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At what age should parents give their children phones? · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:23
  Well, good afternoon, everybody.
• 0:24
  It is a pleasure, as always, to have you on board on board the big show today.
• 0:30
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• 0:34
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• 0:58
  at America Out Loud Talk Radio, and we're happy to have you on board.
• 1:02
  Yesterday, my friends was a big day.
• 1:05
  The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments set to decide the fate of male and ballots.
• 1:12
  Yes, this could end the post-election counting nightmare that we experienced in 2020, again experienced in 2022, in some cases in 2024.
• 1:28
  Let's hope that we don't experience it again in 2026.
• 1:32
  We will see, though.
• 1:33
  I I don't know.
• 1:35
  I don't know where this court is going to land.
• 1:37
  This court thus far has proven to be unpredictable at best.
• 1:44
  And and in some cases, we think, wow, these guys are they're getting it done, they're killing it.
• 1:48
  And in other cases, we think, well, what in the world?
• 1:52
  What just happened?
• 1:53
  Who are these people even?
• 1:56
  Well, we're going to keep our eye on this case.
• 1:58
  We're going to follow it, we're going to track it because we believe that without election integrity, without a free and fair uh electoral system, that the country's lost ultimately without free elections.
• 2:15
  If elections can be rigged, then we're we're not in a good place.
• 2:22
  If elections can be rigged, we are we're just we're in trouble.
• 2:26
  And we don't want to be in trouble.
• 2:28
  We want to be, we want to be full of hope.
• 2:32
  We want to be prosperous.
• 2:33
  We want to be succeeding.
• 2:35
  We want to live our lives normally, and and we want to be left alone.
• 2:40
  We want to elect people that care about freedom, that care about liberty, that care about inalienable rights and that are interested in protecting those inalienable rights, so we can live our lives.
• 2:54
  That's the whole point of elections, not so people can be in power and run roughshod over us and control us by their every whim and um and desires, as evil as they may be.
• 3:09
  That's not the point of elections.
• 3:10
  It's not to give power to a few.
• 3:17
  The point is that we would be able to live our lives and entrust the government with people who will look after protecting inalienable rights.
• 3:26
  Now that seems as of late to be a uh to be a tall order.
• 3:33
  It it does.
• 3:34
  It seems to be a tall order, but vigilantly, we're gonna have to stay at it.
• 3:38
  As a citizenry, we are going to have to stay at this.
• 3:41
  If we don't, then it's on us.
• 3:45
  This is this is the point in time where we are at in American history that it's on us if we if we lose this fight.
• 3:53
  So we'll keep our eye on it and um and and and hope.
• 3:58
  That's what we're gonna do here.
• 4:00
  We're gonna hope that the Supreme Court chooses election integrity over the uh alternative.
• 4:06
  All right, yesterday we also talked about this uh this piece of research out of Singapore that has linked uh screen time beginning in in infancy, by the way, beginning in in babies.
• 4:22
  They they they tracked this that this cohort of children and this longitudinal study from birth to age 13.
• 4:32
  And what they discovered is on average, by the time the child is two, they are spending two hours a day in front of a screen.
• 4:42
  Now, it's not of the child's doing, it's of the parents doing, where the parent is just exasperated for whatever reason or needs some downtime or or just abdicating their parental responsibilities and handing the phone or the iPad or the whatever to the to the child, and then the child is mesmerized by the screen.
• 5:05
  So they in this study, researchers from Singapore tracked these kids, uh, over a hundred of them from ages birth to 13.
• 5:14
  And what they discovered is that there are certain areas of their brain that matured faster that uh matured more so than other areas, and they are linking this perhaps, and this again, we can't we can't scream cause and effect here.
• 5:35
  Um but these the study links early screen exposure to a variety of brain changes that are connected to perhaps slower decision making and an increase in mental health issues, such as anxiety and the like.
• 5:57
  So the question then comes to us.
• 6:02
  What about the screens?
• 6:04
  Should we be allowing screen time to happen?
• 6:07
  Should we be giving screens to our children?
• 6:13
  And at what point should they receive a phone?
• 6:17
  Now, again, we we get it.
• 6:20
  We know the age that we're living in.
• 6:22
  This modern age of technology.
• 6:25
  Uh the phones are here to stay.
• 6:28
  Smartphones are here to stay.
• 6:31
  Screens are here to stay.
• 6:34
  There, there's no way around it.
• 6:35
  It is what it is.
