thank you for coming tonight this is one of those conversations that seems to go back and forth a lot you know but down the phone around iraq i don't want to put down the i mean the right we've all familiar with that conversation that we have at home all the time we started this project in two thousand and seven as a teacher in college you have to remember facebook was only available for college students it was before it went out there to the general public so in two thousand and six two thousand and seven two thousand and six my students came in all excited about this new way to communicate you've got to get on facebook you must get on facebook and i'm intrigued you know what is this facebook thing so my students and i started to work together but as a social scientist with a background in psychology i started to look at how the behavior was changing and so as cool as it was as cool as it can be you can ignore how it's shaping us so i wanted to start out tonight with just explaining that what we're going to do just for the next forty five minutes this is what we refer to as a media literacy program so media and digital literacy is the ability to be able to critically analyze the shaping of facts of the media that we consume so a lot of times we're not quite sure what this media literacy is all we need media literacy what is it you know from from the days of film to when television radio television film one all of that rolled out and the internet we have to we've constantly been monitoring the effects on society so here we are in the digital age that happened faster than any other new technology that we've ever had before so every other generation has had this luxury of a slower adaptation to the new way of doing things so our kids i know many of you have middle school high school kids ok so they're the first generation who have been socialized as we're calling it in the digital age so the term that we're going to use the the aspect of media literacy that we're going to be talking about tonight is referred to as digital socialization this is the first generation how is this new way of doing things affecting our kids so we know that media shapes us but how is it shaping our kids how are you what it what are your thoughts on how your own kids are being shaped by the expectation and the demands of twenty four seven connectivity so just for tonight we're going to focus on making everybody a little happier ok this is a problem solving discussion i want to hear back from you so i'll go through what i learned over the past six seven years of doing this research and hopefully you'll be able to you know have some thoughts that are provoking your own curiosity or how it's affecting your life and the goal here is to leave feeling a little bit better ok once we understand  and we can be empowered to have that discussion with our kids it really is more coming and we can sort of deflect from that the big debate of what your phone down put your phone you'll be able to understand so that's the goal for tonight is that all right ok so i want to just to start out with a little introduction  is a student i met in two thousand and eleven yeah ok and he took a media literacy class of mine and was not that was he was every teacher wants that student who wants to engage who challenges them you know well i don't know i don't know if i agree with you i got a lot of that right ok he is now the associate producer of the documentary film that i did that we did together and you want to show everyone your phone still holding on to the razor ok so it was through knowledge through this understanding that he did a little bit of a a one eighty you know and that's what we're doing that's what we want to do with your kids you know we want to be able to get media literacy into the schools so they have this understanding and go i had no idea that's why i'm feeling this way oh normal i thought i was the only one that felt like this so we have to be able to challenge we have to be able to challenge what the society is pushing on remember they want us to buy a lot of this stuff you know we're of a society that they're saying no you have to have this well our kids got the message that if you don't have it you can't connect if you don't have a thing you're out you know a lot of pressure for kids so this was our story this is what we engaged in in less than a decade our smartphone technology has completely changed the way we connect with one another yes how we start to ask how are these changes changing us but i think technology beautiful i think is one of the beautiful things in the world because we can communicate with people just a completely different level that we've never been able to do before and never been able to do before but now people just take complete advantage of that one college professor is changing the conversation asking people not what do you but how do you feel so very much an addiction and i don't know why i had this needs to know what everybody was doing god gave me weird things i e about being on the internet all the time no one asked each other on dates anymore no one wants to say hi no one cares and you smile it's hard no my connections with my friends and you know family we're now stronger it wasn't meant to be just in your face the whole time and you're losing the connection i want to communicate real life in my future and i think everyone else who's under standard are going to go away feet keep continuing to live the way we are you cannot take human interaction out of the equation because that's how it began and that's the only way to keep  the feedback you notice was all kids young young people so what we what i discovered was when you start to ask just that change instead of saying what do you think just the semantics shifting that one word from what do you think to how do you feel all of a sudden the responses were very very different so during a class when facebook was starting two thousand and seven two thousand and eight two thousand and nine i ended up i was teaching an interpersonal communication class the reason why we're teaching the interpersonal communication class was because a college kid showed up with a t shirt that said if you're not a computer screen don't talk to me ok i was like what's going on here maybe we need some social skills so i started to when you're teaching of course we pick up non verbal communication cues all the time and over the years i used to be teaching and a kid would put the packet cigarettes on the desk and then look at the clock ten times you know hello we need a break two and a half hour lecture like and so much ok we need a break by two thousand nine and ten it was the cell phone on the