Put Your Phone Away: Yondr CEO on the Philosophy Behind Phone-Free Spaces

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Put Your Phone Away: Yondr CEO on the Philosophy Behind Phone-Free Spaces"

Podcast Information:

• Title: On with Kara Swisher
• Host: Kara Swisher, Vox Media
• Episode: "Put Your Phone Away: Yondr CEO on the Philosophy Behind Phone-Free Spaces"
• Release Date: January 16, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of "On with Kara Swisher," award-winning journalist Kara Swisher delves into the pervasive issue of smartphone addiction and its societal impacts. Swisher is joined by Graham De Goney, the founder and CEO of Yondr, a company pioneering phone-free solutions through innovative pouches designed to lock away smartphones, ensuring they remain inaccessible during events such as concerts and within educational environments. The discussion explores the philosophical underpinnings, practical implementations, and future visions of creating phone-free spaces.

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Origins of Yondr and Initial Motivations

Graham De Goney recounts the pivotal moment that inspired him to start Yondr. While attending a music festival in San Francisco in 2012, he observed someone recording a drunk individual without their consent:

[04:12] Graham De Goney: "I saw someone recording someone who was drunk and dancing, and they were posting it to the Internet without their knowledge. That was a crystallizing moment..."

This incident highlighted the growing privacy concerns exacerbated by ubiquitous smartphone use. De Goney's philosophical exploration of technology, influenced by thinkers like Kierkegaard and Heidegger, led him to envision a solution that counters the unintended consequences of constant connectivity.

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Philosophy Behind Phone-Free Spaces

The conversation transitions to Yondr's core philosophy: creating spaces where individuals can engage without the distractions and invasions of privacy that smartphones often bring. De Goney emphasizes the need for constructive adaptation to technology rather than outright rejection:

[06:02] Graham De Goney: "It's about how we are going to move constructively into the future and incorporate these tools..."

He likens phone-free spaces to national parks within society, providing sanctuaries where people can experience life unmediated by digital devices.

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Implementation in Schools and Concerts

Yondr's Pouches: The pouches produced by Yondr are designed to be user-friendly and secure. Users retain possession of their phones, which are locked in the pouch and can be unlocked at designated exit points using a proprietary magnetic key.

[08:11] Graham De Goney: "It's about meeting people where they're at and not trying to impose a punitive system."

Funding and Growth: De Goney shares the humble beginnings of Yondr, including personal financial sacrifices like selling his car to fund prototypes. Early adopters included educators and artists who recognized the value of undistracted audiences. Notably, comedian Dave Chappelle became an early investor, understanding the importance of a fully engaged audience for performance art.

[10:30] Graham De Goney: "Dave Chappelle came on as an investor. He understood the value for his art form..."

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Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The pandemic presented both challenges and opportunities for Yondr. Initial disruptions led to a company-wide reset, but De Goney anticipated a surge in demand as schools and concert venues sought to reintegrate phone-free policies post-pandemic. The heightened awareness of online interactions during lockdowns underscored the need for such solutions.

[14:39] Graham De Goney: "As schools opened up, we had a huge inflow from parents and teachers concerned about increased online interactions."

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Adoption and Policy in Educational Institutions

With over 19 states implementing phone bans or restrictions in schools, Yondr has become a cornerstone in educational policy development. De Goney explains that successful implementation requires a holistic approach, addressing not just the classroom but the entire school environment to sustain phone-free practices.

[24:45] Graham De Goney: "It's about taking a holistic approach to give benefits not just to students, but also to teachers..."

Cost and Accessibility: Schools invest approximately $30 per student for the Yondr program, which covers the pouches, setup, and ongoing support. By treating pouches like textbooks, schools ensure accessibility and continuity.

[25:05] Graham De Goney: "It's a purchase, not a recurring cost, and schools often buy a little extra to account for wear and tear."

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Research and Outcomes

Yondr recently released a white paper demonstrating significant improvements in academic performance and reduction in behavioral issues among schools adopting phone-free policies. Anecdotal evidence from teachers corroborates these findings, with reports of decreased distractions, fewer fights, and enhanced teacher retention.

[27:17] Graham De Goney: "We've seen reductions in behavioral issues by up to 50% within weeks of implementation."

Additionally, surveys indicate that students, initially resistant, often grow to appreciate the phone-free environment, citing reduced anxiety and greater presence.

[28:14] Graham De Goney: "Students who initially didn't like it admit privately that they enjoy being in a phone-free school and feel less anxious."

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Addressing Parental and Safety Concerns

Parental resistance has evolved as the cultural zeitgeist shifts towards recognizing the drawbacks of constant connectivity. De Goney discusses strategies to mitigate fears, particularly regarding safety during emergencies. Highlighting that students retain possession of their phones, Yondr ensures that devices can be accessed even in lockdowns or evacuations through structured unlocking mechanisms.

[31:07] Graham De Goney: "Students can unlock their phones in case of emergencies, and districts communicate these plans clearly to parents."

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Challenges: Circumventing the Pouches

Despite Yondr's robust design, some students attempt to bypass restrictions by concealing phones or using alternative devices. De Goney acknowledges these challenges and emphasizes the importance of social pressure and community adherence to maintain the integrity of phone-free spaces.

[38:24] Graham De Goney: "We're moving quickly to improve the product's security, but social psychology plays a crucial role in encouraging compliance."

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Expert Questions and Insights

Dr. Shamice Taylor's Question:

"How does Yondr balance the need for limiting distractions in schools with the importance of teaching students responsible and mindful technology use?"
De Goney's Response:
He underscores the importance of breaking physiological ties with constant phone use by creating physical separation through pouches. This method helps interrupt habitual phone-checking impulses, fostering new, healthier habits without brute prohibition.

Jonathan Haidt's Question:

"Yonder pouches clearly work, but some kids find ways to circumvent them. What is Yonder doing to improve security going forward?"
De Goney's Response:
He acknowledges the ingenuity of students in finding workarounds and explains that Yondr is continuously enhancing pouch durability and design. Additionally, fostering a culture of respect and collective responsibility is pivotal in reducing attempts to bypass restrictions.

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Future Vision and Philosophical Reflections

De Goney shares his vision for a society where phone-free spaces become normalized across various environments, not just schools and concerts. He advocates for a cultural shift towards valuing focal activities—engagements that require physical presence and critical thinking, such as biking, gardening, and hiking.

[54:58] Graham De Goney: "We need to shift towards activities where the process is bound up with their meaning, grounding people in their lives."

He expresses skepticism towards the relentless pursuit of seamless technology, which he believes detracts from meaningful human interactions and critical faculties.

[55:04] Graham De Goney: "Making everything so easy violates human nature and doesn't contribute to genuine fulfillment."

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Confronting Tech Industry Power

Addressing the immense influence of tech giants like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, De Goney emphasizes that Yondr's mission is not to confront these entities directly but to empower individuals and communities to make conscious choices about their technology use.

[56:56] Graham De Goney: "It's about giving people the choice to control their time and how their minds think, rather than being passive consumers of technology."

