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This before-and-after digital detox brain scan might shock you · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:22
  You know what's the research for me?
• 0:25
  It's the research that's so compelling.
• 0:28
  The research of what our brains look like.
• 0:34
  After we've been engaged in social media.
• 0:38
  Do you remember the 80s?
• 0:39
  Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, and this whole push, this whole war on drugs.
• 0:47
  And this this commercial came out.
• 0:54
  And then the narrative or the narration was this is your brain.
• 0:59
  And they'd crack the egg, put it in the frying pan, and watch it fry.
• 1:04
  And then the narration would be, and this is your brain on drugs.
• 1:08
  And that became a thing.
• 1:13
  Before memes were a thing because it was on people's shirts, and this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs.
• 1:21
  And it's it is exactly what's happening today as we see this the research come out, the the research unfold, the brain research, what the brain looks like.
• 1:33
  This is your brain, and this is your brain on social media, or this is your brain on screens, or this is your brain digitized.
• 1:42
  Fill in the blank.
• 1:45
  What is happening to our brains?
• 1:48
  This is the question.
• 1:49
  I think it's the question we all need to be be asking.
• 1:51
  And we've been, I feel like we've been asking this for days and weeks now, uh, exploring the research, exploring what it what it looks like academically, and also what it what it looks like socially.
• 2:06
  So I've got this got this piece here that I that I came across over the weekend.
• 2:12
  This is out of the epoch times uh American Essence magazine.
• 2:19
  And it's about Carlos Whitaker.
• 2:22
  And if you know anything about Carlos Whitaker, or if you don't, I didn't till I read the piece.
• 2:27
  You might know who Carlos Whitaker is.
• 2:30
  Uh he is a social media influencer, he's a podcaster.
• 2:36
  Uh, and he he went on this journey, this six or seven-week journey to digitally detox himself.
• 2:46
  And this piece talks about what it did, or or or what it looked like on the flip side.
• 2:56
  And I've got a feeling like these these types of pieces are going to become more prevalent, they're gonna become more and more people are going to be experimenting with what their life looks like after a detox.
• 3:13
  Now, if you've ever been through a detox, I've been through some detoxes, you know.
• 3:18
  Dr.
• 3:19
  Ely, he's on the network here, the energetic health institute.
• 3:23
  He he will take you through detoxes.
• 3:26
  He's got he's got four of them 101, 102, 1031, and they all detox a certain thing.
• 3:32
  The gut detox, I have been through the gut detox.
• 3:35
  I should probably go through it again.
• 3:37
  You think I should do it again?
• 3:39
  I mean, I'm I'm I'm thinking about it.
• 3:42
  And uh I felt completely different coming out of the other side, the 28 days, just um holy smokes, 28 days of detox.
• 3:53
  It does something to you, and I would imagine that we're going to be seeing more and more of these digital detoxes, where people want, you know, they want to come out 28 days of of digit-free, and they they want to they want to know what it looks like and what it feels like.
• 4:10
  And well, let's get into Carlos Whitaker here.
• 4:14
  He um he's a best-selling author, he's a podcaster, he's he's a global speaker, he's well known, even though I didn't know him.
• 4:23
  Uh he's written books, he's he's done social experiments, he's very creative with the social media posts, and but the thing that he emphasizes in all of his work is compassion, empathy, uh seeing the humanity in others, and and he he likes to do this, you know, through humor.
• 4:47
  He tends to bring strangers together through kindness, through shared stories, through a genuine presence.
• 4:54
  And there's a the there's a ton of examples here of how he goes about this, and and his efforts are always rooted in Christian faith.
• 5:02
  His mission is to treat others with respect, no matter who they are.
• 5:08
  Um the the piece talks about uh a viral moment in 2021, where he was uh in the Atlanta airport at a layover, and he spotted a 66-year-old playing the piano for tips.
• 5:24
  Uh Valentine Carter is the is the fella's name.
• 5:30
  And he was literally pouring his heart into his music, though most people just walked by, didn't pay any attention, just kept on going.
• 5:39
  So Whitaker is sitting back and and he he notices this.
• 5:43
  He sees this guy pouring everything he's got into this piano, and it's it's beautiful music, and people are just no, they're busy, they they've got to get from here to there, they've they've got another flight to to connect, and it's just you know, you're in Atlanta Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, and people are just going by him.
• 6:02
  Well, Whitaker decides he's gonna he's gonna sit down and he's gonna listen, he's gonna pay attention.
• 6:10
  So when he walked up to put money in Carter's tip jar, they began talking, and he learned that that Carter was spending nine hours a day at that piano.
• 6:23
  Uh, I'm sorry, uh, he he was spending time at that piano because of nine hours a day uh giving himself dialysis treatment, and Whitaker's moved by this story, and so he begins to live stream the airport performance on his Instagram, and while he's live streaming, I mean he's probably got a ton of followers on Instagram.
• 6:48
  While he's live streaming, he starts asking people, hey, why don't you why don't you tip?