desk that replaced the cigarettes i got a check and a check my messages like starting to  to need a break and that's when i started to say like what's what's going on what's really happening and  it seem like we were putting way too much of our whole lives into this thing this thing that was originally created to connect people to bring people together we're now all of a sudden we're not using the cell phone for phone calls at all the statistics of using it for a phone is like minimal and we're using it for everything else and the technology itself you can sit there all day long and go there's it's incredible so it's not about the technology it's about how is this behavior now being shaped by this ability and i remember one time i asked a kid when did talking to your friends turn into a burden because when i was a kid i remember was like oh i can't wait to talk to my friend i can't wait to get home and be on the phone with my friend with my boyfriend and just listen to them breathe now not saying anything hey you hang up no you hang up remember that anybody remember doing that ok and  that was the bond it was a bond so what kids aren't under what people aren't understanding is communication has been now reduced to the sharing of information but actually  communication people for generations the act of a conversation do you know do you know what the purpose of a conversation is for anyone no no that's what people think it's for that's just what you the tools that you have a conversation is actually for the act of bonding it's a need it's a human need to bond you know anyone remember hierarchy of needs ok so there's so much research now about the need for face to face communication that what is happening between human interaction is something that technology can never do and just by the math our kids are getting less of an opportunity to be able to practice and hone and develop a skill so because we've shifted to the texting and nonverbal communication and everything other than this we're actually missing developmental milestones at this point so this by the way a piece of artwork that ben that's ben's i did with we did a great gallery show where we were having photographs that exist exemplified kid feelings on so that's what we're here to do tonight when we know better we do better we really need to start to talk about the honest affects of of what's happening with the kids i recommend for anyone who has teenagers middle school kids it's on you tube anderson cooper did this fantastic documentary you spent two years with kids it's called being thirteen has anyone seen it ok it's on you tube it's called being thirteen and the results of this were sixty percent of parents had absolutely no idea of the fights that kids get into on a daily basis on social media ninety four percent ninety four percent had no idea of the hurt of the emotional anguish that kids are going through on a daily basis i was blown away at what a great documentary with this was and then absolutely pissed off in the last two minutes so i went firing my e mail off to anderson cooper because the last two minutes he's going glad i'm not a kid too bad it was literally like too bad for you parents of thirteen year olds good luck without any suggestion of bringing education into schools and it was like yeah talk to your kids but the material that is in the show and what your kids are dealing with you have never had an opportunity to be educated what do you say how do we handle this what do you do when your thirteen year old opens up their phone and it's naked pictures of people in their class how how do i how do i handle that i'm sure you guys all heard the news story of the school of the high school school in colorado five hundred pictures of naked kids just being exchanged like trading cards you guys hear that story it was on it was all over the news and where we are right now is there is no protocol you know it's well we can't kick out that good because we had one hundred other kids we can expel a hundred kids for doing this and so we're we haven't offered this platform to actually problem solved talk to the administrators and start to elevate some solutions to this problem to this end and get honest with really what's happening so we created this program this little system embrace and let go and the curriculum is very much focused on understanding the paradox so when people go but what about education it's a really good it's an educational tool people can look up stuff on you tube or on google or whatever yeah and it can also increase depression and anxiety you know we've got two things but i really wanted to make the distinction what we're talking about tonight is just the digital socialization that there are ways that we can come to solutions where we can use our technology for digital learning that's great and also limit this addictive part of it because i'm telling you no one's going to be in a restaurant going i need to be i need to use my google calculator you know during dinner that's not the thing that's addictive and i could be hiding under the table trying to do their you know math calculations because they've got this great digital tool so this is the see this is our little system here and we're just going to start with the honesty when the truth is known it cannot be ignored only denied that a great quote and so we're trying to bring the truth let's talk about this we've got a problem going on here we've got kids that literally fall into full blown panic attacks when their phones are being taken away from them and i'm seeing the heads go on like this and it's true then what do you do what do we do you know you're looking at your child and you're going that cannot feel comfortable to feel that anxious about not having your phone on you anybody see their kids kind of looking like this you know there is this growth of of dependency because you have to remember at thirteen from twelve to eighteen there is nothing more important than being accepted and  friends nothing ok so when you're telling your kid that's ok you don't need it now now i had a kid in a classroom i said first day of school i said why why you first day of class i had to kick her out because she wouldn't but the phone away literally i'm like you're going to have to leave so then we sat down and i talked like what what's going on i asked you politely this is the rules no phones in school and she let her her answer was i'd rather jump out the window than hand over my phone i'm like that's that's extreme well extreme there and she's got and i said do you really feel like that she's like i do i have to have it on me i have to have a touching my body so it's a real thing and instead of