From six I knew this is connections.

I'm Raquel Stephen.

New York lawmakers have passed a bill that would require warning labels on social media platforms, similar to the ones we see on cigarets or alcohol.

The goal is to alert users, especially young people, to the potential mental health risk of addictive digital media.

Governor Kathy Hochul hasn't signed it yet, but it's already part of a much bigger conversation about kids phones and the role of tech in our lives.

Today, we'll dig into what the research says, what's behind the legislation, and how families are navigating this complicated landscape.

Joining me in studio are few expert guests on the topic.

Noelle Evans is the education reporter for WXXI.

She's been following this story.

And thank you for joining us, Noelle.

Thanks for the generosity.

Calling me an expert on this.

You are what you are to us, Chris and our listeners.

Also in studio I have with me Katie Allen.

She's the author of the book Stuck in Our Screens, which deals with adult bad behavior and social drama.

Thank you for joining us, Katie.

You're welcome.

Happy to be here.

Great.

And joining me remotely is Julie Skillful, the founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction.

Or mama.

Julie, are you there?

I'm here.

Thanks for having me.

Yes.

Thank you for joining us, Julie.

And to our listeners, whether you are a social media user who will be affected by this policy or a parent of one, we encourage you to join the conversation.

You can call us at 1844295 talk.

That's 1-844-295-8255.

Or at (585) 263-9994 email us at connections@sky.org.

Or you can comment right in our YouTube channel.

All right, let's begin this conversation, ladies.

Noelle, let's start with you.

Sure.

You've been following this legislation?

Yes.

Okay.

What exactly would this warning label do?

Sure.

So the bill here would require social media platforms to display this warning label when somebody opens up the app, and then it would display again after a certain period of time.

The warning specifically would be related to mental health risks, well-being risks like, hey, this platform uses features that the U.S.

Surgeon General, previous U.S.

Surgeon General identified as addictive and noted that prolonged use is shown to contribute to anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia, loss of analytical skills, and lower empathy, especially for youth.

And so this applies to everybody.

Not just like if this doesn't just apply to minors.

So anybody that would be using an app like for instance, Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat, any of them like it.

And these addictive features are also identified as like like accounts, endless scrolling, push notifications, autoplay, things like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the warning label just pop up on your screen?

Yes.

As you open it up and that it should be there, the label language and the frequency of how often it comes up would be determined by state commissioner of Mental health, in collaboration with the Commissioner on education and the Commissioner on Health.

So why why are supporters pushing for this now?

Sure.

Great question.

The reasoning in the bill points to 2023, when the U.S.

Surgeon General issued a landmark public health advisory, finding that, quote, adolescents age 12 to 15 who spend more than three hours a day on social media faced double their risk of anxiety and depression.

And yet, as of the summer of 2023, the average daily use was nearly five hours for that cohort.

And the surgeon general, this is me reading directly from the bill's language, further found that social media companies were exploiting young users at one of the most vulnerable periods of their lives.

While their, quote, identities and self-worth are still forming, and they are especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions and peer comparison.

And the Surgeon General found that frequent social media use is associated with distinct changes in the amygdala of the brain, which regulates emotional learning, as well as its prefrontal cortex, which regulates impulse control and moderates social behavior.

So the legislative intent of the bill, it also points to June last year, 2024, when the U.S.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, called for these warning labels, specifically due to what he called significant mental health harms that the platforms pose for young people.

Yes.

Yeah.

And how do algorithms play a role in this?

Big time.

Big time.

Right.

Because sometimes I'm looking like why I'm not getting enough.

All the likes I usually get on on am, post in the past.

So algorithms also play a big have a big effect on on this this that's part of, yeah.

These quote addictive features.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so what are what are critics saying about this?

I'm not seeing too many critics, to be honest.

And I mean specifically within the state legislature.

I mean, this passed overwhelmingly bipartisan support.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying that like, nobody disagrees with this, but some of the arguments are like, okay, slap a label on it.

And then what?

Yeah.

So for instance, where would I find this?

There was an article I read, I think it was, Association of, Health Care Journalists, and it pointed to, you can't just have this in isolation, you know, it's one thing to raise awareness.

It's another thing to change behaviors.

Yeah.

Because I'm pretty much like how is this.

How would how would this stop, young people from just brushing it over and being aware.

I'm not.

I mean, the other thing that comes to mind for me is, I mean, one question that I have, there's a high rate of teen illiteracy.

So if someone is seeing this warning label pop up, they're unable to comprehend it.

Like, what will that really accomplish?

And when I say high rate, I recently reported on this.

Just to elaborate and not to go down a tangent, but I will briefly.

