Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #948 This Week in Parenting: Poppins, Pistols & Potter

Transcript

#948 This Week in Parenting: Poppins, Pistols & Potter · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
0:07
Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers. Now.
0:10
Speaker 2: I know we do some really really really serious parenting
0:13
Speaker 2: stuff on this podcast, and we're going to do that today, Kylie.
0:16
Speaker 2: But my favorite episode every month. I know, I make
0:18
Speaker 2: a big deal about how I love the Doctor's Desk
0:20
Speaker 2: and we get to go into the science. But you know,
0:21
Speaker 2: my real favorite one, I can't believe I'm admitting this.
0:25
Speaker 2: My favorite one is the one we're doing today. It's
0:28
Speaker 2: this Week in Parenting.
0:35
Speaker 3: You just got because you get to put on your
0:36
Speaker 3: radio voice.
0:37
Speaker 2: I didn't even do the real radio voice. Can I
0:39
Speaker 2: do that? When I was back in radio back in
0:42
Speaker 2: the day, there was this guy called Holger Brockman who
0:45
Speaker 2: did all the triple M voiceovers. And this is what
0:48
Speaker 2: it would sound like if it was Holger Brockman. It
0:50
Speaker 2: would sound like this this Week in Parenting. No, no, no,
0:55
Speaker 2: it would be deeper. It would be deeper. It would
0:56
Speaker 2: be this Week in Parenting. I can't do it. I'm
1:01
Speaker 2: not holg of Brockman. But day, thank you for making
1:04
Speaker 2: that sound however it sounded. I'm sure that it's anyway,
1:07
Speaker 2: this is my favorite and The reason is because we
1:09
Speaker 2: kind of get to go a bit trashy. And I'm
1:11
Speaker 2: not even into trashy. I'm not into goss, I'm not
1:13
Speaker 2: into all the magazines and the like celebrity thing. I
1:16
Speaker 2: don't get into it at all. But there's something about
1:18
Speaker 2: bringing it into the realm of parenting where I'm suddenly
1:21
Speaker 2: completely hooked complete Ike.
1:24
Speaker 3: Just coming home at the end of the day and
1:25
Speaker 3: wanting to watch some trashy TV. Your brain's been working
1:29
Speaker 3: overdrive for ten twelve hours and you just want a chill.
1:34
Speaker 2: Last time we did this Week in Parenting, we got
1:36
Speaker 2: very excited. It was supposed to be super short. We're
1:38
Speaker 2: going to go lightning around. We had five different news
1:40
Speaker 2: stories supposed to be done in fifteen minutes, took about
1:42
Speaker 2: twenty three. Today we have four have to get through
1:46
Speaker 2: it super fast. We're going to start with Bradley Cooper.
1:48
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about Mary Poppins. Then we've got
1:50
Speaker 2: to talk about Harry Potter and Hogwarts, and finally we're
1:52
Speaker 2: going to wrap it up with a really important story,
1:55
Speaker 2: very important story from the New York Times about kids
1:58
Speaker 2: on Instagram and the way parents are pushing them into it.
2:01
Speaker 2: Let's start with Bradley Cooper.
2:04
Speaker 3: Recently, on the Dak's Shepherd podcast, Bradley Cooper was heard
2:08
Speaker 3: to say this.
2:10
Speaker 1: Your DNA is going to tell you that there's something
2:12
Speaker 1: more important than you. I remember the first time I realized,
2:14
Speaker 1: because every was like I would die in a second
2:16
Speaker 1: from my kid. I'm always like, if I'm being honest,
2:19
Speaker 1: i don't know, Like the first thing eight months, I'm like,
2:21
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I really.
2:22
Speaker 2: Love the kid. We don't know, Dope, It's cool.
2:25
Speaker 1: I'm watching this thing morph. I mean, my experience was
2:28
Speaker 1: totally that fascinated by it, love taking care of it.
2:31
Speaker 1: Would I die if someone came in with a gun.
2:33
Speaker 2: It's only a couple.
2:34
Speaker 1: Of months, just alive, and then all of a sudden,
2:38
Speaker 1: it's like no question.
2:39
Speaker 2: So I've just been astoundard at the astonishing response to
2:43
Speaker 2: people on social media in regards to these comments. People
2:47
Speaker 2: are absolutely taking this guy to task. What do you
2:49
Speaker 2: mean you wouldn't take a bullet for your brand new baby? Like,
2:51
Speaker 2: what do you mean you don't love your brand new baby?