you know the finger wagging kind of like you kids today it's like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry that you feel like this that can't be comfortable another one of ben's photos what we're finding is most kids are actually feeling trapped well what do i do i'm supposed to what do i do if my friend attacks me and i'm not there to respond like she needs me we might say that but to them they feel it like oh my god i do not and i've had kids saying somebody is going to be really mad at me if i'm not there to answer when they call they're going to be mad at me and they cannot feel relaxed until they complete that task it is making kids crazy it literally the statistics are there is an increase in anxiety there is an increase in stress the level of kids now taking antianxiety medication is ridiculous and they feel it and they need it and it is a way them to cope through the day it doesn't seem like it's right i think maybe we can shift behavior but it is the actually these are some of the issues that we have going on the sexting is a big issue in middle schools and middle schools we have kids that are sexting naked pictures at twelve years old this is a problem to me ok again just because we can doesn't mean we should ok and then again to understand the normal part of a twelve year old goes back decades so the human didn't change the technology did you'll read tons of stories on well is sexting normal well the intrinsic feeling is the i'll show you mine you show me yours hello that goes back forever it's part of humanity it's part of our sexuality what isn't correct is the platform and the understanding of the ramifications of that behavior that's where there is a disconnect the level of empathy the last a study showed our empathy is declining by forty percent so between two thousand and two thousand and ten we have an increase in narcissistic behavior and a decrease in empathy and again one of the reasons our kids are normal the pressure to have to care about so much is overwhelming how can you possibly care every time you get on social media everybody wants you to care about it you know feed the starving animals feed the poor join th like everyone wants you to you gotta join our and that it's imploding us internally it's like i can't care about anything i got i got homework tonight so no i don't care too much so can you see how that kind of develops a little bit we're not meeting those social skills are the research has been going on over the past decade unfortunately our kids are the kids that have been shaped by it we're now seeing kids graduating from college with a c in social skills not able to pick up a phone and do a cold call businesses are now going what's going on here we need people to actually do these skills and kids themselves are saying they know personally i don't have that skill i know i can pick up the phone we've had plenty of kids that are like unless you can order food online i'm not calling mom can you call because i don't want to talk to anyone ok it's we i mean to us we feel it's weird but we have to really put ourselves and go we're the ones that have been shaping them you know i mean how could they know if it was never taught the distracted driving you can tell somebody all day long this is not good this is dangerous but it's already conditioned where pavlovian right how many as a grown adult even not socialized digitally that phone goes off you're driving you're like who is it i to like i kind of need to know what's going on because it's literally changing the synopsis in the brain so we actually have a little animation to explain what's going on and why we can't put down our phones as humans we're hard wired to bond with one another and the digital age we turn to our devices we text we post we tweak hoping to make a connection but we end up getting sad when we are ignored so we try again when we get a response our happy brain actually kicks out happy chemicals called dopamine it's the same principle as playing a song we think if we keep playing we're going to get a payoff but sometimes it's just not what we had hoped for so we try again in so that's why where we have portion controls we need boundaries is there anything that you can think of today that we consume that doesn't have some kind of limit so why is it so bizarre that we're not having some kind of natural ok you've had enough internet remember the days when we grew up it was like turn off the t v you've had enough we turned it off you know it ended sometimes it just ended with remember the this is so i am so old i do remember when the national anthem would come at the end do you remember oh thank god i see heads yes ok so i was really feeling really old i'm like oh my god i'm like ninety so this is we're trying to say let's find ways where we can implement boundaries it's starting to happen the huffington post will not send out e mails after seven o'clock heineken beer now is going we got a hold off our employees need down time heineken be are not sending employee e mails after six o'clock ok so it's starting because we're going we can't do this is not sustainable you know so we can find ways to implement boundaries ok pop quiz who said they don't use it referring to the i pad we limit how much technology our kids use at home our steve jobs yeah so here's what's not getting to the parents all the high tech creators our low tech parents steve jobs did not let own kids use an i pad the c e o of google sends his kids to schools without technology zero zero technology chris anderson who is the editor at wired magazine was literally quoted i have seen the dangers i do not let my family use it he's got five kids so why is this not know it's like really the great article in the atlantic magazine people who even make the educational games the state the strictest limits for their own kids literally setting the timer you can play the new game for twenty minutes they were talking about the set a conference so all these high tech parents are implementing these very strict guidelines at home and  it's not getting to the public in less you came out here tonight this got to be limits you know like you need to be able to say i'm going to take a shower the world will continue to spin on its access while i'm taking a shower it will be ok but they literally feel very much like this for little kids it is absolutely mesmerizing there are conventions or app game developers that they the app game developers go to the convention and throughout the whole convention do you know what they're teaching the developers how to make it addictive if you the more addictive it is the more money you will  make and that's what it's doing for parents