Jenna and Zach Rausch, lead researcher of the NYT #1 Best Seller, The Anxious Generation, explore how screen time has become a cornerstone of modern parenting—offering both convenience and unintended consequences. They discuss the divisive nature of phones, which have reshaped childhood while balancing technology’s educational potential. Jenna and Zach advocate for clear, thoughtful boundaries while acknowledging the immense challenges parents face in a hyper-connected world. Jenna shares heartfelt anecdotes about the struggles of navigating these blurred lines, emphasizing the urgent need for parents, schools, and communities to come together and redefine what healthy technology use looks like for the next generation.
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As the holidays roll full-steam ahead, we promise this episode is not about screen shaming or screen reduction, but screen cultivation. Being more mindful about what your kids are watching and what to set boundaries on is key to their development and your peace of mind.
To learn more about Begin’s expert-designed digital and hands-on learning products, visit beginlearning.com
Recap
Guests: Zach Rausch (Associate Research Scientist & Lead Researcher for The Anxious Generation) & Dr. Jody LeVos (Chief Learning Officer at Begin) Host: Jenna Bush Hager
In this urgent and eye-opening episode of Let’s Begin, host Jenna Bush Hager sits down with Zach Rausch, the lead researcher behind the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Anxious Generation (co-authored with Jonathan Haidt).
They discuss the massive shift that occurred between 2010 and 2015—the “Great Rewiring” of childhood—where society moved from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood. Zach explains why this shift has caused an epidemic of mental illness in Gen Z and offers a hopeful, actionable roadmap for parents to reclaim their children’s attention, resilience, and joy.
The Problem: The “Negative Money” Trap
Zach shares a startling study from the University of Chicago that illustrates the trap of modern social media. When college students were asked how much they would need to be paid to deactivate TikTok or Instagram for a month, the average answer was roughly $50.
- The Twist: When researchers asked how much they would need to be paid if everyone else on campus did it too, the answer was negative money (less than zero).
- The Reality: Students would actually pay to have these platforms taken away if they knew their peers were doing the same. They prefer the product didn’t exist but cannot coordinate the exit by themselves due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
The Philosophy: Collective Action & “Play Clubs”
The core message isn’t just about taking phones away; it’s about parents banding together to change the norms. It is incredibly difficult for one parent to say “no” if every other 10-year-old has a smartphone. But if a group of parents agrees to wait, the social pressure vanishes.
Zach’s Insight:
“We can’t just take things away… we have to give them a life worth living in the real world. We need to replace the screen time with real-world independence, play, and connection.”
He advocates for “Play Clubs” (a concept from LetGrow.org), where schools keep playgrounds open for an hour before or after school for mixed-age, device-free, unsupervised play to help kids relearn how to socialize without screens.
4 Norms to Reverse the “Phone-Based Childhood”
Zach outlines four specific, evidence-based norms that families and communities can adopt to stop the decline in youth mental health:
- No Smartphones Before High School: Delay giving children their own internet-capable device until roughly age 14 to protect them during early puberty.
- No Social Media Before 16: Protect the vulnerable middle school years from algorithmic judgment and social comparison.
- Phone-Free Schools: Implementation of “bell-to-bell” bans on phones (using lockers or pouches) so students can focus on learning and talking to each other.
- More Independence & Free Play: We have removed “risky play” and independence from childhood (over-protecting in the real world) while giving them unrestricted access to the internet (under-protecting online). We must reverse this trend.
The Nuance: Educational Tech vs. Open Browsing
Later in the episode, Dr. Jody LeVos joins to offer a crucial distinction between toxic “open browsing” and beneficial educational technology. She argues that high-quality content designed by experts should not be lumped in with addictive social media.
- The Evidence: In a partnership with the Mississippi Department of Education, children using the reading app Homer for just 15 minutes a day improved early reading scores by up to 74%.
- The Verdict: The danger lies in unsupervised open browsing and social media, not in intentional, designed learning experiences.
