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Mobile Dev Memo Podcast
Season 7, Episode 4: Protecting children from digital harms (with Karl Stillner)
00:50:17
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- [00:03]
Branch Marketing Voice
People expect a flawless experience from the moment they click a promo link in a text, tap a paid ad for a new pair of sneakers, or scan a QR code on a fast food cup. Marketers, meanwhile, want a clear view of customer behavior and how campaigns are performing across every channel without spending hours digging through data. That's where Branch comes in. Branch is your AI powered mmp connecting every paid, owned and organic touchpoint so growth teams can see exactly where to put their dollars to bring users in
- [00:33]
Eric Suefert
the door and keep them coming back.
- [00:35]
Branch Marketing Voice
Find out what over 100,000 brands know. Head to Branch IO to get started. That's Branch IO.
- [00:44]
Carl Stillner
The problem is that the distinction needs to be drawn between the competence of the economists and the correctness of their analysis.
- [00:55]
Eric Suefert
Hello and welcome to the Mobile Dev Memo podcast. I'm your host, Eric Suefert and I'm joined today by Carl Stillner. Carl, welcome to the podcast.
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Carl Stillner
Thanks for having me, Eric.
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Eric Suefert
So the genesis of this conversation was your most recent investor update, which, you know, all very, all very positive news. I'm an investor in Bright Canary, which is your company, which is tackling the topic of digital safety for children that we're going to discuss today. So first of all, thanks for sending those investor updates. You'd be surprised at how many companies don't do that. But before we dive into the meat of the conversation, I'd give you a second to, or a few minutes if you want to, to introduce yourself to the audience.
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Carl Stillner
Yeah. So I'm Carl Stillner. I'm CEO and co founder of Bright Canary, longtime entrepreneur. The majority of my businesses have been in the mobile space. Last business was focused on mobile advertising and did that for quite a few years. Exited that business to T Mobile in 2019 and spent a few years at T Mobile. While they're my co founder at the last business, Pushpring and I were both going through the same issues onboarding our kids into the digital age and we really wanted to build a company that was focused on helping parents solve this issue that has become a bigger and bigger issue by the year.
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Eric Suefert
So it's funny because, you know, I've known a number of people that, you know, work at Meta who have kids and this is kind of top of mind for them, you know, just sort of the digital guardrails for their, for their children. Do you think having worked in mobile ad tech kind of made you more acutely aware of the issues or do you think kind of all parents can, can see kind of equally the sort of concerns and the risks facing children with just the digital environment. The digital landscape, yeah.
- [02:31]
Carl Stillner
But I think what happened was during COVID devices became a babysitter of sorts for a lot of kids for a variety of understandable reasons. And we saw digital use double during that time for kids. It has not reverted back to pre Covid levels since. COVID has receded. And I think at the very beginning of this, parents understood that this is a way their kids could connect with other kids. Made a lot of sense. But now they're starting to see the costs associated with that. And there's been plenty of research that's come out. And we're now at a point now where parents across the spectrum, whether it's demographic, political, et cetera, they all recognize there's a real issue here. If you have any kids between the age of 8 and 15, 16, 17, you understand this problem is real and you struggle with it on a daily basis. This is arguably the biggest problem parents are facing with parenting at this point. And what's interesting about it is there's no accumulated wisdom. A lot of parenting has been passed down from generation to generation. And these devices of course, are very new. So there's no accumulated wisdom. So parents are really flat footed trying to figure this out. And so it's an issue that really parents face universally at this point, not just in the US but across the world as well. The US is probably ahead of the rest of the world in terms of device adoption for kids under a certain age, but it'll be faced by kids everywhere.
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Eric Suefert
Yeah. So I mean, I ask that because I live in a city called Brookline, Massachusetts, and I don't know if it's well known or renowned, but maybe in the Northeast it is for having a very specific kind of demographic profile, a lot of very professional people, highly educated people. And I always used to kind of anchor my understanding of like the spectrum of concern here. The highest level of concern, the most extreme end being those people I just described the fit, you know, the Facebook or the Google or the whatever, the big tech employees who had kids and they tended to be the most protective. Right. And I always just kind of interpreted that as like, well, they know how the sausage is made. And so that makes them much more conservative with respect to like how much technology they're going to introduce to their children's lives. But then I moved to Brookline a few years ago and it's the same demographic profile. You're highly educated, both parents work, both parents are kind of high income, but no one works in tech. And I would say that the parents in Brookline are even more extreme than the people that I knew that worked at big Tech. And I always kind of. That kind of disrupted my worldview there, where it's like, okay, well, it's only the big tech people, the big tech employees, that are very concerned about this. But no, actually it just feels like maybe the Brookline parents being even more paranoid. And, and I imagine it's across the whole universe of suburbs of Boston. It's very, very similar where no one works in tech really. And so that just made me think that having seen the mobile ad tech space maybe just kind of made you somewhat acutely aware of it. But I think maybe it also kind of tempered some of those fears because your imagination could run wild if you've never worked in big tech.