He envisions a future where cultural values prioritize simplicity, nature, and meaningful interactions over convenience and constant connectivity.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with De Goney's appreciation for the dialogue and the critical role of phone-free spaces in fostering healthier, more engaged communities. Kara Swisher underscores the broader implications of Yondr's work in shaping societal norms around technology use.

[58:27] Graham De Goney: "Thank you, Kara. I really enjoyed it."

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Key Takeaways

• Privacy and Presence: Yondr's pouches aim to restore privacy and genuine presence in environments overwhelmed by smartphone use.
• Holistic Implementation: Successful phone-free policies require comprehensive strategies that encompass the entire environment, not just isolated settings.
• Cultural Shift: Encouraging societal values that prioritize meaningful interactions and critical thinking over constant connectivity.
• Continuous Improvement: Addressing challenges such as circumventing measures through product enhancements and fostering a culture of respect.
• Philosophical Basis: Grounding technological solutions in deep philosophical insights to navigate the complex relationship between humans and technology.

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Notable Quotes:

• Graham De Goney [04:19]: "If you follow that, that line of thinking all the way through, I realized that it bumped up really strongly against this tech idea that everything was going to become more connected everywhere, all the time."
• Graham De Goney [06:02]: "It's about how we are going to move constructively into the future and incorporate these tools."
• Graham De Goney [27:17]: "We've seen reductions in behavioral issues by up to 50% within weeks of implementation."
• Graham De Goney [54:58]: "We need to shift towards activities where the process is bound up with their meaning, grounding people in their lives."
• Graham De Goney [56:56]: "It's about giving people the choice to control their time and how their minds think."

---

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the challenges and solutions surrounding smartphone use in society, highlighting Yondr's innovative approach to fostering phone-free environments and promoting healthier human interactions.

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

It's on. Hi, everyone. From New York magazine and the Vox Media podcast network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. Today I'm talking to Graham De Goney, the founder and CEO of Yonder. It's a company that's mainly known for making pouches that lock cell phones. They can only be unlocked with a proprietary magnetic key, and if you've been to a comedy show in the past few, there's a decent chance you've had to lock up your phone in a Yonder pouch. If you're an American student in middle or high school, there's a very decent chance you've either had to lock up your phone in one of these pouches or you will in the coming years. The pouches are a simple but ingenious solution to a paradox caused by smartphones. We love them and we need them, but they also can ruin everything from weddings, concerts, and comedy shows to court proceedings. Graham started yonder in 2014 before most people had caught on to how pernicious cell phones can be. He takes a philosophical approach to technology, and I want to talk to you about that because we know our phones are killing us. Come on. They're addictive, they're problematic, they're necessary. You have to have them for work. And they also cause all kinds of problems. And we need to get a hold of our issue. The other issue is technology leaders then have complete control of us. And, you know, we don't want that, especially these days. We have two expert questions for Graham, one from Jonathan Haidt, whose book the Anxious Generation has kick started a conversation about the effects of cell phones on K and Dr. Shamice Taylor, the principal of Phoenixville Area Middle school in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Stick around and Dr. Taylor, go Phantoms. Support for the show comes from NerdWallet. When it comes to finding the best financial products, have you ever wished that someone would do the heavy lifting for take all that research off your plate? Well, with NerdWallet's 2025 Best of Awards, that wish has finally come true. The nerds at NerdWallet have reviewed more than 1100 financial products like credit cards, saving accounts and more to highlight and bring you only the best of the best. Check out the 2025 Best of Awards [e-mail] awards. This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. I'm Kathy Schwab's chief fixed income strategist. And I'm Liz Ann Saunders Schwab's chief investment strategist. Between us, we have decades of experience studying the indicators that drive the economy and how they can have a direct impact on your investments. We know that investors have a lot of questions about the markets and the economy, and we're here to help. So download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Graham De Goney]

It is on.

[Kara Swisher]

Graham, thanks for being on on.

[Graham De Goney]

Oh, thank you for having me.

[Kara Swisher]

I've actually wanted to have you here a lot, actually. I've used yonder pouches for many years, you know, mostly at concerts. But this is a topic that I talk a lot about on Pivot, and I've talked about a lot over the years, and I have a lot of kids. So it's a critically important issue. And I think it's kind of an interesting approach to this problem of screen time in young people, which is a more physical approach. But let's get into it. You started yonder after seeing people film a drunk concert goer. Is this your origin story, presumably against his wishes and without his knowledge. Talk about that moment. Lots of companies have their sort of origin stories, some of which are true, some of which aren't. But talk about what prompted you this issue around privacy, because this happens every day. People tape other people all the time now. It seems constant.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, that was a crystallizing moment, I would say, for me, but it wasn't necessarily the origin. I mean, I was at a music festival in San Francisco about 2012.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Graham De Goney]

And I saw someone recording someone who was drunk and dancing, and they were posting it to the Internet without their knowledge.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Graham De Goney]

And that was a crystallizing moment because if you follow that, that line of thinking all the way through, I realized that it bumped up really strongly against this tech idea that everything was going to become more connected everywhere, all the time. And that was going to lead us to this kind of this great place. But the back, the background knowledge that kind of led me there was, you know, I fell down a rabbit hole years before reading people like Kierkegaard and Heidegger and a lot of people who had been examining the question of technology for hundreds of years. And so I kind of took that.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. The original rabbit hole, by the way, just so people are well.

[Graham De Goney]

Right, Exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Graham De Goney]

So that was kind of the origin. But looking at that and then what the tech world was proposing, I just saw things going down. I thought a very different route.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay. I saw the same route, and I read all those same people, including Camus and Sartre and everybody else. But talk about why that was because, you know, ob people were thrilled with the idea that you could film anywhere and you could do, you know, your phone was an extension of yourself, essentially of your eyes, except that it recorded. Why did you go down a more negative path? I have ideas why I did, but I was worried about. I'm always worried about consequences, and a lot of people in tech are not. I think that's one of the things.

[Graham De Goney]

Well, I think it was more. To me, anytime there's radically new technological development, they're going to be possibilities and unforeseen consequences. So for me, it was going, if this theme has been building for hundreds of years and everything is getting faster, easier, cheaper, everywhere, all the time. That's the theme. I thought that the advent of the smartphone was a fundamental shift in the sense that it changed the way you existed in the world. And this younger generation in particular, digital natives were going to be born without that frame of reference of the difference between the online, the offline world.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure.

[Graham De Goney]

And so these issues related to privacy in the public sphere, related to the development of critical thinking faculties, these are going to have to be things that were examined in light of something that changed your experience so radically. So for me, it wasn't necessarily the negatives. It was more, how do we, how are we going to move constructively into the future and incorporate these tools? And I didn't think that the things I was hearing from the tech world sounded right to me.

[Kara Swisher]

So they're always up and to the right. They're always, this is all going to be great. I mean, that's very common. And now, of course, we're seeing another iteration of where it leads to. But right now, about 2 million students use your pouches and more than a million concert goers use them every month. Explain how you got the funding and how the pouches work for people who haven't encountered them. You really have cornered the market on phone free solutions in this regard. And it's kind of a basic idea. Right. It's not like that complex.