Episode Transcript
Zach: The key thing is going through early puberty with a smartphone in your pocket. That’s really what makes Gen Z—the kids born after 1995—really different from the kids who were born before that. So it’s not about that all technology is bad, or that we need to throw away the Kindle, or that we need to throw away Elmo. It’s specifically thinking about avoiding this constantly inflating technology taking up so much time that it, one, pushes everything else out—sleep, time with friends, time with family, playing. And two, increasing all of the online risks because these companies are pretty much completely unregulated. We’ve over-protected kids in the real world in some ways, over-concerned about the kinds of risks that exist in the real world, but missed and under-protected kids online.
Jenna: Our guest today is Zach Rausch, Associate Research Scientist at NYU and lead researcher to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Zach has given expert testimonials—in other words, he’s the only one, or one of the very few, who know what they’re talking about—to multiple state legislatures on the impact of social media and mental health. Zach was kind enough to spend some time with us today so he can tell us how we are going to quickly break our relationship with screens without adding something else to our already packed to-do list, and make our children entirely uninterested in those devices for the rest of their lives.
It is so lovely to have you here, Zach. Tell us everything. Make this easy for us, please.
Zach: Well, Jenna, thank you so much for having me on and hello to all your listeners. I think I don’t usually start this way, but to your question… what I guess I’d want to say first is that the problem that we talk about in The Anxious Generation is about the way that social media and screens have really over-saturated so much of our kids’ lives.
The number one pushback we tend to get about the book is a feeling of profound resignation. It’s not so much that people disagree with us; it’s that, like you said, we’re so busy. What can we do? In the book—and we’ll get to this quite a bit—we believe that there is so much we can do, and it actually is really quite easy, but it requires that we have to work together. In the book, we talk about four big norms about changing our relationship with technology, especially for our kids.
Jenna: When I think about so many different movements—around healthy eating, or seatbelts and bike helmets—there is this automatic “no-ness” that I want to meet any of these moments with. Particularly when the tool has made my life easy. I’m annoyed. I’m resentful. I don’t understand it. Not at you—just to be clear, I’m very grateful to your research because someone has to put a stake in the ground somewhere—but I’m resentful that these devices landed in my hands so easily and quickly. I’m resentful that the media companies have figured out how to make me, let alone my four-year-old kid who sometimes soaps his hands up and forgets to wash it off in the sink, addicted. Like, they don’t have the willpower to walk away. So I appreciate that sentiment that folks are coming in with, but I have a feeling that might be the first step.
Zach: Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing this up because the number one question that I get at talks is: I’ll lay out a lot of the stats about what’s going on with kids, and the question is: What about us? What about us as adults and our relationship with technology?
I think that you’re hitting at a really interesting point of our own sense of guilt and frustration with our own technology use. And I am completely with you. It is so gripping. And this is exactly why we wrote the book—because it is really hard to change behavior. It’s tough as adults where, you know, we use our phones and social media for all sorts of reasons. But we have an opportunity here to set norms around what we can do with our kids for the next generation, so that they can make the choice on their own about their relationship with technology.
Jenna: But real talk, we’re like “un-norming” too. Like, there isn’t a norm. We’re only 12 years into this.
Zach: Yeah, no, I appreciate the number. This is why I’m so grateful to your work. One thing I’d like to start with is just to lay out a couple of stats and one study that I think is really important for this conversation.
Last year, in 2023, there was a study out of the University of Chicago. They had about a thousand college students answering a survey. They asked them: How much money would it take for you to get off of Instagram and TikTok for a month? The answer was they would need to be paid about $50. So, there is quite a bit of value that the students were placing on Instagram and TikTok.
But then they did a second version of the question. They asked how much money they would need to get off Instagram or TikTok for a month if they got everyone else on their campus to do so as well. And the answer to that question was actually in the negative numbers.
Jenna: I was going to say, zero dollars.
