Social Media Dangers Documentary — Childhood 2.0

[Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Singing] [No audio] [Laughter] -What do I love about my daughter? Um [Soft Music] -What do I love about my kids? I'm going to cry. I'll start crying. -My daughter is an old soul who teaches me how to be a better person every single day. -I love his heart. Like he loves big. -They are extremely smart and kind and opinionated... which I love. -He is so unique. -They see the bright side of... everything. They have this altruistic love of people in the world. She's stunning and she's witty. Very athletic, very charming. Like he actually makes me laugh. I'm not laughing because he's so cute, he's like, legitimately funny. Having these children to teach me how to love has probably been the best way for me to learn how to love. -I just appreciate that they're they are good people you know. [Phone ringing] [Phone ringing] -Whose is that? -Is that? How ironic is that... ... talking about? [No audio] It surrounds us... it's everywhere. Um... [No audio] [Soft Music] [Soft Sound of Slot Machine] A long time ago, families were in extended communities. {\an8}They were local. They were small. Um... children and parents largely worked together with neighbors on things that just needed to be done for daily living. I was born in the very depth of the Great Depression. If you know anything about the Depression, it actually began on the farms. At that time, I wasn't much to help but I can tell you later on... I was put to work carrying wood, carrying water. I knew how to shell peas. I knew how to break beans. And I had a little wagon so I was the water girl instead of the water boy. But that was the kind of things that we did. You had responsibilities in the barn with the animals from a very early age. It's getting harder and harder to find, 80-90 you know, plus year-olds that have that perspective that we just have no concept of what it was like to live that kind of scarcity. My mother was raised just about how her great grandmother was. I was raised pretty much like my mother and dad were up to a point. And that's why with my kids, they were able to change, but they had to change so much faster than I did. [No audio] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] -When guys think of your parents and how they grew up, what do you imagine? -So, they had no internet, no smartphones. What do you think they did for fun? [Soft Music] Um I... I don't really know how they would like communicate with their friends. Faxing? Something in the 70s... faxing. If you've seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I imagine their life was like Charlie. It was definitely far different than what it is now. Lots more kids outside. A lot more like being outside than inside. I was outside 24/7. We were told to get out of the house, either in or out. So, if you want to go outside, you were out all day. I pretty much lived on my bike. I would ride my BMX bike. -I fell in love with baseball. I believe we played kick the can in the middle of the street. Capture the flag to manhunt to wiffle ball to basketball to... We built a zip line. And it was actually made out of clothes-line which I would not recommend. I remember getting up at 5:30 in the morning to help my friend with his paper route. He paid me with a doughnut, you know? Yeah, if I wasn't lighting somebody's house on fire, pouring sugar in a gas tank or something... Yeah you went outside. You went and rang the doorbell. Hey man, you want to play? And pick up somebody's sort of one house at a time until you had a posse. Go to Scott's house. Last time we saw the two of them, they were with Jennifer. Then you went and did whatever you want. Then before you knew it, you had the whole neighborhood outside. When the streetlights came on. We had to come home. You had be home when the lights came on. You know, when the streetlights came on. When the streetlights came on. -Streetlights came on. Came home by dinnertime. Come in when it gets dark. Came home when it got dark. And parents would look at me quizzically like why are you here already if you're sitting around? I feel like life was more authentic, like more genuine. Yeah, they got creative. They got very creative. I feel like that's why our like parents' like stories are so much better than ours. They had so much more fun. -Yeah How do you think they got in touch with each other? [Soft Music] They didn't. [Laughter] They never got in touch. Maybe like the house phone. They have to actually like dial a phone number. Remember in the kitchen there would be that ringing sound? We had the one phone in the kitchen that had the really long cord. It still hung on the wall. Yeah it still hung on the wall. -I can remember setting the dinner table and having to take the phone cord my mom's head. Yeah, I was rarely on the phone if my sister was on. And then I would spend hours trying to record her. We always had to have quarters on us too for payphones. When you were out and about... It's was critical. I would call my dad if I needed to ride home if it got too dark. I remember when call waiting happened. Like what? What is this technology? I had a pager at the tail end of College. -We didn't have a phone till I was in College. Everyone from the highway to here would be on the same line. So we... I think we had nine people on the line. I don't think I had a telephone until I was in maybe 5th grade. But I think if we want to sort of be more real and focus on what people are experiencing now, we probably would want to be talking about the Information Revolution. [Soft Music] When I was a Junior, I was taking a class and our professor was like we are going to communicate with another college class in Sweden. And we were like, how... How are we going to do that? So, we all went to the computer lab, stared at this black screen and we typed in like C:\\ all these numbers. I remember thinking this... Why would anybody do this? And she had this thing called AOL. And there was this dial up internet thing and it was like, [funny sounds] [56k modem sounds] And then all of a sudden, she's in this chat room. So, what's everyone up to today? Well, Linda Emerson called and she asked if Tosh and Peter can help Andrew and Lisa learn about the Internet, What's a web page? Something ducks walk on? Ha ha, very funny. And frankly, I remember there being almost nothing to do once you were online. It seemed really cool and then you had no idea what to do. It didn't feel life changing until I think much later than that. Particularly over the last 20 years, we've just seen this explosion of innovation and new technology. I do remember the first time somebody said, "You've never Googled something?" And I was like, "What's Google?" Yahoo Meetups. I think they came before MySpace. Facebook was born like the week our oldest son was born. So... when we look at him with his adolescent awkwardness, like that's, that's how old Facebook is. My kids are way better at using apps and mobile devices now than I am. Kids are so intuitive with... -Yeah. like the mobile devices. They can pick up any mobile device and just it's so intuitive they know exactly what to do with it. Just pick it up and figure it out. Okay, there you go. And you're just like, what did you do? I've seen kids run circles around parents. At least now I have in house tech help when I need it. Technology moves quickly. It's like the Wild West. I try to keep up with the latest... by the time I'm aware of what it is, they've gone on to the next one. How do you keep up with something new every day? It's exhausting. You can't just like... okay, I've got to vet all this and vet all this... -I am not currently on any social media. -The use phones has just ramped up. -I wouldn't even know how to navigate. -Everything is going crazy. -It's very difficult to opt out. It's already too late. [Soft Music] The train has already left the station way before I realized, and I'll never catch up. [Soft Music] -Do I feel like I can protect my kids from the dangers online? Uh no. They're going to have to navigate it and make decisions for themselves without me sooner than I want. Its pace has been so fast that some of the, we'll call them guardrails that are necessary to keep an industry accountable, have been set aside in the spirit of innovation. Right now we're effectively living in an experiment. {\an8}[Soft Music] {\an8}How is this going to affect us? We'll find out with the current generation. -Uh I will tell you that... I'm probably going to be dead and gone and I will probably be thankful for it when all this [bleep] comes to fruition. -Because... because I think that... [Soft Music] this scares me to death. [Soft Music] [Soft Music] The internet is awesome. It's a great place. People use it for work, people use it for art, people use it for socializing. For me, I don't know. It's just fun to take cool pictures and to show them off to the world. I like like checking up on people from like that I haven't talked to since like the fifth grade. Like you don't get to see them for a month, you can talk to them over FaceTime. Staying connected, sharing photos, and being support to one another. My partner calls it SMS parenting because I just text them. -Of course, the educational opportunities. Having the internet at my disposal, I can search anything. What did I have? I had the World Book Encyclopedia? Just feeling a sense of security and safety with the ability for the location tracking feature. Yeah, it's like letting everyone know where we are and stuff just to make sure everyone's safe. Or if he's at a friend's house, I could call. Are their parents home? It's actually been a way that we can keep track of them out there in the real world where things really are scary. [Sound of Breeze] Do you think the dangers online are more prevalent or dangers in real life are more prevalent? -I think it's I think I'm still more afraid of the real world. I think my primary concerns did tend to be physical. Any situation where they cannot physically defend themselves -Yeah. -Then that's number one for me. -Yeah. -That's scary to me. And that's everything outside of that side of the house. I really wasn't allowed to walk around the street. I couldn't ride my bike around my street. I am a senior in high school. I still can't sleep over. Like you know, we can't do that now. We can't just walk down the street and like go to a restaurant. I mean, it's just not really that safe. Without worrying about being kidnapped. -Yeah. -Or, even... I'm going to throw out raped. -Yeah. -Yeah. Many parents today worry more about physical danger of their children than they do online danger for their kids because it's something that they can relate to. -I don't know whether Jimmy has lost his kite or what, but he's really asking for trouble climbing a power or a telephone pole. Here's one rusty nail and believe me, it's dangerous. I remember my parents really, you know, teaching me sort of very physical danger prevention things like look both ways when you cross the street and be careful who you talk to, and things like that. All of those things parents heard when they were growing up. And so that's