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Carl Stillner
Yeah, no, it's interesting. We started the company with a hypothesis that it was exactly the segments you describe would be our early adopters and be most ardent customers. And we've actually seen, if anything, that's probably the most under indexing of our customer base. We see customers from across the spectrum, like I said before, but we see over indexing in faith based communities in the south, in the Midwest, which I think is reflective of a different parenting style. Quite honestly, I think there's a different parenting style that exists in the coast and with tech workers than exists in the Midwest and southern parts of the country. And so we're seeing that reflected in our customer base to a certain extent. So it's not what we expected. But needless to say, you know, the problem is being felt by parents everywhere. And it's just gradations. It's not like there's any one particular segment that's ignoring this. It doesn't think this is an issue, it's just how, how severe they think it is.
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Eric Suefert
Just to kind of circle back to what I said before, I use the word paranoid. That's probably like an insensitive word to use, I would say. Proactive. Right. There's more, much more proactive thinking about this kind of years ahead and, and just formulating a game plan early. Paranoid is maybe a dismissive way to put it. But do you see, do you see segments that are more permissive, like, like actively more permissive, like, like, like in a very, in like a very thoughtful, planned way, more permissive like that sort of want to expose their children to, to technology, you know, just because of some sort of like perceived benefit? And for whatever reason, do you see demographic slices that want to put the tablet in the hands of the children at an earlier age for, for whatever reason.
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Carl Stillner
I mean, I think there are people who are very pro tech and believe that kids are going to be growing up in a digital world. And there's a really good argument to be made for getting them accustomed and getting the healthy habits at an early age, developing that hygiene. And there's a belief, I think, that that can be kind of molded at an earlier age versus when kids are in teenage years, for example, where it's much harder to actually have influence. And so we do see some parents, I think, who are taking that approach, but that doesn't mean they're not interested in kind of the restricting both the quantity so that kids aren't online all the time and also understanding the qualitative nature of what they're doing as well. And so yes, there's lots of parents who think that kids need to be very familiar with the digital world, but those parents are very intentional and they realize that there's a big difference between good interactions and good content and kind of worthless and bad content interactions online.
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Eric Suefert
Got it. I guess, kind of just thinking about it, you always look at the spectrum as being like, you know, one extreme is sort of just, just, you know, foreclosing the use of technology. And then the other extreme would just be kind of like indifference to it or just like allowing it to just percolate up into the child's life as it does. But I guess my question kind of was more like, is the spectrum actually like is the center of the spectrum the indifference approach, the indifference attitude? And then the other extreme end is like, no, I want to intentionally have my child use as much technology as they possibly can. And it sounds like, yeah, maybe that exists, but they're just, they're just very, you know, they take as much care and they take as they're sort of like as thoughtful about the risks as the other end of the spectrum, they just maybe are guiding their child to use it in a productive way.
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Carl Stillner
I think that's right. That's right. I think the problem is indifference when parents are just unaware. And I think that happens a lot. When parents are for whatever reason, not engaged with their kids lives. It may be because they're both working long shifts. For example, we see that a lot with a lot of our customers where both parents are out of the house for 10, 12 hours a day and the kids are alone after they come home from school. And so the parent's not there to provide oversight and provide the guardrails. And so that oftentimes is the case for parents who are, for kids who have unrestricted access is it's functioning as a babysitter.
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Eric Suefert
Got it. So I think it's important, I mean, because it's very contextually relevant for the conversation to understand what Bright Canary is. So maybe, maybe we could start with. You can kind of just describe what Bright Canary does, what are you building? And then maybe could we do like a, a survey of the concerns that parents face in the digital landscape and maybe kind of like map those to different ages? Because I imagine it's, it's very different for like a teen than it is kind of, you know, whatever, a five year old. Maybe start with the Bright Canary and then introduce Bright Canary and what you're building and then let's talk about just the risks, like the landscape of risks that parents face in having their child navigate the digital landscape.
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Carl Stillner
Yeah, happy to. So Bright Canary is an application currently exists for iOS. We don't have an Android version yet, it's on the roadmap. But it's a service that helps parents connect with their kids digital lives. So the way it works right now is kids are spending upwards of five to six hours a day online outside of school. So this is the majority of time outside of school of their waking hours is spent online. And for whatever reason, kids do not share what they're doing online with their parents. So it becomes a black hole. So parents have no insight into what the kids are doing, what kind of content they're consuming, who they're interacting with. And speaking from a parent, I'm a parent of two kids, it's very hard to be an active, engaged parent if you don't know what the kids are doing for the majority of time they're outside of school. And so what we're trying to do is shift some of the gravitational center back towards parents so that they actually have some understanding what the kids are doing. And so what we do is we provide insights into the activity. So what kind of YouTube videos kids are watching, what are they searching on, who are they communicating with in terms of messages, text messages or dms? What are they, what are they typing into gaming platforms? And we run that all through AI layers, which do a very good job of a couple of things. One, for content moderation, AI does a very good job of detecting things like subtle bullying. Machine learning models in the past, we're not good at that. They're really good at detecting things like profanity and pornography, not good at detecting things like subtle bullying. So we run this all through an AI layer for helping Alert parents as to what's going on and when things are going off the rails. Right? So you can imagine getting a text message or a push notification to your phone saying, hey, there's been some suicidal ideation or there's been some references to drug use in some of your kids text messages. And the parent