The 2024 National Assessment of Education Progress reported that about, well, 35% of New York eighth graders scored below basic in reading.

Ed Trust New York, which is a statewide education policy advocacy organization, has said that that indicates that those students lack even partial mastery of essential literacy skills, and those there are higher rates of literacy among students of color.

42% of black students, 47% of Latinx students fell into that below basic category.

Within that national assessment of education progress, and that reveals widespread reading challenges.

That's just for New York State.

And that's just like another thing if we're just kind of looking at more of the context here.

Yeah.

Because I know sometimes when we when we do open apps and we have to click that I agree box, right.

We just do it to keep it moving.

Right.

And we really don't pay attention to what we're reading.

Yes.

So one other aspect of the bill too is and this is something that would be established by the State Commission on Mental Health as well.

Of how long does that pop up stay there?

You know.

Yeah, it's another element.

And I want to touch on cell phone bans.

Right.

Because you talked a lot about you've done a lot of reporting on on cell phone bans.

You've done a lot pretty extensive like, research on this.

How do these two efforts relate to each other?

Sure.

Same vibes, I would say.

You've got this distraction free schools law.

It's taking effect this school year.

And so that requires that schools have policies in place to prohibit use of electronics that have access to internet for the entire school day.

And like one aspect of that too, is like, if you're just telling students, just keep it in their backpacks, like that will not meet the standards, the state standards.

Just putting that out there because some of the local school districts and I was looking at their policies, I'm like, does that cover it, though?

They do have until the end of the month to finalize that.

But this is also and when I say this, I mean that distraction free schools law is the idea is to keep students off of their phones, away from social media.

And, you know, I guess hopefully improving attention in classes and preventing disruptions is the idea throughout the school day.

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily keep them away from it when they're out of school though.

Yeah.

And I know a lot of there's a lot of critics when it comes to this distraction free school day.

Right.

I know we, our photojournalist Max and I, we actually visited Brighton High School right after school, and we asked students, how do they feel about this?

No cell phone policy.

And a lot of them said, well, doesn't really matter.

Some people don't follow it.

Or, you know, the fear was not being able to contact your parents in case of an emergency.

We do have these school shootings that are occur.

What what are you hearing about how parents or students feel about this?

I will say back in January, I was talking with some teachers who were saying, parents are also culpable for interrupting class, trying to reach their kids.

In terms of, you know, being able to reach somebody during a crisis or an emergency.

There is an exception there.

There are exceptions to this rule.

So, for instance, if you have a student who needs translation and they can use their phone for that, for instance, an IEP if there's an element there.

And this doesn't just apply to phones, this distraction free school like that also applies to smartwatches, smart glasses, like anything that connects to the internet.

Right.

So there are some exceptions.

Students who are also caregivers.

You know, there's an exception there.

Yeah.

So that and then also, I'm pretty sure landlines still work.

I haven't checked in every single school district in the area, but, you know, that is also an option.

Schools are required to have at least one, option for being able to contact parents, students, caregivers, guardians throughout the day.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So emergencies.

Yeah, we're definitely going to come back to you and talk about this legislation.

Katie, I want to talk about this book stuck in our screens.

Tell us about, what this book encompasses.

What do you what do you what what is your goal behind.

Well, my goal, changed as I was writing this book.

It began, over a decade ago when I was wrapping up my dissertation research, on bullying in schools.

And what I discovered from talking with students was that, they generally think that bullying isn't a problem, but they think that social drama is.

Oh.

So I said, well, what's social drama?

What's the difference?

It's a difference in, you know, is it connected to bullying?

And, both students and staff told me that it was a series of behaviors that were interactive that involved overreaction, too much emotion, sucked in.

Way too many people who got involved, went on too long, was usually about something, as in their words, it was stupid or trivial.

So, you know, having been in academia and my background was in human development and in education years and years ago, before children, I was an English teacher in high school.

So I thought, well, I should write a book.

But what happened was I realized that kids do this kind of behavior, many of them, as they're forming their identities, as they're figuring out who they are, who they want to be, what behaviors work which which do not.

And then, lo and behold, we ended up in a place where, it became apparent that many adults, influential, powerful celebrity types were doing social drama in quantities far greater than adolescence ever did.

And also, about things that were important that should have been taken seriously.

So my brain froze out, and then I went back to writing and reading.

I read a lot more and realized that adults do social drama as well, and I'm not a fan of social media.

I'll put that right out there.

I don't have a presence on social media, but I watch everybody else who does.