Zach: Less than zero. In other words, the participants would pay the researchers for them to do this. What they say in the study is: the students prefer that the product doesn’t exist but cannot coordinate well enough to get off of it.
So what I’m saying here is that what we’re dealing with, especially with the major three platforms—Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat—is that many young people don’t actually want to use the platforms, but they feel they need to be on there, often for many hours every day, because everyone else is doing it.
This is why it’s so important for us to set norms at the top—parents and legislators—so that we can change this. Because it’s like the Emperor has no clothes; once people realize that most people don’t actually want to be on there, and that we have a choice to do something different… most people actually would prefer that.
Jenna: But isn’t that the same argument as, “Well, most people want to be healthy, but we still eat pizza.”
Zach: Yeah, I mean, that is an interesting point. But one of the things I would say is different about that is if you ask people, “Do you wish that pizza was never invented?” they would probably say no.
Jenna: No. I worship the pizza gods. When someone asked me at like 10:00 a.m. yesterday if I wanted a slice of pizza, I said every single hour of every single day I want a slice of pizza.
Zach: Okay, so let’s say we did that with TikTok. What would you say?
Jenna: I don’t know. I’m really torn. I’m really torn because I understand its currency of connecting people across borders. I spend a lot of my time outside of the parenting space obsessing over how we build global community. How we see each other differently. How we engage with each other’s commonalities, often over humor or music or art. And social media is like the vehicle to do it.
I also am really taken aback by the fact that I have a nine-year-old, and went to the school for the Halloween march, and I took a photo. And two of the five girls in the group—they’re nine, fourth graders—ran over to me and said, “Let me see it. Let me see it.” And I had this moment of like… Oh no. Wait. There’s a relationship with that device that is too scary for our own relationship with our identity. And mine too! If I don’t look like I would to run out to the grocery store, I’m not picking up the phone to take a photo of myself to post it to the world. There have become all these other layers of vanity and materialism. And the goals that we’ve set collectively have just… it’s now like the blue check, or the influencer status, or the sponsorship deals, the follower count. No one is going to debate whether or not those are toxic or not.
Zach: Yeah, thank you for sharing that story. What happened in the early 2010s is you start to get the iPhone in 2007, the App Store comes in, and so now you have all these companies competing to create platforms that will hook you and grab your attention. But then you get things like the Like button, the Retweet button, all of these metrics—follower counts, algorithmic news feeds. And in 2010, you get the front-facing camera. You get Instagram.
And what really changes is that we move from a “social networking system” into what we call it now, which is a “social media platform.” It is literally a platform that we present ourselves on in order to be judged, graded, and evaluated by other people.
And that takes away… I think you’re so right, the promise of technology. The promise of all of this is that we can connect with people and feel like we understand people better and build deeper relationships. But what’s happened is actually seems to be the opposite. The more time people spend on these platforms, we feel lonelier. We feel more disconnected. It’s more superficial.
Jenna: And also holding the fact that other people’s perspectives—even if it’s just a heart button on your life—is how you validate your self-worth. And how that can become so challenging particularly when we’re in a world where consumerism and capitalism is propped up on oftentimes making you feel like you need to consume more to check the boxes to find that happiness.
Help me understand your perspective—and this is where I do feel myself getting a little bit defensive—on the role of screens in early childhood development. When I think about helping young children access innovative products, education products… one of my kids learned to read on the literacy app Homer. There’s another coding product called CodeSpark that comes out of Begin Learning that is in 137,000 different classrooms with millions of students using it. Students are learning how to code. I’m not literate in coding and it’s certainly something they need for the future. How are you all holding both the device itself and then the access to the social media platforms that you’re referencing? How do we build that wall in between?
Zach: That’s such a good question. I really hope that your listeners don’t need to feel defensive about this because, first thing I want to say, it’s not parents’ fault. This is something that came, just like you were saying with AI, into our lives.