can go in and actually look at those particular interactions or those digital messages and see for themselves if the AI is doing a good job of alerting or not. You know, it's not perfect, but getting better obviously very quickly. And then we provide parents with kind of guides and coaching on how to actually handle some of these difficult conversations. So what do you do if your kid's actually looking at pornography? Parents aren't well equipped to actually have that first conversation. So we provide AI recommendations. It's not the replacement for a therapist or psychologist, but does a really good job of providing kind of a foundational, conversational layer for that first and second conversation with the child about this. And so the parent is able to be connected with their kid not just on things that are concerning, which of course is a big focus, but also things that are positive in the kid's life. So if the kid's interested in astronomy, as a parent, I want to know that if my kid is looking at YouTube videos with astronomy, that's a point of interaction I can have with my kid, especially as they get into the adolescent ages where I can indulge that interest and feel more connected to the kid if I have that information at my disposal. We, as a platform, we provide a graduated approach to how much you want to be able to monitor your kids. So for your 10 year old, you probably want to see everything they're doing. And I have an 11 year old, he has no notion of privacy. He doesn't care if I'm looking at all his text messages. In fact, he kind of likes it. He's told me he's heard the Internet's a scary place and he kind of likes that as a comfort blanket. I also have a 14 year old who has a notion of privacy. And so I don't want to read every one of my 14 year old's text messages. I mean, I have no interest in that. And he, and I don't think that forges a great relationship with him either. But I do want to know if things are going off the rails. And so I can rely on the AI to provide me that without having to go and read every one of his exchanges he's having with his friends. And so we're Trying to build a platform that recognizes that an 8 year old is vastly different than a 16 year old in terms of maturity, in terms of the needs associated with that. And AI allows us to do that quite readily. So it's a subscription app that's available in the App Store and we charge on a monthly and annual basis. And we provide that kind of qualitative understanding what your kids are doing. There's plenty of tools that provide quantitative restrictions, including Apple screen time for iOS, which allows you to block certain times a day, et cetera, which we think is important part of it. But we're really focused on the qualitative side of things. And then to the second part of your question. In terms of what are the concerns that, you know, kids are facing right now? I mean, there's, there's a litany, unfortunately. There's a lot we could talk about on this. On this point. We've seen a huge mental health crisis that's affecting kids. It really started around 2013, which is when devices start propagating and social media start propagating to younger ages. This is not, this is not something that is, you know, questionable at this point. This is a fact. And data suggests that kids are facing increased incidents of depression, anxiety, loneliness, body image issues, in particular with girls. And this is all being driven by, you know, the algorithmic nature of these platforms. They're acting as very addictive to kids who, you know, don't have a developed prefrontal cortex, so they don't have developed executive function. And kids, we don't let kids who are under 18 drink or smoke or gamble because of this exact reason. But we're giving them a highly addictive tool and device and saying, good luck with it. And so that's ultimately the addictive nature that is really ultimately at the center of all this. But, you know, it drives lots of things like sleep disruption, having a device in a kid's bedroom at night. I mean, there's been studies on how much that impairs the quantity of sleep and also the quality of sleep, which is hugely. At an age where there's huge cognitive development happening, there's cyberbullying that happens in the kind of early adolescence that's very common on digital platforms. And I think that's probably. It's a lot easier for someone to cyberbully someone when they're not speaking to their face. It kind of depersonalizes it. And so I think cyberbullying is. We're seeing a much higher incidence of that versus traditional bullying in the real world because again, it's somewhat anonymized and it's easier. And so we're seeing a lot, lot of that going on. There's social comparison and insecurity that's predominantly kind of in the middle, middle school years where kids are going through a lot of change and are highly, highly susceptible to kind of the social comparison and the feeling of left out, being left out as well. We're seeing with older kids a lot around dangerous content and drug use. There's lots of drug dealers who are using Snapchat as a distribution platform. There's plenty of high profile cases you can read about, unfortunately, where kids have been contacted by drug dealers on Snapchat and bought things that they thought were something or laced with fentanyl. And there's been all kinds of tragic outcomes in that course. That's more commonly associated with kind of the high school or late middle school. And something I'm particularly concerned about is the crowding out of interest. I don't think this is talked about enough, but if a kid's spending four hours a day on social media, that's four hours a day they aren't spending playing sports or playing an instrument or engaging in the debate team or a variety of other things they could be doing. And so it really does cannibalize their time. And additionally, it's been shown that there's a lot of attention fragmentation going on. So you'll see with kids that they're not able to read a book anymore, they're not able to even watch a full length movie anymore because they have been conditioned to really want to see short form videos that really have an effect that we don't know the ramifications of. Like, I don't know what that's going to be like five, ten years from now when these people are entering the workforce. Maybe it won't be relevant, maybe it will be, but it's certainly a huge change has happened very quickly.
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Eric Suefert
I imagine you probably saw the clip of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck talking about how like moviemaking has changed and how they have to like reiterate the plot multiple times through dialogue because people are just not actively watching movies anymore. They're on their phone and you know, certainly that's not, you know, exclusive to children. I feel that my movie watching now, now my, my pushback to the argument that they were making would be, I can watch a classic movie without picking my phone up. I mean, maybe the movies just aren't very good anymore. I mean, like, maybe what you're Making and particularly Netflix. I mean maybe Netflix is, you know, quality bar is not as high as it should be. And, and you know, that could be a moment that invites some self reflection here. But that's maybe a separate topic. But, but I mean like, you know this, but just maybe just kind of to examine my point for a second is this isn't restricted to just children, right? I mean some of these issues are. Affects adults as well, right?