And what I'm seeing from the human development perspective, is our losing our ability to interact with each other, to look at each other face to face, to have, you know, conversations that involve turn taking as opposed to short little quips that are meant to shut people down as opposed to open up relationship.

So that's how the book came to be.

And in the end, I expressed some real serious concerns because of just about everywhere you go, you see people staring at screens instead of interacting with each other.

Yes, yes, even on, dates.

Right.

Oh, you know, I'm saying, you know, you were say, if you're in a restaurant and you see a couple on a date, usually see everyone's in their phone, no one's really having that that dialog anymore, right?

And and you said adult I like this adult bad behavior.

Yes.

Yes.

Can we explore what adult bad behavior.

Well it was funny because I had written 40,000 words about adolescence and had a chuck half of that when I went to the problem of adults.

But the issues are the same.

You know, you look at, fear of missing out desensitization that happens when we spend so much time, you know, engaged with our screen instead of other people.

You know, narcissism, the growth of personality disorders.

More and more people are exhibiting, you know, what used to be an individual issue, personnel and personality disorders.

And I frankly think as a society, we are developing personality disorders, and screen behavior is a component of it.

It's not the only thing, but it's one of those things that we have control over.

We can put the phone down.

We can turn it off.

Yeah.

Wow.

You know, I just discovered a new phobia that came out.

No mo phobia.

No mobile device phobia.

Right.

And it means that a person cannot let go of the device.

Yeah.

It you know, as a teacher I taught at the community college level for a while and I said no phones.

And in any professional development training that I've ever done, I've said no phones.

And some people really begin to exhibit serious signs of anxiety when you ask them to, to turn their phone off or put it away.

Wow, wow.

Okay.

Katie, we definitely we're going to definitely evolve this conversation.

I want to I want to get Julie, involved here.

Julie, you founded Mothers against Media Addiction.

Mama, I love it.

What led you to this work?

And what are you hearing from other parents when it comes to, social media and addictive devices?

So I spent my career as a journalist.

And during that time I was reporting extensively on youth mental health and suicide, and we began to see suicide rates increase in adolescents.

And then they went up not only in adolescents but in tweens, which are children as young as 9 or 10.

So right now in the United States, suicide is the number two cause of death for ten year olds.

And when I reported on that, you know, I'm a mom and I saw these problems really, happening in the community, and I just couldn't take it anymore.

The more reporting I did, it showed that these tech platforms do not have anywhere near the safeguards that we require in all other consumer products, and so they are allowed to amplify content that, gets users addicted or gets them to stay engaged for a really long time, no matter how harmful that content is.

So when I reported, for example, back in 2005 for The New York Times about, sorry, 2015 and 2005, about, the role of social media in suicide.

We didn't have any data available to tell us what kids were seeing.

But according to Meta's own press release that they put out last September, they took action on 12 million pieces of suicide and self-harm content on their platforms last year.

That's Facebook and Instagram, and that was just in a three month period period.

So a conservative estimate is that there's 48 million pieces of suicide and self-harm content floating around these apps.

And that's not good for kids.

We've known for more than a century that suicide ideation is contagious.

That it's not healthy for young people to be exposed to that kind of information that they don't need.

And so I started mama said there would be a way for parents nationwide to join together and fight back against these bad habits that, as your other panelists have described, both adults and kids have, and to demand that our lawmakers take action.

Yeah.

And enjoy.

So that there's new research that shows a link between media addiction and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, but not necessarily overall screen time.

What should we take away from from that distinction?

You know, spending time on screens directs our brains and our bodies to behave in certain ways.

When you're looking at a screen, you're passive, you're sitting still, and you are receiving information, but it's not an active conversation in the same way it would be with another human being.

When we interact with other human beings, all kinds of, areas of our brains light up.

We have a number of sensory experiences, and it's not the same when you're interfacing with an electronic.

And so what's begun to happen is that all of that time with screens is displacing critically important experiences that every generation of human beings, for all of human history, have had by interacting with others, and that sort of reshaping and rewiring our brains in a way that makes us less able to develop the social and emotional skills we need, and also is preventing kids from acquiring the basic building block that they need for advanced academic success.

I think that's not what Noelle was talking about before.

You know, we're seeing this significant drop in reading and math scores.

Last year they hit levels that were so low we haven't seen them since we started measuring back in 1971.

So, you know, all of this time online is just creating sort of an unhealthy society.

And we as a, as a country are in the middle of what the American Academy of Pediatrics calls a national emergency in youth mental health.

They declared that emergency back in 2021 and they still haven't lifted it.

So, you know, that's why it, mama, for example, we're really glad that lawmakers are acting to put multiple pieces of legislation in place, not only social media warning labels, but also the safe for kids Act, which passed last year, and that prevents social media companies from using addictive design when the users are children.