[Graham De Goney]

Well, I mean, in a way. But in 2014, you know, I was going around, the initial funding came from me selling my car, you know, So I had $7,000 and all the initial prototypes of the pouch, which I can describe, you know, I made myself at a hardware store in San Francisco, sewing them together. But the idea really phone free spaces and phone free schools. And when I kind of created that concept, there was no vernacular for it. So the closest analog I had in My mind was kind of like creating a system of national parks inside a society, recognizing that there are no more frontiers. You've read the postmodernists and you get that. So how are we going to carve out these spaces that allow people to experience life temporarily kind of outside the pull and tug of our modern lifestyles? But if you're a concert goer or you're a kid going to school where yonder's being used, you know, your experience is a little different, but similar in the sense that at a show you walk in, you know it's going to be a phone free show beforehand, you're handed a pouch. Your phone and your wearable tech all goes inside the pouch. Once it closes, it's locked and it's handed back to you. So you have possession of your device at all times.

[Kara Swisher]

Because sometimes they take them away. Some concerts take them away, which makes people really crazy, you know, in terms of finding them later. It's actually somewhat chaotic if you do it in that fashion.

[Graham De Goney]

Definitely. And also it doesn't meet people where they're at because people say, hey, I have a babysitter home with the kids. And we're able to say, hey, that's fine. Your phone's on you. If you need to use it, go to a phone use area. It's like a smoking section. So that was always. My approach is trying to meet people where they're at and not we're trying to open a window for them to have a perspective on tech in their lives. So you have to do it in a certain way.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. And so it locks and then it unlocks when you leave. People have the keys to unlock them when you correct.

[Graham De Goney]

At the exits for every venue, there are unlocking stations. People just walk by, tap the pouch on there and it unlocks. It's the same in a school setting.

[Kara Swisher]

The lock is a magnetized lock. Correct. I've seen different versions. A magnetized lock and it's a soft pouch that protects the phone from being dropped and things like that. Now you said when you're getting yonder off the ground, the people who weren't positive, the only people that weren't positive about were people in Silicon Valley, which is how I knew it was a good idea. Talk a little bit about that. And how do you feel about those people and how do they feel about what you're doing now?

[Graham De Goney]

Well, the zeitgeist has changed so much. Honestly, it's hard for me sometimes to remember what it was like back then because I was going to eight or Nine schools, every single day, going in person, driving up. And at that time, I had an old 1978 Toyota Dolphin. All my pouches were in the back, I was rolling up. And then I would go to two or three music venues at night. But I felt like tech people I talked to, everyone was following this playbook so religiously and innovating in kind of this narrow alleyway that the idea that tech would not be omnipresent or that things weren't going exactly where they thought they were going was not even computing. So I got laughed out of a lot of rooms when I was trying to find early investors. Ultimately, I'm glad that happened because it just made me actually go out in the world and talk to people about what I was trying to do. And that's where I found teachers and I found artists who said, yeah, this is a problem for me, can you help me? And that's how I learned.

[Kara Swisher]

This is for artists interrupting their performances and comics or singers or whatever, theaters and then with teachers not having people pay attention, essentially having kids pay attention. Who funded you? What was the funding situation and what was the breakthrough in terms of getting funding?

[Graham De Goney]

I mean, the breakthrough is probably scraping together kind of an early friends and family round in 2015, 16 of $100,000, which for me was a lot of money at the time. But probably the most meaningful investor over time was soon after that was probably Dave Chappelle coming on as an investor. And when I met him, he was the first artist who really understood what I was trying to do. And he understood, I think, the value for, for his art form, not just from an IP perspective, but for freedom of expression and having an audience that was fully there.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. And from an IP is people record these performances and take away their ip. That is in fact their ip. People don't realize it. It's fine to take a quick snapshot and things like that, but a lot of people were doing more than that, correct?

[Graham De Goney]

Oh, yeah, of course. But also for the art form and for music as well. It's funny. Even artists who tend to approach us first from an IP perspective, when I talk to them over time, what it usually morphs into is purely the experience, the idea of being and performing at a phone free show. You know, like when we do shows at Madison Square Garden, it's hard for people to imagine. Sometimes you're walking into a venue with 20,000 people. And it's not just the fact that you're not seeing phones at the show, those blinking lights, it's the 30, 40 minutes beforehand, as people step in, they get into the mood, the whole atmosphere radically changes.

[Kara Swisher]

Their phones, it's a very different experience, which of course jars people, I think, when they don't have them now. Because that's where they go when they're bored for a second and a half or anything else. Because kids, many of us used to just be bored. That's all. We just stared into the abyss constantly. Speaking of existentialism, was there a different experience when you went to teachers at schools? Cause I wanna get into this idea of what was that reaction? They knew that kids were losing attention, correct? It was not that hard to figure that one out.

[Graham De Goney]

Oh yeah. I mean Even in 2014, I was going around and you would. Teachers at that time fell into two camps. I would say both knew that cell phones were a massive problem in education. One camp saw it as so far gone, they couldn't even imagine how we could put the genie back in the bottle. And the other also agreed it was a problem, but was searching for answers. Some of them were trying to put phones into shoeboxes and things like that, but there was no structural or policy way to help them actually do that. But they were already seeing back then. And it just got worse, you know, a tremendous amount of violence in schools day to day driven through social media and unwanted recording and distractions and critical thinking. And so that was already happening in 2014, right?

[Kara Swisher]

Distractions, cheating, all kinds of things people could do with them. What was interesting is around that time I started when I was in meetings, I used a box, I put them in a box, phones in a pile or something like that. Meetings I was had. My kids had a. My kid had a party, maybe fourth or fifth grade or maybe later, probably later. And all the kids were talking to each other on cell phones at the party, they were texting each other. So I took them all and ran, which was. And then I said, enjoy, enjoy yourselves. But it was a much more. You'd have to be very, very aggressive. But let's go to Covid. So this was something the pandemic and school closures came with. It changed kids relationships to tech. What did you hear when teachers and principals started opening back up in terms.

[Graham De Goney]

Of growing the company? It was a hard reset for us because I mean during. When Covid first hit, we were on a company trip in camping in Joshua Tree. No one had their phone, right. And so when we came out, it was like a zombie movie. Everyone think it was closed down. And we were like, what's going on?

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Graham De Goney]

The concert business Stop. You know, all schools shut down. So it was a reset company wide. But I felt even in that moment that it ultimately would be a tailwind for us because I thought that there was going to be so much more exposure to online learning and all these things that parents were going to see what was actually happening in that. That's what came to pass. As schools opened up and things came back, we had a huge inflow from a lot of it was from parents and from teachers. Teachers were saying we've noticed a dramatic change in our students in terms of two years of loss of kind of in person interaction and socialization. And parents, I think just saw what it meant for them to be online that much, whether it was through learning or their interactions and they were concerned.

