So welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries. This is part two of our conversation with Dr. Richard Freed, my friend and colleague, a psychologist who you might remember from my initial introduction last week, is at the leading edge of of kind of whistleblowing, really. But it's more than that of what's happening with persuasive design.
Richard, welcome back. The where we left off last week, we had a look at what's going on underneath the underneath the hood. The what's happening to manipulate our kids.
And there's this question of the power of this industry is so huge. And the question always occurs to me is who's actually protecting our kids? Like who's doing this? Because sometimes the people who are out there in the children's health industry are not doing such a great job with this. What's your take on that about who's protecting our kids? Kim, thank you.
We have what I call the Silicon Valley exception. We would never let a health body that's been funded by the top junk food and fast food industries to create dietary guidelines for our kids. But we are now in a place where I consider the four leading child health bodies, and some of that is in parentheses, that deal with or provide guidelines for our kids' screen use to be either industry funded straight up or industry aligned.
That they are making money off of and have a profit based interest in putting our kids before a screen. And that is unprecedented. And it's a betrayal of what health care should be, and it's a betrayal of childhood.
Haven't you faced a lot of blowback for talking about this so openly? Yes. I mean, there's yes and no. Like there's the people up at the top who sort of say, I can't believe you're talking about this.
And then there are parents who see my writing and say, thank you for telling the truth. Thank you for calling out what is happening. And I think that needs to happen.
It's very similar to the tobacco industry, how they would fund health care bodies in the 60s or so, or maybe even 70s. And those health care bodies would do everything they could to undermine science and our understanding. And that's exactly what's happening now.
And I don't think it's not going to get better as fast or it's not going to get better unless we call attention to all these organizations. And we talked about this a little bit in our last talk, but who are pushing screens in front of your kids, but you should hear them brag so much about like, my kids don't get this at our house. And to see that just drives me to, even if I'm going to get blowback, I'm like, that motivates me.
The people who I consider heroes in my life have been willing to speak up. And honestly, I'm not doing this, but they've been willing to put their lives on the line to be able to speak the truth. And the least I can do is be willing to face a little bit of blowback.
Yeah, well, bless you for doing it, because these are mighty, really mighty forces. Like you, I've also experienced some pressure, but there is a, I don't know if you experienced this, but a growing awareness, a wave that's building somewhat out to see. Of parents, it's partly because of what you mentioned before, because of just the, at an instinctual gut level, we look at this stuff and just say, hey, something's wrong.
Something is really wrong. And that's our gut. Now, our head says, oh no, but all the other kids are doing it.
It's got to be, you know, we need to, we can't keep our kids away from this. This is the world they're going into. And what's more, it's the schools who are providing it.
See, for me, Richard, the tragedy of this a little bit is that there is so little research, like credible research, pointing out that screens have positive learning outcomes. And yet it's the schools who are pushing it almost like they're the drug suppliers. What do you make of schools who push hard technology on kids? And you can't, you know, kids in middle or high school literally can't access information, their homework, their schedule.
And they're young, you know, they're 10, 11 years old, unless they go all in on screens. What do you make of that? I think we first start, as you say, parents know in their heart. What parents feel in their heart is, I buy it, almost always correct.
If we actually look at kids' lives, whether they're younger or older, the most important emotional connection for them should be number one, family, and number two, school. And they should be out running around a lot and being outdoors. Like, I think when parents look at their kids stuck on a screen, laying in a bed and not moving, what they feel in their heart is correct.
Like that's actually pure science. And then the other science is, the more screens our kids live on at school, the more computers they use, the worse that they do. And we're watching that unfold.
So that is what parents know in their heart. Like, oh, I'm being told by the school, like this is where we all have to go. And then always know that these tech elite are doing, they've either educated their kids or they've gone to these institutions which are human-based, that have small class size ratios and are really based around the human connection.
They do this over and over. And the people driving the curriculum are people who are, it's all, it's follow the money. That's why they're doing it.
And I think schools are, public schools are, they need to quickly, as you say, this wave is happening. I think they quickly need to wake up. Otherwise, I don't think there's going to have a, they're going to have fewer and fewer parents who are willing to send their kids to a school based around screens.