Jenna: Is this turning into a therapy session? Because I could really use that. “It is all my fault if I don’t do this right I’m a failure.”
Zach: No, absolutely not. So first, you know, we just didn’t know. We were in a wave of huge technological optimism. There is so much good that comes from technology. Just what has happened is that through market forces, through different dynamics, a few companies have developed products that we are coming to learn have a lot of negative side effects.
Jenna: But it does strike me that there is a difference between watching Elmo on a screen and using that content to talk about kindness and compassion and courage and curiosity… and what happens when my daughter asked if she could see the photo. It feels like there’s the… have we split this hair yet?
Zach: What we are talking about in The Anxious Generation and in the book is about when kids were able to have their own smartphone in their pocket 24/7. When you have access to the internet all of the time, there are no constraints, and it ends up filling up their day like a balloon. It just keeps expanding. And what we get is that kids are spending 10 hours a day on average on their screens. 8 to 10 hours.
Jenna: Sorry, what age is that?
Zach: Great question. That’s teenagers, 13 to 17. And then we know pre-teens are about 5 hours a day.
Jenna: That is just not mathing to me. So pre-teen is what?
Zach: 9 to 12.
Jenna: My daughter doesn’t have five hours in a day to do anything.
Zach: Right. This is… it’s just started to saturate our lives so deeply. And in the UK, just about 25% of 5 to 7 year olds have a smartphone. The ability of getting these devices has gotten younger and younger.
Jenna: What’s that stat in the states? Do you know?
Zach: All I know is among 8-year-olds it’s something around 10 to 15% who have a smartphone.
Jenna: When you say “have a smartphone,” do you mean have their own personal device? Where theoretically they could open up an internet browser independently?
Zach: Correct. Yes.
Jenna: And this is where I become a little bit illiterate in the products… My daughter has a Kindle, but she can’t surf, but she reads a lot of books off the Kindle. Is that considered a device?
Zach: Yes, it is a device, but it’s not a smartphone. In these surveys, they’re specifically talking about an iPhone. So just to make the point again, it is specifically about smartphones, social media, the ability to access the internet, really go onto any site, anytime, anywhere. That is what we see as the problem.
The idea of watching Elmo, showing some screens in moderation… that is very valuable. When we look at data of the Millennials—that’s my generation—the mental health was quite good. We didn’t see spikes going up. And they grew up with flip phones, they grew up with television, we had laptops.
The key thing is going through early puberty with a smartphone in your pocket. That’s really what makes Gen Z—the kids born after 1995—really different from the kids who were born before that. So it’s not about that all technology is bad, that we need to throw away the Kindle, that we need to throw away Elmo. It’s specifically thinking about avoiding this constantly inflating technology taking up so much time that it, one, pushes everything else out—sleep, time with friends, time with family, playing. And two, increasing all of the online risks because these companies are pretty much completely unregulated. We’ve over-protected kids in the real world in some ways, over-concerned about the kinds of risks that exist in the real world, but missed and under-protected kids online.
Jenna: I’m sorry I keep pushing you on this, but this is me just having to get really clear so I can, one, not be so hard on myself. Two, be clear on what the boundaries are that I should be setting. And then three, know when I am stepping over the boundaries or the things that I want to advocate for.
You see a difference and you differently categorize technology in an academic setting? For example, my kids are on different math apps in their classroom… you advocate on behalf of devices that help educate children not just in the academic sense but also in the social-emotional learning sense? You’re saying if I’m clear that any product that gives kids access to unsupervised browsing of the interwebs is the line that shouldn’t be crossed when I think about 2 to 10 year olds?
Zach: Yes. I would say that’s correct. There is a big question mark around educational technology and just how much that is helpful and not helpful at different ages. That is an area that I have less of a deep understanding of. I think that there is definitely a role for having some access to technology to help you learn different kinds of things.
But what we’ve generally seen as well is that screens have taken up an enormous amount of time in school as well, and we haven’t been seeing improvements in academic performance over the last decade. We’ve actually been seeing general declines. So there is a question mark there.