2:54
Speaker 2: How devastating for your brand new baby to hear this?
2:56
Speaker 2: And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking I relate like,
3:00
Speaker 2: I'm not probably supposed to say this, but I remember
3:02
Speaker 2: when our first born came along. I saw her as
3:05
Speaker 2: I mean, I was thrilled that we had her, and
3:07
Speaker 2: I was delighted to say, I'm really excited that I'm
3:10
Speaker 2: a dad. But I didn't love her. I didn't understand her.
3:13
Speaker 2: I didn't know her, I didn't comprehend her, and I
3:17
Speaker 2: reckon It took me between six and twelve months before
3:19
Speaker 2: I felt like I was just crazy about this kid
3:21
Speaker 2: and would do anything for her. Up until that first
3:24
Speaker 2: six to twelve months, she was an impediment. I mean,
3:27
Speaker 2: she was a wanted impediment. We asked for this impediment,
3:30
Speaker 2: but I didn't connect at all, because you can't connect
3:34
Speaker 2: and develop that relationship until you're spending the time with them.
3:36
Speaker 2: And for me, I hadn't had the same nine months
3:38
Speaker 2: with her in utero that you had. She was just
3:41
Speaker 2: this blob that was now born and I had to
3:43
Speaker 2: deal with her. I just think that the scrutiny and
3:46
Speaker 2: the criticism of Bradley Cooper here is unwarranted.
3:49
Speaker 3: And the challenge we have is that we live in
3:51
Speaker 3: a society that desperately wants vulnerability. They want you to
3:55
Speaker 3: be real, and yet when you're real, sometimes they just
3:59
Speaker 3: tear you to piece because you're not real in the
4:02
Speaker 3: way they want you to be real. Yeah, And as
4:05
Speaker 3: I listened to it, I just heard a dad who
4:07
Speaker 3: was like just being honest, just like you were. Right then,
4:10
Speaker 3: it was just the acknowledgment that I'm still getting to
4:12
Speaker 3: know this person. And I'm not sure how I feel
4:15
Speaker 3: about it, but I can promise you now, I honestly,
4:18
Speaker 3: I can promise you now that had you ever been
4:20
Speaker 3: in a situation in that first six months where your
4:22
Speaker 3: baby was in.
4:23
Speaker 2: Trouble, I'm sure I would have done anything you would have.
4:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you don't feel like that in the moment
4:28
Speaker 3: because everything's okay.
4:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and context is everything. I Mean, here's Bradley Cooper
4:31
Speaker 2: talking with one of his mates on a podcast and
4:33
Speaker 2: they're joking around about the early days of childhood and parenting, like,
4:37
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's the whole social media world. Can
4:39
Speaker 2: we just accept that sometimes parents take a while to
4:42
Speaker 2: settle in. I mean, even even with our kids, Kylie,
4:44
Speaker 2: you didn't bond with all of them the same way
4:46
Speaker 2: at the same time and instantly loved them all completely
4:48
Speaker 2: from the very moment that they were born. It's something
4:51
Speaker 2: where relationships have to develop. I also love that he
4:56
Speaker 2: said this.
4:57
Speaker 1: We talk where I'm on the toilet, she's in the bath.
5:00
Speaker 2: The go to. Now, if anyone's going to get criticized
5:02
Speaker 2: for anything, that's the bit of criticism, seriously close the
5:06
Speaker 2: door and say, I'll talk to you when I'm done.
5:08
Speaker 2: I'm doing some important business here, am I. Right?
5:12
Speaker 3: Hey, look, I don't have any say. There's nothing sacred
5:15
Speaker 3: in my.
5:16
Speaker 2: House, all right. Story number two and the Disney classic
5:20
Speaker 2: Mary Poppins, has been upgraded to a PG rating ahead
5:23
Speaker 2: of its re release to Market's sixtieth anniversary.
5:25
Speaker 3: Mary Poppins goes from a G to a PG.
5:29
Speaker 2: All right, So I think that this is where once again,
5:32
Speaker 2: the world that we live in. I just don't. I
5:35
Speaker 2: don't get it. So Mary Poppins, nineteen sixty four, everybody
5:38
Speaker 2: knows this one. Wow. Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine
5:45
Speaker 2: go down. The movie's age rating was recently lifted from
5:49
Speaker 2: being a G rated movie or PG rated movie in
5:51
Speaker 2: the UK because there's some fear that children could be
5:54
Speaker 2: exposed to discriminatory language. I had to look it up.