something that they can hold on to. It's a fear that they remember. Whereas everything online... oftentimes, it's so far out of what they can imagine because they're not using the technology the same way that kids are, that they can't even wrap their brain around it enough to know what to be afraid of. The greater danger... is definitely mental versus physical in this world. Um I see it. I see it. The biggest issues that have come up with our kids have all been mental. We've already been introduced to sexuality, cyberbullying, marketing, and persuasion. The dangers for my kids that are more present are way more mental and emotional. I think parents are aware that there are mental dangers out there but I feel like we're constantly as parents, you just tend to think that probably it won't happen to my kid. Statistically speaking, our world is much safer outside in the neighborhood. Those physical dangers are much less likely to happen than the dangers that we're seeing online. [Soft Music] -I remember in fifth grade, like I saw all friends slowly, like starting to get phones. And I was like, well, I want to be able to text my friends. I want to be able to like, do like fun things on your phone. Like it's a fun thing. When Annabel was five, I gave them their first iPod. I was, I was 11 when I started feeling pressured. Um, like, even before that people had cell phones. Kids are ostracized by the time they hit middle school. They go in 6th grade, almost everyone has a phone and if you don't have a phone, then it's almost like a bullying thing. You can do better than your peers if you have access to some social media that allows you to engage and know when things are happening and that you don't miss out. Peers judge other peers by their knowledge of what's happening. Certainly in the last five years we've we've seen kids usage of devices continue to increase. We've also seen kids getting devices younger and younger. The rate at which they're experiencing certain types of problems continues to increase. [Soft Music] I'm Kelly Anne. I have worked in multiple different areas with teens, Children's Hospital, nonprofit. I met this groups of girls when they were freshmen. And I have been with them now for four years. They're seniors. They have access to me 24/7. Like what's the max amount you think in one day in the past three years? Like if you picked one day you spent the most time on your phone. How long do you think it was? Oh, I'd say 18... -Hours? Maybe. I'd say five. The last two months it's been eight, nine, 10, 11 hours a day. Yeah, maybe like 12. -So, in the past 10 years or so the time that they're spending online has skyrocketed. On average, maybe seven hours a day. It's a lot of time when you also have to do school and sleep and eat. Seven hours a day is like a work shift. There's a lot to do on your phone. Like you can text people, you can play games, take videos, like take pictures. Like there's a lot to do. -We've always had these things that captured our attention. But there is a certain level of precision with which today's technology hones in on our neurology and the way that we are wired. Social Media and other internet platforms make their money by keeping users engaged. And so they've hired the greatest engineering and tech minds to get users to stay longer inside of their apps and on their websites. I use Instagram, Snapchat. Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Two Instagram accounts. I can just scroll for hours on end. I use Instagram, Twitter. Instagram, definitely. My favorite is Snapchat. If I was to delete Snapchat like I don't think I would hang out. I don't know what's going on with Snapchat. There's stuff on TikTok. The social media games like TikTok and Fortnite. I look up from my phone after being there for 15 minutes and it's been like, an hour. Scrolling through Instagram. Then end up watching other people's videos for like five hours on end. Watch Netflix for time and then like go off Netflix, check Snapchat, check Instagram, go back on Netflix. What I really do when I'm not online is [No audio] kind of just sit on my ass and, like, eat. I call it the race to the bottom of the brain stem. So, it starts with techniques like pull to refresh. So, you pull to refresh your news feed that operates like a slot machine. It has the same kind of addictive qualities that keep people in Las Vegas hooked. One of the central issues of Skinner's philosophy of behaviorism is that just like the pigeon, man is a predictable animal. -Gambling systems have a schedule that we call variable ratio that explains why people gamble. The psychoanalysts say people gamble to hurt themselves, destroy themselves. Other people say they do gamble for the excitement. And so... but nonsense. You gamble because there's a certain schedule built into the gambling device or system as in a horse race. This same schedule will make a pathological gambler out of a pigeon as well as out of a person. It's interesting raising kids, um, five years apart, you know. John could leave his phone sitting somewhere away. We've noticed that Jack's generation of kids — they can't do that. They're so completely tied to their phone and they don't even know life without a telephone. Typically when I get bored I do pick up my phone. I tend to switch apps every 30 seconds to a minute. They will literally melt their brains before they got off the device. When we think about traditional drug use, we know that the age of first you use, the earlier it happens, the greater likelihood for addiction. And so think about, you know, with children their brain is developing. And if they are not having balance in how they are using this and it's developing at a younger age... I just, you know, question how that will continue to impact them for years to come. Young folks tend to have their reward sensitivity and their social sensitivity develop much earlier than their ability to regulate these areas in their brain. Throughout childhood, the brain experiences rapid maturation. It begins in areas responsible for basic perception and memory way in the back of the brain and it ends in front of the brain. And the front of the brain, that's the areas that are most important for having us regulate our responses to rewards and our responses to social feedback. And the highest order part of that doesn't really develop until the 20s. My biggest fear is when they get older that they never put those things down, and that they are so disinterested with connecting with other people (like in person, you know), that it negatively affects them. Being a leader 14 years ago was easier. The way kids are has definitely changed. They have less or no coping skills. They are also harder to kind of break that outer shell and talk about hard things. They don't want to or they don't know how. It's wild. They really just don't know how to get there. One of the greatest consequences of screen time addiction is just lack of social development social skills development, being able to connect with other people. And we're seeing a lot more of that as we are becoming more aware of what social media does to our ability to have empathy and to interact with others and to see their social cues, understand their social cues and react accordingly. We're seeing the difference that it's making but the kids aren’t. The disconnect of even just he with his friends. I mean, I mean, it is how they connect. But how connected are they if they're all getting depressed? Yeah, if they don't have anything to compare it with, you know, like you said, we have a comparison because we grew up differently because we didn't have the option. We're incredibly social creatures. That's actually what separates us. Not our intelligence, but our ability to work together in communities to thrive as humans. A huge chunk of your brain is devoted towards just understanding people's moment to moment facial expressions, because social signals that come very rapidly are incredibly important to us. Even if in the moment we're not totally realizing how important those social signals are. [Soft Music] Would any of you guys say that you struggle or have struggled with anxiety or depression? Anxiety. In high school? Both. Yeah. Depression. -Yeah, me too. -Yeah. Dope. -Uh, yes, definitely. I have an entire friend group who, uhh... has latched on to each other due to their connection with depression. Because they both are prone to anxiety and depression. I can't pinpoint whether or not it has anything to do with their device. He's addicted to games. I'm addicted to some games. Sometimes when we don't get it we cry; we throw a fit. I noticed that my anxiety ramps up when I'm on my phone more, but not from like any specific thing. Just kind of, the more time I spend in my head, the worse off I get. A statement I've been making at my talks with high schoolers is, Don't you all just sort of feel like every moment of every single day we're all living in a state of low-grade anxiety? And they all just kind of look at me like, "Yeah." So, we are seeing many more kids coming to school with diagnoses of anxiety and depression. Umm... and, we also know that the teen suicide rate from 2010 to 2017 um... increased 56%. My day to day life in the ER over the last 20 years, I think there's been two very palpable changes. One is childhood obesity, and the other is mental health issues in terms of the volume and the frequency. I have personally seen a difference in the number of children who are coming to the ER with mental health issues, with non-suicidal self harming and suicide attempts and suicidal ideation. His demeanor with me and his temperament, everything is different after he's had hours of gaming or something with a friend. Sometimes I feel like I wanna give it up, but it's such a big part of teenage life, I guess you could say that I just couldn't. A lot of like our lives are on our phones, like texting our friends, like that's on our phone. Like we have to be on it if we want to talk to our friends. Like our school actually gives us information through social media. So, it's kind of just like goes hand-in-hand that you will be using social media and have a phone. The lives of kids were sort of changing slowly for a while, and then all of a sudden, phones, smartphones were easier to get. Social media was easy to get. Most people were able to afford that, most kids were able to get on social media, and that's when everything kind of skyrocketed. I'm addicted to my iPad. I'm addicted. But adults, not just teenagers are also addicted to their phones. Parents are the primary determinant as to how a kid uses technology. In other words, if we want our kids to be consuming technology differently, then we first need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "Would we want them using their technology exactly how I do?" The race for attention has to get more and more aggressive. And so, it's not enough just to get your behavior and predict what will take your behavior. We have to predict how to keep you hooked in a different way. And so it crawled deeper down the brain stem into our social validation. So, that was the introduction of likes and followers. I post a lot. I