you go in oh my god i just need them to be occupied for a half an hour i got to get something done because there's so much pressure on our own lives but it really is shaping their development and it's exhausting that's a real picture of my son's little sister you know it can be very intriguing so here's where trying to figure out little ways to teach kids how to balance we're being asked to connect all day long so as the receiver of the request we have to ask ourselves all right is this personal or impersonal am i being asked to be an actual friend or am i being asked to be an audience impersonal azen wanting me as a demographic so remember a few gems on one side actually may be more valuable than a lot of junk on the other side so ask yourself which would you rather have so our new approach the no afterlife approach is to really focus first on let's talk about what we need as humans and then be empowered to have our technology serve us it seems like we don't have a lot of balance in the media you don't have a lot of commercials or even public service announcements that are also saying hey it's really important to talk to one another where is that message anybody see any of those what what do you what do we expose to all the time connect connect connect you can connect all the time connect all the time a new commercial of you know the what's her name from the community parks and rec what's her name  rashida jones right so she walks then her mom peggy lipton and she's like hey i'm you know i'm i don't even know what the commercial but no one's paying attention right so when we see commercials like that  and this is a media literacy thing what it's doing is it's a normalizing the behavior so as an audience we're going well rashida jones gets ignored by her mom i saw a commercial i guess  ok i guess that's what we do now we just ignore are ok you know that's where when when we're watching television when we're watching films while watching things as human beings that's how we learn how to be that's how we're learning how to be back in the old days we actually looked at a human being and go oh that's how lame is dressed tonight i guess i wear something like wayne is we're ok this is where we get our social cues in the digital age and as young millennial as are now consuming as much as eighteen hours of media consumption in a multitasking way we're getting all our cue as to how to be a human being by the images that we're seeing there's nothing to counter it you know so we're we're trying to shift it so that we're talking about what we need first and then having the technology serve us and this is where we're going they want the eyeballs they want us in front of technology all the time and it's really hard because we're going to need more of a social shift and it's going to take education for us to be able to say wait a minute i don't want to be twenty four seven connected all the time anybody see this where are we're forgetting what we're supposed to be doing with people you know what's on that phone is more important than the person in front of me but it's up to us now to teach our kids and go to you know you have to say i'm sorry that's really rude i'm trying to talk to you and you're looking at your phone so all way so we can give that we can teach skill the skills we can just say i'll weigh one of the things that i taught my kids in in a personal communication class was this girl who was working as a salon checking people out which is like it's so we're rude somebody just spends one hundred fifty bucks getting their hair done and then they're paying me and they're like on the phone or texting as they're exchanging she's like i can't say anything i work for the salon what am i going to say i can and i said well here let me let's work on a script so we set her up and i said social science experiment let's try this just try it and i said next time you're there if somebody is on the phone you just say you're so important to me and i really want to make sure that we have this money exchange correct so take your call and i'm all yours when you're done but i want to make sure i can serve you the best possible way so she tried it and she was like oh it's so funny as soon as you really say that like i really was here for you i want to serve you and i want to make sure you have my full attention she said all of a sudden everyone gets very embarrassed they're like oh oh you're right you're right but we haven't even been giving anyone these skills to school on i'm sorry let's put it down not because i want you to put it down because it's annoying put it down because i need i need to be with you i need this moment with you you're that important to me that i'm going to give you all my time i'm just kind of exaggerating but laying it on thick but even with your own kids you could literally say you know what it's not about that i don't want you to have your phone it's that i want to hear what you're thinking and feeling i need to hear this and i want you to have my attention so for five minutes let's just pay attention to each other so we also voted and we have a national protocol that we're trying to roll out that we're going to be rolling out this was i interviewed over a thousand kids and we voted over a three year period we tried to do the math so this is what we came up with and this was kids voting on this feeling bad the good news is that there is now a pendulum swing by businesses to focus on human interaction the jobs of the future  according to jeff colvin who just wrote this new book humans are under rated and is the senior editor at fortune five hundred magazine you know all the businesses they're going on we need human interaction that's how those are going to be the jobs of the future and stead of saying what are the jobs of the future that computers can't do the way the he's phrasing it is what are the jobs of the future that we will not accept to be done by anyone other than a human it's really interesting it's a very interesting approach so that's what we're trying to do which trying to tell our kids your human you have all the apps you need they were downloaded up birth we just need to hone them and use them and tell you your perfect you don't you know you don't need to be augmented by technology if you need it it can be there for you and it can be a good tool but it's not you you are all we need and  empowering kids and i guess i'm going to have ben talk a little bit once everyone started to use their own skills through this process of removing their technology they literally felt better they felt empowered they're like i could walk into a party and actually say hello and well you'll tell those but that's literally