5:59
Speaker 2: I was trying to find what on earth is going
6:02
Speaker 2: on here?
6:02
Speaker 3: I don't even think there's a bad word in there.
6:04
Speaker 2: Well, apparently British Border Film Classification decided that it was
6:08
Speaker 2: necessary to change it after analyzing a scene where Julie
6:11
Speaker 2: Andrews and Admiral Bloom having a conversation and Admiral Bloom
6:16
Speaker 2: uses the word hot and tots, hot and tots, HoTT
6:19
Speaker 2: and tots, which I would imagine is sort of like
6:21
Speaker 2: a hash brown. Well, it sounds.
6:26
Speaker 3: That is a discriminatory.
6:27
Speaker 2: Word, okay. Now a dated term. It was historically used
6:30
Speaker 2: by Europeans to refer to the Choe Coe, who are
6:32
Speaker 2: a group of nomadic herders in South Africa, but it's
6:36
Speaker 2: now regarded as racially offensive. During the scene which prompted
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Speaker 2: the reconsideration, character Admiral Bloom used the word HoTT and
6:44
Speaker 2: tots twice. At first, he's dangling from the roof in
6:47
Speaker 2: a boat and asks the bank's children if they're going
6:49
Speaker 2: to fight the hot and tots and the Later on
6:52
Speaker 2: in the film, a group of chimney sweepers whose faces
6:55
Speaker 2: of black and with soot, dance on the roof and
6:57
Speaker 2: the Admiral Ben says change lettles before he shoots fireworks
7:05
Speaker 2: at them. Reactions.
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Speaker 3: I have so many reactions. I don't even know where
7:08
Speaker 3: to start.
7:09
Speaker 2: Just one, isn't it.
7:11
Speaker 3: It reminds me of that quote that you've often shared
7:14
Speaker 3: about not judging the past based on today's stand.
7:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, the quote is the past is a different country.
7:20
Speaker 2: They do things differently there.
7:22
Speaker 3: And I don't have a problem with there being an
7:26
Speaker 3: additional warning at the beginning of a movie to suggest
7:29
Speaker 3: that there is some discriminatory behavior or language used or
7:34
Speaker 3: anything like that. But I think that at this point
7:36
Speaker 3: you're getting all tied up about that. But my daughter
7:40
Speaker 3: turns on the radio and she listens to music that
7:43
Speaker 3: is literally explicit in nature.
7:46
Speaker 2: Well, in our last this week in Pairenting, we talked
7:47
Speaker 2: about Megan v. Stallion and her beef with Nicki Minaj
7:51
Speaker 2: and and everything that's going on there, like we're swallowing
7:54
Speaker 2: thats as swallowing camels, to use a biblical phrase. In
7:57
Speaker 2: other words, we're worried about these tiny little things and
8:00
Speaker 2: these massive things are going on instead. When I think
8:02
Speaker 2: about I mean, so I'm in the majority here. I'm
8:05
Speaker 2: not one of the minority people. The koe Coe. I'm
8:07
Speaker 2: not a hot and top Okay, so I'm not offended
8:09
Speaker 2: by it, but the majority of the world probably has
8:12
Speaker 2: no idea what it is, what it means. And we're
8:15
Speaker 2: just straining at these tiny things when there are such
8:19
Speaker 2: massive things that are out there. Mary Poppins, Philly Boots,
8:22
Speaker 2: go for your life. I think this is madness. It's
8:24
Speaker 2: again political correctness. It's just so peak. Twenty twenty four,
8:31
Speaker 2: number three, number three, just.
8:33
Speaker 3: Going to pull out that radio voice, number three. What
8:36
Speaker 3: is it we're talking about? All things Hogwarts?
8:39
Speaker 1: Ah?
8:39
Speaker 2: Yes, a Hogwarts Legacy is the Harry Potter franchise, the
8:44
Speaker 2: Harry Potter game. As of January twenty twenty four, Warner
8:47
Speaker 2: Brothers has sold twenty four million copies of this game.