They're going to either homeschool their kid or they're going to send their kid to a school that is human-based. They're shooting themselves in the foot. And I think teachers know this too.
And teachers need to know the end game is for AI and these screens to completely replace them or diminish their role and diminish their ability to like have a salary. Like, teacher unions, teacher groups, understand this. Like, don't be sold on this.
You are your kids' best teachers. Understand the power that you have. So I would love, you're right.
It is a wave. It is happening. And what parents feel in their heart is correct.
And yet, we've got this dilemma because with our head, we're being told, unless you immerse your child in this tech world, because it's very hard to do just a little bit. Sometimes parents ask me, well, is a little bit of screens okay? And my answer to that used to, I mean, it's like, yeah, a little bit of poison, a lot of poison. Just choose how much poison you want.
And I don't mean that to be glib. It's like, but can we be a parent that curates the screen? Yes, we absolutely can. But what's happened with modern programming is so, so different to what screens were doing back in the 60s and 70s.
You know, there was once a dad, Richard, at a talk I was given who said, well, look, we had screens, you know, back when we were growing up, and we're fine. And his wife looked at him and said, really? Really? But I brought that back to my grad students back at my university and said, this is fairly fair criticism. What do you think, guys? So we did a little research piece.
We sort of dug into this as a bit of a project. And what we did is that we watched 100 hours of children's programming from the 70s. And then we watched 100 hours of children's programming from modern times, which was an act of self-sacrifice, I'm telling you.
And we took Mr. Rogers and we took modern programming and other shows like Mr. Rogers and even prior to that. And we took Jane Healy's research and the commonly accepted research that takes about four seconds, just under four seconds, for a child to see an image for an average nine-year-old, to see an image and truly make meaning of it. Like chew on that image.
Look at that like they would in nature. Look at the tree. Feel the tree.
Touch the tree. Look up at the sun coming through the leaves. Make meaning of what they're seeing, touching, doing.
So with that in mind, we then counted the number of pans, zooms and changes in Mr. Rogers and the likes. And we were sitting there, like, you know, ready to write the changes. And there was very, very little change.
It's like Mr. Rogers disappears off the screen. The camera just stays there. And he comes back on saying, oh, hello, are you still there? You know, like it's not flickering, changing, split screen, multi-screen, product placement, you know, and all this.
Then we took modern programming and we couldn't keep up with the number. We couldn't keep up. And a couple of people did the quick math on it.
And they estimated you'd have to concertina 900 hours of Mr. Rogers into one hour to equate to the same sensory stimulation. Wow. So in other words, it's not the same.
It's not. I would say then, years ago, it was entertainment. Today, it's sold to parents as a video game.
It's sold as a place for your kid to socially connect. Understand the people who really are pulling the strings behind industry, they don't consider it entertainment whatsoever. It is a science.
It's the science of persuasive design. It's the science of manipulation. You see leading game designers who have graduate-level psychology degrees say, it is my job to take every single activity, voluntary activity, hobby, pastime, and replace it with my game.
Replace it with my product. And I'm going to use psychology, graduate-level psychology, and now AI, to do that. So, we've gone from an entertainment-based environment to a science-based manipulation environment.
It is night and day, so we can't compare those. You know, one of the things that really fascinated me, and I just wonder if you go over it in your book, was what a deep dive you took down through the algorithms and some of the myths. There was a paper that I read of yours a while back with your earlier writing.
But what would you say are the common myths that we're fed, that we need, in a sense, to be aware of? When we hear it, we know there's a good chance we're being manipulated. What rises to the top? If you could bullet point some of those myths, what would they be? One of the key ones, it's all about, gosh, when you mentioned that marketing conference that almost makes me sick to my stomach, but it's about disempowering parents. And if you can imagine, you and I both know that humans have been raised or lived for millions of years together in these close-knit societies.
Can you imagine if a group in your community, like if a group of outsiders came in to try to manipulate your kids and do things to them that were not healthy for them? They would be lucky to kind of get run off back in the day. Today, oh, it's just accepted. And there's this whole industry that is about accepting it, just taking it as apparent.
It's this myth, it's this whole mythology of screens, that that's what childhood should be. And it's fed to parents by the people that they trust. And it makes me sick.