• 6:36
  But of course, in this study, the Singapore study, they talked about how interaction between the baby and the parent, between the the infant and the parent, the titler and the parent, the child and the parent can stall, perhaps, or forego the the detriments of the screen, especially in these developmental zero to three and four time period, because that the baby needs that facial recognition, that facial awareness, that facial interaction between parents.
• 7:14
  The baby needs to hear and to see and to feel and to smell and the to touch and and and the baby's senses need to be engaged.
• 7:23
  And so the interaction between the parent and the child becomes paramount here.
• 7:30
  It's of the utmost importance in terms of the baby being able to develop.
• 7:39
  So we we while we know screens are here to stay.
• 7:44
  And that is to reduce their time, to reduce the child's time in front of the screen, and to maintain familial interaction, to maintain interaction between parent and baby, between parent and toddler, between parent and child, between parent and young person.
• 8:04
  There's got to be this ongoing interaction that takes place.
• 8:08
  So the question comes up.
• 8:11
  At what age is the right age then for a child to receive their first phone.
• 8:17
  And if it's going to be a phone, is it should it be a smartphone?
• 8:21
  I mean, that's that's a whole nother question.
• 8:23
  And so researchers have been examining how early phone use may affect mental health, attention, obesity, social development, and whether to allow a child to have a cell phone is a decision that many parents today are grappling with.
• 8:42
  As concerns grow about the mental health effects of technology, such as rising rates of depression, anxiety, attention problems altogether among among young people.
• 8:55
  This choice that parents are faced with has become far more complex.
• 9:01
  New research suggests that the issue may not be whether to give your child a phone, but whether when they are development developmentally right to have a phone.
• 9:12
  So it might not be a golden age.
• 9:18
  As parents, it's important for us to understand our own children developmentally.
• 9:25
  And not just, you know, not to say, well, yeah, most kids shouldn't have a phone until they're 16, but my child, well, my child's different.
• 9:51
  But it's it's something that we've got to do.
• 9:54
  We've got to have objectivity in this regard.
• 9:58
  Um, a study by the
• 10:00
  Children's hospital of Philadelphia is very interesting.
• 10:04
  It was published in pediatrics, and it analyzed uh 10,588 children.
• 10:14
  6,739 of whom owned a smartphone at age 12.
• 10:20
  3,849 didn't.
• 10:22
  So, all right, throwing out some numbers here.
• 10:25
  Let's just say 10,000 plus.
• 10:28
  These were the amount of kids that were uh analyzed in this uh research.
• 10:33
  Two-thirds of them, let's just round up.
• 10:35
  Two thirds owned a smartphone by the age of 12, and a third did not.
• 10:41
  So listen to these numbers and listen to how it breaks down, and then ask yourself where your child might fit in.
• 10:50
  If your child is at or around 12, or maybe you have a grandchild or a niece or a nephew or whatever.
• 10:56
  Those with smartphones, the two-thirds with smartphones at the age of 12.
• 11:01
  31% were more likely to show symptoms of depression.
• 11:08
  That's a that's a decent number.
• 11:11
  40% were more likely to have obesity.
• 11:16
  40% were more likely to be overweight.
• 11:18
  That's just under half.
• 11:21
  And this number right here is uh is big.
• 11:25
  62%, almost two-thirds of them were likely to get insufficient sleep compared with the 12-year-olds who didn't have a smartphone.
• 11:38
  So by the age of 13, this pattern continued.
• 11:42
  Among kids who did not have a smartphone at 12, but acquired one over the next year.
• 11:49
  Uh they were more likely to report serious mental health symptoms and insufficient sleep compared to those who still did not have a smartphone.
• 12:00
  What does that tell you?
• 12:02
  All right.
• 12:03
  So at 12.
• 12:06
  We've got kids who don't have a smartphone.
• 12:10
  And they are uh reporting, you know, that they're getting decent sleep, that they're not um depressed and that and and they're not obese uh at the age of 12.
• 12:24
  Okay, when they hit 13 and they acquired a smartphone, they were more likely to report serious mental health symptoms and insufficient sleep compared to to when they didn't have a smartphone and compared to those students at 13 who still do not have a smartphone.
• 12:46
  Um Evelyn Ashafu, I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name right, Evelyn.
• 12:51
  She is the uh she is a board certified child psychiatrist.
• 12:55
  And in an interview with the Epoch Times, she said age 13 is often considered a developmental point for teens because it roughly coincides with the transition into early adolescence.
• 13:08
  At this age, she said, children typically begin developing more advanced executive functioning skills such as planning and impulse control.
• 13:17
  They have this ability, more so when they hit 13 to uh uh to control impulses and to be able to plan out things and to schedule their their day and their activities, that sort of thing.