• 6:53
  Let's let's let's give Valentine some some tips here.
• 6:56
  Let's tip generously, and within 35 minutes, 10,000 indoor in donation Ted poured in.
• 7:04
  Uh and within a few days, that 10,000 had grown into 70 grand.
• 7:09
  So this is this is one example of the kind of spontaneous generosity that uh Carlos Whitaker loves to encourage.
• 7:21
  It's and it's it can be the kind of generosity that will change someone's life.
• 7:27
  Uh, but this, of course, this is kind of his thing.
• 7:31
  This this event here in the airport wasn't a one-off.
• 7:34
  This is kind of what he does.
• 7:36
  Uh, and there's another example in 2025 where the generosity was directed towards towards him personally.
• 7:45
  Uh, he uh he had this 20-foot inflatable snowman, and it was damaged, and so he posts this this you know funny reel to Instagram about it, and all of a sudden his followers unexpectedly start donating money to uh get the the 20-foot inflatable snowman repaired with within hours, he's got eight eight hundred dollars sent to his Venmo account to uh either repair the snowman, replace it, finally, someone in his feed just goes off and buys a brand new one.
• 8:22
  So this was intriguing to him.
• 8:26
  It gave him an idea, a philanthropic idea.
• 8:31
  And and he thought, what if what if everyone just kept raising money through this Venmo account, and uh, you know, they they trust me with it.
• 8:42
  They send me the money instead of me pocketing it.
• 8:46
  I will uh you know, I'll give the funds to needy families in Middle Tennessee, where he lives, just you know, close to Nashville.
• 8:54
  And his his followers, I guess this is quite a family he's got with his he refers to them as his insta familia.
• 9:03
  Um he's I don't know, he's probably uh Latin here, Latino, and sta familia, and it sounds like he's got a relationship with these followers and they know him and they trust him, they see the work he's doing, and so lo and behold, they start donating to him.
• 9:20
  They start sending money to his Venmo account because they trust him that he's going to do what he said he's gonna do and give the money to needy families in Middle Tennessee.
• 9:31
  Uh, before long, he had raised 65,000 dollars.
• 9:36
  He posted a video about the families that received the donations.
• 9:40
  A single mom who's been spending $700 a week to rent a car so she can door dash.
• 9:48
  A family holding their breath, unsure how rent was getting paid that month, and parents who didn't lose everything, they were just tired of barely holding it together.
• 9:57
  These were the these were the types of families and people.
• 10:00
  That he was donating this money to.
• 10:03
  And through these types of actions, uh, you know, his thing is to consistently prove that hope isn't an intangible fantasy of a fancy.
• 10:15
  It's not a fantasy.
• 10:17
  It's an actionable gift, one that can be given if we're paying attention to it.
• 10:24
  So you know, throughout this, see, he's got some books.
• 10:27
  Uh, he wrote one in 2014 called Moment Maker, 2017, Kill the Spider, How to Human in 2023.
• 10:38
  His most recent book, however, chronicles his experience uh living screen free, going through this digital detox.
• 10:48
  And we have talked about people who have gone, you know, screen free, you know, for a month in the past, where they they put the smartphone away in their drawer, and then they replaced it with a flip phone, and they went about their their daily lives and daily business uh, you know, with a flip phone, no digital phone at all whatsoever.
• 11:12
  Uh Carlos Whitaker took it up a notch, and I don't know that everybody has the ability to take it up a notch, the way he's taking it up a notch.
• 11:23
  But he he took seven weeks off.
• 11:26
  This is a seven-week-long experiment to detox from the digital world.
• 11:31
  The first two weeks, he went to go live with some monks in the hills of California.
• 11:36
  The next two weeks, he found an Amish farm in Ohio who would take him.
• 11:41
  And then he spent the the last three weeks just kind of going about his life, but but doing it detox free.
• 11:51
  He talks about the tangible symptoms of withdrawal that he actually went through.
• 11:56
  Night sweats, panic attacks, and then he talks about the joys of rediscovering how to live without the burden of technology.
• 12:05
  So what brought him to this point, I think is an interesting question.
• 12:11
  And I almost feel like if any of us are gonna go on a detox in order for for the detox, I think to last.
• 12:20
  We almost have to be brought to a point that there's almost there almost has to be a low point that that we reach that we realize.
• 12:28
  Holy smokes, I've I've been spending way too time digitized.
• 12:32
  And what do I need to do to get undigitized?
• 12:38
  That's uh that's what happened to him.
• 12:42
  This is the very thing that he went through.
• 12:45
  What uh he says it all began one Sunday, 2022, when he received that notification on his phone that describes his screen time.
• 12:57
  It must come at the same time on Sundays.
• 12:59
  We all get it simultaneously.
• 13:01
  Whitaker refers to it as the notification of shame.
• 13:06
  Um so it popped up this one Sunday morning, and he decided he was gonna do the math in terms of all the uh the time he was spending on his phone.
