[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 to talking about?
[No audio]
Is everything all right?
Um
[No audio]
[Soft Music]
[Soft Music]
A long time ago, families were
in extended communities.
They were local. They were small.
Um children and parents
largely work 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,
you know, 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 like that,
like 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 a 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.
It was actually made out of
clothesline 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 the donut, 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.
And 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...
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
like 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.
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 in 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.
Until we... I think we had
 nine people on the line.
I don't think I had actual telephone
until I was in maybe fifth 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 Josh 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 Goggled 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 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.
It's pace has been so fast
that some of the, well,
we 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.
[Soft Music]
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 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 have
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.
[No audio]
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.
They are 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 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,
cyber bullying, marketing and persuasion.
That 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 iPad.
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 in sixth 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 these 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 all picked one day
you spent most time on your phone.
How long do you think it was?
Oh, I'd say 18 hours.
Maybe.
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 in 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 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 spent like an hour.
Scrolling through Instagram.
I then end up watching other people's
videos for like five hours on--
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 psychoanalyst 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.
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 druggies,
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're 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 the 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 20's.
My biggest fears when they get older
that they never put those things down
and that they're 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 screentime 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 like, 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,
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.
We also know that the teen suicide
rate from 2010 to 2017,
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.
Yeah 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 am 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 had 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 don't get like 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 like,
“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 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 to,
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 open 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 a 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.
Uh, 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.
What gets the most likes?
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 like, you can 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.
[No audio]
[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 friends.
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 to 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.
[Singing]
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.
There’s a culture of 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,
you… 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.
It's an amplifier for the worst parts
of us. Let's take an example like Twitter.
It's calculating what is the thing
that I can show you
that will get, gets the most engagement.
And it turns out that outrage,
moral outrage gets the most engagement.
So, it was found in this study that
for every word of moral outrage
that you add to a tweet,
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...
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.
You know, certainly there's an element that
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 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, it sucks.
[Laughter]
I was actually like be like,
What did I do wrong?
I must've done something wrong.
Like, is it something about my character?
I should have completely
changed 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!
There's 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.
Escort to your uncle, go to the 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 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.
[No audio]
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 half
of children ages 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 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?” Like,
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 does 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.
In 2019, porn sites received more traffic
than Amazon, Twitter, and Netflix
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.
-Yeah.
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.
[No audio]
[No audio]
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 a 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 those 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 hung out
or like guys just use you. [Laughter]
It's true.
- 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? Anyone 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--
[inaudible]
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--
What ages now?
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
like try to discourage us
from doing that type of thing.
But obviously people don't listen.
If you have a teacher or just
someone like telling me 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?
- I wish they wouldn’t.
-Would you wake up? - No.
One time I was with my friend and we were, 
we were having a sleep over. Woke up.
Good morning. It was 8:00 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're dealing with.
They're... they're like
these rings of us 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 we'll 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 cyber bullied 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,
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 ads 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 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
[Crosstalk]
Yeah, exactly.
And there was like a list of like all
the people that had access to 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.
I mean, 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 Music]
[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.
[Soft Music]
- He chooses his innocent victims.
- This time he will not pick.
- This time [inaudible]
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 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 but follow me.
I friend a lot of people I'll just join.
He just friends random people.
I was scrolling through games 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 you 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 a picture
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 push to go.
We put everything live
and we documented what happened.
[Soft Music]
[Notification sound]
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.
[No audio]
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 internet,
it's a global thing. It's not just
an East Coast thing or US-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.
[No audio]
We launched our 11-year-old persona online.
- Starting time, It's
4:44p.m. and go.
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One like from a guy whose profile photo...
is a penis.
One minute and seven seconds
-So, let's say
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.
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[Phone ringing]
An incoming video call
in less than five minutes.
[Phone ringing]
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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 question, "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 into
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 parts or 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 escalate into
more of a controlling relationship.
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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.
What's going on?
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
-If they
be stripped
-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, feel 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 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.
Um, and they're not, you know, we're
talking about 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old kids
who are not equipped uh, to
deal with this in a vacuum.
And so, it really takes that
guardian and parent support system.
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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...
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,
my mother had a little
a 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.
[No Audio]
- to 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...
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- 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.
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Definitely the worst day in my life was
getting that phone call from my parents.
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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.
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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...
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 every 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."
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So, 43% of 1.12 million children
that presented to the ERs
for suicidal ideation or suicide
attempts were under 11 years old.
- 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.
So, 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
if I wasn't doing anything
and I felt 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.
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I think I'm still more
afraid as 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.
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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's 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.
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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.
Ride on my bike.
Like kick the can.
 Built a zip line.
Help my friend with paper route.
Go and rang the door bell.
We had the whole neighborhood.
When the streetlights came on.
Just put off into the woods...
I 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.
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- 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.
I do long some for my children
to know a bit more peace.
A bit more calm. A bit more boredom.
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You can't go back. You can't
go back. I know we can't go back.
But I wish we can
make children realize that
life is precious, and it's a gift
and we need to really
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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 this 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.
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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 conversation 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 are 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 run so I'll
go, "Oh mom, I already know that."
"Good. Just honey I wanted
to make sure. You know why?
Because I love you so much.
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.
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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.
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