8:51
Speaker 2: When people are playing it all together. Can current players
8:54
Speaker 2: online on Steam peak of four hundred and eighty nine
8:57
Speaker 2: thousand people playing the game at one time. Wow, four
9:00
Speaker 2: half a million people literally playing the game at once.
9:03
Speaker 2: This thing, like everything Harry Potter, has boomed. It's brought
9:06
Speaker 2: in well over a billion dollars in sales. If your
9:09
Speaker 2: kids want Hogwarts Legacy and they're not on it yet,
9:11
Speaker 2: if they want to know what it's all about. I
9:13
Speaker 2: just thought it would be interesting to step into a
9:16
Speaker 2: quick conversation about what Hogwarts Legacy is, So why.
9:20
Speaker 3: Does it have everybody enraptured?
9:22
Speaker 2: Hogwarts Legacy is it's one of those immersive, open world
9:25
Speaker 2: action role playing games said in the Wizarding World of
9:28
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, and it puts players right in the
9:31
Speaker 2: very heard of it. The game is available on PlayStation five,
9:34
Speaker 2: on PlayStation four, on Xbox, on Nintendo Switch. It's also
9:38
Speaker 2: available on PC. And essentially, what they're doing is they're
9:42
Speaker 2: not diving in with the same characters that you have
9:45
Speaker 2: in Harry Potter. What they're doing though, instead is they're adapting,
9:50
Speaker 2: adapting the games into this magical JK. Rowling wizarding world
9:55
Speaker 2: and essentially big role playing game kids can't get enough
9:58
Speaker 2: of it. Single player action or playing game where players
10:01
Speaker 2: experience life as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
10:05
Speaker 2: and Wizardry and embark on a dangerous journey to uncover
10:08
Speaker 2: a hidden truth of the wizarding world. And obviously they
10:11
Speaker 2: grow their magical abilities by mastering spells and brewing potions
10:13
Speaker 2: and doing all the things at the game demands of them.
10:15
Speaker 2: And this thing is just it's going off one of
10:17
Speaker 2: the biggest games happening in the world at the moment.
10:19
Speaker 2: Hogwarts legacy JK.
10:21
Speaker 3: Rowling. She's kind of a genius. She's literally created a
10:26
Speaker 3: story that has captured children from as young as five, six, seven,
10:31
Speaker 3: and eight year olds all the way up to about
10:34
Speaker 3: as old as you can get. People just love it,
10:36
Speaker 3: can't get enough of it.
10:37
Speaker 2: Such a big deal.
10:38
Speaker 3: Hogwarts is a big deal in our house. But I
10:41
Speaker 3: know it's not popular. But we don't have an Xbox,
10:44
Speaker 3: a Nintendo Switch, PlayStation. They won't play it.
10:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I draw a line in the sand right back
10:49
Speaker 2: at the very beginning when we had our first couple
10:50
Speaker 2: of kids, and I just said, we'll never have a
10:52
Speaker 2: gaming console in the house. It's not what we do.
10:55
Speaker 2: We don't want to do this. I don't want to
10:57
Speaker 2: bring it in. And because I knew what it did
10:59
Speaker 2: in my home, and even then, I was watching what
11:02
Speaker 2: was happening in so many homes and just said, no,
11:04
Speaker 2: not going to happen. It's made us really unpopular as
11:07
Speaker 2: parents with our kids. But screens are just messing up
11:12
Speaker 2: our kids' lives. I don't know how else to say it, Like,
11:14
Speaker 2: I want to be impartial, I want to be scientific,
11:16
Speaker 2: and I want to be really trepidacious and careful and
11:20
Speaker 2: reserved in the way that I make judgments around what
11:22
Speaker 2: screens are doing. But I feel like screens are the
11:26
Speaker 2: new smoking. It took decades for scientists to finally garner
11:31
Speaker 2: the evidence where they could stand up and say categorically
11:33
Speaker 2: smoking is bad for your health. We have now had
11:37
Speaker 2: screens pervasive in our lives for fifteen twenty years, depending
11:40
Speaker 2: on how you're looking at it. Facebook's been around for
11:42
Speaker 2: almost twenty years now, and we are seeing the fruits
11:46
Speaker 2: of this technology, and the fruits are rotten. The fruits
11:50
Speaker 2: are fomenting, the fruits leadings to negative outcomes. And as
11:54
Speaker 2: wonderful as Hogwarts legacy might be, when you've got a
11:56
Speaker 2: half a million kids online at any given time playing
12:00
Speaker 2: this game instead of being outside riding their bikes, playing
12:02
Speaker 2: on play equipment, swimming in the water, climbing, throwing things,
12:06
Speaker 2: kicking things like this is not what a healthy childhood
12:10
Speaker 2: is about. It's wonderful if you need it to supplement
12:12
Speaker 2: from time to time. I'm not anti anti anti games well.