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Carl Stillner
No, that's absolutely the case. And we actually hear that from parents quite often is that, look, I know I have a problem as a parent with these devices and I want better for my kids. I think that we got these devices, there was no warning label, there was no concerns when we got these devices. And I think parents developed all kinds or adults developed all kinds of bad habits. And I think those that are kind of thinking about this realize that there's a window of opportunity to help set up your kid for success. And that happens pretty early on, so you might as well try and seize it. And so I think that's what's driving a lot of the parental concern about this engagement is they want better for their kids than what they have for themselves.
- [19:01]
Branch Marketing Voice
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- [19:28]
Eric Suefert
What are the concerns that are specific to social media? So you mentioned kind of bullying. You know, we had the Facebook files incident where the internal team at Meta had surfaced some of these concerns. Which of those concerns are specifically acute within, you know, these social media platforms? And then I guess, like what are the defenses, you know, that the parents have against those?
- [19:54]
Carl Stillner
I mean, I think all those things I mentioned are related to social media, unfortunately. Right. Because this is how kids are spending their time. Right. And so social media, sleep deprivation, for example, it is because of algorithms that drive these kids to want to consume hours and hours of content that they're not getting as much sleep as they used to. Right. Like that's just a reality. And so that's driven by social media. But you know, in terms of the cute things that social media has been accused of, you know, there's a lot of things around body image issues where girls in particular are being shown videos and content that kind of reinforces a certain Beauty ideal to a kid who's in seventh grade and has all kinds of insecurities already. There's issues about feeling left out, right where you're in Snapchat or you have a Snap map and you can see your friends are all at a party that you weren't invited to. That's devastating for a 15 year old, right? It may seem kind of silly for an adult to think about, but if we all think back to when we were at that age, being left out was hugely harmful for our confidence and our psyche at the age. And the problem is it's so much easier to see that now than it used to be. And so all these things have been raised by whistleblowers within the social media companies and they recognize there's an issue here. And I don't think it's any kind of mystery. I think people who work at these companies realize that they can do better as well. And I'd like to believe that they are trying to do better. But today, the tools that have existed within the social media companies haven't been particularly robust. I mean, they vary depending on the platform, of course, but there is, I mean, I think we have to acknowledge the fact that it's little antithetical to the business model, right? I mean, the business model for social media companies is about engagement and about getting people into the platforms and using them very early on. And so what we're trying to say here is that if you have a problem with the algorithms that are driving kids to use it too much, that's truly antithetical to what they're trying to do as a business. And so it's hard to expect them to really kneecap themselves in a meaningful way. I think some tools have helped, right? They've given some tools to parents, but there's an awareness problem for those tools. Like parents aren't aware these tools exist. Like we hear this day in, day out from our customers. Like, I didn't even realize, you know, Instagram had any tools. We hear that all the time because they're not marketed to parents. And even if they were marketed well, parents have multiple kids on multiple platforms, right? So it's a lot to expect a parent to log into all these different platforms and keep track at what their kids are using and adjust the settings and stay up to date and what's happening. Parents are harried. And so, you know, that's kind of the genesis of what we're trying to do is provide a dashboard that provides controls across all the different platforms where parents can go in and understand what's going on Instagram and, you know, and, and across all the different platforms at the same time. And so, you know, there's not a huge set of great tools that exist within the platforms that, you know, I think are particularly useful. But there are some things parents can do in terms of limiting quantity at the OS level. On Apple, there's screen time. On Google, there's Family Link, which allow parents to restrict how much time and when kids are using services. You can certainly do it at the Internet connection layer too. I do that at home, where our wifi router goes off at a certain hour, so the kids don't have access that way. But it's a little bit of a cat and mouse game, admittedly. And then on the qualitative side, that's what we're focused on, as I mentioned before. And there's not a lot of tools out there. I'd like to think that more tools will develop because this is a huge problem. Competition is something I don't worry about at all. And this is such a massive problem that I think we need more solutions in market. And I think with the advent of AI, there's a huge opportunity to become much better at providing a qualitative assessment of what your kids are doing online versus just telling them how much time they're spending online.
- [23:50]
Eric Suefert
Yeah, the sleep point feels under discussed. I mean, I think you mentioned that, but I noticed a dramatic improvement in the quality of my sleep when I just stopped looking at my phone within an hour of going to bed. It was really shocking and I imagine that. And I'm a grown man, I don't think I need sleep, obviously, but I don't think it's as important for my cognitive development. I mean, that ship is sort of sailed for a kid. It's critical. Right? I mean, and you know, if they've just got sort of unfettered access to their phone at night, they're probably not going to sleep. And I think I read some story, maybe the Atlantic or something, about like children. They're. They're showing up at school with like two hours of sleep because they've been watching TikToks all night.
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Carl Stillner
That's right. That's right. It's hard. And there's actually. There was a study that came out recently, I can't remember where it was, that even the presence of having the phone within reach when you're sleeping disrupts the quality of sleep. So it's not as deep as it would be if the phone's in another room. And so that's the first line of defense. Parents should not allow their kids to have their phone in their bedrooms at night. Nothing good comes out of that. And so you're right, though, the sleep is something I think that's under discussed. And it's really the root of a lot of behavioral issues that exist, adults and kids alike.