• 13:32
  While the study focuses on the age at which smartphone ownership begins, it also raises a broader concern.
• 13:41
  One about early exposure to social media, a debate now moving beyond the research community toward government policies and even toward uh you know policies within school systems.
• 13:55
  In 2024, Australia passed the online safety amendment act, uh, which introduced a mandatory minimum age of 16 for social media use.
• 14:08
  Supporters uh at the time argued that the law was necessary and a necessary safeguard to protect developing minds from harmful content and addictive design features, which we know are in the social media platforms.
• 14:27
  Well, the study shows a strong association between early smartphone access and later health challenges, including mental health challenges.
• 14:37
  Researchers note that multiple factors, including family environment and supervision may also play a role.
• 14:42
  So, I mean, there's certainly other things that could go into this.
• 14:49
  As in the Singapore study, there are certain things that could go into the fact that um kids that are on have that are using so much screen time from birth to 13 are full of anxiety and have um you know slower processing in certain areas of the brain.
• 15:10
  There could be other things at play there.
• 15:12
  There certainly could be other factors, but the interesting common denominator here is screen time.
• 15:19
  No matter what the screen is, whether it's a smartphone, whether it's an iPad or whatever.
• 15:25
  Screen time seems to be the common denominator.
• 15:30
  Um Sarah Domoff is an assistant professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Albany.
• 15:37
  And here's what she reported to the Epoch Times and in regard to this study.
• 15:41
  She said, although I understand that many parents wait until their child is a teenager until getting a smartphone.
• 15:49
  Some 13 or 14-year-olds may need extra support and safely using their phones.
• 15:54
  For youth with emotion or behavior regulation problems, more oversight and support will likely be needed.
• 16:03
  So I don't know that 13 or 14 is the magical age here.
• 16:09
  I don't think there is a magical age.
• 16:12
  When should our child, when should our children be given smartphones?
• 16:16
  I don't think there is a magical age.
• 16:18
  You know, if if we had to do it over again, we would not uh I'd give my children a flip phone.
• 16:25
  If I absolutely needed to contact them and to be in contact with them, they'd get a flip phone.
• 16:33
  And they could text and they could make calls.
• 16:36
  That's it.
• 16:37
  I mean, probably that's what I would do.
• 16:39
  And then later on, you know, if they wanted a smartphone, maybe when they were, I don't know, at some point, I don't know.
• 16:45
  Again, there's not a magical age.
• 16:47
  I think we have to know our kids.
• 16:49
  We have to know their ability to be able to handle the um the stressors, the extra added stressors that are brought on to them by the screen.
• 17:02
  Uh you know, if um, if we don't pay attention to that, then uh we will be giving them a smartphone perhaps earlier than what they should have it.
• 17:15
  Um that to me, I mean, that's the bottom line.
• 17:19
  All right, so I want to dive more into this article.
• 17:21
  I'm looking at the clock here, and I see we're up against it.
• 17:25
  Uh, smartphones, we know that the screen affects our brains in a particular way.
• 17:30
  I mean, we talked about it yesterday in the Singapore study, and I want to dive more into it today on the other side of this break.
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  All right, my friends, more to come on the other side of this break.
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  So let's let's get back to this piece here.
• 22:33
  What is the right age for a child's first phone?
• 22:36
  That's the question that's being asked.
• 22:38
  I think ultimately the answer it's not just a magical age.
• 22:44
  I think the answer really depends on the parent and the child, the parent and the adolescent, as it were.
• 22:52
  Uh, I think one of the things we have to ask and inquire and research and look into is how phones affect the brain.
• 22:59
  I think this is something that we have to just spend more time in.
• 23:03
  Uh, we know that these phones are built to grab and hold our attention.
• 23:08
  Notifications, endless scrolling, social feedback loops, all of these things trigger the brain's reward system.
• 23:18
  They they trigger this release of dopamine.
• 23:21
  Uh, that brings pleasure and and and motivation.
• 23:24
  This is why we keep going back to social media because of the dopamine hit.
• 23:29
  We're we're motivated for kids and teens whose brains are especially sensitive to this reward mechanism, uh, this peer approval.
• 23:41
  Uh the pull is even stronger for them to go there.
• 23:44
  And this is why we're at a time where I was talking to it to a dad not long ago.
• 23:50
  Uh, and he's got a teen daughter.
• 23:53
  And they were having this discussion about should she have a smartphone or not.
• 23:58
  And she was just epoplectic over the fact that all of her friends would have a smartphone, and she wouldn't.
• 24:05
  She didn't want to be the odd one out.
• 24:07
  She didn't want to be out of the loop.