used to... like, I almost like have like a mental schedule like okay like each month I'll post. And, like, I'll edit the picture and like make it look really good. Now I just kind of like post like when I want to. And I like definitely delete posts that that don't get a lot of likes. I like to have a lot of likes at my posts. Just to like, it just makes you feel good. You feel better when people are Yeah, you're looking good. But then at other times you feel horrible because people aren't liking your posts, but you can see they looked at it. No, I don't care. I mean, it sucks when my art doesn't get a whole lot of likes, um... They call each other and say, "Hey, do me a favor. Like my picture. I need I need more likes on my..." Like, it's really easy for you to be like, "Oh, look at this other girl, like she got this many more likes. Like her body's is, is this much nicer." Are they chasing likes? Are they as some young people say, you know, I'll put a photo up but if I don't get 50 likes right away, I'm taking it down. And that got every, it was much cheaper too, instead of getting your attention to get you addicted to getting attention from other people. And this has created a kind of mass narcissism and mass cultural thing that's happening with young people, especially today. I think people's online status does connect to their popularity at school. I'd say they're kind of symbiotic, like they both feed off of each other. Look at this, I have a 400 streak with this person. I'm better than you. Or, look at this, I got 600 likes on Instagram. I'm better than you. They just want to be famous. They just want people to adore them. They're hoping to get famous. They're hoping to get popular, they're hoping to get validated by strangers on the internet. Clout addiction. You know what clout is? It is not as if all of the sudden, a separate part of our brain evolved in the past 10 years to separate out social signals from social media, from those social signals that we get in real life. The social feedback is literally rewarding when it's positive, and it's literally punishing when it's negative. Ms. Stanphil, I was a little confused by one thing you said... Did you say Google doesn't use persuasive technology? That is correct, sir. [Ragtime Piano Music] What gets the most likes? [Ragtime Piano Music] More skin, more likes. -Yeah. Girls in bathing suits. -Yeah. You have to sexualize yourself or you have to post a bikini pic or something that's revealing in order to get a lot of likes. The more attractive you are, the more likes you get. Hot girls get a lot of likes. Parents day-in-age, you couldn't get on your phone and be like, "Oh my gosh, look at Kim Kardashian's life." We have the ability to compare ourselves with other people. We weren't really worried about what we were wearing because everybody in the whole world wasn't watching us. The pressure to maintain the perfect image online is huge. On the flip side, if they post something and either don't get likes or get poor comments, then it's hit with depression. -But you know what you look like. You can see yourself. You don't need [laughter] um... Yeah, but it's not how you look like this. - Yeah. It's like how you look like on that. It's not checking to see if their hair's okay. It's seeing if they look like the girl that they saw on Instagram, that was perfect. Seeing people like that. It's like, why can't I, you know, look like that? It's weird because we know that they're made up and they're not like 100% authentic pictures. Girls like strongly edit their pictures. And you can like, tell like the wall is bent at that their waist. So like [laughter]. But it just still makes you feel like They're always ready for a phone. It's like they're constantly prepared to be captured by something and be shown to the world. A man feels free if he believes he is free. And he will believe he is free if he is conditioned by positive reinforcement to think so. [Gentle Breeze Sound] [No audio] [No audio] You could be the meanest, most horrible person in the world, and if somebody sees you have 6,000 followers on Instagram at school, or like you get a ton of likes, they'll be your friend. They don't care what you're like. Are you going to be on my side if I let you up? Sure Chip, sure I'm on your side! Just let me up! I'll do anything you say! When I was a student, bullying was always in person. In my neighborhood, the bully who lived up the hill and we would be careful to not go that direction, 'cause if he was outside he would grab your bike and harass you. Get off, I wanna ride it. Oh, no, Chip! Not my new bike! Oh, I was bullied all through school. And I can remember the kid who you all just kind of knew was mean to people. Whether it was on the playground or other places. I'm not going to say his name. But I'm sure he is a great guy now. The bullying happened at school or on the bus. The ways in which this person could have access to my life were pretty limited. In this case, it was the seven hours that I was at school. Okay real mature guys! Now it's always available. It's going to follow them everywhere. Has any of you ever been harassed online? Yes. [Laughter] 120%. People are still just like, mean. Yeah, they're called trolls. They just like troll you and try and make you feel bad. Trolls are just kind of a part of the society we live in nowadays. Our bullying did not go in front of the whole world on social media. To them, it feels like it went out to the whole world. Personally, I don't really get those. Well, um... Where are the safe places for a kid growing up? Because as soon as I get home, everyone goes to their room and the devices come out and everything that was horrible about what just happened is shared over and over and over again. By sixth grade, he was like bullying me on Instagram and my friends were telling me and I had no means to defend myself. Well, honestly, I do think it's worse to be bullied online. because you don't know who you're talking to. Big picture. He was bullied in a lot of different ways. And part of the way that also showed up was through text message. You know, it was in person in school, in the classroom. Divide and conquer as well as cyber. And so, it was coming at him from all angles. And it would never shut off. Um but the cyber stuff, So I would block kid A and block kid B and they would give Ethan's number. Then they started texting Gavin. They had Gavin's ID and messages were coming in through. Gavin was what? Six at the time? They were relentless. He was the target. It was relentless. -Relentless. When I finally did get a phone in seventh grade, it got bad because I also got Snapchat around the same time. And so, I could now see what he was posting about me. Every kid sees this happening. It's hitting a much larger and broader audience than it ever used to. You know, and sometimes people pile on. It's another thing when the bully gets 25 people on a text thread and it's all directed at you. It's just, it's a different scale and it's a different time. {\an8}It's an amplifier for the worst parts of us. {\an8}Let's take an example like Twitter. {\an8}It's calculating what is the thing that I can show you {\an8}that will get, gets the most engagement. And it turns out {\an8}that outrage, moral outrage gets the most engagement. {\an8}So, it was found in this study that {\an8}for every word of moral outrage that you add to a tweet, {\an8}it increases your retweet rate by 17%. If they didn't have tech, I swear they would have a black eye every day. There are just so many more channels through which I can be a complete jerk that don't involve me being in front of you, which is the great neutralizer of cruelty. Because if I see you and I look you in the eye, we tend to treat each other differently. He was having a really difficult time. He was very agitated. Uh, and it had to do with his phone. And I couldn't understand because we'd found some text messages on there that concerned me. And I asked him about it. I took the phone from him and uh... we talked, we shed some tears and I said, Really son, what's going on here? A couple of days after Christmas his stomach pains got so bad, we had to go to the emergency room I was convinced he had appendicitis. He was in so much pain. He threw up two or three times. His blood work's good. This is weird, like we don't know. And I knew in that moment it was anxiety. I knew it. We got into the other side, but there was a place there where it was so dark. I thought, this is it. That this is that tipping moment where we lost our kid. {\an8}You know, certainly there's an element that {\an8}kids need to learn resilience and they need to um, understand that people are not always going to agree with them and they may even tease them. There's an element that um that's okay because that's, we can't train kids to expect that they will always be shielded from any negative thing in their life. That said, it's important for a parent to know where in the spectrum it is for your child relative to where they are in their developmental cycle. -So, it's definitely there. It's definitely there, but I'm certain it's probably more behind people's backs nowadays. Cyber bullying is definitely, like Charlie said, a lot more subtle than people like to make it out to be. So, what happens when somebody takes somebody off Instagram? Oh, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. -Yeah. It's like, you know, when you block somebody on Instagram, like you can tell, like, we all know the signs of like when somebody blocks you on Instagram. And it's a big thing because you know, this person doesn't like you anymore. That group photo where I don't tag that one girl. The parents may not pick up on that but that is a subtle way of saying I'm not going to tag you or I'm not going to like that photo or whatever it might be. We've attached worth to those those things. And this is a little subtle jab that kids are doing all the time. I see it. I hear it. What about the constant awareness that you're not invited to something or you're being left out? - I hate that. [Laughter] Nothing makes me more upset than that. When people hang out or do something cooler than you, they're going to post it And then it just shows like, "Hey, you're not here." You know, you suck. [Laughter] I was actually like be like, What did I do wrong? I must've done something wrong. Like, I need to fix something about my character I should completely change myself. Who would be the person that would be invited? And then make myself into that. -It's not outright and it's not something you can just see when you go online. It's something that's behind the scenes and it's something that affects someone over years and years and slowly changes, um, the way they think. [No audio] [No audio] -How easy was pornography to come across? Oh boy. -Oh boy... [laughter] It's like mom, dad don't watch this. - I know. I had a trunk and I had ways to hide it, and we had different methods of finding it. We all congregated at this one guy's house because he had a VHS tape that had something on it that had been recorded from Cinemax. Hey, let's go up to your uncle's, go to the up bathroom there. We take a Playboy