• 13:19
  He said, I've been spending seven hours, 23 minutes a day on my phone.
• 13:26
  That amounted to over 49 hours a week and more than 100 days in a year.
• 13:33
  If I live to be my dad's age, 85 years old, I'll spend over 14 years of my remaining life looking at my phone.
• 13:43
  He said, That's when I thought this was not the way we were created to live.
• 13:48
  There's got to be something more now.
• 13:49
  For a social media influencer, it seems like that's your job.
• 13:53
  Your phone is your job.
• 13:56
  But for many of us, uh our phones are somewhat tied to our job.
• 14:04
  I mean, we use them for everything.
• 14:05
  There's apps on on our phones that we are tied to, banking apps, uh you know, workout apps that that need the phone in order to function if we use those types of things.
• 14:19
  Uh and just that the way that we stay connected.
• 14:23
  We we stay connected to the world through our phone.
• 14:28
  Is it possible to cut those apron strings?
• 14:32
  Whitaker says he was keeping a close eye on his mental health, and he had been for a while.
• 14:38
  Uh for years, he's shared his own battles with stress and depression and anxiety, and he's turned his own experiences into a resource for others who are also struggling with those things.
• 14:51
  And so when this screen time uh screen time number jumped out at him on that Sunday morning, that this was his wake-up call.
• 15:01
  This was his slap in the face.
• 15:03
  He realized he needed to do something.
• 15:06
  And so he said, I'm gonna offer myself up as a lab rat.
• 15:10
  I mean, why not?
• 15:12
  There is no better way to find a better way to live uh than have myself be the lab rat.
• 15:21
  And he he knew that if it would help him, that it would probably help others too, and he would be able to offer that help and that and and that support to anybody who would listen, anybody who's out there paying attention, he's going to offer them this support.
• 15:38
  So I think this is something that that we need to pay attention to.
• 15:44
  I think it's a it's a story that we need to be aware of, especially if if we're parents and our kids are in front of screens all day long in school, and many of them are.
• 15:56
  Many of your children are in front of screens all day long.
• 16:01
  70, 80 percent of the day is spent in front of a screen, because many schools believe that technology is the thing.
• 16:11
  So even if even if the school is phone-free, like my school, we're we're phone free.
• 16:18
  You come in the end of the day, you come in in the morning, you put your phone away in a phone locker, and then you you go throughout your day, and then at the end of the day, you get your phone back, even if you're scone even if you're your scone, even if your phone uh, or even if your school is phone free, if you're spending 70, 80% of your day in front of a screen, and then these kids are you know getting their phone, and they're right back, probably close to 100% of their waking day is spent on their phones.
• 16:56
  That's horrible.
• 16:58
  And we are discovering more and more that that's horrible.
• 17:01
  It's horrible for their mind, it's horrible for their brains, it's horrible for their thought processes, it's horrible for their future.
• 17:08
  So, this is a story that we need to pay attention to.
• 17:12
  And I feel like we have spelt we have spent a lot of time.
• 17:15
  I'm having a hard time speaking to Aaron.
• 17:17
  I'm just having a hard time getting it now.
• 17:19
  I feel like we've spent a lot of time the past few days uh on this very topic.
• 17:26
  And it's not like we we we planned it, we don't do it on purpose.
• 17:29
  As things come up, we dive into it.
• 17:31
  I see what interests me, and I I go after it.
• 17:34
  You know, people say to me all the time, uh, how in the world do you do you run a school and then uh do this for an hour every day?
• 17:43
  What do you find to talk about?
• 17:44
  I just talk about what's interesting to me.
• 17:47
  I mean, that's it.
• 17:48
  I just what am I interested in?
• 17:50
  And that's and then I go.
• 17:51
  If you're interested, then you're gonna listen.
• 17:54
  If you're not, well, then you're gonna you're gonna shut down, you're gonna go somewhere else.
• 17:58
  And then and that's fine.
• 17:59
  There's a bajillion other podcasters out there.
• 18:02
  But this is something that is of interest to me.
• 18:05
  And I just keep seeing it pop up everywhere.
• 18:07
  And so we're gonna we're gonna dive into it.
• 18:09
  We're gonna go after it.
• 18:10
  And maybe you need to hear it.
• 18:12
  Maybe you need to hear Whitaker's story, and uh go on a digital detox of your own.
• 18:22
  All right, so we're gonna do that coming out of this break.
• 18:25
  We're gonna we're gonna dive into his experiment before we dive into it, though.
• 18:29
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  All right, let's let's get back into this experiment.
• 24:01
  So Whitaker comes to this conclusion.
• 24:03
  He has this come to Jesus moment.
• 24:05
  It's a Sunday morning apropos.
• 24:08
  He looks at his numbers, and he's spending over seven hours a day on his phone, and he's like, This has got to change.
• 24:16
  I've got to do something different with my life.
• 24:20
  So he goes after it.
