Seisei Tatebe - Goddu ‘01 Talks “BIG” at Assembly

By SAM ALTMAN, LUKE CHON, DRONA GADDAM, CRANE LEE, AALIAYAH SALVA, and MARVIN SHIM

    On Friday, Sept. 20, Ms. Seisei Tatebe-Goddu ‘01 spoke to Exeter about her initiatives against abuse of technology countrywide. She is the CEO of Lights on Labs, an organization advocating for the responsible usage of technology. She has also worked at Mothers Against Media Addiction, which seeks to normalize conscious usage of social media for children.

    Tatebe-Goddu’s childhood in Japan had a large influence on her relationship to Exeter and worldview going forward. “When I was twelve, my family moved to Japan,” Tatebe-Goddu explained. “We spent three years in southeastern Miyazaki, which was not anywhere close to an international school. Instead, I attended a local Japanese school where no one spoke English; I spoke maybe five words of Japanese when we arrived. While I was there, another family started looking into prep schools, and so that’s how I became aware of Exeter.”

    Tatebe-Goddu continued, “When I first got to Exeter, everyone complained about the long days and Saturday classes. And I’m looking at everyone going, ‘First, for most of you the classes are in your first language and second, I’ve been going to Saturday classes for three years now.’ From that perspective, Exeter was actually easier than what I’d come from, and I think I was one of the few students who had that perspective. Sometimes students think that anything less than perfection is detrimental. But, in Japan, I was in classes where I was being graded the same as native Japanese speakers,  except I didn’t know the language. I was at the bottom of my class the first semester, but by the second semester I no longer was.”

    “And you know, I remember a specific Kanji test, which is our version of a vocabulary test, on which I received a score of two out of a hundred,” Tatebe-Goddu reflected. “I looked at that and said, ‘I recognized one of them [a character]—woo! So it just totally shifts your perspective. It shifts your framing. This is no longer failure. This is actually success in the context of everything that is stacked against you.”

    Tatebe-Goddu began her assembly by trying to capture the audience’s attention. “I think the atmosphere was very engaging,” upper Jacques Leleux said. “Having the questions at the beginning was super helpful. People were standing up and shouting, especially some of the younger students. It was definitely a great way to bring the audience in, and we were with her on the ride for the rest of it because of that.”

    “I feel as if everyone, including myself, was engaged in the assembly, especially after her tactic of starting off with a game. The assembly seemed very light and uplifting, especially considering the atmosphere outside. It lifted my spirits for the rest of the day,” prep Ryan Ramos agreed.

    “I thought it was very interesting how she used different anecdotes about herself in between her main topics,” prep Abby Rogers said. “The atmosphere felt very lighthearted. Ms. Tatebe-Goddu did a good job in engaging the audience in a way that some of the past speakers haven’t been able to do as much.”

    After connecting with the students, Tatebe-Goddu jumped right into her efforts for societal change. In an interview, Tatebe-Goddu discussed more of the specifics of her work and its inception.

    “I had been working with a group called Center for Humane Technology, which is the same group that created The Social Dilemma on Netflix and actually recently came out with a collaboration with Oprah. One of the conversations we kept having with them was that the organization didn’t really have a movement arm. It didn’t have an ability to galvanize ordinary people and create a mass movement. So, to demand regulation and bring in the public, we launched Lights on Labs,” Tatebe-Goddu explained.

    “And the first campaign that we supported was Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), in part because across the organizations working on this issue, there was an element missing that felt like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That program was essentially a group of people—not just moms, but also parents, uncles, grandparents—confronting a problem that was harming the kids in their lives,” Tatebe-Goddu said.

    Tatebe-Goddu continued, “MAMA is a group of people who are sick and tired of being told individual responsibility is the issue—the idea that you can just stop doom scrolling and it’ll be totally fine. That’s not actually the solution. The solution is getting companies to recognize they can no longer make design choices that deliberately target kids. That is not okay. And the only way to change that is if you get companies to conform to legislation that says, ‘Hey, you can’t actually do that because it’s illegal.’ We’ve tried voluntary measures, and it just doesn’t work.”

    In the assembly, Tatebe-Goddu introduced the issue by referencing statistics. “Did you know that the average screen time for kids in this country is seven hours per day? Seven hours per day? And do you know that seven hours of nonstop dopamine hits leads to, unsurprisingly, not healthy teens, but tragically higher rates of suicide among 10 to 14 year olds and other illnesses like depression and ADHD?”

    Many students resonated with this information and her work and were struck by her speech. “One of the major points of her speech was the impact of social media,” prep Ray Li mentioned. “Especially for teens and our generation in general, we don’t even realize how much it affects us. Seven hours a day on social media—sometimes you don’t even notice it and it passes so quickly while you’re not actually achieving anything.”