12:16
Speaker 3: And our kids have experienced all of these forms of
12:20
Speaker 3: gaming at friends places and things like that. We haven't
12:23
Speaker 3: stopped them, right, but I'm not going to bring it
12:26
Speaker 3: into my home.
12:26
Speaker 2: Right And so for people who are listening with young kids,
12:29
Speaker 2: I know that this is this week impairing. It's all
12:31
Speaker 2: about news, but I want to just I want to
12:33
Speaker 2: preach what I practice for just a sec and that
12:36
Speaker 2: is we have made a conservative effort to keep this
12:38
Speaker 2: stuff out of our home because we know it's not
12:39
Speaker 2: good for our kids, and they are benefiting from not
12:44
Speaker 2: having it here. I just don't believe there's anything redemptive
12:47
Speaker 2: about it at all. Number four, our final story fit
12:51
Speaker 2: today is a heavy Instagram has a policy against children
12:55
Speaker 2: under thirteen having their own account, an investigation by The
12:59
Speaker 2: New York Times. Parents think it's just a jumpstart into
13:02
Speaker 2: a mileline career for the child, but it can quickly
13:04
Speaker 2: descend into a dark underworld.
13:06
Speaker 3: The New York Times has done an investigation into Instagram
13:10
Speaker 3: and specifically child accounts run by mummy bloggers.
13:16
Speaker 2: Right that end up being stalked by men. So this
13:19
Speaker 2: is people always say, oh, my kids are fine, and
13:23
Speaker 2: I'm fine to put photos up of my children on
13:25
Speaker 2: Instagram and that kind of thing. I just I can't
13:28
Speaker 2: emphasize enough the mendacity, the duplicity of the people who
13:34
Speaker 2: are running Meta and the other platforms that our children
13:36
Speaker 2: are involved on, they don't care about your kids. The
13:40
Speaker 2: e Safety Commissioner Julian mcgrant was here on our podcast
13:43
Speaker 2: just last week or the week before or whatever it was.
13:45
Speaker 2: I've forgotten the day, but just in the last couple
13:47
Speaker 2: of weeks literally talking about how she has written to
13:51
Speaker 2: and sought information from twenty seven of the world's major
13:54
Speaker 2: technology platforms who are not using the technology that they
13:58
Speaker 2: have at their disposal to keep creeps off the site.
14:03
Speaker 2: In fact, they're actively, in some places, literally actively promoting
14:08
Speaker 2: abuse oriented material.
14:10
Speaker 3: Well, this is a numbers game, right, The more traffic
14:13
Speaker 3: we've got, the more money their owning.
14:16
Speaker 2: So this week in parenting, this particular story not for kids.
14:19
Speaker 2: You might want to press pause until the kids aren't
14:21
Speaker 2: with you if you're listening with them right now, or
14:23
Speaker 2: maybe you do want to listen because it matters so much.
14:26
Speaker 2: New York Times did an investigation that's just wrapped up.
14:29
Speaker 2: The reporters analyzed two point one million Instagram posts, They
14:33
Speaker 2: monitored months of online chats of professed pedophiles, and interviewed
14:37
Speaker 2: over one hundred people, including parents and children, and essentially
14:40
Speaker 2: what they're looking at is young women, girls and young
14:44
Speaker 2: women who are posting on Instagram, usually in an influencer capacity. Okay,
14:52
Speaker 2: they're not sharing any of the images because they didn't
14:54
Speaker 2: want to make it worse. But for example, there's a
14:57
Speaker 2: box that represents a real photo of a nine year
14:59
Speaker 2: old girl in a golden bikini lounging on a towel,
15:02
Speaker 2: and the photos posted on her Instagram account, which is
15:05
Speaker 2: run by her parents, and the comments underneath this did
15:09
Speaker 2: I tell you it was a nine year old girl
15:10
Speaker 2: in a bikini? The comments underneath this post say things like,
15:14
Speaker 2: mummamea great body. Love perfect bikini body. Mm take that
15:20
Speaker 2: bikini off. You're so hot, before someone jumps in and
15:24
Speaker 2: says you all are dogs. She's a child. This article
15:28
Speaker 2: and we'll link to it in the show notes from
15:29
Speaker 2: the New York Times. We'll probably take you about fifteen
15:31
Speaker 2: minutes to read. But essentially it's an article that says
15:34
Speaker 2: we've got a whole bunch of people who are running
15:37
Speaker 2: these mum run accounts for their kids so that their
15:40
Speaker 2: kids can become online influences. The large audiences tend to
15:48
Speaker 2: be oriented in a sexual way, even with young girls
15:53
Speaker 2: and tend to be boosted by men in the audiences.