• 24:23
  He spends two weeks praying the liturgy of the house, or I'm sorry, the liturgy of the hours with monks at a Benedictine monastery in California.
• 24:37
  Uh there he learned about how they lived a life of silence and contemplation.
• 24:44
  Then he spent two weeks living on an Amish farm in Ohio, shearing sheep, tossing hay bales, and discovering what purposeful living felt like.
• 24:55
  And then lastly, in conclusion, he brought it all home to live the disconnected life with his own family for the remaining three weeks.
• 25:06
  He said initially it was just going to be a two-week stay.
• 25:09
  I was going to move to a cabin somewhere, not have a phone or any screens and just try to live.
• 25:14
  I mean, I think that's what we all, you know, when we think of detoxing.
• 25:18
  That's that's what comes to our mind.
• 25:20
  I'm gonna go to a cabin, I'm not gonna take any phones or screens, just some books and paper.
• 25:25
  Which, you know, that would be fine if you have the mentality to handle it.
• 25:29
  But for him, um, he said that uh I was going to move to a cabin somewhere, not have a phone or any screens, just try to live.
• 25:39
  And I thought, you know what?
• 25:40
  That's actually going to make me go insane.
• 25:44
  And the experiment isn't about going insane, it's about trying to live without a screen.
• 25:48
  So I think you have to know yourself, and you have to know how you would respond to such a thing.
• 25:57
  And obviously, Whitaker knows himself, and he was like, Yeah, that that's not gonna fly for me.
• 26:03
  So he contacted Dr.
• 26:06
  Daniel Menn, who's a renowned neuroscientist.
• 26:10
  He's the founder of the amend clinics in Los Angeles.
• 26:13
  So Whitaker reaches out to him and he says, Hey Doc, how long is it gonna take for my brain to change if I go screen free?
• 26:25
  And we just puts it out there.
• 26:27
  This this world-renowned neuroscientist, and and you know, the doc says, Yeah, it's it's probably gonna take you two months.
• 26:33
  You want to see some some brain changes, it's gonna take you two months.
• 26:37
  So initially, he was looking at two weeks.
• 26:41
  And after talking to the doc, he's like, Yeah, okay, you know, maybe two weeks is enough.
• 26:46
  I mean, according to the doc, 30 days isn't enough.
• 26:49
  I mean, if you want to fully detox and you want to change your brain, then this neuroscientist is saying, uh, two months.
• 26:58
  You you really should, you really should focus on two months.
• 27:03
  So his wife suggested calling a monastery to start his experiment there instead.
• 27:11
  And she had some connections years before her father had been uh a volunteer with a particular Benedictine order in the high desert of Southern California.
• 27:23
  So she she picks up the phone, she calls these guys, and she asked to speak with Father Francis.
• 27:29
  She she remembered Father Francis when she was little, and as it turns out, Father Francis remembered her as a little girl running around the monastery, running around the grounds with her father.
• 27:41
  And so she tells him, you know, this is what my husband's doing.
• 27:45
  What do you think?
• 27:46
  Can he can he come hang out with you guys for a couple weeks?
• 27:49
  And Father Francis is like, yeah, yeah, we got a guest cabin here on the grounds.
• 27:54
  Come on up.
• 27:55
  He can spend some time with us.
• 27:57
  Spend some time in prayer.
• 28:00
  And uh it's quiet, though.
• 28:02
  Nobody talks.
• 28:03
  He's I'm talking to you on the phone now, but otherwise we don't talk.
• 28:07
  It's quiet.
• 28:08
  We're we're we're contemplative, we're reflective.
• 28:12
  And so Whitaker is like, okay, that's where I'm gonna go for two weeks.
• 28:18
  And as he's thinking through this experiment, if he's gonna spend two weeks in quiet solitude, he he started thinking about, you know, maybe I could spend an additional two weeks uh without my phone, but somewhere where I'm doing physical activity.
• 28:37
  And an Amish farm, uh really was uh an idea that came to him through one of his followers, an Instagram follower, whose husband was formerly part of the Amish community.
• 28:50
  Um, you know, he's talking about this experiment, and she reaches out to him and said, Hey, you have to come live with the Amish.
• 28:57
  That's what you got to do.
• 28:58
  You gotta live with the Amish.
• 29:00
  They're gonna put you to work, and you're not gonna have any technology because they don't have any technology.
• 29:08
  So he's like, Yeah, all right, let's do that.
• 29:12
  Let's go to the Amish.
• 29:13
  But you know, the Amish are kind of their own thing.
• 29:17
  They're kind of their own community.
• 29:19
  And breaking into the Amish community is easier said than done.
• 29:24
  And he discovered that uh it was a difficult thing.
• 29:29
  And you know, several Amish he reaches out to several Amish farms, and they're like, nope, sorry, we're not gonna be a part of your experiment.
• 29:39
  You you you go so you go somewhere else.
• 29:42
  We don't want you invading our community.
• 29:44
  Well, finally, he fight he found a farm in Ohio.
• 29:47
  They said, sure, come live with us for two weeks.