    “Screens are so embedded in our lives nowadays, it’d be impossible to function completely without them,” Leleux commented about the assembly. “I need to check my schedule, when lunch is—all these things that only our phone can do. It’s so ingrained in Exeter at this point. But I will agree that things like doom scrolling or Instagram can definitely have somewhat of a detrimental impact on students. As soon as you press the little reel icon, you’re gone for half an hour or 45 minutes. So, there’s definitely a balance to be struck, maybe some government regulation changes. If she’s trying to lobby for that sort of thing, I think that’s a noble pursuit.”

    Tatebe-Goddu spoke not only about her work with Lights on Labs and MAMA to support the responsible usage of social media and technology for children, but also opted to spend a great deal of time discussing its more abstract implications, the misleading nature of material success, and “big.”

    Tatebe-Goddu explained in her speech, “But while MAMA’s work is important, I don’t actually want to spend all of my time today talking about my work because that makes the conversation about me. And I would much rather make the conversation about something that I hope will help you leapfrog the anxiety that some of you may be feeling about what your future may hold. So let’s have that conversation instead. Today I want to share a story about something I’ve struggled with for the last 20 years and only really recently resolved. This is a story about ‘big’—‘big’ as a framing that we place upon ourselves and the path that puts on ‘big’ as a set of stories that we sell ourselves about what success means. It’s a story about ‘big’ as a lens that tends to focus us on our limitations instead of on our potential.”

    She would then continue to explain what having a “big impact” actually means and to not let the idea of utilitarian success take away our own agency. “If you only focus on ‘big,’ ‘big’ will make the choice for you, not the other way around. I’ve had what you might describe as a colorful career. It zigs and it zags. And often, my greatest success has come not because I’ve done a predictable thing, but because I’ve taken a left turn that no one could possibly have predicted. It is not linear.”

    “I think she knew going in that it would be tough to advocate for limiting screen time in schools to a room full of people who are used to technology. But she tried to relate her values to more abstract ideals, which was a good point on her part,” Leleux said.

    “I think the idea of ‘big’ is definitely something that we should learn from and something that’s really important in the grand scheme of things. However, I think that it was a good pairing with Sarah Jin Ho’s previous assembly. She was trying to suggest to us to aim big and do the things we want to do in life. Now we hear that it is okay if we fail and just do the things that matter to you,” senior Byran Huang reflected.

    Instructor in Physics Charles Mamolo explained, “The first thing that came to my mind were the Exonians. They have the idea that they have to go big or go home. And it was quite the opposite of what she was saying, that you don’t have to go big to gain the respect of other people or find yourself useful or relevant. It was a counterthesis to what most kids here think, that you have to be good at something.”

    Lower Max Liu commented, “she presents something very relatable to the younger generation, especially for Exonians. That we should not just aim for what success is like by convention and truly find what speaks to ourselves. And I’m certain that there are a lot of us with this insecurity and this talk certainly helped comfort and provide a new perspective for these audiences.”

    Leleux agreed, “I mean, I’m a senior right now. College applications are weighing heavily on my mind. It’s a really refreshing message to know that just because you’re not a household name, doesn’t mean that you didn’t succeed in life. Happiness is being kind, embodying your own core values. That’s more indicative of a life well-lived than being famous.”

    “The value of a person does not come from what the utility of the person is or what their achievement is,” Mamolo continued. “The value of a person is the person. They are enough. And everything else is to find meaning in life. It must be balanced that you don’t make big who you are. Because that’s not who you are.”

    “Overall, I’ve never thought of life in terms of the word ‘big,’ but I have heard of the philosophy of not always chasing idealistic success, so I thought her lens was intriguing,” Rogers said.

    Ramos concluded, “She explained how comparison is the thief of joy. She taught the importance of establishing your own goals without worrying about society’s perception and whether it’s ‘big’ enough, which I think is really going to help me throughout my Exeter career.”

    “People on their deathbed never talk about work,” Tatebe-Goddu stated. “They talk about relationships. They talk about the communities that they’re a part of and the regrets that they have around relationships that they built or didn’t build. So that’s a sign, right? That’s a warning sign to us here and now that what we need to be paying attention to is the quality of our communities, the quality of our relationships. You don’t get there by blindly following ‘big’ and eliminating the possibility of serendipity in your life.”

    Throughout Tatebe-Goddu’s speech, she made several references to her college friend David who became a father at an unexpected time. She discussed throughout how he managed to persevere despite the added challenge of raising a child, and how he conquered ‘big.’

    At the end of her assembly, she had a final reflection to share about David. “I want to go back to David because I left you on a bit of a cliffhanger. He did have a beautiful baby girl and he became a lawyer for one of our country’s largest federal agencies, working to ensure that we all have access to affordable, efficient, and effective public services. And he also got to be a father to someone who now works to deliver healthy babies. He will never be a household name. But wow. Talk about impact.”