Katie, how do you how do you feel about this warning label law?

I'm a little bit skeptical about its effectiveness in terms of changing behavior, as Noelle mentioned.

But I do think that it's important.

There are lots of parents who pay attention to those kinds of things and use that sort of information to regulate their children's access to, to screens.

I would like just to add that, I completely agree with everything that Julie is saying.

Her research, studying is spot on.

There's a concerted movement to, create phone free childhoods today.

Some of you may be familiar with Jonathan Hite, who wrote The Anxious Generation.

And, you know, he cites a lot of the same statistics that Julie's very aware of regarding anxiety and depression.

And I, you know, I'm not one for censorship, having been an English teacher, but I am coming around to accept the fact that although there are benefits for some kids spending time, you know, on social media and using screens for other kinds of things, I really agree with the idea that kids don't need phones.

They need to go outside and play.

They need to do library programs.

They need to read books that may sound very, very old fashioned, but Julie's absolutely right in terms of brain development, social emotional development, that those parts of who we are, are damaged and inhibited when all I might do is look at a screen.

Yeah, yeah.

And I want to touch a little bit about the benefits of social media and being on social media.

But I wanted to touch on that in a little bit, but I wanted to, address that even younger now kids are getting addicted to iPads or Kindles, right?

There's a joke that says, you know, iPads are the new babysitters, right?

It's yeah, for sure.

It's starting younger now.

Julie, can you speak on it is.

Why is this an issue?

So it's an issue for a bunch of reasons.

And one, you know, we have to acknowledge that there are some real bigger issues in our society economically.

We have a huge disparity in wealth, and child care is very expensive and unattainable for many parents.

And so, you know, mom, we don't want to shame anyone.

And it's hard to be a parent.

And when Mike had my first son, I didn't let him watch any TV.

The second I had a second kid and I needed to change a diaper, I plunked my first kid in front of a video to get me a couple minutes.

I understand why parents do that.

However, what we are seeing is that when children are exposed to screens too early, when parents clip the phones to the strollers or give them iPads, those children are getting speech delays.

They're having developmental delays.

And in extreme cases, we've even seen children lose the ability to make eye contact or lose the ability to verbalize.

They're developing symptoms that are akin to what you see in children with autism.

So there are very real risks to children who are exposed to early and too often to screens.

And, you know, that's one of the reasons I think warning labels are a very good idea.

They certainly aren't going to solve all the problems.

But just like with tobacco, we needed to have a different cultural way of thinking about these products and social media.

Warning labels are part of the solution.

So how do we know that we're hooked?

Everyone laughing.

You can't put it down.

You're you hear a ping and you have to grab it, grab your phone or go check your laptop.

You know, you, there's actually scales that the social scientists have created, you know, that, that articulate all the different features.

It's it's addiction of any sort, you know, you have a physical reaction when you can't get the thing that you that you need and do these symptoms per se.

Translate differently in adults and kids or do you see some similarity?

I'm not 100% sure.

I think adults who have more impulse control are able to carry it off in social circumstances where it's would be rude to have your phone out.

I think it's much harder for students, for kids, to to let it go and fake it, if you will.

But, you know, one of the things that.

And I'm sure Julie knows this from what she's been looking at, but the ability to focus and concentrate is really hampered.

The more you time you spend doing that.

Quick scrolling, quick, you know, quick, sending a like to somebody, you know, the one of the things that I fear is happening to our brain.

And there is we touched on this is the inability to grasp complex ideas and understand them and solve the kinds of problems that require, you know, deep thinking, big words and long sentences.

Yeah.

And those are the kinds of things that, like, you would need to practice in order to get better at, right, 100%.

That's so true.

Right, Julie?

Oh, do you want to I was go I was going to jump in.

I mean think about for children.

You know, you cannot read, 200 page book till you can read a 100 page book and you can't read a 100 page book until you can read a chapter, and you can't read a chapter until you can read a sentence, and you can't read a sentence until you have the words.

And so there are all of these building blocks required to get to advanced levels of thinking and comprehension.

And, you know, I think Katie's exactly right.

Nicholas Carr wrote a great book about this a couple of years ago called The Shallows.

But what happens if you are spending five, eight, ten hours a day with a program on your mini supercomputer, which is what phones really are?

That's telling your brain you don't have to be frustrated for a second.

If you don't like something, just swipe right.

They'll always be a new video.

So in a way, the design of these products are actually engineered to teach us and our children exactly the opposite of everything.

We want them to learn to be good students, to be good, friends, to be good members of of a community.