how they felt like i have this i don't need the phone i don't need to hide behind my phone at a party oh my god i walked into a party and said hello and had people chatting with me and it really made them feel great so what we're trying to do is incorporate this term t s i which means technology free interactions we're starting to use it in businesses we're having a conference it's a t f i'm meeting no phones where we're all about hearing from you because you can't have that distraction you need things unfold in your head we need to process and we need to work with one another because if somebody says something if you're not hearing that you can't jump on that and your brain isn't going all that was a great idea how about this that was really a way what about the so that's what's not happening in conference rooms because half the people are being distracted with something else that seems to feel more important so this is the conclusion what we did just so that you know we had a group of kids once we started learning interpersonal communication skills we decided to try all week without any technology nothing except for your phone had to be hard wired in your house as if it was one thousand nine hundred two so a lot of kids there why i don't have a home phone anymore so the idea doesn't go over really well in the beginning but after weeks of saying well we're going to try this we're going to practice the skill by the eighth week of the skills of doing the classes and then sort of following the siani steps like ok let me just be mindful can i make it more personal this was the result after a year a year later we checked in and we found we came up with something that actually gives us the best of both worlds why did you choose to make that decision to downgrade your phone and i'm like i was too addicted it wasn't benefiting me in any sort of way so why would i continue that and they kind of reflect on themselves and their way through i'm quite happy now it's more of a phone call every day instead of texting all the time because of the emotion played for me simple act of just an honest conversation just talking and listening to one another was remarkably powerful like for me to just sit here and be like yeah i know this is something that's definitely affecting me is more than i would have said months ago i would have laughed about it and been like ok i'm going to go back to my computer now after we filmed i got really curious about what facebook and all the social media was like i was in the middle of a relationship when i had that when i first got the facebook and that i really started to get how much facebook was stupid after we broke up and i saw her with her other boyfriend and like so appearing in someone else's life i look d like a window and i really i didn't like that at all we keep looking at all this technology and it seems really amazing and there's an app for everything and everyone's all intrigued and wrong however when nobody is really feeling fulfilled i don't need to be on it all the time having those things cluttering your mind it's a fog machine you can only contact me through calling me listen we may be best friends and we may have been best friends for the past ten years is not healthy for my lifestyle and i just need you to understand this and by having a friendly guys it kind of gets them to realize ok you know what i don't think it's healthy for either i didn't necessarily create more time i was just always there just didn't see it when i'm with my girlfriend will leave the phones in the car but i don't feel like i need my phone because i have her and that that feeling it gave me  children now thinking about you know it's just it's such a great feeling and you can't get that if you don't interact with some of the data is out we're starting to see the results of why we don't feel good and it's because it's it's not the filling it's not feeding the soul and the way that humans are supposed to connect communicating talking to people looking somebody off just is showing expression if you keep continuing to sit  r your computer and decide to have discussions with your friends out way to live your life i don't hold with a lot of typing for you watching t v and you can expect to be happy later on down the road when these kind of relationships don't exist in real life you're not shaped by social networking so i think that individual ism is the key to moving forward and it differentiates you from what social media is trying to do for you it's not anti technology it's pro human it's about really connecting on and on that level you cannot take human interaction out of the equation because that's how it began and that's the only way to keep it going so i think you notice that it's all kids you know it's them and what was just amazing was when you really said in asking how are you feeling this is going to be your world you know i'm going to be gone and this is going to be your future what is it that you want how do you feel and they really do want more face to face interaction we did a survey and we asked one question if you had a magic wand and could change one thing the way people communicate today what would you do and in their own handwriting it was that a sky high school every kid wrote some form of more face to face that it broke my heart we usually we have some of them in the film but it's kill facebook more face to face people need to put down their phones so i'm hoping to start a dialogue so that we can carve a path so that it's a choice and not this demand on them and to make it easier for a kid who has who's choosing to have a flip phone because they don't want to have the drama in their life or they don't want to be exposed to i did not ask for this naked picture and there it is to give these kids a choice to opt out of the demands of twenty four seven connectivity so that's our that's my part i'd like to hear from you and we have two students from the film morgan brown is also here and when people ask can you raise a kid today without texting can you so he was raised he's nineteen he just got texting on his phone in college because that's when they send the emergency alerts or whatever so questions from you sure it makes me cry depression was on its way down suicide rates were declining up until two thousand and ten and from two thousand  they started going up again and i get very emotional because it's you know people keep forcing it on these kids that there's an app for everything that the app is a solution for everything and you know what you know what resolves depression you know how we address depression when we feel understood when somebody gets me you know for how many years since the fifty's