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Eric Suefert
I oftentimes hear some of the concerns be dismissed as essentially repeats of or just like resurfaced concerns that are fundamentally similar to other technological paradigms that have entered into society that were similarly the source of hysteria at the time. So you could think about TV or video games, but even like PCs, right? So, I mean, I had a. I remember I had a. In my room, I used to build PCs when I was growing up. And so I had like two in my room. And people were shocked when they hear that. Don't just play video games all night. And you know, I'd say, no, I need to go to sleep. Right? I've got some self control. And is that, do you think that there is a fundamental difference here? Because I think that on the TV piece, I mean, I don't think there's any child who grew up watching more TV than me. And I feel like I'm a functionality member of society. Right. Hopefully a productive one. Are these different? Are these fundamentally different? Because does a smartphone form factor change these concerns?
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Carl Stillner
Yeah, I mean, I think it does. I believe it is different for a few reasons. One, the form factor, as you mentioned, I mean, this is something that's in your pocket. You can take it to any place you go, right? The TV stayed in the basement or the living room of your house, and it was somewhat inaccessible because of that. But when you have a phone with you, you can be on the school bus, you can be on the sideline of your soccer game, et cetera. So it's always there, it's omnipresent, and it's kind of habituating you to always want to check. Whereas this a TV where you get to watch an hour or two when you get home from school. The other thing is, it's like tv. I mean, I'm sure there was some thought that it was addictive when it came out, and there was probably some elements that were addictive, but it wasn't nearly as addictive as these platforms had been engineered to be. There wasn't the variable reward mechanisms and all these mechanisms that have been highly engineered into these platforms and into these algorithms. And so it's really where you might have had a, A Fight with the TV when you were growing up, like you had a chance. Kids don't have a chance when they're dealing with these, and they're totally outmatched. And so it's really a lot to expect a kid to be able to understand that. And so I think it, like anything, the quantity and the quality of it matters. And I think we've gotten to a point where the quantities is so high and the qualitative nature of it, it's so powerful that kids really don't have any chance with it. And, you know, I do think, like, there's always there, you know, there's a concern that are we being too restrictive? And look, kids are going to be growing up in a digital age, like I said before. And so I don't think anyone should be advocating for not letting your kids understand what's going on digitally, but instead we should be trying to figure out ways to get them healthy habits early on so they can be productive members of the digital world. There's certainly lots of benefits of having your kids be able to connect with other kids. Like, like the fact my kids are able to connect with their cousins who live on the east coast right now, that's a huge benefit. And I don't want to deny that. I don't think any parent wants that. It's just making sure that that becomes the focus as opposed to, you know, a lot of the stuff that happens online that ends up taking 90% of the time the kids are there. And so it matters, the nature of the interactions matter.
- [28:30]
Eric Suefert
Right. And also the provenance of the, the content they're watching TV is, you know, especially like, you know, when I was growing up. Right. Or just anchor that to like, you know, the, the origins of the concern. Well, the content available on TV was produced by, you know, a handful of big studios or whatever, and there wasn't a lot of variability in terms of, like, the nature of it or how extreme it could be across whatever spectrum this, the political spectrum or social spectrum. Right. But obviously that's different here. In this case, it almost infin. You could almost infinitely explore any of those spectrums. Right. And you could land in a very dark place that a child's mind is probably not prepared to process or fully interrogate like, or to view as bs. Right. I mean, I think that's what kind of scares me. I think, you know, you could see some of these influencers and I can dismiss what they say as nonsense or uninformed or ahistorical or whatever, and you just pick A topic and there's someone spewing some, some garbage on it. But a child might be more easily convinced.
- [29:37]
Carl Stillner
That's right. I mean, there was an editorial control that existed for the TV content that you watch that does not exist online right now. Anyone can publish anything. It can be served off an algorithm to a kid repeatedly, and then it can reinforce other things they're watching, et cetera. So again, there's kind of no controls that exist for what kids are actually getting access to.
- [29:57]
Eric Suefert
Yeah. And you didn't run into the Gish gala type problem. Right. So you're talking about, like, tv and it's like, well, okay, someone might present an opinion that you don't think is credible or valid, but they can't present hours and hours and hours of that opinion in a way that you just, you couldn't possibly, as a parent, have the time. Right. To refute. Right. I mean, I, I couldn't go through. I mean, I don't know, like, I, you know, pick some random influencer from some extreme on the political spectrum. I couldn't. I just, I don't have time to go through and refute that. And like, I can just kind of of, as a filter, hear the quality the message and dismiss it based on my own experience and knowledge, but a child can't. And then if a child asked me, like, well, why do you think that's not right? Who says that the dollar is not going to collapse and the US Debt is going to be? Well, because, look, it's. And then. Oh, well, no, but then how about this point, though? I don't have time to go through every single one of these as a whole. I can understand this person to be a vehicle for nonsense sense. And that's really the problem. Right. It's almost like, well, why are you the authority on this? Well, I'm not, but I have this ability to sort of classify someone as a charlatan or not. You probably don't.
- [31:12]
Carl Stillner
Yep, that's right. Well, and I think it's sad because you're right. This kind of. The content kids are getting exposed to and the algorithmic loops that are providing reinforcement against these ideas is a huge problem. But. But there are so many other problems that this one's not even really talked about that frequently at all. It's all the other issues that we talked about before that are getting the lion's share of the focus. But that's certainly an issue as well. It's certainly an issue for adults, and why wouldn't it be an issue for kids? Who have less ability to understand the context and be able to understand the provenance of where the content is coming from. So yeah, absolutely.