[Kara Swisher]

Did you think the addiction increased during the pandemic?

[Graham De Goney]

Well, again, the trend has been developing for so long and I try to stay away from the word addiction, honestly, not because it's not true, but because if I'm a young person and we're using that kind of language, I don't know, it's the most empowering or inspiring language to use.

[Kara Swisher]

The problem is Vivek Murthy, who's the surgeon general said is these are useful too. It's not like it's a cigarette where there's very little use for it besides addiction and presumably pleasure for some people.

[Graham De Goney]

I totally agree. And that's the thing. That's why I try not to paint it that way. But absolutely. I mean, look, it's what people are going to take. The young people are no different. They're going to take the path of least resistance when it comes to learning or social interaction. So to me, digital tools, most of it follows a path of least resistance. If it's easier or less stressful to text someone than to talk in person, get in a vacuum, people are gonna do that than this. So how are we, you know, we have to create structures, I think to help young people orient towards the online world. Not negate it, but kind of give them a frame of reference. Because it's not fair to ask someone who is born into something to immediately have perspective.

[Kara Swisher]

Stop using your blank. I mean they did that with television, with people.

[Graham De Goney]

They did that exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

You know. So right now schools, is that correct? Are your biggest source of revenue. And in more states, I think 19 states either ban or restrict cell phone use in schools. Localities are doing this. And a lot of education policy is done on a local level. State and local level, Virginia and South Carolina's policies went into effect this month. Talk about is this the trend happening education where cell phone bans are what happens everywhere? It seems to me that's the case.

[Graham De Goney]

Well, yeah, I mean it's accelerated incredibly quickly. So again, 10 years ago, when schools and teachers were reaching out, it was mostly at the classroom level. They were saying, hey, I need help, my princess. Yeah, my principal or superintendent's not ready, but I need help. And we tried that again. What we learned over time is that you really have to do bell to bell in a holistic solution for a whole bunch of reasons. But in terms of legislation, we've kind of grown along with that curve, I would say. Whereas we were mostly working with districts a couple years ago, now we're engaging with entire states and helping them kind of inform going, hey, you want to create a phone policy? And, and it's probably important to distinguish between the idea of a phone ban, which some, a state like Florida kind of moved on the concept, but nothing's really happened on the ground versus what we term like a phone free school, which is actually the devil's in the details. How do you support teachers and principals to do it?

[Kara Swisher]

Was there resistance or just inertia? That's very common among school districts.

[Graham De Goney]

Resistance to the idea of becoming a phone free district or school. I think it's, it's really interesting. It depends a little bit on what part of the country you're talking about and the demographics involved. But in general, the support now is, I would say over 80% in most districts. An understanding of an appreciation of what it is. In the past, most resistance would come from parents.

[Kara Swisher]

You said earlier that demographics affect the reaction to cells in school. Talk about that. I've noticed that, but talk a little about demographics.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's fascinating. We work in schools of all sizes, all sizes, urban, suburban, rural. And I would say there's a couple things. One is when we roll out the yonder program, it's a program, it's not just a pouch. We help with the pre planning, the communication, the policy creation, also the implementation and the rollout and also the ongoing support. But in terms of demographics, something I've noticed over time is in some of the, you know, the poor areas that are, especially in very dense urban settings, the phone can become for students more than just a tool because there's not, let's say, extracurriculars or athletics and things like that going on, it can become this window to the world, you know, and so psychologically, well, in, in just a very deeply rooted way, I would say. And so that that attachment is, is emotional and not just psychological. And so trying to unwind that and create a space where all students are in, you know, in a phone free school day from begin is something you really have to work in communicating with parents and them understanding the need for it.

[Kara Swisher]

Go ahead.

[Graham De Goney]

Oh, well, yeah. The other part I would just say about that is we learned very early on also you really can't, you can't try to create a policy in a punitive way. So picking out students who can't control themselves or things like that does not work. It's really important that all students are in the same boat together. That's what makes it work.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. I would say Jonathan Haidt's book the Anxious Generation has arguably been the catalyst for the increase in interest around the school. Cell phone bans. Talk about the book's effect. And obviously there's some controversy around the book, but the cell phone ban thing is pretty explicit and has that heightened it? He said that by September, a great majority of schools in this country will be phone free. Does that sound realistic to you?

[Graham De Goney]

I mean, it's moving incredibly fast. And I think that his work, I think articulated in a way that people could understand and relate to. And that had a tremendous effect if you follow the trend that we've seen. Because look, we're not just in the US we're in 35 different countries. So we've watched this trend develop. It was moving this way, I think, very quickly. But what I think his work did is also help parents understand that the things they're worried about and they see in their children. Exactly. This is something that we can articulate and we can wrestle with. So I guess in terms of that general collective action problem, you know, 10 years ago where I always saw myself and yonder is the action part, how do you facilitate that? You have to do something about it. And it starts with concrete, tangible things.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Graham De Goney]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Graham De Goney]

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[Kara Swisher]

What if we added a feature that.

[Graham De Goney]

Lets users name their own constellations? Yes, great idea.

[Kara Swisher]

I'll make a Brainstorm board.

[Graham De Goney]

We can add stickies with user feedback. Miro's canvas is infinite and intelligent, so.

[Kara Swisher]

My team could brainstorm as expansively as.

[Graham De Goney]

We wanted while keeping everything in one place. What about an astrology feature?

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I love it.

[Graham De Goney]

Add it to the board. Miro AI took all our unstructured ideas and user feedback and synthesized them into.

[Kara Swisher]

A product brief in seconds.

[Graham De Goney]

With the brief solidified, the team took the next step.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, so I created a new board.

[Graham De Goney]

For the dataflow diagram.

[Kara Swisher]

Can we update the query to pull in data from the southern hemisphere?

[Graham De Goney]

Yes, I'll get a developer on it. And with Miro's seamless third party integrations like our two way sync with Jira, we added a Kan button board directly.

[Kara Swisher]

To the workspace, keeping all of our.

[Graham De Goney]

Work in a single organized space. Wow, that was fast. The stars have aligned. Let's ship it from Idea to Outcome. Miro's Innovation Workspace is your team's one.

[Kara Swisher]

Collaborative space for seamless, productive work.

[Graham De Goney]

Innovation belongs on the canvas. Innovation belongs on miro. Go to miro.com to find out how. That's miro.com.