15:58
Speaker 2: And here's the really concerning thing. One calculation performed by
16:02
Speaker 2: an audience demographics firm found thirty two million connections to
16:06
Speaker 2: male followers among the five thousand accounts that were examined
16:09
Speaker 2: by the Times. And this paragraph just flowed me. Interacting
16:13
Speaker 2: with the men opens the door to abuse. Some flatter,
16:16
Speaker 2: some bully, and some blackmail girls and their parents to
16:19
Speaker 2: get racier and racier images. The Times monitored separate exchanges
16:23
Speaker 2: on Telegram, which is a messaging app where men openly
16:26
Speaker 2: fantasize about sexually abusing the children they follow on Instagram,
16:30
Speaker 2: and extolled the platform from making the images so readily available.
16:34
Speaker 2: Here's a direct quote from Telegram about Instagram. It's like
16:38
Speaker 2: a candy store. One of them wrote, God bless instamums,
16:43
Speaker 2: wrote another.
16:44
Speaker 3: I just feel physically ill. I'm literally sitting here and
16:49
Speaker 3: thinking about my nine year old daughter and how I
16:54
Speaker 3: would feel had I posted a picture of her that
16:58
Speaker 3: got that kind.
16:59
Speaker 2: Could you imagine?
17:00
Speaker 3: I can't, you'd want to thing to speak like I've
17:03
Speaker 3: really it just makes me physically ill to not only
17:07
Speaker 3: think that there are people out there that think it's okay,
17:10
Speaker 3: but that mums would actually place their daughters in that situation.
17:15
Speaker 2: So two things on that. First off, a Melbourne mum
17:18
Speaker 2: who went by the name of Caylen in the interview said,
17:22
Speaker 2: and I quote, I really don't want my child exploited
17:24
Speaker 2: on the internet. But she's been doing this so long
17:28
Speaker 2: now her numbers are so big. What do we do?
17:31
Speaker 2: Just stop it and walk away? So Caylen, whose daughter
17:34
Speaker 2: is now seventeen, said that she was worried that a
17:37
Speaker 2: childhood spent sporting bikinis online for adult men had scarred her.
17:42
Speaker 2: Here's the direct quote. She's written herself off and decided
17:45
Speaker 2: that the only way she's going to have a future
17:48
Speaker 2: is to make a mint on only fans. She has
17:52
Speaker 2: way more than that to offer, with the wisdom and
17:55
Speaker 2: knowledge I have now, if I could go back, I
17:58
Speaker 2: definitely wouldn't do it. I've been stupidly naively feeding a
18:03
Speaker 2: pack of monsters and the regret is huge.
18:07
Speaker 3: This is such a heavy hitting article. It really just
18:11
Speaker 3: it's like a sucker punch to the stomach. Really makes
18:14
Speaker 3: me sick. But what I don't understand is why these
18:19
Speaker 3: platforms are not protecting our kids.
18:22
Speaker 2: Okay, well, there's two things here. First of all, the
18:23
Speaker 2: platform is doing a terrible job, and I want to
18:25
Speaker 2: share some stats on that in a sec But secondly,
18:27
Speaker 2: just a reminder of your parents. Your children are not
18:30
Speaker 2: going to be benefited by being on Instagram and TikTok
18:34
Speaker 2: and all the others. I know that there are some
18:35
Speaker 2: people out there who are doing it really well and
18:37
Speaker 2: making heaps and heaps of money. To me, I just
18:39
Speaker 2: don't think that it's worth a risk. I just can't
18:41
Speaker 2: believe that it's worth the extra ten or twenty, or
18:44
Speaker 2: thirty or even fifty or one hundred thousand dollars a
18:46
Speaker 2: year in your bank account or in their bank account.