- [31:49]
Eric Suefert
Yeah. I think Sam Harris has always like the asymmetry of BS or something. It's like, well, you could just say whatever you want. I mean, you could just say whatever you want. And there's no, no, there's no sort of like limitation on that because it didn't take you any time to research it. Whereas if I want to refute something or disprove something, that could take me 30 minutes per point. And you, you know, if you look at somebody's pockets five hours long, there might be 200, which is sort of like ill conceived or completely wrong or just sort of like wrong and nuanced ways. You know, so seemingly correct, superficially correct, but to refute that. And then it's like, so if a child has already gotten sort of indoctrinated by that, then how are you going to, you know, reel them back in? Right? And because it's not just a matter of like, well, there's this content exists. But yes, it exists in this, you know, sort of infinite points of view or whatever, but some of the, the totally factually astray content is very, very popular.
- [32:43]
Carl Stillner
Yeah, that's right. And if a kid's spending three hours a day watching that and has a 10 minute conversation with their parents at night, who's refuting a lot of that stuff? I mean, it's still difficult, right? Like it's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of ammunition you're giving the child in terms of that content.
- [33:01]
Eric Suefert
Let's get real.
- [33:02]
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- [33:37]
Eric Suefert
What are the risks in being too restrictive? Right. So I imagine that there's probably an imbalance here. Like the risk of being too restrictive is probably, you know, less severe than the risks of just being totally laissez faire. But what are the risks of being too restrictive? I mean, you know, if, you know, I guess you could say, well you know, we're living in essentially in an Amish household and there is no tablet, there's no phone, there's no smartwatch and you have no, no exposure to the Internet. I mean that, that seems like there's probably some risk there because you need to learn how to integrate these into your, into your life. But like, maybe like, let's take that away from that total extreme position. What are the risks of a parent just being far too restrictive or is there a too restrictive? Does that even exist? Does that threshold exist?
- [34:20]
Carl Stillner
I think the biggest issue I see from being too restrictive is the fact that all their cohort is living and spending a lot of time in the digital world. And so if your kid goes to school with a bunch of other kids, you can be sure that 90% of them are online a lot of the time. They're gaming together, they're messaging together, et cetera. And so that's how they're interacting. And so of course the risk is if you prevent your kid from engaging in that way it all together that your kid becomes somewhat of a social pariah. Right? They can ostracize. They are not able to force the same kind of social connections because the social landscape has changed, how kids interact has changed. And so yes, their parents are forming groups of like minded parents who are like, we're not going to get our kid a device or gaming platform or whatever till this age and we're going to have our kids interact together. But that's still the vast minority. The majority of parents are letting their kids have access to these devices and that's how kids are interacting. So that's the biggest risk I see is that you're going to deprive your kid of really important social contact in a very critical developmental period where they need to feel like they have friends and feel connection to other kids.
- [35:27]
Eric Suefert
We got this. I want to say it was like a physical form, but it was a pledge document from some parents group or whatever. And the idea was that we'd all pledged to have our child not get a smartphone until I want to say, fifth grade. Maybe that was it. It which felt like a nice thing to do. But I was just kind of thinking about it more and I was like, well yeah, okay, I understand why you'd want to socialize that because you know, if your kid's the odd one out, I mean they literally will be the odd one out in all these social settings that take place on the Internet and which, you know, being socially ostracized could probably have like some, some pretty severe negative impacts on their development, like you said, in terms of confidence, but just even learning how to, how to, you know, be a social being. But is that is, I mean, just, just to kind of establish boundaries here, is that really the concern? I think that the real concern here is probably just that kids don't. It's not, I don't think as many parents are really concerned that they're being too restrictive. Right. It seems like the, probably the real concern is that they're not getting involved enough.
- [36:28]
Carl Stillner
I think that's, that's right. That the majority of parents are concerned they're not being restrictive enough or not engaged enough with what their kids are doing online. So. Yeah, and you know, it's, it's something that again, every parent is struggling with. Right. But I think they're struggling on that side of the fence. Right. There's devices everywhere at this point. Kids are issued devices at school. And so even if you're a parent who says, I'm not going to have devices around the house when they're home, kid brings home a laptop and all of a sudden is online, it's kind of like having a phone in many ways. Right. They're able to do a lot of the same things they're able to do on a phone, on a laptop. And so even for the best minded parent who's being very intentional about this, it's very difficult to kind of get around that as well.
- [37:08]
Eric Suefert
All right, so maybe let's take this to kind of like the regulatory realm. How active have US Regulators been in creating digital protections for children? Because I guess I would imagine that there's one concern, it's just like, it's just presence. I mean, not every parent has the capability to just monitor their child's usage of their smartphone or whatever for any number of reasons, but also probably maybe even like a lack of awareness of what the risks are. Right. Is there a regulatory role here? And then how active have US Regulators been in fulfilling that role?