[Kara Swisher]

Nerds. Support for this show comes from NerdWallet listeners. A new year is finally here. And if you're anything like me, you've got a lot on your plate. New habits to build, travel plans to make, recipes to perfect. Good thing our sponsor, NerdWallet is here to take one thing off your plate. Finding the best financial products, introducing NerdWallet's best of awards List your shortcut to the best credit cards, savings accounts and more. The nerds at NerdWallet have done the work for you, researching and reviewing over 1100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a balance transfer card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that. How about a bank account with the top rate to hit your savings goals? They've got a winner for that too. Now you can know you're getting the best financial products for your specific needs without having to do all that research by yourself. So let NerdWallet do the heavy lifting for your finances this year and head over to their 2025 Best of Awards at NerdWallet.com awards to find the best financial products today. So to explain how the program works, you said earlier you have to have a bell to bell approach. We talk about that idea. It has to be the entire day, no lunch break, break, et cetera, et cetera.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, well, in the early days. So we would help a teacher who reached out and said, I need support for my classroom. What we found out really quickly was when you did that, you know, you have, it falls to the level of classroom management. So some teachers are going to be strict, some are going to be lenient. Almost invariably though, over time they'd be worn down and the policy would just kind of float away and disintegrate.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Graham De Goney]

So what we found is also the benefits of home free school day. It's not just in the classroom and distractions. It's in passing, period. It's not having kids filming other kids and posting it to the Internet in the locker room. It's things we hear even now from schools about kids eating more at lunch because they're not afraid of being filmed and recorded. So we realized that bell to bell, you had to take kind of a holistic approach and go for it in order to give the benefits not just to students, but also to teachers who are leaving the profession in huge numbers largely because of the working environment.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. And it's actually harmful. It's not just in the classroom. There's, there's research showing that. How harmful they are in the entire learning environment.

[Graham De Goney]

Exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. So what's the cost? What do schools pay and how does it get paid for?

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, it's $30 per student for the program. So it's a purchase. It's not a recurring cost for them. But that comes with everything I talked about, which Is all the hardware, all the setup that helps them. Every student is assigned a pouch, kind of like a textbook at the beginning of the year. We also have our unlocking mechanism set up by all the exits and in the office and mobile unlocking mechanisms. But the is more than half of what we provide and that is every time we launch a large district, we help them go phone free. It's kind of like a mini campaign. And so if a district comes to us and they say hey, we want 100,000 pouches in two weeks, our answer is that's great, we're happy to help you. But have you done this? Have you talked to your community? Have you answered their questions? Have you talked to students? Have you kind of walked through all the checklists? And we kind of force districts to do that so that we know they're ready to go in the. And they're kind of sitting around corners.

[Kara Swisher]

A bit and do they buy new pouches for students each year if they need them.

[Graham De Goney]

But usually they'll buy a little bit of an overage just like they'll do for Chromebooks or whatever else.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, right. Whatever else they're doing isn't that thing. So you just released a white paper with research that shows an increase in academic performance for schools that started using pouches. I've heard anecdotally that from teachers. Talk us through your. Obviously it's in your interest to show this but talk about your research. And it's certainly something I've heard from teachers and over again, no question.

[Graham De Goney]

I mean, and by, you know, by the end of this, this, this school year we're going to have a lot more because we partnered with a lot of different universities for studies in districts and statewide rollouts. So we'll, we'll know a lot more. But we've been hearing for years we get information from districts and schools that launch about wild reduction in behavioral issues and fights like a reduction of 50% within two or three weeks. Improved academic performance, better teacher retention, all the stuff you kind of expect to see. But we've been seeing kind numbers from these districts for a while. And then we also, we try to get survey questions from parents and from students wherever we can. And one of the surprising things, and this goes back longer than you'd expect, this is five or six years. We've known for a while that even students who initially don't like the concept, they will admit to you privately, not around their friends, that after a month or so they actually enjoy being in a phone free school and they actually, they Feel less anxious in general.

[Kara Swisher]

Right? No, I've talked to a lot of students about it. They do like it. They are annoyed by it initially and then they like it. It's sort of a freedom thing in a weird way. I want to get to tech companies being against this but I mean obviously they do a lot of attempting to whitewash what they're doing. But I'm sorry, I'll use the term addictive. They're selling addictive devices. But you said some of your resistance comes from parents and some of them want to stay in touch with their kids and don't want to give that up. This is an issue. I've heard teachers complain about this too, that parents text and call during class, even monitor the kids screens remotely. Talk about how parents are pushing back here. Cause it's a smaller group but it certainly exists and they're quite loud I would say in the schools I've been involved in.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, I mean again I only know.

[Kara Swisher]

That cause I have to give speeches to the parents and I'm like, you need to fucking back down. Like you strange helicopter people anyway going go ahead.

[Graham De Goney]

Oh look, I get it. And that's changed a lot over the years as well. Whereas when we would go to launch, let's say in a wealthier area this might have been three or four years ago, those areas particular parents could get very prickly about the idea of access to their student throughout the school day. So that has changed where now we've run into that far, far, far less because again the zeitgeist has kind of turned. But one thing we always try to do is we try to take, take that concern that the average parent has about watching their kids scrolling TikTok endlessly and watching them become more socially disengaged and worried about what is their education going to be like, what are they going to grow up to be? And we try to tie that to. All right, what can we practically do to affect that? It's a huge nebulous problem affecting people of all ages across society. And our kind of what we say is, well, we can affect the six to eight hours today they're in school and giving them a break from that. And here's what a phone free school does and here's how it bumps up against your concerns. But also just trying to paint a picture that when a parent is calling or texting their student through the day, what is that doing to the learning environment? What does that mean for the teacher? And trying to paint that in vivid terms because they don't always Necessarily get that right off the bat.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure, absolutely. But some parents are using the excuse of safety. New York City announced the cell phone ban and then backtracked in part because they got complaints from parents who weren't able to reach kids during a lockdown, which is an unfortunate, increasingly common event. Most security experts think this is nonsense. You want the kids to focus on staying safe, not texting, even if it makes for a dramatic story sometimes when they're reporting these terrible incidents. But how do you address that fear of parents? They've got to, if there's a lot, you know, if this happens, talk about that, the safety issue. Because there are certain things that happen, even if they're rare, that parents worry about locating their kids.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, no, you're right. And that's something in the pre planning for a launch, that's something we always encourage districts to do. And a lot of them now, actually it's the director of safety and security in the district that's helping bring yonder in. And usually they'll enlist local law enforcement to talk to parents and answer questions around emergency response and explain, like you said, why students are not safer in an emergency. It's also important for parents to know that the students have possession of their devices at all time when yonder's being used. So if they have to evacuate or they're in lockdown, they can unlock them in that class and have access to them, which is really important. So those are all kind of things that we encourage the district to be proactive in talking to parents, going, hey, in an emergency, here's the communication plan, here's how we will contact you. And just be really explicit about that because as you know, in today's day and age, like people's immediate response to things like that, and for good reason, I mean, I have a kid is visceral and kind of emotional and you have to walk people through the trade offs, which is true in all aspects of modern society. You can have, let's say, to use another different example, you can have CCTV on every corner in London and you can make an argument that makes people safer. There's also a profound trade off in terms of privacy. Absolutely.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. It's really interesting to think about that argument and you totally understand why it's completely emotional. Your kid's not in school yet though, right? Correct. You have a younger kid.

[Graham De Goney]

Oh yeah, he's two and a half.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, he'll be in school. So some kids also have started to resist them. There's a change.org petitions against yonder pouches. One said he understood the use of pouches in class but quote, completely confiscating them all day seems excessive and disregards their role in a crucial communications tools. They want to use their phones at lunch, talk to each other. What is your best argument to kids? I think kids like it, most of them. Some of them don't. But what's your argument to kids? You know, this is my freedom, this is my thing, this is my social life, et cetera. Etc.