So that's really why it's so harmful.

Okay, Noelle, I know you wanted to respond to, you know, something came up last week, where I lost my phone.

It was, like, 24 hours after I got it back.

And, I mean, I just spent a workday without it, right?

Which I'm just like, all right, well, I've got to make sure, like, team, like Microsoft Teams up and everything, and I'm making sure I'm getting, like, my slack notifications and all of that.

The amount of anxiety that I felt.

And for me, like I'm accustomed to like distress tolerance skills, like, you know, urge surfing, things like that, where it's just like, I feel this heightened anxiety.

I know I'm going to get my phone back at some point, but like in terms of getting through the day to feel how intense that was at my age, which is 36, to think of what that may be like for students going into the school year this year.

Yeah, they're going to get their phones back if they do have a phone at the end of the school day.

But surfing through those intense emotions when you're so accustomed to that dopamine fix, let's say, if you're not being taught skills to handle that, there may be more disruptions at the start, potentially is something that's come to mind since like just the other day going through this and I'm like, wow.

I mean, we talk about the harms of it if we're going to if policies are being put in place to address that, there may be this transitional period where there is going to be this effect on social emotional habits too.

Just something that comes to mind.

Yeah.

When you think about it, how many times do you see people or do we reach for our phone as a coping mechanism.

Were bored.

We're tired of waiting in line.

We're getting anxious, we're getting restless.

And what we're getting so used to being entertained 100% of the time with it, with a screen in front of us, that to not have that, as you describe, you experienced it yourself.

Yeah.

That's great little, experiment.

Yeah, I, I'm ashamed to admit that I cannot use the restroom without my phone.

I need to it helps me relax.

Coping mechanism.

We're pretty custom.

Yeah, I work closely here.

We.

Hey, Julie, I we're sorry what you said earlier, Julie, about you.

You'd said 2005.

What?

I meant 2015.

And I was thinking like, oh, that's two years before the iPhone came out.

This is such a recent development.

And.

It's so true.

I mean so I mentioned earlier I have, I have three children and when my first son was born in 2005, there were no iPhones.

And by the time my second son was going to pre-K, every single parent in the neighborhood had one and was using it to photograph their children, constantly share those photographs.

And maybe we didn't think about it at the time, but we were inadvertently modeling that that's a normal way to live your life, right?

And there's only two and a half three years difference there.

And my third son came along two years after that, and now he's growing up in the world of Tik Tok, and I don't let him have TikToks because I worry what they do to his attention span.

But I can't stop him from seeing Tik Tok because his friends keep sending them to him.

YouTube has gone to shorter and shorter.

Real snap has added reels, so you know, there's been this huge culture shift.

And I think that's where social media warning labels come in as well.

When you looked at sort of how we used to treat alcohol or how cigarets were had doctors in the advertisements saying, it's fine, it took a number of things for our culture to really think about it differently.

And in a matter of decades, we have managed to greatly reduce the number of young people who smoke, and that has in turn affected lung cancer rates.

And I think what we want to do here with social media use and technology use is really begin to shift.

Everyone's thinking about it.

One thing we haven't discussed at all so far today is the role of industry here.

You know, there has been reporting on how much money the tech industry is spending to try to prevent regulations, and it's astonishing.

Just last year, meta, Microsoft, ByteDance, which is the parent of TikTok and X, a formerly Twitter and Snap, spent close to $62 million on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan campaign finance group issue one.

So they are spending, you know, tens of millions of dollars.

According to the Wall Street Journal, big tech spend about $100 million to stop the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act, which is a bill that passed 91 to 3 in the Senate last year.

Bipartisan support kids safety might be the last thing all Americans agree on, you know, so we have to look at why this addiction is happening.

It's not just because, you know, we're all helpless.

It's because these products are designed by the world's best programmers to become addictive.

They're using the same techniques that are used in gambling and in other addictive products to affect what happens in your brain.

So that's why the regulation is so important.

All right ladies we're going to take a quick break.

And when we get back we'll talk more about addictive digital media and this social this warning label on social media.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Coming up in our second hour we bring back one of the most popular conversations of the year.

It's about eagles, peregrine falcons.

What to do if they end up in your yard, how to handle the situation, how to protect them, and really the kind of conservation and protection efforts that are going to be necessary long term for eagles and other birds of prey.

That's next.

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And we're back with outside connections today.

We're talking about the New York State law that required that will require warning labels on social media platforms and in studio.

We have WXXI education reporter Noelle Evans.

I also have Katie Allen.

She is the author of the book Stuck in Our Screens and remotely.

We have Julie Scal Fo, the founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction.