in there, put them in a tin, run down the alley and look at it. She brought out a few magazines. "Quick, quick, you can look real quick. Oh, somebody's coming." "Look at this." And it was a Playboy Magazine. And I was like, "Good night, what are they doing?" And we thought, this is our moment. You had to be MacGyver to like, you know, to get it, hold it, keep it. But they had those sex hotlines that you could call. Oh, yeah. The the 1-900. I remember it. [Laughter] They would advertise it on the late night TV. But this was again a plan, like a detailed plan that had to be enacted. And there was no other way to get access to this sort of thing. In the 50's, we had pinup girls — Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe. And in the 60's we had girly magazines. And then in the 80's we had VHS. And then there were chat rooms with webcams... and now we have cell phones in kids' hands. [Soft Music] All the physical barriers be it, um, physical location, right? Be it proximity, all those sorts of things, be it people, maybe they had access to it, right? None of those barriers exist anymore. I mean, it's completely different now. I mean, it is. Like it's all video and it's all... I mean, watching XXX videos are a lot different than looking at a Playboy magazine. The Australian study that found that about half of children ages of 8 to 16 had exposure to pornography, and many of those were actively seeking it out. 27%. If you look at the unfiltered internet, 27% of all video content on the unfiltered internet is pornographic or explicit in some way. If I imagine, everyday growing up, there was a coffee table in my living room and there were four magazines on that coffee table. One of them was pornographic and three of them weren't. And my parents just hoped every day that I didn't look at the wrong one. [Soft Music] That is what the unfiltered internet is for kids today. We have put little boxes of porn in their pockets, under the guise of safety, under the guise of over-protection, under the guise that I have to get in touch with my kid all the time, every day 24/7, we have given them access to pornography that far exceeds anything that we ever were exposed to. What about porn? Does every, do guys all watch porn? I didn't even realize that, but pretty much every guy has like an addiction to it. -Oh, yeah. -But no one talks about it. So, saying like talking to them about it and they'll be like, I'll be like, "Oh, like, does that guy do it too?" And they're like, "Yeah." And I'm like, "That sweet, innocent boy watches it too?" Everyone. -Everyone does. I don't know, everyone watches. How many guys or girls do you guys know that watch porn? I'd say all guys pretty much... I think I know one guy at my school. I think I've talked to one that I can confidently say hasn't and nobody else. You know, it's very prevalent and like everybody knows it. They watch porn for fun. They don't even watch it for any sexual release. They just watch it to watch it. Do you think parents really have any clue of how significant of an issue of pornography is in kids? No, not really. [laughter] -They are pretty clueless. -Yeah. What's that, what percentage? It is on every platform, even the platforms that parents think it's not on. Just for example, Twitter. Which is one that most adults probably use. They probably know Twitter. Snapchat is where explicit content on Pornhub lives just seconds away from every user through back doors within the app. The app knowingly allows a well-documented list of porn performers to make thousands of dollars daily through their premium Snap accounts. The people behind pornography know how to optimize their content for search terms. Pornographers, any new technology that comes out, they immediately saturate it. They know about it, before, as it's getting ready to come out and they are ready with every strategy to saturate it. What age did like watching porn become common? I'd say seventh grade. Yeah, middle. -Middle school. Ninth and 10th grade. I remember guys being like, "Yeah, I had an issue in seventh grade." and I'm like, "I'm sorry, what?" -What? What I say to parents is it's time for every parent on Earth to leave the ignorance of the land of "if" and embrace the reality of "when." The film we'll see this morning will give the answers to these questions, it will also show the earliest phases of growth as well as the changes that take place during childhood and adolescence. So, when my parents were addressing the birds and the bees with me, um, there was no conversation. [Laughter] I walked out more confused after the conversation than when it started. We don't talk about those things at all. [Laughter] Now, sex, sex, sex, sex. Where were we? It's absolutely normal to be curious about sexuality, it's normal to be interested. Don't have sex. 'Cause you will get pregnant and die. Just don't do it. Promise? Okay. Everybody take some rubbers. My dad had conversations with me when I was a teenage girl. Like, I asked him and he was very blunt and just told me. Do you think kids are using pornography as sex education? Definitely yeah. Unfortunately. -Yeah. - 100% Okay. They feel like they don't want to talk to a parent or like a guidance counselor or anything like that. 'Cause it's awkward. Like it's an awkward topic to talk about. Like I said, I have three classes right now and they all are going like over Sex Ed type things and it's really boring. So, a lot of the times I don't like, I just kind of like tune it out. This is a tool for sex education for a lot of children. They are learning so many wrong things, not only about sex but about relationships. Guys especially our age, like they just like, watch porn to be fulfilled in their own ways. So, then they're just like, if my girl can't do the same things that these people are doing, like something's off. I don't want to be compared to like a porn star... Wow. There's like certain guys that I've hooked up with and I'm like, "Whoa this is really aggressive, like this is too much for me." And then I'm like, and it's just terrible. I'm like, this is so bad. Because I haven't had sex yet like people... the guys who like ask and I'm like, "No, I don't want to do that with you." And they're like, "Are you kidding me?" Like, they get so mad. Guys get this image in their head that that's how intimacy goes and that's how sex goes, and there's definitely a bigger population of guys that feel that way now than they were, there were even like five years ago. [Sound of Breeze] [Sound of Breeze] The science is still emerging, but I just happen to live in the camp that when young people are exposed to large amounts of pornography, it shapes the way that they see other people. I happen to be somebody who at a very young age, was exposed to pornography. I discovered a stack you know, of magazines when I was way too young. And that planted a lot of curiosities in me that I wasn't ready for quite honestly. I didn't know what to do with that. Um, and we could talk a long time about what that did to me later in life and what that did to distort just my views of sex and intimacy even as a, you know, a young adult and as a married man, um even leading to an addiction of my own to pornography that was destructive in a lot of ways. That was years ago, but I can link all of those things together. And I'm a guy that did not grow up in the digital age, yet I was exposed to something that I wasn't ready for. I didn't have anybody who was giving me any sort of baseline to compare that to. So, a combination of that early exposure, plus the Internet became a very toxic thing for my life. I feel like a lot of porn does, um I guess show the woman as more submissive and it kind of puts that idea, I guess, in boys' minds. It just leads to guys objectifying women a lot, you know? And then forget about the whole relationship part and that's all they think of now, is just sex because that's all they've seen. Even though we've been talking about a lot of like guys are like into pornography, but like a lot of girls are too. -Oh, absolutely. -Yeah I don't even think parents have like, the birds and the bees talk anymore. 'Cause kids will know about it by the time they are like eight, if they have access to social media. -Yeah. -It's just honestly f-ed up. But it's just faster now and it's younger. 20% of youth report that they uh came across it, children, you know, that it was unwanted. But we can now be in different places and we're in a group chat and somebody shares it. Everybody's got it if they open it. And in the elementary schools that I'm in, I typically hear counselors saying, yeah, we've got kids that are already seeking that out in the elementary school age. Sex is not something that is easy to talk about with your kid at any age, but it's something that you absolutely have to talk about and at a younger age than you might think, because even if he couldn't access pornography on his personal device or through our home uh you know, cable, um somebody on the bus probably could. [Soft Music] This mother proceeded to tell me, her son was 11 years old, but when he was nine years old, he went to sleep over at a friend's house, a family that they knew quite well. And this son, his friend showed him pornography, um, hardcore, really horrible stuff on the iPad at the sleepover. And then proceeded to practice that pornography on her son. That was when he was nine years old. Okay. Fast forward two years. He's now 11. He's never told anybody about this, but mom has noticed that my son just isn't happy anymore. And she sat down and had a conversation with him and found out through this conversation that for two years he had held on to this secret. And then he felt so much shame and guilt that there was something wrong with him that he did something wrong. And so for two years, he held on to this corrosive secret that started on an iPad. The number one common denominator of those who abuse other kids is an the early exposure to pornography. Because what they see, they feel neurologically compelled to do. [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] I guess my first boyfriend was... I was college age when I had my first boyfriend. We would have hay rides or weenie roasts or it was more, more like just groups of people. Now, after you finished 4-H they had what they call Rural Youth. and that's how I met my husband. We would meet once a month and maybe have a dance or a lot of it was square dancing. And everybody would bring food. And there were a lot of marriages. Uh my friend Mary Lew and I both met our husbands through Rural Youth. So, that's how I met my, that's how I met my Mr. Right. [Laughter] [Soft Music] Dating in 2020. How do dating relationships begin? A guy says you're hot. Pretty much. [Laughter] -A guy says "What's up?" The guy will like, add you on Snapchat and then you might like say you liked each other, but you know, of course it's over text. So, it's not face-to-face. Then you guys might have 'a thing'. Hooking up with each other. -Know when you like each-- So, you hook up before you are dating? Yes. People don't really go on dates. It's kind of you just like hang out or like guys just use you. [Laughter] It's