[Graham De Goney]

Well, part of it is we never try to win a cool contest with kids coming into school. We try to explain why it's important, the benefits so that they can hopefully grasp onto those as they get used to being in a film free school. But we're not going to try to win a cool contest. And it's part of kids job to push back against things that other people are kind of their principal or their superintendent or their parents are dictating. I can appreciate that, that. But a big goal for me honestly is this again, digital natives. They were born into a world. It's almost part of a little bit of a thought experiment of what it's going to be like to navigate the online world. I'm not big into telling people what to do or what to think, but I felt like it's my generation's responsibility as a crossover generation to give them at least a frame of reference and a perspective of the difference between those two worlds. So. So when they're in there they can understand and maybe it will give them a perspective on hey, how do I feel about spending this much time online? And that can drive cultural change over time. And that's also where the artist side of what we do plays because a lot of young people go to those shows and it's to me, stepping into a big concert experience where you're phone free is a sense of freedom and adventure for a young person.

[Kara Swisher]

Even if you can't record it right exactly.

[Graham De Goney]

In a way that you can't get through the mediated world of online, you know, interactions.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, there is a pull to record it. Right. Like if you're Taylor Swift concert, whoever concert you happen to be at, there's a pull to do it. She did not have them. She did not have Yonder Pouches, which was interesting. I think she wanted those photos everywhere. And it was a different experience. It was a stadium experience, which is different.

[Graham De Goney]

I guess we do stadiums too. But of course I agree with you. I mean I would love to do tours like that.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. You'd like to? Yeah. I don't Think she wanted it? I'm just recalling. Yeah, but every week we ask an outside expert question. We got two questions for you, just so you know. Here's the first. And we thought it was important to have two different types of questions. Let's hear the first one. I'm Dr. Shamice Taylor, and I have.

[Graham De Goney]

Been a middle school principal for over two decades. There is an entire generation of children that has only known life with cell.

[Kara Swisher]

Phones at the middle school level level.

[Graham De Goney]

I've observed that students are often not.

[Kara Swisher]

Developmentally ready to consume and process the vast amount of information to which they are exposed daily. While I am a proponent of limiting.

[Graham De Goney]

Cell phone use for middle schoolers, I also understand the value and importance of teaching children how to use these powerful devices responsibly. The big question I would ask Graham.

[Kara Swisher]

Is how does yonder balance the need.

[Graham De Goney]

For limiting distractions in schools with the importance of teaching students responsible and mindful technology use?

[Kara Swisher]

All right, first, that one.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, that's a great question, I think, and we get that a lot. It comes down to the details a little bit. How do you think you're going to educate young people how to use these devices? Again, if you're asking the fish swimming in water about the water, that's not really a fair question. So to me, if you get down to how we're going to educate young people, if mostly technology to me, interacts with your nervous system. And so when you actually, when a student steps into school, their phone goes inside a pouch and it's in their pocket, they're going to be several times, especially in the first hour, where they have that phantom vibration they feel, they reach for it and then their hand touches the pouch and it gives you a chance to interrupt the impulse, that pathway that's been carved. And to me, if you do that repeatedly, what you're doing is you're breaking kind of the physiological tie and allowing a new habit and pattern to form. So at that level, I think the physical separation and boundaries is one of the best ways to deal with the influence of the role of technology, because that's how it operates. It's very difficult to just attack it at the world of rational ideas, because that's not really how it works. The other is as you go in and educating kids about a phone free space and giving them the experience, to me, that has a chance of making a much deeper imprint on them and giving them perspective about the way technology, not just phones and the Internet, but TV and other things, things are part of their daily life. So the details about how to educate kids I think are really important, but you can't. It's very hard to have that conversation in a meaningful way while they're fully inundated with it.

[Kara Swisher]

So we have a second question that's absolutely true. I think there are ways to teach them without having to be there. We didn't have television on all the time in school. Was a very good answer. All right. Sometimes we did. All right, let's move to our second expert question.

[Graham De Goney]

Hi, this is Jonathan Haidt. I'm a professor at New York University.

[Kara Swisher]

And author of the Anxious Generation.

[Graham De Goney]

My question for Graham is this.

[Kara Swisher]

Yonder pouches clearly work. The schools that use them are reporting great results. But my daughter and other young people tell me that you just go on YouTube, you find five different ways to.

[Graham De Goney]

Crack open the pouches. And so some kids still do have access to their phones during the day. What is yonder doing? What will you be doing to improve security going forward? Thanks.

[Kara Swisher]

I love that one. All right, talk to Jonathan. Kids are always so clever. How do you fix that?

[Graham De Goney]

They are. And it's part of their. Honestly, it's part of their job. And we're not naive. We know that. We know certain students are going to bring a burner phone and put it in the pouch and they're going to put it in their sock. So at one level we know that and we talk to schools about that. And part of the policy and having everyone on board and parents is when a student is seen with a phone inside the school, everyone knows what happens next. And there's no ambiguity about it. But in terms of product itself, look, we're moving as quickly as we can to try to keep up and be ahead of kids in terms of improving the product strength and durability and being clever about how it's designed.

[Kara Swisher]

But maybe you hire those kids like you white hat hackers or something.

[Graham De Goney]

We've talked about it, definitely. But it is the social pressure and the idea that is the most important because again, if you go to a large show, we'd done Fenway park with Bill Burren. If you're going back in the nosebleeds, it's not the pouch that's holding that phone free space together. It's the social psychology and the shared belief that this is important. And that's something I never want to lose sight of by creating a Fort Knox type of pouch because in a way that would send a really weird message to kids, right?

[Kara Swisher]

Which is you're not going to crack this thing or you're not this is. Yeah, they're going to want to try to do it rather than stop being an asshole, leave it alone kind of.

[Graham De Goney]

Thing compared to exactly everyone else. And my hope is down the road that kids will start to go, you know what? Hey, get off your phone. Let's have fun together. That would be ideal.

[Kara Swisher]

So do you have the same problems with concerts? Do people try to get into them in some ways? Take pictures or things like that? They can also get removed from the theater in that regard or whatever they happen to be at.

[Graham De Goney]

Oh, of course. Yeah, of course they can be. I mean, everything is very explicit. So if someone is seen with their phone out at a show, everyone knows that they shouldn't be doing that. And usually it's the people right around them in the crowd who are shaming them and pointing them out, going, hey, you know, don't be an asshole. This is a phone free show. We're all having fun, right? But honestly, it really depends on the show and the artist. If you're doing a Friday night show with the Joe Rogan crowd in some part of the world, that pouch is going to have a little bit different life than a Bob Dylan show in Madrid on a Wednesday, you know?

[Kara Swisher]

Right, right, right. Meaning which one are you implying is more.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

Loose. Let me guess.

[Graham De Goney]

Exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

But you don't, do you? Do you see people ripping them apart or cutting them or. Sure, you probably see everything.