• 24:09
  She didn't want to be out of the know.
• 24:10
  I mean, these guys would all have their phones.
• 24:13
  They would know what's going on.
• 24:16
  And she wouldn't.
• 24:17
  She would not know.
• 24:19
  She would be out of the loop.
• 24:20
  And this is the dilemma that a lot of parents are struggling with.
• 24:26
  They don't want to be the cause of their kids being out of the loop, as it were.
• 24:32
  Uh, there is this strong pull.
• 24:35
  And and this this debate is it's ferocious.
• 24:38
  So let's talk about the the brain here.
• 24:43
  We've been we've been spending a little bit of time in this.
• 24:45
  Let's dive into it a little bit more today.
• 24:47
  We know that in the pre-adolescent stage, typically ages 9 to 12, several neurodevelopmental processes are underway.
• 24:56
  All right, we're talking about the maturation of the pre pre prefrontal cortex, which by the way, that that maturation is sped up.
• 25:05
  That's what we discovered yesterday in that Singapore study, where they followed zero to 13 year olds' birth to 13.
• 25:15
  And the more screen time they had, the more prematured their prefrontal cortex was, and that's not a good thing to be prematured.
• 25:25
  You need to uh slowly is the fastest way.
• 25:29
  I mean, let the brain mature how it's supposed to.
• 25:33
  All right, so 9 to 12, these types of things are happening.
• 25:36
  The prefrontal cortex is supposed to be maturing at a at a normal rate, not sped up.
• 25:45
  The brain's decision making center uh is said to be this it's this responsible place for planning.
• 25:54
  This is the prefrontal cortex.
• 25:56
  It's responsible for planning, it's responsible for impulse control, decision making, increased limbic system sensitivity, which leads to stronger emotional reactivity.
• 26:08
  It it's what it tends to cause preteens to go into these mood swings, sensory overload, overthinking.
• 26:18
  All of this happens right here.
• 26:20
  The prefrontal cortex.
• 26:22
  During this pre-adolescent stage, reward pathways are also sensitive, making children more susceptible to activities that offer reinforcement.
• 26:34
  Activities such as video games or likes on social media.
• 26:39
  It's these likes that are that are so reinforcing to the youngins among us.
• 26:46
  Younger children also have less experiencing or less less experience managing uh these intense emotions, and they're they're possibly more than likely going to rely on some external stimuli, such as games, such as phones, that they're gonna rely on on these things to soothe or distract themselves.
• 27:12
  Ashafu, here's what she said in this regard.
• 27:16
  These pivotal brain areas are still developing.
• 27:19
  And if smartphones are introduced too soon, it can lead to disruption in the maturation process.
• 27:26
  And that's what we have seen out of the Singapore study.
• 27:31
  That these kids are getting screen time from day one, and there is a disruption in the maturation process.
• 27:38
  It's speeding it up.
• 27:39
  And it's not a good thing.
• 27:42
  In contrast, adult brains are fully developed, especially the prefrontal cortex region.
• 27:50
  The connection between logical thinking and emotional reaction is stronger in adults.
• 27:56
  This, of course, helps us pause before acting, and it also allows us to better control our impulses, at least some of us.
• 28:05
  And so while adults can still be drawn in by reward-based technology, they're generally better equipped to manage screen time and delay gratification.
• 28:16
  Even though social media can still be highly addictive to adults, and even though it can still be challenging to regulate, our brains are there.
• 28:27
  They're fully developed.
• 28:29
  And at least we have the capacity to regulate.
• 28:33
  We have the capacity to kind of control this better.
• 28:37
  Where young people, adolescents, pre-adolescents, they don't even really have the capacity.
• 28:44
  So excessive screen time becomes associated then with higher risk of mental health conditions, such as such as anxiety, uh, attention deficit disorder, uh, suicidal tendencies are even in the mix here with excessive screen time.
• 29:03
  And this is part of the uh this lawsuit right now that's that's going on against the social media companies that you know they're being the charge is that they knew they knew this was what would happen, and they promoted it.
• 29:20
  They put it out there.
• 29:22
  A 2024 study suggested that people who use smartphones excessively may become more easily distracted because their brains don't use their attention networks as efficiently.
• 29:36
  Attention processing is the brain's ability to focus on important information while ignoring distractions.
• 29:44
  This skill helps you concentrate.
• 29:47
  It's it's the reason that you can remember details.
• 29:52
  And it also helps you to respond what's happening around you.
• 29:57
  This study from 2024.
• 30:00
  Helps explain why heavy smartphone users may have a harder time staying focused on task and filtering out irrelevant information.