Jenna: I mean, those declines are also correlated to like 10,000 other variables. Our Chief Learning Officer Dr. Jody is on this podcast ten toes down every episode talking about the importance and power of play. And we just had Sherrie Westin, CEO of Sesame Workshop, on talking about how tablets distributed in some of the hardest to reach parts of the world—emerging conflict, post-conflict zones—are the only lifeline that some early learners have to literacy programs, to mathematics, to community building vehicles.
So it’s a little bit like I’m calling a bit of BS on the role that Tech can play in the education sphere, but I want to say that I’m a total Ally of yours when it comes to drawing boundaries around the open browsing and the social networks. And it feels like again trying to split the hair that the open browsing means that our kids have access to very dangerous content and that the social media can be the vehicle for self-judgment and disappointment.
Zach: I like that middle ground that we’re taking here. And I think that… right… one of the things about having your own smartphone is that the platforms learn your behaviors. They understand you in a very deep way. These platforms are designed to try to keep you on. And so we constantly are getting our push notifications.
One of the things we’re seeing in schools is that the distraction can often overpower the educational benefits. Especially if you have a smartphone. Yes, there might be a program that’s really helpful, but if you’re constantly being texted by your friends, if you have the easy option right in your pocket to say, “Am I going to do math or am I going to go onto Instagram or shopping?” It is such an easy way to entertain oneself, to sedate oneself.
And that is part of the reason why we’re really pushing for phone-free schools. So what we call for in the book are four big norms.
- Delay smartphones until high school. Because what we find generally is that during middle school is the period where these platforms are particularly harmful because kids are very sensitive to social belonging and social cues. Our frontal cortex doesn’t really form until we’re in our 20s and so it’s hard to set boundaries for oneself.
- Delay social media until age 16.
- Phone-free schools. And when we say that, we really do mean from bell-to-bell. Because what we’ve found is that the hallways in schools have become really quiet. Same as the lunchrooms.
Jenna: Well so is the dinner table in some contexts! I mean the amount of times that… I was just at a university this past weekend… and I went to the bagel place on Saturday morning… and it was like table after table of college students in their hoodies, back arched over their cell phones.
Zach: Yeah. I mean that is what is happening everywhere. And I am guilty of this too. This is the norm that has been set. And what we’re trying to do is do a big societal reset. Let’s think about: How do we want technology to elevate our lives? Not pull us down and push us away from our relationships, from learning, from the things that we really care about.
One of the big things we recommend is trying to create boundaries for families. Like a no-phone dinner is a great thing. Phones in the bedroom tend to be an issue—that’s the period when typically the most bullying happens, kids don’t get to sleep. So those simple things can make a huge difference. No phones in the bedroom and boundaries at dinner.
Jenna: I feel bad for the alarm clock industry.
Zach: [Laughs]
Jenna: But one of the things that I see a lot… I recognize that there are times where I am definitely tossing my screen across the room or across the table to my kid. But sometimes I feel like we’re not being honest about why we’re using it and when we’re using it. And parents, we know, are more stressed than they’ve ever been. Mothers have more on their plate than they ever have until the systems show up with authentic caretaking support. It’s exhausting to be a parent across the financial spectrum, let alone for single parents juggling two jobs.
I walked into one of my very good friends’ homes a month ago. She’s a single mom, a public school teacher, and her kid was in the corner on his device. And I was like, “What are you doing?” And she gave me this look of like: Do not. Because she was already beating herself up about it.
Where is the data or the ideas around how to take the devices away from kids? Because I rarely see a successful off-ramp when you take a device away from kids. What is that? I guess I can relate to that cuz I’ll scroll 20, 30 minutes an hour longer than I mean to and I am losing sleep as a consequence. How do we do that better?