true. -She's right. We couldn't communicate in person because we'd like, built the relationship online. I had like the same experience only after about three months, he asked for nudes. And when I said, "No, I don't send them." Um... he dumped me. For many young people, uh, sexting could be considered the new first base. Kids call it nudes. We call it sexting. Yeah, no, everybody knows what it is. Everyone knows sexting is a thing. My school uh, sending nudes is very common. It's mainly between people who aren't actually dating. Do you know of anyone who's been affected by that at all in your school? Affected by sexting? Yeah. Yeah. Like, they've had an incident or a bad thing happen to them. Well, yeah. Like, um, nudes of girls go around the school all the time. -Really? Yeah. We are seeing more and more young people that expect to jump right into sexual acts without the relationship portion before that, without getting to know each other, without going on that first date, without holding hands, without having that first kiss. They're jumping straight to send me nude photos, send me a video of you masturbating and that's happening, younger and younger. But in 8th grade there was like two different groups. And it was like the group of people that like, did like send nudes or like did all these things. And then the group of girls that like didn't do it, And there was like just a very distinct and it was eighth grade. And that's-- And that's what divided the groups? Honestly, yeah. And like now, like my brother's in middle school and like, I sometimes hear him and then like a bunch of kids I babysit in middle school like it's happening younger and younger. And like-- Like, I mean, like sixth and seventh grade... With sexting, while the studies typically focus on the ages of 12 and older, I've been in schools — elementary schools — where sexting has already occurred with 10 and 11-year olds. We have a lot of teachers and counselors come in like trying to discourage us from doing that type of thing. But obviously people don't listen, like if you have a teacher or just someone like telling you constantly not to do it, it makes you more just want to do it and like to try it out. Is that amount of communication needed before a boy feels comfortable asking somebody by text for a nude? You're pretty much lucky if you get about two weeks into talking to them before they ask. Or even sometimes they won't even like just like talk to you. Like they just Demand it. -Yeah. Or send their own without us asking. -Yeah. What about guys? Do they send nudes? Yeah they are disgusting. Who wants to see that? -Would you wake up? -I wish they wouldn't! One time I was with my friend and we were, we were having a sleep over. Woke up. Good morning. It was 8 a.m. I was like, I don't need to see this. They are more unsolicited like most of my friends have gotten them and I think like for girls for the most part get disgusted by it. What do you think percentage wise of girls have received them? High percentage? Probably more than half. -Yeah. -More than half. Do a lot of people you guys know send nudes? [No audio] In Middle School? [Laughter] That's okay. That was a huge thing. Oh, yeah. You guys had like, huge problems you were. dealing with. -Scandals. They're... they're like these rings almost that got caught and the police would get involved. In middle school, that's like the peak of like... which is totally messed up. It's just so casual. Then when a girl does it's totally different and looked down upon kind of. Some girls I know like, they just like, won't say no because they're like scared of like the repercussions because they don't want to be yelled at or called a prude or like... And you're constantly judged that's so true. Like they're, they're either like, oh, well, she's a slut and will do anything or like, oh, she won't do anything with guys and there's really like no in between. It's a no-win situation. If you give it to a boy and then you're a slut, then the girls find out about it, then you're cyberbullied by the girls. If you don't give it, then some girls will even jump on the bandwagon. You know, "I gave it to so-and-so. What's the problem? Why won't you do it?" What do you do in that situation? Because you know you can't win. I don't think people think it's a positive for doing that type of thing. But it definitely gives you a lot of clout. Like, you have a lot of attention on you. Like, good or bad. And so, people would definitely want clout. They like do like almost anything just for people to pay attention to them. If the good girl sends Johnny something that she normally wouldn't, everyone's gonna be like, "Let's get more!" And then all the guys will go after her too. Oh, yeah. Then she's got like 20 new adds on Snapchat, three new DMs. But behind closed doors people are like, "She is a whore." And people act cool around her but like behind closed doors people hate her. Let's say your your daughter was dating a football player. She breaks up with him. She hasn't had sex with him. But he says you need to give me a little something-something, some pictures, and then I'll stay in the relationship. So she does it. She gets pressured and she does it. And they break up. Well, I talk to kids all the time. What happens when you break up with those pictures? Let me take a step further... What happens when you break up with your boyfriend and his new girlfriend goes in his phone and finds your pictures? It gets distributed. Especially with Snapchat which is you know, kinda more or less created for that exact purpose. It gives people a sense of like, oh, it's not that serious. The pictures go away but... we all can realize now and look back and say, well no, that's definitely not true. Yeah. Once something is out on the Internet, social media will latch on to it people will download it. So it's like a Dropbox and it was like, I guess some guy went to our school made it. And it's like just girls nudes just like Just random people. -Just like all the guys But everyone had access to it? -Yeah, anyone could see it. Yeah, exactly. And there was like a list of like all the people that had accessed it and it was even like people that you wouldn't think really like good guys that you wouldn't think would like engage in that kind of stuff. But some girls had no idea that their pictures were like out in the open for everyone. All of these naked pictures and videos guys get from girls they went to high school with. They're in their college dorm. They go on ANON IB and they trade them like Yu Gi-oh cards. This girl that I grew up with, she had a sex tape actually and it was leaked. I remember even I who didn't even go there had access to it. But it was sent around and we were freshmen. One of my most hated terms is "Not my kid." Parents suffer from a disease called the NMK syndrome. It's described as "Not my kid." My kid won't do that, my kid would never my kids friends aren't like that. My kids school isn't like that. You're wrong. Everybody's community is like that. Every school is like that. Every kid has the potential to do any one of the things that we're talking about here. Even my own kid. [Soft Music] [Soft Breeze Sound] [Soft Music] [Soft Breeze Sound] [No audio] About 60% of the youth who experience sextortion when it's they're kind of blackmailed or you know, forced to send images, threatened to send it, actually know their perpetrator. However, we also know then about 40% met the person online and sent the image. [Dramatic Music] He chooses his innocent victims. This time he will not fail. This time he is sure... So, I grew up in the era of "stranger danger." So, it was really the media that taught me more about strangers. Dangerous people. You know, "stranger danger." If somebody tries to engage with you, run away. It's always like a van. -A white van. -A dude in a van. -With no windows. You know, don't ever get into a car. He's gonna promise you a puppy and some candy. -Don't fall for it. -Yeah. Yeah. We were told not to hitchhike because we would be kidnapped. So, in 1997... we had a guy come from Brentwood, Tennessee, drive up here to Naperville. Met a 13-year-old at the corner of her block. Took her to a hotel, raped her. Let her go back home. And she told her parents that she met him on this thing called America Online. Call now for America Online. A new way to use your computer to communicate. My Instagram is kind of like a mix. Like, I would say half the people I know and half the people I don't know or are like friends of friends. Three fourths of it is probably my friends from like school or acquaintances I know. Not just random people off the internet. But there is of course that one forth that is random people I've never talked to or don't know, looking at pictures of me. When it comes to Tumblr, a lot of people like follow me for my stuff and that's cool. I like to have them follow me. But also, there's sometimes people that I don't know that follow me. I friend a lot of people I'll just join. He just friends random people. I would just join games for no reason and just go — add friend, add friend, add friend. Braxton does end up, you know, I'll be in there and he's on the headphones playing Xbox and I'm like, "Who are you playing with?" And he'll be like, "I don't know some kid." Have you ever gotten creepy DMs from guys? -Yes. All the time. Have you been solicited by any creeps online? -Yes. -Yeah. He was contacted by a stranger on Instagram. "Oh, like, I saw your page and like I'm really like, oh, I'm interested like sending you money for like, in exchange for pictures..." I had people like DM me saying that I'm like, I'm so beautiful and he'll buy me whatever I want. So, we at Bark, unfortunately, detect issues around online child predation very frequently. Last year alone, we escalated 450 online child predators to law enforcement. And so, we know that it's a common problem. Uh unfortunately, we think most parents underestimate the commonality of that problem. We decided to go undercover as multiple children on social media and post innocuous content to see what would happen. We had to be very intentional with everything we did. We had to create personas. They had to have believable date of births and we'd have to know everything about the city that they lived in. And we had to create storylines. And we worked closely with law enforcement. And basically, just pushed "go." We put everything live and we documented what happened. [Soft Music] [Notification Sounds] Within the first hour of posting on Libby's accounts, seven adult men contacted her. By the end of nine days, that number was 92. The conversations ranged in severity from making sexual comments, to sharing and requesting explicit photos and videos, to manipulation and threats. [Dramatic Music] We had to deploy an entire team, you know, around the clock to responding because the rate at which these messages came in was mind boggling. And of course, when you're dealing with social media and the internet, it's a global thing. It's not just an East Coast thing or U.S.