• 30:09
  Additionally, constant screen stimulation can affect cognitive development, can affect language, can affect social skills.
• 30:18
  It can even affect our sleep patterns.
• 30:21
  And we talked about this yesterday that Steve Jobs didn't let his kids use the iPad.
• 30:28
  And Bill Gates shut the phone down before bed.
• 30:31
  He said, You're not having it at lunchtime at dinner time, and you don't get it before bed.
• 30:37
  Because they understood.
• 30:39
  They understood the disruptions that it would bring.
• 30:43
  Um, especially uh towards sleep, poor disrupted sleep.
• 30:48
  Uh, I mean, it's closely tied to many of the mental health struggles that kids go through.
• 30:53
  This is according to uh Ashi Ofu, if I'm saying her name right.
• 30:57
  She said late night screen use, notifications, and blue light exposure can all interfere with quality sleep, affecting mood, behavior, learning.
• 31:08
  It affects overall well-being.
• 31:10
  This stuff right here, this the screen time.
• 31:13
  What we're talking about is literally tied to overall well-being.
• 31:19
  Uh so in other words, the question may be less about whether a child is allowed a smartphone and more about whether their brain is developmentally developmentally prepared to handle it.
• 31:31
  Do you think your child is developmentally prepared to handle it based upon the research that's coming up?
• 31:37
  Based upon what we're hearing and what we're learning.
• 31:42
  I mean, as parents.
• 31:44
  Maybe flip phones are the way to go.
• 31:46
  Maybe they're the answer.
• 31:48
  Maybe, you know, uh maybe kids don't need to be tied into the world 24-7.
• 31:56
  Maybe let their brains develop a little bit before we tie them to the universe 24/7.
• 32:03
  Uh so uh I think parents may want to ask themselves some questions here.
• 32:10
  Uh, how open is your child with sharing with you problems that may occur online?
• 32:16
  I wonder.
• 32:16
  I think this is an important question.
• 32:18
  When you're talking about should they have a smartphone or not?
• 32:22
  How open are they?
• 32:24
  You know, to talking about some of this, talking about some of the problems that that may appear.
• 32:31
  Do you think they have trouble socially?
• 32:33
  Or do you think they have trouble with impulse control?
• 32:37
  Because if they do, if they're struggling socially, if they're struggling with impulse control, then a smartphone probably isn't the the Christmas gift for them.
• 32:49
  Does your family have a plan for how to respond if your child is experiencing harmful interactions online?
• 32:55
  I mean, what's the what's the protocol?
• 32:58
  This is stuff to think through.
• 33:00
  What would the protocol be?
• 33:02
  These are the types of questions that reflect different aspects of readiness and family practices for for managing phone use.
• 33:14
  How ready is your adolescent or your pre-adolescent?
• 33:18
  How ready are they?
• 33:19
  I think these these types of questions might help you to figure out.
• 33:25
  Uh, to reduce screen time.
• 33:27
  There's a few things parents can do.
• 33:29
  Number one, they can use a system in which their child earns screen time, you know, by completing tasks or doing chores.
• 33:36
  Back in the day, it was, you know, you did chores and you got money, you got paid for it.
• 33:39
  And maybe now the payment is screen time.
• 33:43
  Maybe, I don't know.
• 33:44
  I mean, it's it's an option.
• 33:46
  Um, this might help to put more limits in place for screen usage while simultaneously encouraging positive behaviors.
• 33:57
  Um, Ashafu recommends ensuring that parents spend time with other structured and adaptive activities, such as being outside.
• 34:06
  Let's let's go outside, let's throw the ball around.
• 34:09
  Uh, recreational activities, sports, creative arts.
• 34:12
  You know, let's let's do some drawing.
• 34:13
  Let's let's do some painting.
• 34:15
  Let's let's do some hands-on mobility type stuff here.
• 34:19
  Uh, not only is this getting the the child off the screen, but these types of activities actually promote mental health.
• 34:28
  They actually promote well-being uh while they are replacing the screen time.
• 34:34
  That's that's a win-win.
• 34:35
  That's a double bonus.
• 34:38
  Uh, there are also things that a child can do to reduce screen time and ensure that they're ready for the smartphone.
• 34:46
  She suggests here uh that some strategies kids can implement include blocking content that is upsetting or distressing to them, turning off likes to posts.
• 34:59
  You know, you we want to see the like, just shut it off.
• 35:02
  Shut them off.
• 35:03
  Or you could you could set time limits on the apps, you know, self-regulating.
• 35:09
  Just after, I don't know, a period of time, the app shuts down.