Zach: I’d say a couple of things. One is that this is part of the reason why we focus on schools. Because one of the things that schools can do is they can help implement policies that will give kids back eight hours generally without their devices. And that is a new reset that will happen at school, which will make it easier to make those boundaries in the home as well.
The other thing that is great about schools is it’s happening at a group level. This is also what makes these decisions really difficult for parents… the biggest thing kids say is, “Well, if I don’t have a phone, if I don’t have social media, I’m going to be alienated, disconnected from all of my friends.” So you have to make this almost impossible choice.
So our recommendation is to try to team up with the parents of your kids’ friends.
Jenna: We have decided, my husband and I, that we are sending emails to parents pre-playdates that outline our rules related to screens. In the same way that in the homes that my children go to where I know there are firearms, I say to parents: “If you want me to walk through your front door with my children, I am going to ask you every single time if it’s locked. And I appreciate your patience and generosity in answering me every single time.” And in framing it that way, they’re like, “Okay great, this is just going to be our show.”
So we were thinking about saying: “Hey, here’s our rules. Our kids aren’t allowed to have access to screen time, browsers, social media. If that’s too much of a headache because I know you’re juggling a lot at home… if you want them to come and play at our home, I am happy to throw them some baking ingredients and see what they can concoct.”
Because we had someone who came over for a playdate and they walked in with their iPad. And it wasn’t a “Hello, thank you for having me,” it was a “What is your Wifi password?” And I was like… I’ll take that. And I texted the mom straight away and was like, “Hey, just so you know, I took the iPad.” She was like, “Great, that’s awesome.”
And I pushed them outside. And it was really jarring for me to watch them… this one person try to figure out what to do around a tree. We live amongst ladders—just climb it! Dig a hole with a stick. And it was like there was this numbness. And that’s what scares me the most. We’re creating spaces for people to get numb. And what are we going to do when we have such big challenges that require us to feel and see each other?
Zach: Half of the book is about what devices are doing to us. The other half of The Anxious Generation is about what is being lost and replaced. And your example there is perfect. We can’t just take things away from kids. We also have to get them outside, getting them to have what we call a “play-based childhood.” Where kids are interacting with each other in person, in real time, and learning these very essential skills of: What do I do out in the world? How do I interact with people? How do I climb trees? How do I fall from trees and be okay?
These are the skills that we really need to facilitate and grow. And it’s really where you get the social-emotional learning skills. I think your point is… I’ve heard many similar stories of when you take kids’ phones out of school… at first, sometimes recess is really hard because—
Jenna: “What do I do?” I’m seeing kids like, “What do you mean what do you do? You trip on your untied shoe!”
Zach: But it feels like our relationship with these devices require an intervention to reground ourselves. It’s like we’ve lost our capacity to be present.
Jenna: And when parents—caretakers, adults—are trying to make sure kids are reading and writing… and also try to figure out if they want to play soccer or the violin… and then they say they hate both… you are super reliant on it. I know for me, it is a gift to be able to have my cell phone when I’m sitting at swimming class and I’m on Slack and I’m on emails and I’m connecting people on tech. It’s amazing. I can look down and then I can look up.
Zach: The changing of parenting over the last 50 years… parents are really stressed out doing so much. And one of the things we really recommend—and I know it can be difficult in different settings—is unsupervised free play. Letting kids go out on their own.
It’s very hard to do that in modern times because everyone’s on their devices, but also you have cars, trucks… it’s harder to just let kids out as we did in the past. This is again where we bring in the role of schools. One of the things we work with is a non-profit called Let Grow (LetGrow.org), run by Lenore Skenazy. And one of the things they’ve developed is called a “Play Club.” Which is where the school opens up the playground either an hour before school or an hour after school. You have one adult present, and you just let the kids play. You have some jump ropes, loose parts, and the kids just play without their devices. The adults step back. And especially for elementary aged school kids, one of the best things they can do is just have time to be with each other and play. It doesn’t have to be structured.