since we started doing talk therapy it's called talk therapy it actually has some good results you know because talking and feeling understood having one one statistic was having one person one best friend one person in your life that gets you yourself esteem goes up one so these kids today what's happening is they're being told that they're only relevant if they have a certain amount of likes it's very superficial there's the one hundred like club or facebook so we have kids all day long going oh my god i'm not popular i'm not relevant i'm not relevant if i don't have an audience of people clicking like that's insane it's insane to raise to have these kids having to feel like that sorry i get very emotional other questions i saw hands up mean there are a lot of there are so many of those on the market right now there's all sorts of different things there's a thing for your computer that has a line that goes along and it's like going you get to the end you hit your twenty minutes but they're not even very popular anymore because they thought that they were going to make all this money and i don't i don't know specifically which one you know but it is it is a time suck you get into it and you're like i been on facebook for an hour  maybe we think about just you know for kids who do have smartphones already we can start and mentally just take your social media off the smartphone g p s awesome understood how does it feel to go a day without any social media on your on your phone just try it one day look because what's happening these kids are not spending any time developing autonomy that was another decline the second i'm alone you know i got to look you know and so it's this self soothing that's what technology is replacing the human development of self soothing you guys understand it's a you know it's like one of the things that i put in the book was one of the students had said to me you know i was getting my hair colored and this woman was in the salon and there was a baby and you know the basket and she just gave the baby the you know every time the baby was crying gave the baby the phone and she with the student was like all upset about it she was like oh that's just wrong and i'm like well why what difference is it between giving a baby a phone to distract them and sue them than a binky or a blanket just like i don't know it just felt it i said you don't know why and she's like no and i said because a binky and a blanket have an expiration date we wean you off of them so we don't have college kids pinky in their mouth ok we take you we take it away so you can develop it on your own so what is now going to happen when we give kids babies technology to soothe them every time they get a little agitated and then there's no expiration date you know these are some of the things that we need to start to talk about a little bit more  it's where we're starting to see in the business world like people like jeff all than when he's you know in charge of fortune five hundred company they're starting to have that conversation and they're starting to say you know what the technology looks good on paper we'll be able to fill in the blank and what they're actually seeing is a lack of productivity there are more and more companies now going fridays no emails the companies that are now taking away internal e mails going get up and walk to the cubicle next to you so we're starting to see that there was starting to see it get into the business world because it just it's sort of like i was kind of think popeil it's lice is a dice is it does all the stuff right you like it does all that it can do that and then you go but you know what i kind of like cutting board and i just i'm good i have that's fine that works too but we but that doesn't sell you know it doesn't sell to say actually having a conversation with another human being very effective but i can't sell anything ok do you want to tell the story i have i have one who was thirteen that i had this conversation with so he can tell i was in i  was in seventh grade and i was that was the first time we all got cell phones of like my generation i'm nineteen i'm a freshman in college right now and i we all got the dumb phones but then everyone started i really progressing and stuff and i started getting the i phone and stuff and i kind of stayed behind not only because of my influence but also because it kind of the way that you'd want to present it in my life the way i think you would would be a different you want to see that you're better than other people but you want to say that like you can do more with just your mind and the way of talking to people than you would be with just texting mindlessly aimlessly like i got texting and i mean it's a fish and and you want to get facebook and you want to stay connected all your friends because everyone's like want to do that and there's obviously like and you want to be with your friends but that it's also they need to know everything that's going on in their own head to side i bring the conversation up with a using like some science stuff and just be as a social like thousands of people like thinkers everyone who's ever done anything with music art they never had any of that before so you don't want to like basically break it down be like you don't need it if you want to you can do it but make sure you know what you're getting into and you need to make sure that you kind of put up a shield first and kind of like sort out what's real what's not how what relationships are actually real what relationships art that's the best way to really talking about it like the best way also which was i've been very fortunate with my own parents they've always treated me as an adult and she's always helped me with saying look it is your life you can like she let me down the path that's ok you need to know this but you can also make your own choices if you want to so i think the best way to bring to them would talk to them as a this is the stats these are what everyone's saying you talk to any college kid now they'll say the exact same thing that any of it's my age and my mom's age will tell you what it will do if you think it will help then go for but we're going to monitor a lot or just be smart and like you know that you don't  he and i had at that age and he was very he was like mom you understand this is how we communicate this is how this generation communicates and i said i understand that but let's try if on any level you are feeling absolutely ostracized will reconsider it so what happened was two years later i'm going to embarrass you ok two years later when he was the kid that would talk to people he came in his like mom you know that texting