MAPS Great Speaker Forum: Human connection matters

The Merrill High School Fieldhouse buzzed with energy Tuesday morning, April 22, 2025, as nationally-recognized youth speaker Joe Beckman delivered a powerful message about the importance of human connection to students and community members at this year’s Great Speaker Forum.
Beckman captured the audience’s attention immediately with his straightforward approach, kicking things off by challenging volunteers from the audience to a dance-off and then getting the entire student body in the bleachers dancing. He also had everyone singing along to well-known John Denver and Journey hits along the way, keeping energy at a high level until the very last minute.

The power of human connection
Beckman said if he could summarize his entire presentation in three words, it would be these: “Human Connection Matters.”
The Minnesota-based speaker and co-founder of Till360 didn’t shy away from addressing concerning trends he’s observed in his work with over one million students across 2,000 schools worldwide.

“I don’t wanna waste your time,” Beckman said. “I am not the ‘Cell phone is bad’ guy. I am not the ‘We’re going to hell in a hand basket because of technology and life was better 30 years ago.’ None of that stuff. I believe our lives are incredibly more efficient because of technology [and] in some ways more connected.”
“However, when you start to peel back the data, which is starting to come back in droves ... you start asking yourself, ‘Are these serving a greater purpose?’ We start seeing increases in nearly every single mental health condition: stress up, anxiety up, depression up, self-harm up, ideation up, all while human connection over the last 10 years has gone down,” Beckman said.
His presentation focused on three core themes that align with three chapters in his bestselling book: Love You, Push Through, and Just Look Up.

Love You: Embracing self-worth
“When it comes to this idea of seeing the good in ourselves, when it comes to this idea of seeing our lights, we are really, really good when we’re really, really young,” Beckman said. “But at some point, somewhere along the way, we start to shift our focus. Instead of seeing all the things that we are, slowly but surely, we start seeing and feeling all the things that we are not. Somewhere along the line, we start comparing ourselves to other people, and instead of focusing on everything we are, we start seeing all the things that are wrong or imperfect, or what we would say is ‘incorrect.’”

“In fact, they did a study around this to prove this. They polled thousands of first grade students and they asked these first grade students, ‘How many of you believe you have light that you can share in your heart?’ Every single hand went up in the air,” Beckman said. “They asked the same question to a group of 10th graders: ‘How many of you believe you have light in your heart that you can share with others?’ A few sporadic hands up in the air.”
Somewhere along the line, between that time, the voice of NE kicks in, he said. “What do you mean NE? — Not Enough.”
“It’s that voice in your head this morning, just like every morning, when you look in the mirror and you say, ‘I don’t look good enough,’” Beckman said. “Or you make an error on the field and you say, ‘not athletic enough,’ ... ‘not smart enough,’ ... ‘not popular enough’ ... these messages of not enough that start into our brain, they filter out into our hearts.”
“And if you don’t think that that has an impact on how you treat yourself or how you treat others, guess again,” he said.
“The not enough started for me pretty early—second grade, eight years old,” Beckman said. “I’m the youngest in my family, and I always grew up on the heavyset side of things, and I always got made fun of for it.”
He shared his personal story of how that year he received a hurtful gift—a t-shirt with “Human Garbage Disposal” written on it—”and everybody starts laughing at me”—a moment that kicked off his struggle with body image.
“That is the moment where I started focusing on all the things that I wasn’t versus all the things that I was,” Beckman said. “That was the moment where I told myself that, ‘Joe Beckman, your value has nothing to do with what you give and everything to do with other people’s opinions.’”
This mindset led to destructive behaviors, including making himself throw up after meals during ninth grade.
“Some of you are looking for happiness and joy in the opinions of other people, and it feels so good when you get it, but I gotta tell you, if I could go back and give myself any advice so I could go back and do things over again, I would tell you that true joy, true happiness, has nothing to do about somebody else’s opinion,” Beckman said.
“It matters to all of us when we see the light, but it’s incredibly hard to do that when every voice in our head for the last so many years has been telling us a different story,” Beckman said. “Stop comparing yourself to everybody else.”
“You might not ever look how she looks. You might not ever have what they have. You might not have their athletic skills or whatever it is that you want from them, but guess what?” he said. “They don’t have what you have.”
“And I don’t care who you are or where you come from. I don’t care what rank in the class you feel you are at. Every single one of you brings something to the table, something to the school, some kind of light that could somehow help somebody who’s going through a little bit of dark.”
“So stop focusing and comparing yourself and your life to everybody else’s. It’s pointless,” he said. “See the light in you. Focus there.”
“The second thing I would say is, ‘Change the script. Your brain.’”
One suggestion he offered was this: Get a post-it note, write down something positive your brain needs to hear daily [You Are Enough], place it where you’ll see it, and read it aloud every day.
“Think about the amount of time we waste every day, focusing on all the things that we are not, instead of pouring that energy into all the things that we are,” Beckman said.