Jenna: This feels frustrating. Like we are having to reinvent play. Like, “Here’s what play is. Here’s a playground. With your friends. And a rope.” It’s the same thing with the earthing movement where you walk on grass with bare feet.
I would categorize this conversation into a bit of a privileged lane. Because there are so many parents who, again because of the stresses of the way this country was built, rely on screens. How does that sit with you as someone who puts this research out that says, “No, it’s bad, no, it’s bad”? In the same way that we would with food deserts—it’s like, well we have an obesity problem but if you’re buying your food at 7-Eleven you’re not going to find high quality product.
Zach: That’s an interesting way to frame it. The way that I think about this is… what we find is that kids who come from lower income backgrounds, who tend to have more marginalized identities… these are the teens and the kids who end up struggling often the most through these platforms. And they have the least protections from them.
And so again, this is why we’re not asking things to be done at an individual, single parent level. Because asking an individual, single parent to do something is very difficult and it’s exhausting. This is why we want to have change in government, change in policy, change from the tech companies. They literally just continue to do all of this knowing the kind of harms they’re creating. And trying to do this also at school levels.
The focus on individual parents to solve every problem is, I think, completely unfair. And our hope is that by setting these policies and norms at higher levels, it’ll make it easier for everyone. Of course there are some benefits, some people who need access to these devices… but man, we can do better. Especially at the policy level of the tech companies. Can do so much more to make it easier for parents to have choice and agency over their devices. Right now, parental controls are a mess. Why don’t we just create one button that parents can press that can set the device to be a child account?
Jenna: And you’re suggesting that with folks like yourself and Jonathan Haidt and so many other experts who can help identify what those different controls are. I can see how this, though, could become politicized and very divisive. And what I hear you saying, Zach, loud and clear—which is the call of our time—is that the only way to solve our biggest crises (and this is certainly one of them) is if we come together and do it with everybody’s interest in mind.
Zach: Yes. 100%. And what’s so important about this is we can’t solve anything as a country right now… except, I believe, this issue.
Jenna: That’s so interesting. You think this can be a unifying one?
Zach: Because most legislators, they have kids. Everybody sees the problem. And this is why right now, this is like the one bipartisan issue that we can agree on. The Kids Online Safety Act passed 91 to 3 [in the Senate]. We have people far right, far left, coming together on this issue. Because everyone sees the problem.
Jenna: We’re in. I’m signing up everybody. We’re all in, Zach. Where do we sign up?
Zach: Let me tell you! AnxiousGeneration.com. At the bottom, we’re launching a movement to roll back the phone-based childhood and reclaim life in the real world for kids, for adults, for teens. And just reshaping our relationship with technology. So that it’s a tool that elevates our lives, not pulls us down and disconnects us.
Jenna: Zach, you have done what my therapist or a glass of wine or a little chit chat with my friends have failed to do so many times. We have navigated a fraught landscape of a thing that I don’t want to let go of, but now I am much more clear on what the boundaries are. I have my work cut out for me in terms of my own relationship with these devices. And I appreciate you offering me the permission to not take full responsibility for the fact that it’s an unhealthy, toxic relationship. And also acknowledging that there are some good things that can come from it. If we don’t understand what’s happening, we can’t help be part of the solution. You and your colleagues have really raised the bar for all of us and provided a lot of clarity. So thank you, Zach.
Zach: Yeah, Jenna, thank you so much. I really appreciate your very nuanced perspective. And being a parent yourself… I’m not a parent.
Jenna: Right now I am forgetting that the producer was like, “You should probably talk about the fact that he is the only non-parent on the season.” Does that change the way that you relate to this subject?
Zach: Absolutely. I see it as a mission for me to try to get this fixed before I have kids. I empathize really deeply with how hard this issue is for parents and I know that I can’t fully understand what it’s like. But I hope that my goal is to share the research and to give people more choice and opportunity. My nephew is 3 years old and I hope that he can grow up in a world that he feels like he can thrive and play and have the kind of technology that elevates his life. Our view is that we want to create simple norms to solve complex problems.