Now we have some comments from our YouTube and I just want to read these off late so you can respond.

Tom from Rochester is asking if the guests are familiar with the work on the effects of social media and what their thoughts are.

Is anyone familiar with Zig Ziglar?

No, no, no.

So I guess I was the easy answer this time.

We need you to go back to explain to us what think we're gonna we're gonna look into that for you, Tom.

Gary on YouTube says tech.

Is it the issue?

As much as parents that give tech isn't the issue as much as parents that give their small children 0 to 3 years old?

Apps and screens too early, too often?

Restricting access for young adults is not the way to teach impulse control or safety.

Interesting.

One thought that comes to mind is, 2020 back during pandemic shutdowns when a lot of folks resorted to handing their kids screens in order to get through the day.

And then fast forward to where we are today.

I appreciate that comment.

Also, when it comes to I mean, just that, image comes to mind, the point about teaching impulse control we've been seeing, I don't know if you all have been hearing about this Gen Z stare.

It's like making the rounds.

This talk about, where I don't know, as a millennial, I'm just like, used to, you know, as a generation being, like, insulted for whatever.

But, this there like, what I've been hearing is that folks are talking about, you know, if this is coming from being so used to looking at a screen at a time when your brain is still developing in adolescence and that you I myself do not, like, have the research in front of me.

But it's interesting to think about how social norms may be shifting because of access to technology.

I don't have like a stance either way so much as, you know, these observations.

But it is interesting to me that as a teenager, you can't really learn impulse control in the same way that you can as an adult, because, I mean, your brain's going to continue to develop until, what, 25 ish?

So that's, you know, if I thought, can we go back to the.

Oh, sorry.

No.

Go ahead.

Julie, I can't tell if it's helpful to jump in or not.

Please, do we go back to the caller for a second?

You know, I love this idea and agree that children need to develop impulse control.

And I also think they need to learn media and digital literacy skills.

And that's really important.

And that we need to start having that just as a fundamental part of education, like reading and writing.

At the same time, I don't think that it's developmentally appropriate to ask young children to control themselves with a product that's designed to be addictive.

For example, I want my kids to grow up to be safe drivers.

I think everybody here wants children to grow up to be safe drivers.

But how many of us think they should start driver's ed at age 7 or 8?

We just know that their brains and their bodies are not ready for that yet.

And similarly, as a society, we've decided that, children should not be in casinos because their brains and bodies are not ready.

Many adults can't even handle it.

So why would we put children in that situation?

And I think that's what we need to apply to some technologies, especially those that are designed to be addictive.

It's just too much to ask a child to, have the impulse control.

And even we adults are addictive.

So.

So what's realistic truly, for for schools and families to manage.

So I think the first rule of thumb I always recommend is delay, delay, delay.

The more time you can by your child to grow up in the real world and delay their time on screens, the more opportunities you're giving them to develop real world experiences, real ability to interact, to focus, to socialize, and to have experiences without, what many teenagers are having now, which is living in constant fear of having your worst moment shown?

We're hearing from teachers, actually, the the, a wonderful, poet was, was online yesterday talking about, ocean Vong.

He was talking about seeing his students being afraid to take chances because there's so much fear with everything being recorded and shared constantly, that they can't even experiment and try out different things as they grow up.

So delaying screens as long as possible, keeping personal devices out of schools so that the only technology kids are exposed to in schools are the ones that their teachers and their librarians decide have value for their education, and then at home parents setting healthy limits and, you know, observing those limits themselves so that they're modeling good behavior and just changing our relationship with the technology.

We use it when it's helpful.

We don't let it use us.

And when is it helpful?

Right.

We talk about all the the bad things that happen to us biologically and and, you know, as far as addiction.

But when is your when is it helpful at all?

Go ahead.

Well, I'll speak from real experience because I, I'm not on social media.

I have three grandchildren.

The youngest two are six weeks apart.

They're both the year and a half, and I have a three and a half year old granddaughter and they don't live here.

They live in another state, so FaceTiming with them and chatting with them is a huge use of the screen, which I find to be generally very, very rewarding.

My both of my daughters have tried very hard to, limit the amount of screen time that their children are exposed to.

But it means you have to turn the TV off, because at six weeks of age, I observed an infant, you know, infant's eyes moved to that big screen with the color and the sound in the motion, and then modeling the behavior of looking at the screen.

There's mom or dad or both of them.

And children know what to do with the screen before they can even talk.

So so our behavior, we have to change our behavior.

And we and I like what Julie said.

You know, we have to reorient, orient ourselves as a culture to using technology in ways that are good for us and not bad for us.