18:49
Speaker 2: I just don't believe it.
18:50
Speaker 3: It's an expectation of your child.
18:52
Speaker 2: There's definitely people who are saying that. Here's what it
18:55
Speaker 2: says in the New York Times article about what's going
18:56
Speaker 2: on with the platforms. Account owners who report explicit images
19:01
Speaker 2: or potential predators to Instagram it typically met with silence
19:05
Speaker 2: or indifference, and those who block many abusers have seen
19:08
Speaker 2: their own account's ability to use certain features limited. According
19:12
Speaker 2: to the interviews and documents, in the course of eight months,
19:15
Speaker 2: the Time's made over fifty reports of its own about
19:17
Speaker 2: questionable material and received only one response. Let me pick
19:22
Speaker 2: up on that. If the account owners are reporting potential predators,
19:26
Speaker 2: Instagram Meta is reducing their reach. It's actually reducing their
19:31
Speaker 2: impact and their capacity to do what they're trying to
19:33
Speaker 2: do as influences. In other words, Instagram's basically saying, hey,
19:37
Speaker 2: if this is what you choose, then you take the
19:39
Speaker 2: whole package. You don't get to choose who gets to
19:43
Speaker 2: follow you and who doesn't. Will just limit you if
19:45
Speaker 2: you want to play that game. Meta, Instagram's parent company,
19:48
Speaker 2: found that half a million child Instagram accounts had inappropriate
19:51
Speaker 2: interactions every day, every day, every day, according to an
19:55
Speaker 2: internal study in twenty twenty that was quoted in legal proceedings.
19:59
Speaker 2: This stuff is staggering. And you know what, the Meta
20:02
Speaker 2: spokesman says, parents are responsible for the accounts and their
20:04
Speaker 2: content and complete content at any time. Which is true. Okay,
20:09
Speaker 2: that is true. Parents have got to take some responsibility here.
20:12
Speaker 2: Parents are the ones that are putting their kids out
20:13
Speaker 2: there and lining this up. But my goodness, we've got
20:17
Speaker 2: a platform that has the capacity to do something here
20:20
Speaker 2: and they are not doing it.
20:23
Speaker 3: And here we are talking about hot and tots going
20:25
Speaker 3: from a G to a PG, and we find ourselves
20:27
Speaker 3: looking at this kind of a story. This is insane.
20:31
Speaker 3: What does our world come to.
20:33
Speaker 2: Really, you are so sexy, is what one comment on
20:37
Speaker 2: an image of a five year old girl and a
20:40
Speaker 2: ruffle bikini said. Those two little things look great through
20:43
Speaker 2: your top, said another on a video of a girl
20:46
Speaker 2: dancing in a white cropped shirt who months later posted
20:49
Speaker 2: pictures of her eleventh birthday party. This is a scourg
20:55
Speaker 2: and you know what. We're sharing this on this week
20:57
Speaker 2: in Parenting because we want you to know this stuff's happening.
20:59
Speaker 2: And if you sticking your kids out there, you are
21:02
Speaker 2: allowing them to be exploit exploited, And this is the
21:06
Speaker 2: exploitation stuff. But these people are on accounts all over
21:10
Speaker 2: the place. People always say, oh, would never happen to
21:12
Speaker 2: my child. This stuff only happens in the papers in
21:14
Speaker 2: the media. It doesn't. It happens all the time all
21:18
Speaker 2: over the place. We just need to be so careful
21:20
Speaker 2: with our kids on social media. We really hope that
21:23
Speaker 2: this has been a helpful conversation for you, and we
21:26
Speaker 2: would strongly recommend every parent on the planet read the
21:29
Speaker 2: article in The New York Times about how children are
21:32
Speaker 2: being affected by what's going on Instagram. Kylie, that is
21:40
Speaker 2: this week in parenting.
21:42
Speaker 3: OK, you can do better than that.
21:45
Speaker 2: Not today. I've had enough. Hey, thanks so much for listening.
21:48
Speaker 2: The Happy Family Podcast is produced by Justin Rown from
21:50
Speaker 2: Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer. For more
21:53
Speaker 2: information about making your family happier, please visit us at
21:56
Speaker 2: happy families dot com dot au. Sign up to the newsletter.
22:00
Speaker 2: Way safer than being on social media.
22:07
Speaker 1: Yahm.