• 29:50
  We're gonna put your hiney to work.
• 29:52
  You're gonna ruin the day.
• 29:53
  You you wanted to become an Amish.
• 29:56
  So he does that for two weeks.
• 29:57
  And then the the third leg of his journey.
• 30:00
  Uh is where he goes back home.
• 30:02
  This is the final phase.
• 30:04
  It lasts about three weeks.
• 30:06
  Um, where he said it also included one week where he took a road trip to Yellowstone National Park.
• 30:12
  I mean, that if you're gonna detox, shouldn't it include a road trip to Yellowstone National Park?
• 30:18
  I would think so.
• 30:20
  I would think so.
• 30:22
  Uh, he said it focused on reintegrating lessons learned from the monastery as well as the Amish farm into his everyday life.
• 30:31
  You these lessons that he learned in these two places, goes back home to to wrap it up, and he's going to tie these lessons into everyday life.
• 30:40
  Um, and still no screens allowed.
• 30:43
  The last three weeks of his experiment, he he's off screen.
• 30:47
  Uh, he said the result was that he had more thoughtful conversations and a rediscovered wonder in ordinary moments.
• 30:56
  And and this is interesting because the the last study, the the last self-guinea pig study that we talked about here on the program was with a guy who took uh four weeks off.
• 31:10
  And I don't know if you recall this, but I don't remember his name.
• 31:14
  Lawrence Wilson, maybe.
• 31:17
  Uh, he took off four weeks, and he he put his smartphone in his drawer and and and got a flip phone.
• 31:23
  And he was still along his daily life with a flip phone, but even he said that he he noticed that he was having more thoughtful conversations and he was just rediscovering uh wonder in the everyday moments again.
• 31:38
  Those were two things that jumped out at him.
• 31:41
  And hearing Whitaker say the same thing is reminded me of this other guy's story that this is this.
• 31:49
  I mean, again, it's it's two people doing this, so I'm gonna say it seems like a common thing, but you know, for two people, obviously it's not a it's not a um a scientific study, you know, everything hasn't been accounted for, all the variables and all that.
• 32:04
  I I get it.
• 32:04
  This is purely anecdotal.
• 32:08
  But sometimes anecdotal is the best type of evidence that you can stumble upon, especially when you're when you're trying to do something for yourself.
• 32:21
  Whitaker uh documents everything with a film camera.
• 32:25
  So he doesn't, you know, use a phone camera, he doesn't uh let you know the the digitalness of it seep in.
• 32:32
  It's all you know, it's all film.
• 32:36
  Uh and so he's written a book about it.
• 32:38
  You can find the book.
• 32:40
  Uh I don't know what the book is called, quite frankly.
• 32:45
  Um it's not in this piece, but uh the the important thing here is the the brain scan.
• 32:54
  He gets he gets the the post digital experience brain scan.
• 33:00
  And this is really the the jaw dropping moment, the biggest revelation that's gonna that's gonna come out of all this is the before and after.
• 33:09
  So the if you'll remember the uh Dr.
• 33:12
  Amen, the uh neuroscientist that he spoke to when he said, Hey, what what's it gonna take?
• 33:19
  How long for my my brain to be different?
• 33:22
  He he had a brain scan done before he went on this seven week journey, and then he went back to Dr.
• 33:30
  MN and had a brain scan done on his, you know, after the seven weeks was over.
• 33:37
  And this is where the other guy, you know, didn't do any any pre and post brain scans.
• 33:42
  He just was operating on his own feelings, putting his phone away.
• 33:45
  But Whitaker here takes it up a notch with this pre-imposed brain scan.
• 33:51
  He said there were definite massive differences in my cognitive memory, not subtle, not a little, massive differences in his cognitive memory.
• 34:03
  He said there were massive differences in the shape and scope of my cerebellum.
• 34:09
  What?
• 34:10
  Massive differences in the shape and scope of your cerebellum.
• 34:14
  After seven weeks of shutting off the screen.
• 34:19
  He said all sorts of things were happening to my brain.
• 34:26
  His cognitive memory score went from the 50th percentile in the pre-experiment test.
• 34:35
  He was right in the middle, cognitive memory somewhere in the middle.
• 34:39
  But when the seven weeks was over, his cognitive memory test had put him, jumped him up to the 99th percentile.
• 34:48
  He said, Look, this wasn't a scientifically controlled experiment.
• 34:51
  I get it.
• 34:52
  I understand that.
• 34:53
  But after two months without a phone, there was only one percent of men in America with better memory than me.
• 35:01
  Only one percent.
• 35:02
  He's in the 99th percentile.
• 35:05
  After seven weeks without a phone, and that's what I say.
• 35:08
  Sometimes it's the anecdotal experiments which hit home the most.
• 35:16
  Um he is completely blown away by this.
• 35:21
  And but the guy's a podcaster, he's on his phone all the time.
• 35:24
  It's kind of his livelihood.