And that means changing our behavior as adults, too.

You know, it's it's difficult.

I've one of my daughters, doesn't have a partner.

And when she takes long car ride, she finally gave in and bought this little screen thing.

She can download something on it.

The only time her daughter sees it is when they're on a long car ride, doesn't go into the house, doesn't leave the car, doesn't come out when they're just going grocery shopping.

So you know, we have to think about, you know, there are moments when the screen can be a life saver, changing the diaper, you know, that kind of thing.

But, yeah, it's it's up to us adults to make changes first.

You know, I want to propose this, this, this, this content versus screen time.

Right.

Because there, there are educational programing, right.

That that can prove beneficial to kids.

But is is it do you is it the screen time that's the issue.

If I'm watching something that's educational, if I have my kids focusing on something that's educational, well, the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics have put, recommended Time's Out there.

And I think that for children, it's no screen time until maybe they're two.

Check that on me.

But it's, you know, and then if we're going to put them in front of content, make sure that it is good content as opposed to mindless kinds of, of content.

You know, there is some research, particularly around issues for kids, adolescents who are LGBTQ or questioning, that because it's so hard for them to find a physical community, to participate in, you know, in face to face, real world, those type of kids find each other online and that can be good for their mental health as opposed to negative for their mental health.

And there's also research that says if all you're doing is passively consuming, curating, scrolling, that the kids who do that a lot are more likely to experience depression, anxiety.

But kids who use, social media to connect with people and create content and post it and interact with other people are less likely to experience those negative, problems.

And Noelle, I want I want to talk to you about the different states that have enacted this type of law.

How is how is that working out for them?

Is it any success stories there?

Well, I mean, I'll point to Minnesota.

The governor there just signed, this similar, you know, warning label law into effect.

It won't I mean, he's enacted it it won't take effect until next year.

So we will see with the New York state law, if and when the governor signs, this bill into law, it would take effect, like, what, 100 and some days after.

So something happens where, like, you've got the warning labels been, established, like, you know, all of the the details have been finalized.

It will take effect after that.

And then, it would be an annual report each year after for, you know, the effectiveness or, you know, any sort of information that was gathered there.

Okay.

Yeah.

And Julie, what does it look like when, when families get this right?

You know, I think that the example that Katie offered earlier about sort of, her daughter allowing her grandchild to just watch, for limited time while she was traveling in a car, you know, sets a parameter that this child's life is based in the real world.

So if you have a healthy family, if your child is active, goes outside most of their life, is interacting with other people with books.

And a small slice of it is with screens, they're going to be fine and they're going to be healthy.

What's worrisome now is that we're seeing kids are spending upwards of eight, nine, ten hours on screens because schools are requiring them to do that.

They're teaching classes online.

They are providing their kids, you know, and this has happened to my kids, to teachers will give them assignments to watch something on YouTube.

But what they forget is that the moment your child opens up YouTube, that platform has been designed to keep you there and keep your attention.

So the next video that comes up may not be educational, and the one after that might actually be harmful.

So, you know, I think what getting it right looks like is families, you know, joining together to advocate for safeguards.

We have to make sure that these products are safeguarded the same way we do everything else.

You know, when you go to buy baby formula, you feel confident that there's not going to be wood chips in there, even if that company could make more profit if they put sawdust in there because we don't allow it.

As a society, it's not safe for children.

And similarly, we don't allow even toys to be packaged with small parts.

The kids could choke on because we know kids are going to use it.

So why should we allow social media products for children that contain things that we know to be harmful?

We have seen an increase not only in suicide and severe mental health problems, but in eating disorders and self-harm and cutting, and that kind of content right now can legally be sent to your child.

So that's what we have to change.

It's the entire sort of system at work here.

On that note, just going back to the, language in the bill, I'm just going to read this.

So from 2008 to 2015, the percentage of hospital visits among young users of social media, young users for suicidal ideation and attempts nearly doubled from 2008 to 2015.

The impact, and I'm still reading here, has been particularly acute amongst adolescent girls, as between 2011 and 2018, self-harm poisonings among 10 to 12 year old girls quadrupled hospital admissions for self-harm.

Among 10 to 14 year old girls, tripled major depressive episodes among 12 to 17 year old girls, increased 52%, and suicide among 10 to 14 year old girls doubled.

So the among.

I'm going to continue reading here and I'll start with a sentence among female adolescent users, the association between poor mental health and social media use is now stronger than the association between poor mental health and binge drinking, obesity or hard drug use.

That's yeah, part of this.

I mean, Raquel, these these problems cut across every, gender, every economic level, every race.

Yes.