-based thing. There were men that wanted to talk to children for nefarious purposes at all hours of the day and night. We tried it with younger personas as well, even an 11-year-old. [Dramatic Music] We launched our 11-year-old persona online. It's 4:44 p.m. and go. [Soft Music] [Soft Music] One like from a guy whose profile photo... is a penis. -So let's say... -One minute and seven seconds we have a message request. Although this, sorry, two more requests just came in. How much time? A minute and 40 seconds? Yeah. -How old are you? -How old are you? You go to the profile, you'd know that that is a child. It also says in the profile that the child is in sixth grade. Another one. It's just lighting up. Like the inbox is just boom, boom, boom, boom. [Soft Music] [Phone ringing] An incoming video call in less than five minutes. [Phone ringing] [Soft Music] They all say "don't be shy." This happens to all types of children. This is not just kids who might be at risk. You know, oftentimes it's a child who's simply bored in their bedroom at night. And I cannot tell you how many children I see in their bedrooms on live stream with tons of people just watching them, asking them to do certain things. You know, when parents allow their kids to have that device in their rooms at night, you know where your parents? These are, then come the grooming questions, "Where are your parents?" "Are you on an iPhone or are you on an iPad?" "What school are going you?" "What are you wearing?" "Oh, your makeup looks so beautiful." It's not uncommon for grooming behavior to include showing minors, images of pornography to help them to think that that is normal. And then, that can be a progression in towards, um, engaging them in sexual activity. Do you want that? Do you want that as a parent? Strangers in your child's room. While you're sleeping, would you leave the door open with a sign that says "My daughter's bedroom is the second one on the left," and then go to bed? We have traded a false sense of safety and security for actually putting our kids in riskier situations. There are some that are just there for a quick fix. They want to see uh, something, a body part or a live video, and then you might not hear from them again. But there are others. They use psychological strategies to methodically groom children by forming a friendship, by showing care. And then it is escalates into more of a controlling relationship. [Notification Sound] [Ominous Tone] [Notification Sound] [Ominous Tone] [Notification Sound] [Ominous Tone] [Notification Sound] [Ominous Tone] What do predators do with the pictures and videos they get from kids? Uh, they keep it or they trade it. Last year alone, we received over 18 million reports of international and domestic online child sexual abuse. Between 2017 and 2018, video files reported to NCMEC increased 541%. We're seeing reports with graphic and violent sexual images of young children, including infants and reports of on-demand sexual abuse known as live streaming. Unfortunately, some of those were people who wanted to actually meet the child in person, which could have been just because they wanted to have sex with a minor. Sometimes we believe that it was because they might be part of a sex trafficking ring wanting to actually traffic the child. It was a tough decision. But if Keith wanted to meet Libby in person, we would let him. The project has also resulted in numerous arrests, and that's great. Unfortunately, it's a drop in the bucket. The average internet predator has 250 victims in their lifetime. One person has that many victims in their lifetime if they're not caught. So, what happens in the law enforcement arena that cops are not getting this technology training. The problem is so big. I mean, we would need to employ so many more officers um, trained in dealing with this issue. When you're a law enforcement professional, and you're looking at more cases than you can ever possibly get to, unfortunately, a lot of those get triaged so low that they never actually get investigated. And so, unfortunately, that allows predators to keep doing exactly what they're doing without as much consequence. I think about how I would have felt as a young impressionable child. I would have kept the abuses to myself, for fear of being shamed and blamed. I would have suffered with it secretly and quietly. Uh, it's important really to never start that process because as a child, once you're in it, it's very hard to get out of it. Very hard to come forward and tell your parents "This is what's happening to me." Do you think your parents know that this happens? -Oh, no. -No. I wouldn't be allowed to have a phone. If they knew what was going on, it would stripped... -If they knew... And so if you, as a parent or caregiver can be an open, honest, soft place for your child to come and say, "Hey, look, everybody makes bad choices. I'm here for you. We'll get through this together." There's no bigger God's gift than a mother's intuition. When a mom knows something, feels something, there's something wrong with their kids. And God's given this to moms to protect their babies. Whether their babies are six months old or 40, that never goes away. So, I always tell moms to follow that and it will never lead them astray. The best line of defense by far is to have active and engaged parents who understand what their child might be encountering online. Uh, children unfortunately, left to deal with this all on their own. And they're not, you know, we're talking about 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old kids who are not equipped to deal with this in a vacuum. And so, it really takes that guardian and parent support system. [Soft Music] [Soft Wind and Chimes] [Soft Wind and Chimes] [Soft Wind and Chimes] We always knew where our next meal was coming from. I don't want to say that, but there wasn't much money. And in that, middle of that time we had had... Um... We'd had a tragedy we lost my sister, my older sister died of pneumonia. And that's the, talk about the good old days but we didn't have the medical care back then that we have now. And then, in the following February, um... my mother had a little my little sister, Carolina. And she had a heart defect and couldn't be saved. So... my parents lost two children in less than a year. [Soft Breeze] You know... the kind of things you did and... Sure. Yeah. Jack is... I have two boys. John and Jack. Jack's the younger of the two. John's 21. Jack was 15. Jack was a very outgoing typical teenager, 14 and 15. Rambunctious, outgoing, very compassionate pretty much an empathetic kid. He was a really sensitive person and I think that was one of his best attributes. Because he could like tell when you were feeling feeling down and without even asking you or having a conversation with you, he'll just could like pick that up. Total empath. He was so kind to other kids. And I wonder if that sense of kindness made him more susceptible to feeling... [No audio] Was there much talk of, I mean, with the... do you remember there being suicides or anything like that? Never. Never. I never have heard that. We were worried, we were more worried about physical illnesses. But I don't remember... I don't remember there being a problem with suicide. You know, I've always liked technology. And I will say that it was hard to keep up with it. But I would stay up sometimes very late trying to figure out what my son was doing on his phone, and figuring out how to use all the same apps that that he used. so that I never got behind on that stuff but... You know... that's a really difficult thing to do. I knew that it was working because Jack told me one day, "Mom I give up. I... You're too smart... I cannot keep up with you. And I'm just going to tell you everything now." And he did. Except one thing. [Soft Music] Definitely the worst day in my life was getting that phone call from my parents. [Soft Music] He didn't do it on purpose and he didn't do it to hurt us. You know, he was just in a lot of pain. [Soft Music] Jack struggled for nine days in the hospital. And then, after about six weeks, we were able to crack his phone. Someone said that there was, you know, some stuff on sale at Home Depot that would help you basically off yourself. And um, And other kids would just come right out and say, text, you know, just go kill yourself. And then this is not uncommon. He's not the first kid that's had that happen to him. Why did I not know anxiety was and why do you know? I guess they've made it all... They've been a little bit bitter about... But even then, they only made it known to us after four kids killed themselves. That's true. In Littleton alone, at the beginning of the year, there were multiple suicides before school even started. At Children's Hospital, there is a new program for 10-year-olds and over and they say, have you ever thought about killing yourself? Have you ever tried to hurt yourself? How do you feel about that? So, I work in one of the busiest pediatric emergency departments in the country. At any given time, we can easily have four or five, sometimes six patients who are there waiting for a mental health evaluation or waiting to be transferred for inpatient treatment. You hear from the CDC that suicide is the second leading cause of death in children ages 10 to 24. In Colorado, suicide is the number one cause of death for individuals 10 to 24. Every day we send out, you know... over... over a dozen imminent suicide alerts every single day. It was such a rare occurrence to see that. Now it is commonplace. You know, did something change about us biologically? From 2000 to 2007, the suicide rate seemed fortunately, was pretty stable and had if anything, some years fluctuated down. But then we saw a beginning trend and it became evident over time that it was increasing from 2010 to 2017. Not only teen suicide, but child suicide like 10 or 9 years old. I said, "All right, sure. What have you got?" He goes, "well, Friday night, I had two 10-year-olds on Snapchat, one thought it'd be a funny idea to talk the other one into committing suicide. And she did it. She's dead." [Soft Music] So, 43% of 1.12 Million children that presented to the ERs for suicidal ideation or suicide attempts were under 11 years old. [Soft Music] Whether these young adults think that they're not worth anything, I guess, I don't know. But people can't deal with things now. But I feel like a lot of people in our generation are like way more sensitive than they should be. If one insignificance happens, it'll just trigger like every past thing that's happened in their life. There's always a competition. Like with school, you're competing for the best rank with social media. There's this unspoken I guess kind of competition for like most followers in a sense. If you're losing that competition, I... it hurts. Like it shows. You feel it in your heart. Constantly comparing myself to others, constantly, you know, wanting that thing or needing to be checking or not falling behind notifications or whatever kinds of stresses are attached to that. But then you couple that with the fact that I just don't know how to deal with anything coming my way. And I just think at times for some kids, it's just a toxic combination. Suicide is always the result of many, many factors. As we are not