• 35:25
  You know, he's a he's a social media influencer.
• 35:28
  He's out there on his phone, you know, being witty with the posts, and people are like, hey, this guy's witty, let's follow him.
• 35:34
  So now what's he gonna do?
• 35:37
  Uh he signed off on his last podcast, telling his audience he's gonna take a break.
• 35:42
  He's gonna take a pause for them from the platform, but he's got some big ideas in store for them.
• 35:48
  Uh, he said one of them is envisioning a community for people that are feeling all the pressure of AI and all of the things that are slowly but surely pulling us from staying human in an inhuman world.
• 36:02
  Uh so uh uh I don't know what what's next.
• 36:06
  Well, I don't know what's coming down the road for him.
• 36:09
  But what I am blown away by, what I am completely mesmerized by, is the pre-imposed brain scan.
• 36:18
  Now, the brain scans to me are uh they're so intriguing.
• 36:22
  You get a good brain scan and you can just kind of study them and see what's going on in the brain.
• 36:26
  And if you're looking at pre-inpost, uh, you know, the seven weeks of being digital free, and you look at your brain scan before that, and then you look at your brain scan after that, and you're noticing massive differences in the shape and scope of your cerebellum and your memory capacity is moved you from the middle of the road to the 99th percentile.
• 36:50
  I'm just I'm suggesting here that there's something to this.
• 36:57
  And I I think that we as Americans, as you know, citizens who care about our kids, who care about their education, who care about uh about their their well-being.
• 37:11
  I think we have got to pay attention to this.
• 37:14
  And it's gotta be something that we talk about.
• 37:19
  It's gotta be a prevalent conversation, something that we're discussing all the time.
• 37:25
  Uh so on the other side of this break, we're gonna pause here, and I want to look at uh another um a commentary on how the digit the the the digital classroom is absolutely failing us, failing our students today, and therefore it's going to fail us as a country tomorrow.
• 37:47
  All right, don't go anywhere more to come on the other side of this break.
• 37:51
  You're listening to the dean's list on America out loud talk radio.
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• 40:36
  All right.
• 40:37
  My friends, so we're talking about really digital effects on our everyday life.
• 40:48
  And we are asking this question, and we've been asking this question really for days.
• 40:52
  What are the effects on our kids?
• 40:55
  Because you know they're inundated in it.
• 40:58
  Academically, socially, recreationally, the screen is their life.
• 41:04
  So Jeff Menick has this piece in the Epic Times where he describes how some parents are responding.
• 41:13
  And how parents and teachers are pushing for a return back to traditional classrooms.
• 41:21
  Let's get technology out of the classrooms and let's go back to traditional pencil and paper and books, actual books.
• 41:31
  Minnick says Americans love a good success story.
• 41:34
  He's not wrong there.
• 41:35
  We do, especially a success story built from failure, and that has had to overcome a lot of obstacles.
• 41:43
  In this regard, you know, you can think of some some classic Americans.
• 41:47
  Think of Edison and his thousands of attempts to make a light bulb.
• 41:52
  Or think of Lincoln when when the string of political defeats preceded his presidency.
• 41:58
  I mean, loss after loss after loss.
• 42:01
  We've we've gone through the list here.
• 42:04
  The dogged perseverance of these two men inspired countless others to keep going when the going got tough.
• 42:14
  Less noted are the success and the successes that breed failure.
• 42:21
  In the beginning of the 21st century, Minnick says, no child left behind aimed at making all student technologically literate by eighth grade.
• 42:31
  That was the objective.
• 42:33
  However, over the next 20 years, both federal and state governments, while lavishing vast sums of money on laptops and tablets to make that happen, with many educators enthusiastically joining this tech ed revolution.
• 42:53
  We are where we are, and we've hit where we've hit.
• 42:57
  He says in 2024, for example, schools and government spent over 30 billion dollars on digit digit digitized, digitalized learning.
• 43:12
  That's 30 with a B, 30 billion in 2024.
• 43:18
  Wow.
• 43:19
  That's a lot of money.
• 43:22
  What if we took that 30 billion?
• 43:24
  What if we didn't spend it on technology?
• 43:29
  I mean, you think there's something else that could be done with it.
• 43:34
  But right now, technology is the thing.
• 43:36
  I mean, it's the craze.
• 43:38
  You gotta have technology in your classroom.
• 43:41
  Uh Minnick says this extravagant funding worked like a charm.
• 43:46
  By 2020, two-thirds of public high schools and 40% of elementary schools provided such devices to their students.
• 43:55
  By the end of COVID, when school lockdowns forced students to attend school from home, those numbers had climbed to 90% and 84%, respectively.
• 44:07
  Holy smokes.
• 44:09
  Umy percent of public schools were giving their kids laptops.
• 44:16
  40% climbed to 84% of elementary schools.
• 44:21
  Man today, 55% of young people, Minnick says, spend up to four hours of their school day on screens with another 27% spending five or more hours.
• 44:35
  So here's the distinction.
