Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1287 - [Parental Guidance Episode 1] Deepfakes, Screens & Our Kids - Parenting in the Digital Age

Transcript

#1287 - [Parental Guidance Episode 1] Deepfakes, Screens & Our Kids - Parenting in the Digital Age · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Artificial intelligence. It is everywhere and your kids know all
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: about it too many of them are using it in
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: dangerous ways. Plus how many screens do you have in
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: your home and how much are they being used? Hello?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Happy Families podcast, Real Parenting Solutions every Day.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and Kylie Coulson and the recap continues from Parental Guidance
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Season three, Episode one on Monday night. If you haven't
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: seen it, you can catch up on nine Now. The
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: topic for the week how do we parent in the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: digital age. We've got focused parents Amy and Mark. They're
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: active parents, Nathan and Joanne they're our traditional parents, Courtney
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and John are our protech parents, and Mark and Tammy
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: are our up front parents. On yesterday's episode, we were
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: talking about how our children might soon be interacting with
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: AI if they're not already, and the implication of that
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: understanding that AI is the new social media bots are everywhere.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: What's real? What's fake? How can we tell?
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: That?
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Was yesterday So a moment that shocked everyone on episode
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: one was a link that featured your image setting up
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: a new challenge. Here's what happened?
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Hi?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: There, it's doctor Justin Colson here with your next challenge.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: In the modern world, many friendships take place online, but
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: just how real can these friendships be? Your child will
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: now make a new online friend.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: We haven't been introduced to them yet, but Cassie and
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  Speaker 3: Josh they're the life school parents. They asked this question.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Can I just triple confirmed that the video of you
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: at the start is you and it's not an aiimage?
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Justin? Was that you in that video? I did not
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: record that video message. I've never heard or seen this
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: until now. It wasn't me. It is a deep fake. Wow,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: who made the video?
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: I did?
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: Oh our talent to Lucy.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is one of our producers and camera operators.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: How long did that take you to make.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: The whole process?
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Take about twenty minutes?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Twenty so?
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Did you have to upload a photo of him that
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: you found, like online or something?
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  Speaker 4: Yes? I took about three minutes of video footage of
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: Justin which I found online, uploaded it to the platform,
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  Speaker 4: and then I had a digital avatar of Justin which
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  Speaker 4: I could make say whatever I wanted.
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  Speaker 1: Cassie, Clock Dirt and our protech parents. I mean, I
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: put my hand.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: I had no idea, I had no idea anyone else
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: even think about it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't think about it that we were actually excited.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: So I literally turned to you when that came on
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  Speaker 3: and said, is that actually you?
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  Speaker 5: Like?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Instantly?
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Instantly?
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: In fact, I don't think you asked the question. I
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: think you made a claim that's not you, so you
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: knew but you know me really, really well.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: So it wasn't the image, it was the voice. It
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: was not your voice.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Well. Also my movements were quite unnatural.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, but that came later instantly when I connected your
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: image with your voice. It wasn't you, and it wasn't
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: until it repaid again and I'm looking at it and
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: there was something off about the image, but I couldn't
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: work out what that was. But it was your voice.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, So that's great for you because you know me well.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: But there are some pretty I was going to say,
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  Speaker 1: severe significant, really important implications here, particularly around our children,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: especially our young girls, and what to do in terms
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of protection and safety for our children. I mean, fundamentally,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the issue of deep fakes is I would say, in
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the news at least weekly, where typically school boys girls
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  Speaker 1: do this as well. I just need to highlight it
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  Speaker 1: does happen both ways, but boys are overwhelmingly the major
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  Speaker 1: contributors to this problem problem creating deep fakes, sharing them
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  Speaker 1: around in their online chats, message groups, discord wherever of
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  Speaker 1: classmates and school teachers with a really strong pornographic bent.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: And here's the challenge though, even though you're acknowledging that
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: girls could.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Do this, and sometimes they do, like they set it up.
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  Speaker 3: As an attack against boys, the reality and.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: They also attack other girls as well.
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  Speaker 3: That does happen, But the reality is the fallout from
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  Speaker 3: a deep fake representing you or another girlfriend is astronomical
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  Speaker 3: in conquen lifelong cons to a boy who actually gets
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  Speaker 3: kudos for the same kind of video.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, social status goes one way for the boys and
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  Speaker 1: one way for the girls. And the boy who creates
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  Speaker 1: the content as well, he gets social status for creating
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  Speaker 1: it and disseminating it. I mean, the world that we
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: live in in so many ways is terrifyingly scary.
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  Speaker 3: Raf talked about this to and the impact that this
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: is having predominantly on girls.