teaching kids as many skills to self regulate and deal with difficult emotions. Well, one thing that a device can be is a great way to distract. Not being able to have my phone for a week well, definitely like I would get really bored and I feel like I would be stressed out. Typically, when I get bored, I do pick up my phone. I had people to talk to but they got bored. I don't know. It's just like something that I do when I'm bored. Oftentimes, it's a child who's simply bored. Yeah, I'm pretty much bored. When I get so bored. Sometimes when I'm bored. Because they were bored. When they're bored. Boredom. He is so bored. My mind set got worse and worse just because I felt so unproductive and I wasn't doing anything and I feel like that's pretty common. You know, most kids are bored, cooped up and feel unproductive. At 12, here again, I was helping my dad. We still, we were still milking cows, we were still raising hogs, carrying water. We still didn't have electricity. I had to have the tractor gassed up, everything hooked up and ready to go. I mowed their lawns, some housework for those folks. I didn't even know the word bored. And if we continually interrupt that boredom with distraction with screens, I think that we are removing kids' abilities to deal with their own thoughts. And then that carries the risk then of being in a situation where parents are fixing everything and you combine that with situations in high school where parents have fixed everything I've not been taught how to deal with my own thoughts. Life is kind of hard. I have no idea what to do with this. [Soft Music] I think I'm still more afraid of the real world. When the kids are outside, I don't give them freedom. I really wasn't allowed to walk around the street. You know, we couldn't do that now. We couldn't just walk down the street. Without worrying about being kidnapped. There's not a lot of freedom when they go out in the front yard, or they can't ride their bikes by themselves to the park. I couldn't ride my bike around my street. I'm going to throw out raped. Yeah. -Yeah. I mean, that's just not really that safe. But I get it from the parents point because it's a safety thing too. Out there in the real world where things really are scary. Interesting that you guys think that because what I'll tell you is that realistically, the physical world meaning kidnappings and that kind of stuff, it's actually much safer now. [No Sound] It's easy to become fearful of your child stepping foot outside. It seems like there's so much imminent risk with all these things. It's more of an issue with the parent and then for the kids, you know, it is it's hard to engage in a world where it seems like every day or every week or something there is something horrible happening. What makes you think that? Yeah, I think it's because like, it's so like populated like the news and stuff like you hear all these... Like watching the news and like really just seeing all the dangers that are out there in the world. [Intense Music] [News Reporter Crosstalk] [Intense Music] [News Reporter Crosstalk] [Intense Music] [News Reporter Crosstalk] [Intense Music] [News Reporter Crosstalk] [Intense Music] [News Reporter Crosstalk] [Soft Music] We live in a town, a community, of 300 million people with a flow of information that happens all the time. You actually kind of wonder, can I... are my kids okay to play outside in the yard for an hour without me sitting there watching them? And I'm thinking, man when I was in seventh grade, I was going around my entire town. On my bike. We were told to get out of the house. Hey man, you want to play? Ride my BMX bike. Lived on my bike. Played kick the can. Built a zip line. Help my friend with paper route. Went and rang the door bell. We had the whole neighborhood. When the streetlights came on. Just went off into the woods... Had to be home when the lights came on. The whole town was, you know, extended family of yours. This is, this is why am I nervous? This is so dumb. I've been conditioned by everybody around me that this is scary. This is not scary. That anxiety is something we as parents have to really kind of do some self examination with and understand and wondering what part are we involved in terms of potentially transferring some of that anxiety towards our kids. They have to be allowed to fail. There's no way you can ever prevent pain, you know, or anguish 100% of the time. And in fact, it might not be healthy. [Soft Music] [Soft Music] Do you guys feel like teachers and adults, and parents in general have kind of abandoned helping you through the social media thing in life? It's also like we shield stuff from our parents too so they don't know. -We are really sneaky. I don't blame them for not... -That is so true. being able to help because we don't ask for help. I definitely feel like us as kids kind of got put in a in a tough spot... Yeah. You know, in between two worlds. This is all new for us as parents, we, we... This technology in this world has kind of crept up on us. And there is so many of us who could do better. My parents would be like heartbroken that like their kids have to go through this. Over half of tweens and close to three fourths of teens experience issues regarding mental health. And then we get into cyberbullying and that's over three fourths. Then we get to sexual content. And for tweens, it's around 70% and then for teens, it gets even higher. Our society has just become too isolated, just losing human touch. And there's no human touch to kind of heal the scar or the pain. Why do you think all these like suicide and like depression rates are skyrocketing? It's because of social media, And nobody's doing anything about it. We gave this stuff to ourselves because we wanted it. And now we get to watch it happen to our children. Kids right now are going to experience the worst of what we're going through. For most of the things that parents can't stand about technology, It's our fault. I don't want to trade my influence for their access to a million different sources of influence that may not be credible. Some parents say I'm not going to do anything. I give up. It's too overwhelming. I just, you know, I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that they do okay. As a family, it is the one thing we fight about, more than anything. If I had the option to turn things back and give our kids of today a life without social media and smartphones, I would absolutely do it. I would absolutely take away the internet from my kids. Yes, I would have rather grown up without the Internet. I mean, I would do it immediately. Take it all away. If social media was gone, like completely and nobody had it, it'd be a positive. [Piano Music] I do long some for my children to know a bit more peace. A bit more calm. A bit more boredom. [Soft Breeze] You can't go back. You can't go back. I know we can't go back. But I wish we could make children realize that life is precious, and it's a gift and we need to really [Soft Music] just really value it. Do I wish that we could just throw all the technology away? I kind of do, honestly. But I know that that is not the solution. I think we're going through a painful process of adaptation to something that's fundamentally changed our culture. But the opportunities for kids in this world are so much more vast. And yes, it's more complicated. And it comes with its own set of worries and concerns. But if you take the control out of it, and you focus on just trying to teach them how to be people in this world, with all the things coming at them. Technology is amazing. I think it's a great thing for human culture and stuff like that if we can control our consumption of it. [Soft Music] So, new technology almost always comes with unintended consequences. You know, we didn't have car crashes before we had the car, right? The car is a great invention. Uh, but unfortunately, that resulted in car crashes. And so, the answer was not stop driving cars. The answer was, we invest in driver's education, and we add seat belts and airbags and lane assistant. We're constantly looking for technological solutions and educational solutions to make that technology safer. How do we keep our kids safe? Uh, there's so much to that. I think what we need is a mass public awareness campaign so people understand what's going on. One thing I have learned is that if you tell people this is bad for you, they won't listen. If you tell people this is how you're being manipulated, They'd... no one wants to feel manipulated. As parents though, we decided we're going to become the experts. They need to start to see us as the experts rather than just everybody out there. What's awesome is all these parents are, you know, becoming innovators. And they're like, wow, there isn't this safety thing that we need and so I'm going to invent it. There's so much more help now than there was five years ago. [Soft Music] And there are ways that it can benefit them hugely, but it's not going to benefit them and they're not going to use it only for positive stuff unless we educate. The best filter that your child will develop is the one between their ears. So, having an adult they can go to that they trust is critical. And having an adult that's interested in and able to have the conversations with them is critical. And they'll say, you know, I want to talk to my parents, but they just don't get it. And maybe they don't, but they should try to get it. Because once you crack the shell, oftentimes these kids are just dying to share. The best thing that you can do for your child is make sure that they feel comfortable talking to you about these types of issues. Unfortunately, most parents are relatively ignorant about the types of things their children are experiencing online and aren't prepared to help them even if the issues do come up. So, you're my child, I love you. So, if something goes sideways that we missed, I want you to know you have the open door and we're not going to, to give you any consequences for coming to us. Because you're going to make mistakes. I want a kid to kind of once in a while go, "Oh mom, I already know that." "Good. Just honey I wanted to make sure. You know why? Because I love you so much. That I want you to know this thing," right? If a kid isn't to the point where they're just a little bit annoyed by you going there again, then you're not doing it enough. [Soft Music] At some point they will be taking flight and they will be leaving our home in just a few short years. And I want to know that we gave them everything that we had. I mean, that's the truth. Even my husband who is the most, he's not a very emotional guy. He will call me up in the middle of the day and be like, "Gosh, she's just amazing. She's an amazing soul." I just so desperately want those young people to have other voices in their life. Adults will look at them and say, that's not you are. That's not who I see. This will come and go. I see you. You're going to be okay. I love you. And they just need to hear that. We all need to hear that. [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music] [Soft Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,138,811