• 44:38
  This is school hours.
• 44:40
  55% are spending a minimum of four hours of their school day on screens.
• 44:48
  That's more than half the day.
• 44:50
  I mean, a school day is only seven hours.
• 44:53
  So four hours are spent on screens.
• 44:56
  You've got an hour in there for lunch.
• 45:00
  I mean, it's actually it would probably be more than than um, I mean, it would probably amount to 80% of their day.
• 45:18
  So maybe close to 100%.
• 45:22
  The collaboration of big big tech government schools and teachers' unions have now largely succeeded in digitalizing classroom, Minnick says.
• 45:35
  He's not wrong.
• 45:37
  He's not wrong.
• 45:39
  But those who are supposed to gain most from this leap into the future, which would be the students, are failing the greatest.
• 45:50
  Minick notes that the national assessment of education progress, which we affectionately refer to as the nation's report card, shows a decline in both math and reading for U.S.
• 46:03
  students, and this is out of the uh the latest.
• 46:07
  Data from 80 other countries reveal this same decline in literacy, cognitive ability, and even IQ scores.
• 46:15
  And listen, we know anecdotally that cognitive ability and screens.
• 46:21
  I mean, you know, Whitaker in that last segment told us he was in the middle of the road.
• 46:27
  His brain scan was the middle of the road before he went on that experiment.
• 46:31
  When he came off of it, seven weeks, he was in the 99th percentile cognitive memory.
• 46:36
  So we know it's a thing.
• 46:40
  Uh, and even uh, according to the MEP, I'm sorry, the uh the NAPE national education report card.
• 46:50
  Uh, this even affects IQ scores.
• 46:54
  Minick says COVID's school closures undoubtedly harmed many students, but many of us, me included here, uh, tie this deterioration in learning and thinking to the use of screens in schools.
• 47:08
  Now, I think it goes beyond that.
• 47:12
  I do think screens are playing a role, but I think it goes beyond it, clearly.
• 47:18
  I think when we lost morality, we lost much.
• 47:23
  Uh, in his January 2026 appearance before U.S.
• 47:27
  Senate committee regarding this educational train wreck.
• 47:30
  Neurologist and teacher Jared Horvath testified that for the first time in American history, students were failing to exceed the scores of their parents.
• 47:43
  And we we've talked about Horvath quite a bit here the past couple of days.
• 47:47
  In his testimony, Horvath said this is not a debate about rejecting technology, it's a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning actually works.
• 47:58
  Evidence indicates that indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthening them.
• 48:06
  Horvath isn't wrong.
• 48:09
  To sum up his testimony, the very tools put into classrooms to help students learn were in fact undermining that learning.
• 48:18
  We're in R.
• 48:19
  They continue to do that.
• 48:22
  So interestingly, here's what's happening in Sweden.
• 48:26
  They have cited lower reading scores.
• 48:28
  They've cited a loss of focus in students.
• 48:32
  So uh Sweden is cracking down on student screens and investing in go figure books.
• 48:39
  They're investing in books, restoring traditional pen and paper teaching.
• 48:44
  In Great Britain, uh actor Hugh Grant and actress Sophie Winkleman are outspoken advocates for device-free classrooms, patrons of close screens, open minds, a nonpartisan organization fighting to remove ed tech from schools and restore the use of books, pencils, and paper as tools for learning.
• 49:09
  Like their Swedish counterparts, closed screens, open minds argues that devices in classrooms have resulted in a failing of literacy, uh, a failing of literacy rates.
• 49:25
  Uh they're just falling off, they're tanking, they're bottoming out.
• 49:31
  Uh, diminished cognitive skills, bottoming out, increased lack of concentration, concentration.
• 49:39
  I mean, if we have an increase, I guess it's not bottoming out at that point.
• 49:43
  Lack of concentration is on the rise.
• 49:46
  And I think most importantly, we've got reduced social interaction here.
• 49:53
  Reduced social interaction.
• 49:55
  That is, you know, according to Thomas Aquinas.
• 50:00
  He said the the existence of being, the definition of being, of actually being human is interacting.
• 50:10
  It's being in communion with one another.
• 50:13
  It's being actively engaged and involved in a community.
• 50:19
  And if uh we're experiencing reduced social interactions, are we actually human at that point?
• 50:26
  Australia has taken this a step further.
• 50:29
  We've talked about this.
• 50:31
  They've banned anyone under the age of 16 from setting up or keeping accounts on social media.
• 50:37
  So there are no 16 year olds or under on TikTok, X, Snapchat, Facebook, all of it in Australia.
• 50:46
  Well, at least the law says they're not allowed.
• 50:49
  I'm sure that they're there.
• 50:52
  Those behind this policy intend the band to protect the mental health and well-being of Australian children and teens.
• 51:00
  Here in America, MINIC notes, the same fight to control or banish screen usage in our schools is underway.
• 51:08
  Some school districts have a bell to bell policy, such as mine.