Push Through: Finding resilience in difficult times
The second part of his message addressed how to handle life’s inevitable difficulties. After suffering a sports injury that threatened to end his athletic career, Beckman learned valuable lessons about resilience.
“The question should not be, ‘How do we avoid pain and tragedy when life punches us in the mouth?’ The question is, ‘When it does, what do we do next?’” Beckman said. “And I believe we always have two options: We can live in the low or we can find a way to grow.”
He emphasized the importance of allowing yourself to process grief, especially for young men who are often told to suppress their emotions.

“Here’s where weirdo motivational figures screw it up,” he said. “They look at a group of students or they look at a group of adults and they say things like, ‘Chin up, buttercup. Life was better after the tragedy,’” Beckman said.
“When life punches you in the mouth, I challenge you to live in the low, to cry it out, to grieve it out, to process it out,” he said. “Gentlemen, I hope you are listening to me right now, because we’re fed a different narrative in our society, what it means to be a man—Stuff it down, push it down, don’t talk about it. I think that’s the worst advice anyone could ever give.”
“I think living in the low is a very important part of the process, but here’s what I also think—that living in the low has an expiration date,” Beckman said. “If you live in the low and define yourself by the tragedy that you are going through right now, you are giving your soul, your heart, a chance to sour.”
“Limit the low,” he said. “But when you are ready. It’s different for everybody.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to tell you when this is gonna happen,” Beckman said. “But when you get that tug on your heart that says, ‘Life is meant to be lived’ down here, I urge you to take step number two, which is find a way to grow.”

Just Look Up: Reconnecting in a digital world
The third part of Beckman’s presentation focused on technology addiction and its impact on mental health, comparing today’s smart phone dependence to cigarette addiction in previous decades.
“Big tobacco” was simply replaced by “big tech,” Beckman said. “... There are people making millions of dollars, putting things in these phones—every ring, every ding, every notification you get has been strategically designed to make us look down. Why? Because it makes somebody else money.”
He shared alarming statistics about screen time and its correlation with mental health issues.
“The data is coming back—to tell us is that all of this looking down and this lack of looking up is having a significant impact on how we show up—a significant impact on our happiness and a significant impact on our purpose and our legacy,” Beckman said. “We are addicted.”

“The fact is 8.5 hours a day is the average amount of time a 10th grader is looking down at a screen. This is non-academic time. That is addiction,” he said.
“The average age of depression used to be 30 years old in our society. Today ... all the isolation, all the looking down, all the lack of human connection, I believe plays a significant role in how this age of depression has dropped significantly. The average age today is less than 15 years old.”
He shared a powerful story about Sam, a high school quarterback who had attempted suicide, to illustrate how everyone struggles, sometimes invisibly. Every day, 5,400 youth between the ages of 12 and 18 attempt suicide, he said.
“Sometimes it’s really easy to know the kids who are struggling,” Beckman said, “but oftentimes we do a really good job of putting on that mask and acting like everything’s okay.”
“What I think we forget—and I need everyone listening to me on this one, please: Every single person in this room has a story and every day we have to make someone’s story a little bit easier,” Beckman said. “We get really good at putting that mask on and acting like everything’s okay and we forget that we need each other.”

A call to action
Beckman concluded with a challenge that encapsulated his message.
“I do believe once we understand that there’s a lot of broken pieces around us and that we can’t exactly know who it is ... If I challenged you to pick up one broken piece for one person every day, and you did that, and I did that, and community members did that, and teachers and staff did that, that’s how we leave a legacy that is impossible to forget,” Beckman said.
“You have a responsibility, I believe, to see where you can use your kindness, your compassion, your wisdom, to pick up someone else’s piece,” he said. “And it’s one piece for one person every day. How do we do that? We look down less, we look up more, and we will see where our kindness and compassion can be used.”
His final challenge to the audience was simple but profound: “Look down less, look up more ... that legacy can take you from there.”
The Great Speaker Forum, a tradition since 1978, was funded through donations from local businesses and community members. This year’s speaker was selected by a committee that included students who have served since sixth grade.
Beckman lives in Minnesota with his wife, Jess, and their four children. His best-selling books include “Just Look Up” and “Just Look Back,” and his work with Till360 focuses on building meaningful connections and positive school culture.