- [37:44]
Carl Stillner
Well, I think there is a role for regulation largely because no one platform is going to try and do things differently if other platforms aren't going to. Right. So one social media company is not going to volunteer to restrict kid access to a certain age if their competitors aren't. It's a collective action problem. So the role for regulation is to ensure all those companies are moving at the same time so they're not facing some kind of competitive issue associated with their action today. At the federal level, there's been basically nothing done. The Only legislation we've had at the federal level to protect kids was COPPA in 1998. It was implemented in 2000, which is really around data sharing for kids under 13. But that's the only regulation we've had at the federal level that is intended to protect kids. There's been a number of bills that have been floated the past couple years, notably cosa, Kids Online Safety act that is kind of languishing right now and has not moved forward. And so there hasn't really been any action at the federal level. Some states have tried to do things as well. That's been difficult as well. And so we're seeing a lot more action outside of the country than we are inside the country. And so hopefully the drum beat gets louder and louder and legislators understand that parents are rightfully very concerned about this and do something about it. But to date there's been next to nothing to done.
- [39:08]
Eric Suefert
So. So on that note, I mean, I know that, you know, Bright Canary is a proponent of Sammy's Law. Talk to me about Sammy's Law. What is Sammy's Law?
- [39:14]
Carl Stillner
Yeah, Sammy's Law is a really creative solution to this problem in the fact that it gives parents the right to understand what their kids are doing online. So it's not getting the government involved in terms of age, gating the platforms like a lot of the other legislation that has been proposed does. Instead it's saying, as a parent, I have the right to see what my kids are doing online. And it requires the social media companies provide access to third party safety software providers like us. We would be considered one of them. So that if a parent decides they do want to see what their kids are doing online, they can do it through a company like ours. And so it provides programmatic access. So the social media companies would have to provide us an API and so that if a parent requests access, we would be able to provide it to them. So it's really a free market solution. Right. It's very minimal government involvement, unlike a lot of the other, other approaches. And it really provides parents with the tools they need. Because the one thing we've learned is that no one cares about their child's well being more than parents. Right. Like the parents are ultimately the ones who care the most about their kids and their kids digital health and so give them the power to be actually able to parent in an effective way. That's what it's trying to do.
- [40:25]
Eric Suefert
What do you make of. So there's these social media, just blanket restrictions that have that, you know, they went into, into law in Australia and you've got the law in Texas. What do you make of those? And then how do you think they, you know, the intentions sound different than you know, just just blocking social media access for under a certain age versus like kind of giving rights to parents. Which of those approaches? I think I know the answer. But like which of those approaches do you, do you appreciate more and what do you think are the kind of downsides of just blanket, like a blanket band. Right.
- [40:58]
Carl Stillner
Well, I appreciate what Australia is doing. I mean they're trying to do something about it and they, they've implemented a law that restricts access to. So no kids under the age of 16 can get access or get accounts on social media companies platforms. And it provides fines for the social media companies, although they're quite small. I think it's like $50 million Australian. So it's pretty minimal. And there's carve outs. I don't think the gaming platforms are addressed by it. The messaging platforms aren't either. So those are two notable holes in the law. But it basically mandates that the social media platforms don't have anyone underneath the age of 16 there. And I think that I actually have no problem with that approach. I think that multiple approaches are needed. The size of this problem warrants it in the states. There's all kinds of first amendment problems associated with that. And that's one of the reasons why cosa I think it's been had a hard time getting a lot of momentum is that there's a lot of concerns around the First Amendment ramifications of that and it'll be challenged in courts indefinitely for that reason. I think that that's happened with the Texas legislation as well. And I think Utah was challenged in a similar light. And so there is the approach that we're taking with Sami's law doesn't rely on first Amendment. It basically puts the control back in the parents court to decide what they want to do with it. It doesn't mandate kind of platform changes. But again, I'm not categorically opposed to those laws. I think that this is a crisis and I think there needs to be more than one approach that's used at this point. Point.
- [42:25]
Eric Suefert
How, I mean how easy is it to implement just the ban? I mean because that was an issue with, with copa, right? I mean not, you know, obviously, obviously well intentioned. Right. But, but with copa, I mean you had age gating and you know, you had to kind of put forth a reasonable effort to validate that the person's age was the one that they, you know, indicated how like, how airtight is that, how bulletproof is that approach to just saying, well, okay, we've got to validate your age and if it's below something, then you can't use our platform.
- [42:53]
Carl Stillner
Well, I mean, look, kids are smart, right? They can figure out ways around it. I'm sure there's ways they could figure out to masquerade as an 18 year old when they're a 15 year old. They've certainly done that to date. When you can't volunteer their age. We see that all the time. But at the same time, these platforms, because they have access to how the kids are consuming content, they have a pretty powerful way of being able to determine algorithmically whether someone is below a certain age or not. And it's a pretty strong signal. So it may not be perfect, but it should be able to indicate pretty clearly whether a kid is of a certain age. And those could be harnessed by the social media companies pretty powerfully to provide age gating on their side. There's also a lot of talk about having age gating happen at the app store level, right. Where you need to have an account that's been verified to be of a certain age, be able to download certain applications, which I think is another approach that could work as well. But none of these are fail safe. Right. There's going to be workarounds for all of them. Them, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be implemented because they still may be effective for a large percentage of the population.
- [44:00]
Eric Suefert
Right. Is there any consensus around the right age for a child to be given a smartphone or other milestones? Right. So I mean smartphone is one going back to like the, you know, the sensitivities around technology. I know a lot of parents that have given their young teenagers smart watches, so they've got all the capabilities to do messaging and stuff. But you know, it's obviously much more limited, you know, in terms of just like social media and doom scrolling, which basically just not possible. But if they need to get in touch, they can, or they do phone calls and messages. Is there any consensus around the right age for these various milestones with technology?