• 51:12
  I mean, at Waterbrook, we we don't have cell phones, and that's what the bell to bell policy is.
• 51:18
  It bans cell phone usage throughout the school day.
• 51:22
  Others are ditching classroom computers or limiting them.
• 51:25
  Yes, we've done that.
• 51:27
  We had a, I mean, we still do have a um a laptop cart that is available to seniors if they're working on their senior thesis or you know, things that they have to type, that is available to them.
• 51:45
  But otherwise, we don't have a uh we we don't have the mobile laptop library moving around from grade to grade as it once did.
• 51:56
  Um state legislatures are proposing laws that would regulate screens in schools statewide.
• 52:04
  Uh Minnick says that with schools a prime market for their products.
• 52:09
  Uh tech companies are fighting back against this rising tide of resistance.
• 52:14
  He notes that in the anxious generation.
• 52:17
  Hate rights of this battle for the minds and hearts of individual children and teens.
• 52:23
  He says the companies are competing against each other for users' attention.
• 52:28
  There we are again, the users.
• 52:29
  That's what they refer to us.
• 52:31
  We're users, just as if we were drug addicts.
• 52:36
  Companies are fighting for our attention, and like gambling casinos, they'll do anything to hold on to their users, even if they harm them in the process.
• 52:47
  And this is what came out last week.
• 52:50
  This was the throat punch that that meta took.
• 52:53
  Six million dollars in the LA case.
• 52:56
  And I think, was it 350, 350 million or 375 million in the uh New Mexico case?
• 53:02
  I don't remember the number, but holy smokes, it was high.
• 53:06
  They took a throat punch because of this very claim that they'll do anything to hold on to their users, even if the users are harmed in the process.
• 53:18
  Uh, Mimick notes that with the same indifference to harm done on social media, these companies will continue pushing the sale of their devices in schools.
• 53:28
  They do not want to let that market go.
• 53:30
  Are you kidding me?
• 53:32
  Are you kidding me?
• 53:34
  That market is it is prime.
• 53:39
  So uh Minnick says, hey, look, you can join the resistance.
• 53:44
  If you're a parent, if you're a grandparent, or if you're a mentor new to this fight, start with some reading.
• 53:51
  And he he's got some uh some reading tips here.
• 53:56
  Jonathan Hait's anxious generation is key, as is Hovarth's the digital delusion, how classroom technology harms our kids learning and how to help them thrive again.
• 54:10
  Uh, if you have teenage Gen Z girls in your life, don't miss Freya Indian India's girls, Generation Z and the co-modification of everything.
• 54:21
  That book is due out in May.
• 54:25
  Or you can watch YouTube interviews with Hate, Horvath, and India.
• 54:30
  At the top of this list, he says, put Sophia Winkleman's 2025 ARC speech.
• 54:35
  This is one you don't want to miss.
• 54:37
  All right.
• 54:38
  So I've read Winkleman's, or I've listened to her ARC speech.
• 54:42
  I've played bits and pieces of it here.
• 54:44
  Uh, I have not read Anxious Generation all the way through.
• 54:48
  I have thumped through it for some research and pulled some things out of it.
• 54:53
  I have listened to Horvath's uh congressional speech.
• 54:58
  I am intrigued by the digital delusion.
• 55:00
  I'm going to pick up his book.
• 55:02
  Uh next, uh, Minnick says, start paying attention to your child's learning.
• 55:08
  As a former teacher and father of four, he says, I know from both sides of the fence how easy it is for parents to turn their children over to a school system in the full belief that they'll receive a good education.
• 55:21
  Don't make that mistake, he says.
• 55:23
  Have your children read aloud to you as they progress through elementary school and see how they're doing.
• 55:29
  As they grow older, scout out reading comprehension tests.
• 55:33
  Have them take a test to see if they can comprehend and decipher its meaning.
• 55:38
  He also suggests that we that we keep track uh additionally to their prowess and math and composition.
• 55:46
  The three R's, reading, writing, and arithmetic, they remain the essential for higher education of any kind.
• 55:54
  So if you want to uh you want to stay on board this, he says, look, if they're behind, arrange to meet with the teacher and start looking for solutions.
• 56:03
  But as parents, we have to uh we have to keep our eye on this.
• 56:08
  It's our responsibility.
• 56:10
  And I know it's easy to just turn them over to a school and say, go get it.
• 56:14
  I'm gonna go to work, you go get educated.
• 56:17
  But it cannot be that way.
• 56:19
  We cannot abdicate our as parents our responsibility of being the primary educators in the lives of our kids.
• 56:28
  And that involves staying on top of this thing digitally.
• 56:33
  We gotta stay on top of it.
• 56:34
  All right, my friends, I'm looking at the clock, and yet again, another day is gone.
• 56:39
  And what a great day it is, what a great day it's been.
• 56:42
  What a great day it will be.
• 56:44
  Encourage your friends and family to get on the dean's list.
• 56:48
  Let's unite to renovate the age.