thing and i'm like oh here we go and he's like i will never ever have texting and i said really why and he goes i learned girls like to talk and i'm the only one that will talk to them so he became the only one who would talk to them and he'd be in his room and they'd be like talking to and come down for dinner and i'm like oh who are you talking off the ledge tonight like who's and he's like all this what would be in the car and they'd you know i could hear the girls just chatting away and then what was interesting because as a parent all of us together we are our kids are always our own social science experiment as a pair we don't know but you are honey and what happened was year after year he became the guy who taught and there was even another incident that he was able to help out a girl who was actually got into trouble because of a sexting incident and i am going to tell this story with but i get a phone call from the police because that's what every mom wants to do is pick up the phone and have a police officer go hello is your child morgan brown you know oh he's not in trouble but we not need to talk to him because he was the witness we think he was a witness to an assault and so what happened was he comes and to you know from school and like the police cold and want to come and talk to you at six o'clock tonight you know i'm panicking and he's oh yeah i want to tell you about that i'm like i'm going to kill you so the police came and what had happened was a friend of his was a junior in high school ended up sending a sexting picture to somebody that she didn't know she ended up meeting up with that person she was sexually assaulted and as i'm listening to this in the kitchen as morgan was talking what the police were saying was  morgan had been they had all the records of how long he was on the phone with her every night you know actually talking not texting and what we found out was all her friends and her brother literally told her don't tell mom she'll take your phone away and morgan was like you have to tell your mom but it took a conversation i mean it took night after night right of talking to her to finally tell him but think about that this is kids are hearing don't tell mom she'll take your phone away and the idea of losing your phone was more critical than so i mean these are some of these are harsh realities to answer i don't know i'm sorry it's but these are this is what i'm dealing with this is this is my frontline did that help at all or no but this is what we can do erin mcneil is a can you aaron aaron runs media literacy now and we are desperately trying to get media literacy into schools we have to be able to have this conversation in schools the reason i did the entire film in a peer to peer narrative was so that a kid is listening to another kid not a finger wagging so when you have other kids saying it's not we're trying to get the film into the school we're doing another twenty four minute edit so we can edit it down  not yet but i'm working on it i literally i got sucked into this and i'm watching kids crying all the time so this whole film was done on my credit card you know it was just like all right well then when we started to learn that this was actually helping he's like you got to write a book you need to write a book so i'm like all right i'm writing my book and then what did you say no one reads books we have to do a fellow yeah so we wrote the book and then we did the film and we're hoping that it's parents like you who came out  tonight well paul belmont middle school and say we need to get media literacy into school we have a literature on the front here we need to talk to our senators we need to get media literacy into schools because they're the ones that need this information we've got great programs but schools are like all we don't have time we can find the time but you know this is the health of our kids this is their future and we need your help you know we're looking for volunteers we're looking for people that will help us because it's exhausting to do it all on our own right aaron so where we're working on getting a distribution i need some legal because i've got louis c k is in the film and jerry seinfeld and we've got a few little legal things that we're trying to tie  yet it's digital citizenship and it's sort of you know i mean it's we've ibut yet to find a program like this where we're getting into the actual social psych the psycho social aspect of it from a psychological standpoint we've got the american pediatric association going oh recommended no screens before to where they we are the commercials which is the balance we're going to need a cultural shift but we're going to need we need people to get involved and you had a question  right and that's and this is this is where you speak up and we yeah exactly i was so pissed my son was in theater and didn't have facebook and i was the same horrible mother you are and morgan would be at a theatre rehearsal and the theater people would go oh we're going to put the rehearsal time up on facebook and someone tell morgan so he would come home go and mom really and i'm like so did somebody tell you yeah we are there yeah that's amazing how did that happen you didn't miss a rehearsal  so but but but here's the deal we have a thing like this tonight you know we can do we can tell the school you know what we need to be able to give our kids a choice to opt out of social media we're reading literature we see the research there is a thing called facebook depression it is causing our kids to be more depressed because they are subject to the constant comparison of other people every day i'm not like that i don't look like that they're having more fun and they get depressed so you can say we have the research now that's this thing is causing depression why are you forcing my child to have to have it so again it's empowerment we can say no you know i find another place to put the information my thing again because i'm not a lot i i'm not again i think you know get a kid run website let them run it show them entrepreneurial leadership skills let them be creative let a kid because i don't understand why is in charge of our socializing i'm not sure why that happened but apparently he's in charge and owns it all because he and people forget to you know zuckerberg was a psych major at harvard right you know he was a psych major so these manipulative emotional terms like friend and brilliant brilliant want friends i want to share let me go on facebook because that's how you do it now nothing just to have that experience not he has texting now for alerts and it's again where are we teaching everyone how to use it so that was like the