• 35:13
  Uh Demoff said she's the other um the other person in this article here.
• 35:20
  Uh, the other psychiatrist.
• 35:22
  She says we also recommend children trying to stay off their phones around bedtime in order to promote healthy sleep practices.
• 35:29
  And yeah, we talk about that all the time.
• 35:31
  Maybe an hour or two.
• 35:33
  Shut that thing down.
• 35:35
  Uh, some families may also consider alternatives before introducing a smartphone, such as the flip phone.
• 35:42
  Let's just go flip phone, where you know, you're gonna, you're gonna text.
• 35:46
  You can text all day long, and then gradually increasing access as a child demonstrates responsibility there.
• 35:53
  And that can help build digital skills and stages as opposed to uh happening all at once.
• 36:02
  Ultimately, the decision to give a child a smartphone isn't really about the right age, but it's about the readiness.
• 36:08
  Do you think uh young Johnny is ready?
• 36:12
  And do you think Janie is ready for this?
• 36:15
  Do you think they're you think they're up to the task?
• 36:19
  Uh again, there isn't a sweet spot here.
• 36:21
  There isn't some golden age.
• 36:25
  It's up to the parent.
• 36:27
  It's up to the the parent and the child to, well, the parent to determine where the where the child falls in this, and and conversations are important.
• 36:36
  Conversations have to be had at this point.
• 36:39
  Uh definitely elementary isn't the answer.
• 36:42
  In middle school, I don't even think is the answer.
• 36:45
  I wouldn't.
• 36:46
  I wouldn't do it.
• 36:47
  I wouldn't do elementary, I wouldn't do middle school, wouldn't do smartphones in those in those age categories.
• 36:53
  Once high school gets here, then start having the conversation.
• 36:56
  But I certainly wouldn't do it beforehand.
• 37:00
  All right, my friends, I am I'm looking at the clock here, and I'm want to pause at this point for a break.
• 37:06
  On the other side, I want to pick up perhaps what experts have missed about the algorithms.
• 37:14
  They've warned us about the algorithms, but but what have they missed when it when it comes to our kids and the algorithms?
• 37:21
  All right, we're gonna we're gonna keep this conversation going only because I like it and I'm intrigued by it.
• 37:27
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• 39:52
  I think I want to wrap up this conversation today by exploring another article.
• 40:00
  This is entitled experts warned us about algorithms but missed the kids.
• 40:06
  This piece is also from the Epoch Times.
• 40:10
  The subtitle, if we allow algorithms to raise our children, we will not only lose a generation.
• 40:18
  We will lose the very qualities that hold America and humanity together.
• 40:27
  That's a bold statement.
• 40:29
  If we allow the algorithms to raise our children, we will not only lose a generation, but we're going to lose the values that knit us together, not only as an American society, but as humanity.
• 40:43
  So she goes on to say that for more than a decade.
• 40:48
  Experts, of course, have warned us about the dangers of the algorithms.
• 40:53
  In 2015, Frank Pasquel, a legal scholar, an expert on law, as it pertains to artificial intelligence, wrote a book called The Black Box Society.
• 41:06
  The secret algorithms that control money and information.
• 41:11
  In it, he said, authority is increasingly expressed algorithmically.
• 41:19
  Algorithmically.
• 41:21
  Data scientist Kathy O'Neill followed that up in 2016 with her best-selling book entitled Weapons of Math Destruction, Math, Math Destruction.
• 41:35
  In it, she showed how invisible formulas reinforce inequality in areas such as credit scores, policing, and hiring.
• 41:46
  These warnings were serious, and these warnings were right.
• 41:51
  But even as they sounded alarms about fairness, about bias, or about discrimination in an adult system such as credit scores and hiring.
• 42:03
  One thing was left in the shadows, and that's childhood.
• 42:08
  The experts were watching how algorithms governed our finances and governed our jobs and our reputations.
• 42:16
  But few stop to ask how those same symptoms and/or systems amplified through social media and now AI companies would come to govern the daily lives, the daily identities and the futures of our children.
• 42:35
  By 2020, the groundbaking uh breaking, groundbreaking documentary entitled The Social Dilemma, brought the issue into the mainstream.
• 42:47
  Former insiders from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, alongside researchers at the Center for Humane Technology, revealed how engagement-driven design was exploiting psychology, spreading misinformation and polarizing societies.
• 43:05
  I referred to this documentary in the in the last segment.
• 43:10
  The film was a wake-up call.
• 43:13
  But even then, the focus was mostly on politics and civic trust.
• 43:18
  Again, children were treated as collateral victims, not as the primary target population.