- [44:33]
Carl Stillner
Well, Jonathan Haidt, who's a social psychologist who wrote the Anxious Generation, I'm sure you've heard of it. It's been a New York Times bestseller for 89 weeks now or something like that, he's reviewed a lot of the research and his recommendation, of course is that no phones till high school, no smartphones. That is so flip. Phones fine, watches fine, and no social media till 16. And I think that's really rooted in the fact that kids are particularly vulnerable in the middle school age where they're subject to all the pressures and the comparisons that we talked about earlier. And so the longer you can hold that off, the better. And by the time they get to high school, they're a little more capable of handling these things. But I think it's also rooted in the fact that there needs to be a pragmatism. Social media is everywhere, devices are everywhere. So it's unreal realistic to say, hey, you should really wait till 18 or 21 or something like that. I don't think anyone thinks that's actually even possible at this point. So I think his recommendations are rooted both in some of the research around cognitive development, but also around the realities of living in 2026 as well. So I, I think those are as good as any at this point. And this kind of how I, I, I, this is kind of how my, my wife and I are navigating as well as using those guidelines. Our oldest has a watch, he's 14, but he'll probably get a phone next.
- [45:53]
Eric Suefert
Since high school, have you encountered any kind of competing views where people say, no, you got to give them social media as young as possible and they should have a smartphone as a baby. Are there any voices that kind of argue the opposite side of that or it just doesn't exist?
- [46:06]
Carl Stillner
Not for social media, for devices, yes. And I think it's rooted in oftentimes concern around, oh, my kid's taking the bus. And I'm worried about real world dangers associated with, you know, whether the kid's going to be attacked or abducted or something like that. That almost never happens. But of course is, you know, a pretty scary event and a concerned parent's mind. And I think, you know, again, going back to that book, there's a lot of talk about how kids are overprotected in the real world and underprotected in the digital world. Right. And I think that's kind of manifest in how parents view devices. I think that, oh, their kid needs to have a phone on when they're at school because if, God forbid, there's a shooter event, there's somebody who's going to guide their kid through that, that, that horrific incident like, which is obviously, you know, a fantasy that they're going to be able to help in any way. But I think there's some of that that's going on. So we do see it with devices we don't see with social media all,
- [46:54]
Eric Suefert
has there been any sort of natural, call it like cohort based rejection of social media because you know, you hear about Gen Z how they don't drink alcohol as much and, and, and, but, but you know, I mean you hear about, you hear about some behaviors that you think might be actually caused by, you know, interacting with social media too much. Like they're just less social, which could, could be a function of just being on your phone all the time and not knowing how to engage in, in you know, interpersonal communication or whatever. Whatever. But have you seen any sort of like rejection of social media and this kind of cohorted basis? Like no. Look, we see the people on their phones all the time. That doesn't seem like a particularly attractive way to live your life. We actually don't want to spend as much time on social media as we see some of our older cohorts engaging because that just looks bizarre and not, not very fun and not very pleasant. Have you seen any of that?
- [47:43]
Carl Stillner
Yeah. So in terms of the pullback, we're starting to see some potential around that. We're seeing some kids who are recognizing how it makes them feel. And I'm hopeful that there is going to be and more of that as kids get more aware of the research associated with it. There was actually a study that was done not too long ago that asked kids whether or not they would like social media or not. And a majority of the kids said they would prefer there was no social media as long as it was applied to everyone. So the bottom line is they would rather not be on social media, but they would rather be on social media if all their friends are on it. So again, it's the collective action problem. So kids are realizing it doesn't make them feel great. It doesn't. You know, all the effects we've talked about are not lost on kids at this point, but they also have a problem because their friends are on a lot of their class, you know, classwork's done on it, et cetera. So they're really attached to it. So I'd like to think that the movement has begun where kids are recognizing this and you know, will become savvier consumers over time.
- [48:44]
Eric Suefert
Is any of that a reaction to the demonstrated risks later in life of having your lived kind of social media public profile become a risk or a liability? Because I imagine, you know, now people are seeing like, oh, wait a minute, the posts I made on social media when I was 14 ruined my career when I was 27 and I should be much more protective or. Or just circumspect of the platforms, given that this stuff is permanent and it could haunt me later in life.
- [49:13]
Carl Stillner
Life, yeah. No. We advocate that parents are very transparent about their relationship with Bright Canary, with their kids, that they tell them. And a big part of that education about telling your kid you're using a service like Bright Canary or any of our competitors is saying, look, you may think that your interactions are private. What you're doing online is private. It's not. It can be exposed in a number of ways, and you should not assume any kind of level of privacy with anything you're doing online. That's the reality. It's sad, but it's true. And so I think kids are now getting the message that what they once thought was very private is not in any way.
- [49:43]
Eric Suefert
Carl, this was very enlightening and very intriguing. How can people learn more about Bright Canary? How can people learn more about what you're doing in the space?
- [49:51]
Carl Stillner
Yeah, you can go to our website. We create a lot of content, so we have a newsletter that we send out every other week. We have an app that's available in the App Store. We have a trial for those of you that want to try it out. And, yeah, we welcome feedback as well. We're evolving the platform quite rapidly here, and so we welcome any kind of feedback from people who are using the application.
- [50:09]
Eric Suefert
Thank you very much for your time.
- [50:10]
Carl Stillner
Yeah, thanks, Eric.