Rating: 4.9116631 out of 5

Keywords: Dangers of Social Media, Mental Health, Social Media Addiction, Child Predator Experiment, Online Predators, Online Dangers, Childhood Suicide, Suicide Ideation, Lockdown and Mental Health, Quit Social Media, Digital Detox, Childhood, Kids, Dangers, Anxiety, Depression, Addiction, Bullying, Cyberubllying, Suicide, Undercover, Mom, Dad, Child, Girl, Boy, Social, Media, Predator, Experiment, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Gaming, Chat, Sexting

Id: He3IJJhFy-I

Length: 88min 36sec (5316 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020

Reddit Comments

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[u/ScallionOk958]

Thanks so much for posting this. I resonate with it because I grew up right when kids were getting their own phones. Texting didn’t exist until high school, but even then it cost extra money. iPhones changed everything when I was 16, but I didn’t want one because it was consumerist, materialistic. Smart phones cost so much money that our parents wouldn’t have been able to pay for the data. Those were different times. Now my students are in a GroupMe that I babysit so that they don’t exchange any misinformation or sell each other their notes. I get texts from GroupMe 24/7. It feels like part of the job nowadays.

And I notice it in times when I have to wait for something. When I’m in line at the pharmacy, I whip out my phone. When I’m waiting for a friend at a restaurant, I whip out the phone. I’m embarrassed to say that when I’m in the bathroom, I’ll whip out the phone. I’m an addict now. The only positive thing I can say is that now instead of Facebook, I go on reddit to read FDS, r/askFDS, and r/FemaleLevelUpStrategy.

[u/[deleted]]

Thank you for sharing this documentary. Listening to the opinions of these kids was very insightful to me. I've seen the entire thing.

Very obvious that this new social media culture affected young girls worse, way worse than it did men. Watch it and listen to what the boys say about sending nudes in the beginning too. Also mostly all victims are women anyway, of course.

The documentary is decent but it could've gotten more into the essence of the issues in my opinion. It felt kind of shallow? Because statistics are fine, interpreting them is the point. It lacked more interpretation.

[u/Platipus6]

2000 : get your kids on devices! They need to learn technology so they don't fall behind in life!

2020 : get your kids off technology! They need to learn social skills so they don't fail at life! also the cp grooming and skyrocketing depression, anxiety and suicide. But mostly we want them to be optimal worker bees.

[u/[deleted]]

This breaks my heart

[u/Emma_Lemma_108]

I watched the whole thing, it's a very insightful film with a lot of research that went into it. I used some of the sources in an article I published about reforming sex ed in our schools - so thank you!