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  Speaker 5: So this is particularly concerning for girls and women where
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  Speaker 5: deep fakes become a weapon against girls to create fake
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  Speaker 5: porn of them. You know, all you need is really
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  Speaker 5: just an image, and you just scraped that from Instagram,
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  Speaker 5: and that can be really damaging for a teenager. Something
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  Speaker 5: in the ballpark of ninety eight percent of those are
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: actually against women, so it's like clearly a form of
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: gender violence as well.
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  Speaker 1: There was a Channel nine reporter football reporter who recently
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: had her images deep faked, and the impact is enormous.
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  Speaker 1: Our conversation now really needs to be about what we
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: can do to protect our children, to keep them safe.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: What conversations are we supposed to be having with our daughters. Now.
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  Speaker 1: This is a really provocative thing to say, but I'm
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: going to say it anyway because I'm known for saying
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  Speaker 1: what needs to be said. Typically, the advice has been
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: be careful about what you post online. But it's terrible advice,
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  Speaker 1: and I'll tell you why.
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  Speaker 3: Because once it's on line, it's online. And when you look,
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: even just at the video that they utilized of.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: You, you were imagining me with my top off, weren't you? Na, No,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not that.
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  Speaker 3: Would have been that image would have been taken from
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  Speaker 3: a video that you've done on social media. In your office,
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  Speaker 3: we had a tricky question a number of weeks ago
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: about a mum who was worried about the kind of
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: photos her daughter was posting.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Because a bit too provocative. Yeah, but it doesn't matter, Correl.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: All they need is a face.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, I'm not creating deep fakes and
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not jumping in there to see how it works.
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  Speaker 1: But from what I've read, they literally just need something
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and they can go from there, and the more information
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  Speaker 1: they can provide the AI, the better it can work.
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  Speaker 1: But the Channel nine reporter who had this occurred to
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: her she didn't have anything that was particularly provocative that
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: she was sharing. But people can still just take a
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: photo of somebody and stick it in there and away
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  Speaker 1: it comes. There's some Australian kids that recently you used
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: yearbook photos. Like yearbook photos, you can't get much more
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  Speaker 1: innocent and non suggestive than yearbook photos. But they were
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: able to take those and then disseminate deep fake pornographic
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: images of their classmates and school teachers based on yearbook photos.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: So the advice to be careful what you post, be
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: careful what you share.
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  Speaker 3: It's no longer relevant.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I don't think that that's relevant at all as a parent,
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  Speaker 1: I would definitely say don't post images of your kids,
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  Speaker 1: especially your young kids, because there are some horrendously bad
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: actors who will do the wrong thing with those images.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: And we've been hearing this for more than a decade
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: about sharenting. I think that it's more important now than ever.
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  Speaker 1: The advice that I would actually be giving is as follows.
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  Speaker 1: Teach your sons and your daughters that it is not okay.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, it's a criminal offense. Teach them more than that.
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  Speaker 1: It shows a lack of empathy and a lack of
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  Speaker 1: humanity towards others if you take their images and turn
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  Speaker 1: them into something that they would not designed for. The
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: images were never taken for that, and it's just it's
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  Speaker 1: just not okay. This is a massive topic. I only
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: see it getting bigger and more problematic over the next
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  Speaker 1: few years until we've got some strong legislation, until companies
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: start to be held responsible for what they're promulgating. This
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: is not going to go away. Up next, we need
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: to talk about screen time, because, oh my goodness, was
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: this a revealing activity? Okay, Kylie? Online content is everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody's connected, everybody is compulsively and completely online, but to
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  Speaker 1: what extent, exactly how much time families are spending on screens,
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  Speaker 1: and what the impact of those lost hours are in
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  Speaker 1: terms of scrolling, liking, and clicking, the loss of human potential.
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  Speaker 1: All of our focus families were asked to do an
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: order of their weekly screen time. The results varied some
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  Speaker 1: shocking screen time.
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  Speaker 5: Here we go, average usage thirty eight minutes.
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  Speaker 1: Thirty eight minutes a day daily averaged three hours thirty
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: nine minutes.
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  Speaker 4: I know already that that was between one am and
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  Speaker 4: about four am.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a lot, isn't it.
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  Speaker 3: It's disgusting Netflix. What's that say?
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  Speaker 1: What's five hours twenty three?
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  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, young lady taking your phone off you?
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  Speaker 1: How many devices have we got?
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  Speaker 3: Two?
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  Speaker 1: That's twenty one.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it shocks me that we had twenty one devices
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  Speaker 3: amongst six people. Yes, you're up itdy.
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  Speaker 1: You averaged sixty three pickups of your phone sixty three
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  Speaker 1: times a day. I was surprised. The screen does one
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  Speaker 1: hundred percent become everything. We didn't want it to be
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  Speaker 1: a babysitter. We're just focused on the phone. Peak usage time.