Jenna: Thank you so much, Zach.
Jenna: So Dr. Jody, I feel like this conversation is fraught with strong opinions, lots of data sets that either consider all the variables or don’t… and I’m wondering where you stand on this. Not because I’m looking for permission, but a little bit because I’m eager to figure out where to park my guilt. Or at least know when I’m eating the “high fructose corn syrup” versus not knowing when I’m doing the thing that’s not helpful.
I’m eager for our listeners not to get another firehose of data… but I would love to hear from you as a mom, someone who I imagine loves your own screen but also works with a company that sole objective is to produce really high quality content for children.
Dr. Jody: As a mom of two kids… the way I perceive it is that screen time shouldn’t be about the time so much as it’s about the quality of the content. I think where some of the research gets a little bit scary and starts to get a little confounding sometimes is when we lump together things like screen time with technology with social media. When you lump all of those things together, it’s much easier to have a rhetoric and narrative that is a little concerning.
If we take a step back and we put a little bit of a boundary on the conversation so that we are clear that we’re talking about young children and we’re talking about apps that have been designed specifically for them specifically around Early Learning outcomes… then I think we can have a much more fruitful conversation. Because in that, the data is actually quite clear: there can be some profound learning outcomes with careful use of early learning apps that have been designed by experts.
Jenna: I appreciate Zach and his focus on the tween onboarding into social media… but my kids love all the Begin content. Homer, learning how to code. Anything within the Sesame Street family has my huge stamp of approval. But there’s also the other kinds of content out there like National Geographic and PBS… my kid just explained how the rotation of the sun and the moon worked and I know that’s because he’s a visual learner and just watched a clip from Magic School Bus.
So to me, I don’t want people to run away from the subject because they’re like “It’s all bad,” when in some cases it can help us catapult.
Dr. Jody: It absolutely can. And the other application of screens that I think we know from research can be hugely beneficial is video calls. There’s a lot of research showing the benefits of having that face-to-face connection with family that’s traveling.
To use something that you brought up earlier, it’s like food. Not all food is good or bad. I think we can think about the use of technology in a similar way. I really encourage people to think about the quality of the content as opposed to the amount of minutes spent on the device.
And the good news is at Begin we do actually design so that a little bit of time can have an outsized impact. We know from research that children who spent just 15 minutes or less a day with Homer improved their early reading scores by as much as 74%. So we’re not talking about hours and hours of time.
Another application is exemplified in our partnership with the Mississippi Department of Education. Mississippi took advantage of funds to help kids improve literacy scores and they chose Homer as one of their apps of choice. A couple years later now, we are part of that story that is being heralded as the “Mississippi Marathon,” where Mississippi has gone up in the literacy rankings so significantly.
Jenna: Zach referenced everyone in Silicon Valley sending their children to Waldorf schools which are screen-free, but it does nothing but reek of overwhelming privilege to be able to send your children to an independent school that has the resources to ideate around what that might look like… when I think about that comparison to what some of the public schools might look like in rural Mississippi for example.
It feels like 2 to 10 we can be very clear about what we are doing with the screen: which is high quality product, developed by people with the right intentions that have been vetted with the focus on early learning development both academically and from a social emotional learning perspective.
Dr. Jody: It’s not over yet. We know that young kids learn best through play. One of the things that screens have the ability to do is scale up and reach people where they’re at. It doesn’t require massive means to give kids the opportunity to play, whether that’s digital or with physical products. And that’s really what we’re focused on at Begin. We’re parents too. We understand that screens can play that helpful role even if it’s just allowing you to get dinner on the table.
Jenna: Jody, I really appreciate that because the last thing we want to do is create another layer of guilt or shame or confusion. So I hope you, like me, are a little bit more gentle with yourself as you fling that iPad across the room on Saturday mornings… and be kinder with yourself as we’re also being clear around how we create the safest world possible for our kids.