[Graham De Goney]

Of course you see everything. I mean, you know, large shows, people. People are crazy.

[Kara Swisher]

But.

[Graham De Goney]

But it's been really cool to see over time. We track, you know, how many pouches we lose here and there, and it's gone steadily down, down, down. And I think that's partly the normalization of the concept and people's understanding that this is a positive thing. And we go through great lengths to try to have those conversations with people as they enter and kind of put them at ease because that's important.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be back in a minute.

[Graham De Goney]

Foreign.

[Kara Swisher]

With Carol Swisher comes from Indeed. It's a couple weeks into the new year, but you might still be looking to hire that open position from 2024. It's time to get that spot filled and start your 2025 off right with the help of Indeed.

[Graham De Goney]

Wait, you have another podcast? I'm sorry.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Graham De Goney]

This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Sometimes the most painful part of getting sick is the getting better part. Waiting on hold for an appointment, sitting in crowded waiting rooms, standing in line at the pharmacy. That's painful. Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy remove those painful parts of getting better with things like 247 virtual visits and prescriptions.

[Kara Swisher]

Delivered to your door.

[Graham De Goney]

Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful.

[Kara Swisher]

So I want to ask you very quickly about Kids online Safety or COSA, the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Acts or COPPA 2. Two bills that aim to protect kids online. Both are not without their controvers. You're not a policymaker, but Yonder has lobbied lawmakers and you obviously thought about these issues. What is your take on these legislative efforts to curb tech companies access to kids? I had an interview with Amy Klobuchar, who is one of the people working on these things. Talk a little bit about that on the higher level of protection of kids.

[Graham De Goney]

You know, we've been pulled into some of these conversations because there's a lot of legislative moves are being made in states and districts are going, hey, we want to go foam free. They reach out to us to figure out how do we do it, what does that actually look like. But in terms of regulation, it's interesting to see how quickly it's developing and I think it's obviously necessary. I think I've always pushed on the cultural aspect of things, because I think in a way that moves faster and might have, in a way, a deeper and broader impact on young people is how do you motivate them to want to kind of choose a life maybe that's a little less online and seek out these different experiences and change the way to balance. Balance about how much they put into the online world versus not. But I think it's positive and it's exciting to see how much groundswell there's been behind it. But I am a believer that in a way, when you're on the Internet, it's not so much if you're in the deep end or the shallow end. It's like once you're in the pool, you're getting wet. And so creating the juxtaposition between the two is the foundational lesson to try to teach young people.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, in that regard, though, phones aren't the only technology in schools. A vast majority of schools have laptops at schools, so many of them are mandated. That's a big phone. Right now there is software to restrict what sites and apps these kids can use, but they're resourceful. Is that. And some teachers do not like kids connected to the Internet the entire school day. Talk first about that and then also within these concert settings, more and more technology is on the body. Right. There's going to be more and more within glasses and all things like that.

[Graham De Goney]

Well, definitely. So at concerts in schools, when yonder's being used, all of that stuff goes inside the pouch together. So that's earbuds, that's wearable tech, that's glasses. So all of it goes in. But yeah, in terms of other devices in the classroom, it's interesting to see not that long ago, Finland, I think, has moved back to books and pen and paper. So these changes people are talking about, and I hear this from parents all the time, they're going, great. We're talking about the phone. What about this other digital curriculum happening in the classroom? Like you said, a lot of these labs, laptops, are monitored with different software. But like you also said, students are resourceful, so it's going to be interesting to see where it goes. The thing that I'm interested in is, especially with the AI and things like that is going, what's really important for young people in education, I think, is mostly developing critical thinking faculties.

[Kara Swisher]

Absolutely.

[Graham De Goney]

And so when you think about the type of assignments they're getting, the tools at their disposal, I think the risk is that young kids are becoming information retrieval machines. And that's not critical thinking. And no matter where we think we're going as a society. Society.

[Kara Swisher]

Information retrieval systems.

[Graham De Goney]

Yes. Without that we're not going anywhere fast. And that's not necessarily a native faculty. It's a muscle that has to be flexed. So with a lot of tech, I view it that way as the foundation. Must be something like that. And that's maybe the concern.

[Kara Swisher]

Plus we're uploading our stuff to them in order to spit it back at us for us to go retrieve it. Stupid dogs. But talk about AI. Obviously it has a lot of teaching potential. And of course I'm not as obsessed with cheating with AI. I think kids have cheated since the beginning of time. It's just a new way to cheat. But a lot of schools are bringing generative AI in the classroom and will be. What happens in that situation when you just said that's a really smart idea, the information retrieval machines, this is even beyond that.

[Graham De Goney]

I think that's the thing that makes me highly, to be honest, pretty skeptical.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. An AI in a yonder path. Couch, let's just say.

[Graham De Goney]

But go ahead. No, this is a broad societal thing. I think we should approach it very carefully because to me that's the likely outcome is that it's going to be leaned on more and more and more heavily. Because if you're a kid sitting at home and you have your phone or you have AI at hand and you're given an assignment, what's more likely that you're going to put that away and critically think and go, what do I think about this? And draw on your body of experiences or are you going to lean on that? And I think that's already before AI. A knock on effect that's happened with the Internet and smartphones societally is kind of this idea that as people spend more time online and they pull out all these ideas and associations and amalgam of images offline, they're living in these kind of half baked ideas more than their own experience rooted in a community in the world. And it's kind of pulling at the social fabric and people's independent worldview. And I think that's more likely to continue to happen the more these disaggregated ideas are piled on top of each other.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, right. That's a really good way to put it. Now, as you noted, we talked a lot about kids, but many adults are obviously addicted to their phones. It's something I point out when I talk to school groups. It's like, let's look at the parents here. Cause you can't tell kids not to Be addicted when you yourself have the problem. And I will use the term addicted, as I said, but people get home, they doom scroll. I do it. It's a version of television for me. I guess you have a tray that you sell, that you put things on. Explain where you go. This, this is a signal blocking tray that you use at home. Talk a little bit about that, about that idea of what more products you could have rather than just, oh, turn off your phone because people can't seem to do that.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, of course. And again, that idea of how do you create new habits around something that's so ubiquitous and also tied up so foundationally in the basic. More and more, almost in a disturbing way, the foundational infrastructure of day to day life and society. Like, like that's a broader question I'm interested in that's not being looked at a lot is the need to have a smartphone to navigate the basic necessities of daily life.

[Kara Swisher]

But, well, it's necessary for work too, so.

[Graham De Goney]

It is. Absolutely. And it's a little bit of game theory in there. You know, everyone's kind of running faster to stay in the same place. But we're in a lot of other spaces in addition to schools and concerts. Like we're in warehousing facilities, work facilities, courtrooms, all different kind of spaces. So part of the idea I think is normalizing that concept and then people can hopefully adapt that to their own needs, especially in the home. So for us, the home tray is something like that. It's something that can become part of people's daily ritual. You come home from work, it's dinner time, all the kids, everyone throws their devices inside the home tray. You shut it, it can be locked if you want. Most people don't. It's more about what it symbolizes. You've moved from your workday where it's about efficiency and that kind of work a day mentality into something that is built around not efficienc efficiency. It's around family time. And the, you know, the signal blocking thing is important to me because of privacy, I think without a basic, you know, and that's something, you know, how important that is without privacy.