• 43:26
  Yet today it is young people who are most deeply governed by the algorithms.
• 43:33
  Pasquel and O'Neill were right to call attention to these opaque systems that decided who got loans based upon their credit scores or who got jobs or who could speak online.
• 43:45
  But while adults have some defenses, such as life experience, critical thinking skills, developed identities, again, all the stuff that we've we've been talking about today.
• 43:58
  Children don't have these.
• 44:22
  Development in neuroscience show us that adolescence is the brain's second most active growth stage, rivaled only by early childhood.
• 44:33
  And this is why the Singapore experiment was was and is so intriguing, because it tracked these children through these most volatile times of brain activity.
• 44:48
  The teenage brain is unusually that the term is plastic.
• 44:58
  It craves novelty, it's sensitive to peer feedback, it's wired for risk taking.
• 45:19
  This is why comparing algorithmic control of adults to that of children is an it's a mistake.
• 45:27
  It's an error.
• 45:30
  Adults may be nudged, distracted, or even manipulated by the algorithms, but children are being formed by them.
• 45:38
  In this piece, she emphasizes the word formed.
• 45:42
  Where an adult might lose focus, a child may lose the capacity to focus at all.
• 45:49
  Where an adult might feel lonely, a child may grow up never having learned the skills required to have friendships or intimacy at all.
• 46:00
  The stakes are not simply higher.
• 46:03
  They are uh existential.
• 46:07
  Algorithms now govern childhood in at least four crucial domains.
• 46:11
  And these are the domains that I want to dive into here.
• 46:14
  The first is attention.
• 46:16
  Social media feeds are designed to keep the eyes of young people locked to the screen, capturing time, capturing focus that once went to other things, including family, including friendship, including studies, school work.
• 46:33
  That time when that focus is captured.
• 46:37
  Notifications arrive 24-7.
• 46:40
  Fragmenting concentration and eroding sleep.
• 46:53
  And sleep, forget it.
• 46:55
  Are you kidding me?
• 46:57
  This erosion of real bonds lies at the heart of the loneliness epidemic, which was identified by in 2023 by then Surgeon General Vivek Murphy.
• 47:14
  And it tends to hit the youngest generation the hardest.
• 47:18
  All right, so that that's the first domain.
• 47:21
  Attention.
• 47:27
  On platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, likes and follows have become the currency of value.
• 47:36
  You are valued, or you do have and possess value, depending on the number of likes you have, depending on the number of followers you have.
• 47:50
  Admitted that its algorithms make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.
• 47:58
  That was the internal statement.
• 48:01
  Childhood was was once a time to discover intrinsic worth.
• 48:06
  It has now been turned into a constant audition for digital approval.
• 48:12
  All right, so that's uh that's crucial domain number two.
• 48:16
  Number three is community.
• 48:20
  Recommendation engines steer youth into echo chambers and rabbit holes, narrowing their world, fracturing their social bonds.
• 48:33
  Their community is being driven by the algorithms.
• 48:38
  Friendships rise and fall according to what the algorithm promotes.
• 48:42
  Instead of of the interaction that would happen during recess or after school.
• 48:50
  Instead, we have digital friendships, and these digital friendships are leaving young people with networks that are broader than those previous generations experienced.
• 49:01
  But being broader, they're also incredibly shallow.
• 49:06
  There's no depth to them at all.
• 49:09
  As Virginia Eubanks notes, she's a political scientist and an author.
• 49:17
  She wrote automating inequality.
• 49:21
  She is shown that automated automated systems are not neutral.
• 49:27
  Rather, they are designed to sort and discipline populations.
• 49:32
  For children, this means that their very communities are being shaped.
• 49:37
  They're being fragmented, they're being policed by an invisible corporate code of algorithms.
• 49:45
  All right, the fourth.
• 49:58
  For earlier generations.
• 50:00
  Loneliness could be softened by a trusted friend, by a sibling, you know, confidant.
• 50:07
  Today, however, the algorithms offer substitutes.
• 50:11
  AI chat bots and large language models are marketed to youth as companions, always available, endlessly patient, apparently empathetic to a young person feeling isolated.
• 50:27
  These systems developed by the uh by the algorithm can feel like friends.
• 50:36
  But they're not friends.
• 50:37
  They are predictive text machines trained to simulate care, but incapable of love and capable of friendship and capable of community.
• 50:50
  The danger used to be subtle, but it's no longer subtle.
• 50:54
  The danger is now profound.
• 50:56
  Children may grow accustomed to mistaking machine responses for intimacy, weakening their ability to form durable bonds in the real world.