As far as a really key myth, one of the key ones that I think of is just this myth that when your kids hit preteen and teens, that parents don't matter so much, that really what they need to connect with most are their peers and where they find those. And strangers, like they're supposed to develop their person by communicating with these peers online that have absolutely no investment in your kid, or these absolute strangers who God knows what they're trying to do to your kid. But parents are sold, like that's what my kid needs most.
They don't need me as a parent. No. The science is so clear.
When you look at the scientists who do this research, they just laugh that off or it's just ridiculous. When they set up the experiment, they go, we know for a teenager that family is going to be number one. We know that school and the educators there are going to be number two.
Let's kind of see where peers are at. And then they typically go, you know, peers as usual didn't really help kids not be depressed or not be suicidal. Family did.
School did. But that's going to get translated to the leading pop culture voices today that claim to be health and are going to shove your kid in front of a screen and say that's where they, and that is so destructive of families. And it's so disempowering of parents.
Like you can't do, these parents need to know that they're number one for their kids. You know, it's one of the persuasive aspects of the conference I went to, Richard, was that they called it the home alone maneuver. And I thought, well, what's that? Because do you remember the Home Alone movies? Yes.
So what they do is that their first strategy is to, they call it flattery, and that's followed by home alone. Let me describe flattery first real briefly. Flattery is if you buy your child this console, if you buy them these skins for this game, if you buy them, you know, this new app, they will admit you to their friendship group.
And then the screen they showed, they showed these ads and the stuff. So then the dad or the mom is sitting playing on the console with the kid and the other kids are saying, your mom is so cool. So in other words, they are trying to establish what I call a whole generation of children who are raised by peer parents, parents who are their peers.
Horizontal attachment. In other words, not attaching to an authoritative adult. And that's a fundamental confusion between being friendly with a child, of course, respectful and friendly.
But there's a confusion with being friends, with being friends with your kids. And the second maneuver is the home alone one. And that was if that flattery doesn't work and having a parent de-evolve back into a teenager or a tweenager or younger, then we've got to persuade the kids to not listen to their parents.
We've got to portray them as stupid, dumb, negligent, self-interested and have no time for you. And there was a rather large pause over parents don't have time for kids a lot these days. That's why they use screens as babysitters.
So let's manipulate that like crazy. Tell the kids your parents don't have time for you. So therefore, do not listen to them.
Listen to us. And this was just and they were completely upfront about what they were doing. Isn't that just I guess that doesn't surprise you, Richard.
But I was listening to this thinking I didn't think I was going to be surprised by much. But oh, my goodness, that is truly dark. Wow.
I don't know how you were able to tolerate that. Yes, I'm almost speechless. But you see that I think it's, you know, there's this hard science that I see in my practice and in the research.
Boys aren't doing well in school. If we visited a college today, it would be nearly 60 percent women because boys play much more video games and the persuasive design in there is so compelling. We see girls that are depressed and cut.
And we know through Jean Twenge's research and Jonathan Haidt's research that that is causing that girls living on social media is causing that. So that's this hard science. And then I just know and I think, you know, it's hard to measure.
But this culture of disrespect, of moving away, of kids that won't listen to teachers, of teachers quitting their jobs because they live in an environment where kids have zero respect or near zero respect for authority. I don't have to listen to you. God forbid you try to remove my phone.
We're going to actually have to call security or the police. Supposedly that's softer science. But, yes, this culture of disrespect and kids have no idea who their mom or dad is, that in this economy they have to go away from the home to work multiple jobs.
I don't know what my mom does. She just leaves the home. I'm on my phone.
She comes home. Screw you, mom. They have no idea that their parent is out there putting out their lives to work for them, to put food on the table.
They just think of their parent as somebody that's supposed to purchase Wi-Fi for them. So, yes, I think that that's a conscious—let's minimize the authority that people that care for kids, parents, educators, have for kids so that we can sell to them. Cam, you're making me upset by telling me the truth.
But, yes. Well, let's deal with our depression and round off in this second of this very special feature. And when we come back, we'll focus in on what we can actually do.
What can we do in a very small, doable, successful way to give our children a childhood? So in the third and last episode coming up soon, that's what we'll explore. So hang on in there.