[Kara Swisher]

My son calls me and I stopped taking pictures and he called me a sharrant. That ended it. I stopped taking. I stopped. That's what he did and that's all it took. But go ahead, go ahead.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah, just the idea that the ideas of tech companies listening and mining people's data and tracking people, I just fundamentally don't like. And as a company, company look, we don't have social media, we don't do paid advertising. And that's part of the reason I think it's. People are bombarded with enough stuff, it just becomes so derivative, you know.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. So they just. And just turning off the phone during dinner doesn't work because signal blocking is Exactly. You know, I know people have these a little bit of conspiracy theories that everybody's listening all the time, but they're listening a little bit. They certainly are. By your usage, you're being tracked. I'm like, you're being tracked like an animal all the time. You don't understand how quickly you've been tracked. As opposed to being on a. When you were on a laptop, they knew you went from website to website. Now they know what directions you asked for, where you stopped, where you had coffee, where you had. It has a. It's astonishing how much information they're collecting about us that people don't understand. Or maybe they do.

[Graham De Goney]

I guess that's always. It seems to get people motivated to care about privacy in that way is hard for some reason or the other. Other. But I think looking at. Through another lens again at like a big show or a festival for a young person experiencing the world where you're. You're bumping into people, you have to find your friends. That's a sense of adventure and exploration where you're not being monitored or filtered. That I think maybe fuels the adventurous spirit this younger generation is going to have to have if they're going to find meaning in the world, you know.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. So you know, you started with some very important philosophers. You know Paul Virilio, he's my favorite of these philosophers. You should read him. He's a French philosopher. He said the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside the popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is why one of the gravest threats to democracy. It's one of the greatest threats to democracy in the near future. It is an imperative to develop a democratic technological culture. And he predicted in a 1994 interview that virtuality will destroy reality, which was an astonishing thing. I'd love you to talk about your most realistic version of utopian vision for how to change our relationship with phones. You have a two year old son. I think about it a lot with my four kids to talk about these choices and affecting them. I was very happy my two older sons took social media off their phones by themselves. I didn't do it, they used YouTube and Reddit, which neither of which I consider social media mostly for consumption of tv, essentially, which I feel okay with. I watch television, they watch it on YouTube. Talk about your most utopian vision given. And do you get a lot of pushback from tech companies in doing this?

[Graham De Goney]

Well, thanks for sharing that quote, by the way. That's a great question. I'll send it to you. Yeah, it's great. And some of the. When I'm not to get off track, but when I moved to San Francisco, I got to know Hubert Dreyfus, who was one of the original critics of artificial intelligence. And then I actually got to know Albert Borgman, who is a philosopher of technology in Montana, like a Heidegger protege. And these people, like you said, people have been thinking about this for a while, a long time. So I think when it comes to phones or future society, what that looks like. I don't think there's ever going to be a utopian. I can't tell you, or I don't think anyone can, what exactly good looks like. I think the best we can do is try to, in civil society and as a culture, try to understand where we're at now and try to deflect ourselves on a slightly better path, you know, And I think that's. That's what I'm trying to do, and I think a lot of people are trying to do. But I do think that I believe we are living in the. The age of the technological understanding of man, like as an epic, you know, and there have been other epics in the past. And I think we're starting to realize, and people feel deep down in a nihilistic kind of way that that's not necessarily working for us and that if everything in your life is built around efficiency, it has a way of hollowing out the meaning in your life. So I guess the thing that's important.

[Kara Swisher]

To call it seamless, the tech people, you know that they call it friction, lack of friction. Seamless. That's the word they love to use.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah. And it violates to me that idea that if we make everything so easy, we'll have all this time to do all the things we want to do. It kind of violates human nature. I don't see it mirrored anywhere in the natural world. It's more like idle hands do the devil's work kind of thing, right?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Graham De Goney]

Yeah. So to me, I think the thing that's important is in Albert Borman's concept of this, is this idea of focal thinking things, carving out space for things where the process of doing them is bound up with the meaning of it, like biking, gardening, hiking. And I always ask people, if you think about the things you absolutely enjoy doing most in your life, if you then apply the idea of doing it faster, quicker, easier, cheaper, does that concept even make sense? And almost invariably the answer is no, because those things are not enhanced by that process. And I think those things are what ground people and root them in their life. And those. If I think about a future society, my hope is that the weight of people, what people care about, what they value, shifts more towards that than just things.

[Kara Swisher]

So how, let me the final question. How does that happen? Right now? These billionaires who are richer than ever, richer than ever by a factor of double Elon Musk, $400 billion, Mark Zuckerberg huge, 30, $40 billion richer in the past month, essentially they have enormous unlimited power. They're cozying up to power in Washington now. They've invaded Washington. They follow, by the way, Graham, and I'm very upset by that. But what do you say to them? Because they have unlimited, unprecedented power. And now Mark Zuckerberg is removing the guardrails completely. It's all out there now. Yonder is a company with a pouch that has seams. They want seamlessness so that they can run everything. I think it's pretty safe to say at this point. What do you say to them? And do they resist what you're doing?

[Graham De Goney]

Well, I don't know. I think maybe there's a fundamental disconnect about the belief of where the future is going, you know, and this tech utopian idea, like I mentioned, that, you know, we're all going to have smart homes. And to my mind, that some people think, oh, that's going to be great, we'll have all this time to do everything. To me it's more like, what's the point of that? That we can become passive jelly inside our active homes. But I would say it's not about those people to me necessarily. It's about, it's about young people and about society at large. What do people want? We live in an economy that's becoming largely service based and information movers and convenience oriented. And convenience based, yeah. Does this younger generation want to have jobs where they sit in front of a computer all day and move information around, or are they going to want something else? And to me, a lot of that is driven not just by regulation, but by culture, cultural changes of what people want and simplicity and hopefully some element of going back to nature. So the idea that powerful people want to control stuff and make a ton of money. That's as old as time, you know that. So I think it's about trying to get people to realize maybe that when you step into a phone free space or what that represents, it's a choice. It's not just a choice of being in that space. It's opening a window for a different lifestyle, you know, for choosing how you control your time and the way your mind thinks. Because once you enter the online world, you know, all bets are are off.

[Kara Swisher]

Yep, 100%. Graham, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I think it's just a pouch, but I think it's a great, it's a bigger idea than that and it's critically important for people to be thinking that way. I appreciate it.

[Graham De Goney]

Thank you, Kara. I really enjoyed it.

[Kara Swisher]

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Kristen Castro, Roselle, Kateri Yocum, Jolie Meyers, Megan Birney and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a special key to unlock your yonder pouch. If not, be like the Swisher boys and take social media off your cell phones. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York Method Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.