• 51:06
  Now, more cases of self-harm are surfacing in which teens confided in artificial algorithmic friends that gave them the support to carry it out, to carry out the unthinkable.
• 51:21
  I mean, we don't call it support.
• 51:24
  But but that's what's happening here.
• 51:27
  The evidence of harm is overwhelming.
• 51:31
  Pew Research reports dramatic rises in teen anxiety and depression since 2012.
• 51:38
  This is a time when platforms shifted from chronological to algorithmic feeds.
• 51:45
  Murphy's loneliness warning confirms what parents see every day.
• 51:50
  Today's youth are more digitally connected than any generation in history.
• 51:55
  Yet they feel more isolated than ever.
• 51:58
  Recent data make the cost even clearer.
• 52:02
  Okay, listen to these numbers.
• 52:03
  From 2010 to 2020, the suicide rate among U.S.
• 52:07
  adolescents, ages 10 to 24, rose by 56%.
• 52:14
  Among girls in the age category of 10 to 14, the rate surged by 167%.
• 52:23
  And among boys in that age group, it surged by 91%.
• 52:28
  Those are unsustainable numbers.
• 52:32
  By 2021, suicide had become the third leading cause of death among high school students, with nearly 2,000 deaths, and one in three girls reporting suicidal thoughts.
• 52:48
  Jonathan Hay.
• 52:50
  H A I D T hate.
• 52:58
  He calls it the great rewiring of childhood.
• 53:01
  These are the fruits of systems not designed for empathy, not designed for growth, not designed for love.
• 53:08
  Instead, they are cold machines that fake companionship.
• 53:12
  They fake compassion for engagement metrics, corporate profit, taking advantage of developing brains too young to know the difference.
• 53:24
  But even beyond life and death, numbers alone don't capture the cost.
• 53:29
  What is being lost is not only playtime or friendships, it's the formation of character itself.
• 53:38
  Childhood is the training ground for citizenship.
• 53:42
  It's when young people once learned patience.
• 53:46
  It's when they they learn trust, self-control, and meaning through shared struggle or little arguments on the playground at recess.
• 53:57
  When those lessons are replaced by endless feeds or gamified approval and machine simulated intimacy, the loss becomes generational.
• 54:09
  Older readers may recall growing up with human governors, you know, what we would call parents and teachers and neighbors who were like parents.
• 54:17
  They set poundaries and they they pass down values.
• 54:21
  Those human guides taught us responsibility.
• 54:24
  They taught us restraint.
• 54:26
  They gave us a conscience.
• 54:29
  The child who learned these lessons became the adult who could build families and businesses and communities.
• 54:35
  When algorithms take that role, what kind of adults will emerge?
• 54:41
  A generation governed by algorithms will not simply be lonely.
• 54:46
  It'll be full of citizens who struggle to focus.
• 54:50
  Workers who can't create without machines or neighbors unskilled in empathy, and voters conditioned to trust whatever their highly curated feed serves up next.
• 55:01
  Leaders raised this way may lack the moral depth to govern without consulting algorithms as their silent advisors.
• 55:12
  The implications extend far beyond homes and workplaces.
• 55:16
  A society of distracted, isolated and emotionally fragile citizens is easier to manipulate.
• 55:23
  It's easier to divide and it's easier to control.
• 55:27
  Whether by corporations or by hostile powers abroad, or heaven forbid, by hostile powers within.
• 55:37
  The algorithm cannot lead the way here.
• 55:41
  If this path continues, the United States may not only lose its resilience, it may lose its ability to lead.
• 55:49
  A culture built on recycling what performs rather than imagining what's true or what's good or what's beautiful.
• 56:00
  And this, my friends, is what some people want.
• 56:02
  They want America to lose the ability to lead.
• 56:06
  They want America to lose the sight of what's good and what's true and what's beautiful.
• 56:13
  So I'll end it this way today.
• 56:16
  Uh pay attention.
• 56:19
  Pay attention to the age here.
• 56:21
  Pay attention to the age of your children when you give them a device.
• 56:25
  And should you give them a device?
• 56:27
  I mean, that's the question.
• 56:29
  Especially for the young, the middle school and the early high school.
• 56:33
  This is a question that we must ask ourselves early and often.
• 56:38
  All right, my friends, that's it.
• 56:40
  That's all the time we have for today.
• 56:42
  We're gonna wrap it up with that.
• 56:43
  Listen, thanks for joining me.
• 56:45
  Share the good news of this show.
• 56:47
  Get it out there.
• 56:47
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• 56:51
  Let's unite to renovate the age.