protocol what i said their social media can be used social media is a great tool of mass communication excellent for mass communication a tweet can replace a fifteen second ad that we used to have to spend a lot of money for on television and radio for again trying to make that distinction it's not for human socialization in regard to what we need however you also need once you consume something it's really hard to delete it once it's in your psyche that's the thing so all day long we can look at magazines and go all their photo shopped they're really not that then they're really not that perfect but it still gets in there and that's one of the problems is once you consume you can have the intellectual component and go  yes that's a horror movie that's not real blood ok i get it but you still took it in and one kid might have nightmares and another kid might not some kid m all day long and they're all idiots another kid could be sitting there going oh my god i am i don't fit in so that's what media literacy literally does we look at movies we look at all sorts of media and analyze it and through that analyzation in classes being able to look at media that we take in we get kids talking about it and then they're analyzing it themselves and then they're going wait a minute maybe people aren't having as much fun one of the the things that i say to my kids is a picture tells a thousand words but it doesn't tell the whole story you know it says a lot but the second you know how many times you've had that picture and two seconds later you know someone's crying in the other room or they're  miserable you know again not to be a total downer but you know there are so many incidents and i'm and i'm sorry but i'm on the frontline with with the suicide thing somebody goes oh my god they just posted that picture smiling that's the girl that just went and killed herself so there's something else happening and it is getting into us it's getting into us on a on a different level  you you said exactly right but i'm going through my first semester of college and honestly i met this one person who was sick i just i had like one conversation with her and then it was she told me that or she was in the conversation and like we were all hanging out in a room whatever and obviously we're all aware of snapchat so she told me and this she said it very jokingly and then i left the room after c said that where she goes only other time i ever hung out with them was we were all hanging out in a room and then she said oh like video everyone and then she said let's turn to the people who isn't here and i'm like that that's really messed up you see you know i can tell you grew up like some like i'm not seeing like the people who are like on that track now and what they're going to grow up to be but i just drawn from my own experience with all my friends like i know none of my friends would ever do that and they're all on facebook and they're all the same way but and stuff like that i don't know well we'll work on that will brand a new term we'll come up with something you know it is going to take more of a social movement and sharing the singer he just said i'm  social media it's making me sick in the film we have john mayer he was the inspiration for the digital cleanse and so when we can put a film out there where you have celebrities going i can't do it anymore i can't do it i'm feeling sick that's what's going to start to change things the reason i did the whole film and wrote the book specifically for the eighteen to twenty five year old demographic and some of you are here tonight you are the trend setters thirteen year olds want to be you and fifty year olds want to be you and so the second the second the most popular kid in high school to be able to go it's stupid i'm not doing it i'm just not and want to set the trend you know it is going to change for the next generation but it is going to be education it's going to be able to say listen here's what everyone is saying here's the research and here's how you're feeling being on social media makes you feel sick being off social media makes you feel better let's try it let's do it in class i want the marketing people for kale kale in the past two years and one did you eat kale a few years ago maybe you did yeah but like how did they get cal to be the thing you know avenue you need the advertisers to push human interaction i want to go like pro human humans are cool like humans yeah i want to make a case that human interaction is actually a great thing it makes you healthier calm less stress be a human have a conversation listen to someone you'll feel better like that's kind of like what we are so that's what i'm saying i'm not saying anti technology i'm saying humans really serve this purpose for your health and well being and yet it's sort of like a screw you to humanity because we've got technology that we can sell that does a better know it actually doesn't it's there we can use it if we want but there is nothing better or more for filling than laughing out loud with another human being not you know not by yourself that's sad that's lonely when i ask it's on like give me tell me about the last time that you had the belly laugh that you were ready to fall off you know tell me about that experience and it's always with their friends technology's never involved with it there's a story for your daughter say ok let's just talk tell me about when you laugh out loud like what are you feeling you know so it's and then they go oh and they try to think it's like oh i saw you tube video while i was with my friends laughing out loud is not really fun when you're all alone it's so much more fun with another human to this day my best friend when she needs to laugh she just goes home  bowling alley so again i hope we just again this was just an attempt to elevate the conversation there's research there's all we're just trying to make it better for your kids that's it we're here we're trying to get media literacy into schools we're trying to get programs like this into schools so that we're doing it in schools with kids talking to kids ask your principal to bring them to you know to to do it demand it ask your p t o people anyone part of p t o ok let's show the film at a p t o meeting get the parents and the kids but we're here to help you call me i'll come over and have wine and how my son over for dinner he'll bring his guitar he's a rock star but yeah like we're going to move it forward but we're going to do it personally i'm not going to give you any app or click or tweet or do anything just call me and let's let's move it forward let's elevate it so thank you very much i'm here grab my number thank you