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  Speaker 5: I picked usage time was sat today.
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  Speaker 4: Oh no, that doesn't make sense because on saturdayackle sixteen
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  Speaker 4: hours tis what.
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  Speaker 1: Mum, get your phone out and your total screen time
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  Speaker 1: for the week was sixty five hours In one minute,
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  Speaker 1: I need to get a life.
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  Speaker 3: So a few things I really want to highlight from
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: that montage. Interestingly, Joanne, who has really tight limits on.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Her well, the kids don't even have social media.
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  Speaker 3: Her girls had more than thirty plus hours herself. But
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  Speaker 3: the standout scrolling Instagram between one and four am in
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  Speaker 3: the morning.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe Joanne knows the hooks that it has into her
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and therefore she doesn't want the kids to cop that.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's an important observation.
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  Speaker 3: Number two, Mark and Tammy, they're our upfront parents and
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  Speaker 3: they really believe that screens don't have a huge impact
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  Speaker 3: in their lives, not a huge focus all at all.
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  Speaker 3: But when they didn't audit twenty one.
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  Speaker 1: The six of them, twenty one devices, that is a lot.
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  Speaker 3: And the last one sixty five hours for Courtney, our
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: pro tech parent, what I found really really interesting was
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: her justification, her acknowledgment that it would be great for
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: her to play with her kids all day, but she
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: has to earn a living, and so often that's our
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: default as parents. We justify our actions when the kids
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: don't need us to play with them all day.
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  Speaker 1: I'm just going to call it out. Nine and a
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  Speaker 1: half hours a day, seven days a week. That is
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  Speaker 1: a lot of time on a screen. That's just it's
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: not associated with optimal human functioning.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: And the other thing that came out as a result
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: of that was the was her son, who's this little
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: entrepreneur and he's earning some money as a result of
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: what he's doing. But on Saturday, he was on his
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: screen for sixteen hours. So if mum's on her screen
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: for nearly ten hours a day and her son is
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: on screens for sixteen hours of that same day. But
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: she acknowledged that she knows every person that he's communicating with.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: And that not possible.
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  Speaker 3: It isn't it's not possible.
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  Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's not. I mean from nine am
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: until eleven thirty at night, that is a long day
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: in front of screens. It's not healthy, it doesn't. I'm
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: stoked that he's doing entrepreneurial things. We've just got to
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: be able to get the balance. So let's throw up
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: today's podcast. I mean, you know how I feel about this.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I could talk about it for hours. I could talk
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: about it for days, but I'm just going to share
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a couple of ideas. When we spend time in front
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: of a screen, especially when it's excessive, we do not
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: grow our brain. In fact, the research seems to indicate
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that there is less graymatter and people who spend more
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: time on screens rather than more graymatter. That is a
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: massive problem. Number two social life relationships. They will not
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: be as strong when they are digital versus when they
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: are our analog and our analog relationships will decay if
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: we're not spending time on those relationships. Cannot emphasize enough
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: our kids need. Our kids need to be having analog
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: face to face time. I keep going back to that
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: study that has just grabbed my attention so much. Nine
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: times more activation face to face versus on zoom. This
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: is a problem. I'm concerned about predatory behavior from people
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: who have bad ideas. I'm concerned that kids don't get
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: enough sleep, physical activity, or time in nature. We need
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to have boundaries.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: What about real life connections like that has to be
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: the number one thing on the list. If you're on
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: a screen for sixteen hours a day, what real life
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: interactions are you having?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: So this stuff matters. It matters a great deal as parents.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: It's incumbent upon us to set appropriate boundaries and have
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: effective conversations. If you'd like to know more about how
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: to do that, I've written about it extensively in my
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: book The Parenting Revolution, which is based on the TV
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: show Parental Guidance. You can find The Parenting Revolution wherever
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: you buy your books, and I think it's the most
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: important pairing book that I've ever written, Like it needs
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: to be on the bedside table of every single pairent
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: in the country. I reckon we should wrap it up
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: there though tomorrow our final discussion about online bullying. Oh
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: my goodness.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Of course, the worst case scenario is we've seen younger
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: and younger, often young girls take their lives, you know,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: literally right down the hole from their parents. And so
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: letting our kids know that we'll be there for them
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: no matter what happens is really really important.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I love this TV show, Parential Guidance Season three. You
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: can catch up on nine now on the app. The
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Mim Hammond's provides research and other support, and Craig Bruce
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: is our executive producer across this busy parental guidance recap stage.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: If you'd like more information and more resources about making
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: your family happier, check out the book The Parenting Revolution
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: and visit us at happy families, dot com, dot a