Historically black teens were thought to be more insulated from suicide risk than their white peers.

Instead, now we have seen an increase in suicide rates, in the in black adolescents, higher than in any other group.

There was 144% rise in suicide between 2007 and 2020.

And among Hispanic children, the suicide rate between 2010 and 2019 went up more than 92%.

So, you know, this is an emergency.

And, again, you know, we don't need these products, right?

Social media products are supposed to be fun.

They're not lifesaving medication.

So, you know, at mama, we really encourage parents to think about whether or not they want to expose their child to the risk and to join us in working for safeguards that eventually these products will be safer.

Katie, what what's realistic for schools and families to manage this?

I think it's, takes a an understanding of the issues.

I don't think all parents understand the business with algorithm rhythms and continuous scrolling and realize how those are techniques that are specifically designed to create harm.

And so to drive profit and profit.

Right.

They make money but hurt people.

So we have we have to kind of think about it that way.

You know, alcohol, you know, look at the campaign to change littering.

When I was a little girl, people threw garbage outside of the car all the time.

No one does it anymore.

You would you would, you know, you might get a ticket, but you also would be socially sanctioned by people around you.

I hope, and I think we have to we have to try to promote a culture where we use the tools.

The tools don't use us.

And that's and that's a good way to segue.

So what is a piece of advice you would give to a family or household that that is overwhelmed by technology.

Create limits, sit down and decide what what is workable and what is not workable.

I, I really don't like my cell phone very much, but I do misplace it and and then I know that's a problem.

So maybe losing it can be helpful.

Yeah.

Time.

You know, read books to your children, talk to them, talk to them.

Kids today have difficulty having conversations and ask them questions.

Not yes or no questions, but questions.

You know, how did this happen?

Or what happened?

Or where are the questions that require more than a yes or no answer and and get her to look at us.

We have to look at them.

Then they will look at us.

You know, little babies mirror what our faces do.

And when little kids are watching their parents stare at a screen, they start to misbehave.

Yeah, it's interesting with the research, you know, they misbehave, they get into trouble, they start trying to nag.

But there's a message embedded in that for us that when we're with our kids, let's be with our kids, not in a screen.

Katie, you have you always not been on social media or is this something that, I just decided, well, I was on Facebook for a while.

I never really got into it much, but then I got hacked, and after that, I, I, I actually have a Facebook page that was given to me by an organization that I joined, and I don't have an author website, and I need one.

So a friend of mine is going to help me set up an author page on Facebook, but I'm not interested in it.

I love to read, and I like to watch people, and I like to listen to people, and I like to know people's stories.

So I want to look at them and talk to them.

So do you notice a difference with with how your, your mental health and when you decided to when you were hacked and how you were then when you had the social media, and now that you I felt invaded when it was hacked, I felt invaded.

And I realized not everybody in the world needs to know every single thing that I do.

I mean, for some of us, if we don't, if we go on a vacation and don't post pictures, we did.

We really go on vacation?

Did we have any fun?

If we aren't shown I'm leaving on a vacation in a couple of days and I'm not going to use my phone for pictures, I'm just going to look and watch and listen.

Somebody else can take pictures.

I don't need them if you don't have a picture.

Did it really happen?

Yeah, I know it really happened.

I know it really happened.

Yes.

And and Julie, what is some advice you would give to a family that is overwhelmed by, by addictive devices?

Well, the first piece of advice is please visit us at we are mama.org and join us because mama is a coalition of parents who are joining together to support one another.

It can be difficult to go this road alone, but for example, we had a chapter leader, organize a few of her friends, and they all got landlines so that their children could call one another and learn how to, use their manners, talk to strangers, you know, you call it your friend and their dad might answer, what are you going to say?

But those are important building blocks for children.

And as part of mama, we have some tools and tips for parents to help them with this.

But also, you know, some positive news here.

Once people make the decision to change it, it's pretty easy.

So when we, last year and earlier this year, we spent time with the New York State United Teachers at a program they ran in Rochester and around around the state called disconnected, where principals, teachers, school social workers, counselors, all got together to talk about what's been happening in the schools.

And the principals who implemented phone bans during the day said yes.

In the first week or two.

It could be difficult.

Some children felt sad, but after about two weeks, everybody gets used to it and the kids are much happier.

They don't have to worry all day if they're missing out on something because nobody else is using their phone.

And at lunchtime in the cafeteria, it's loud again because kids are talking about whether they're playing.

All right, Julie, thank you.

Thank you so much.

We have to wrap up this hour.

Thank you, ladies for coming.

Thank you.

Katie Noelle.

Julie, appreciate you.

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