← Scrolling 2 Death
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Scrolling to Death. This is the first episode I'm recording in 2026. I can't wait to bring you this conversation with Emily Churkin, the screen time consultant. But first, I have a pretty big update. Episodes of Scrolling to Death will look a little bit different for the next two months. I will be putting all of my energy into a major jury trial, which starts January 27th. This is a trial about social media platforms addicting children. Thousands of families have sued meta snap, TikTok and YouTube for engineering products that keep our children hooked. And the allegations are that they lied to us about it harming thousands or if not millions of children in the process. The jury will have to decide if social media is in fact addictive to young people. I'm going to be bringing parents into the courtroom telling you exactly what's happening behind the scenes, what the CEOs are saying when they testify. I will be giving you a play by play with the goal of empowering parents like us to make safer choices at home, but also to mobilize us beyond our homes to unify our voices against companies whose business models are harming kids and demand that they do better. So please keep an eye out for the Heat is on Big Tech on Trial. This is a miniseries on Scrolling to death in partnership with Heat Initiative. The first episode drops January 26, with weekly episodes to recap what is happening inside the courtroom and what it means for parents everywhere. Because the outcome of this trial, it could literally change everything. Now let's get into my chat with Emily Cherkins.
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One of the things I think that is so confusing still among lawmakers is that there is the lack of understanding of the difference between the screens that kids bring in personally, like phones and watches, and the screens that schools are providing. And I think that's a mistake to see them as separate things.
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B
And so did you see this graphic today? It has banned and then required.
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A
Yes, that's what I keep saying this like. It's so ridiculous that we're going to go to all this trouble to ban iPhones from school and then give them iPads and tell them to behave differently and like, you know, use it responsibly. It has to be all of it. And again, I go back to what I say all the time about the business model. It's the same. It's the same companies. It's ed tech as big tech in a sweater vest.
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B
It's the same. I already wrote the title of this episode as Ed Tech is Big Tech. Because Ed tech is Big Tech is
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A
Like the shortened version.
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Yeah.
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You don't even need the sweater vest part.
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No.
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We're losing the sweater vest. Yeah.
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B
Right.
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A
Well, especially because in the UK they call. It's hilarious. They call them jumpers. And like a jumper here doesn't matter. I.
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B
You kind of have to be like,
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okay, wait, but for you guys, I've had to say school uniform.
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Yeah.
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It's so funny. It's totally different.
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So for parents listening, we are talking about ed tech, which we. I want to get into more. And there's a really exciting opportunity. You've gotten to go to D.C. this week to testify in the Senate, and we're going to talk about that. But I, I did ask for parent questions because I thought this would be a good opportunity to roll through those. And I got a lot and I'm, I tried to lump them together, but are you good to just jump into those?
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Let's jump.
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Okay. Okay. A parent asks, is there a link between screen time and literacy decline?
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Yes. Read Jared's book. All the research is there. Yeah. I mean, yes is the short answer. And it, and it's more complicated in the how and why that's happening. But again, even that question is that parent asking about home screen use, school use. Right. Because somehow we're connecting this to like, well, screens are bad for kids at home, but here we're just, like you said, we're just gonna keep putting em in hands at school.
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B
Yeah. That's interesting. I think as we talk about it going forward, we should stop differentiating and just being like, screen time is screen time is screen time. You know, and there is that ABCD that I always think about. By the by nih, with the brain scans showing like the changes in white matter in the frontal cortex. So kids who are on screens a lot, period, read later, have literacy decline. Like, these are some of the results. And we're actually seeing that in our brain scans.
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A
And one of the things I think so interesting about literacy, and I mean, this was like a recent aha moment for me, is like, literacy is not just the ability to read. It's the ability to make meaning of what you read. And so you might like physically, physically be able to read the, the letters and the words, but if you can't interpret meaning from them, that is dangerous.
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Yeah, I, I think I read too. When that happens to the brain, a result could be like forming thoughts and communicating your ideas, which is like, literally. You definitely need that for anything.
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Society. Yeah, no, that's. To me, that, that's the through line and if we're just going to jump right into what I'm most worried about, it is a threat to democracy. Because if you have people who can read words but not make meaning from them or not understand satire or irony or even just straight up why a risk might impact them if it's being written about someone else, that is deeply worrisome. Right. That is not an informed citizenry. And we need people who are informed to be making decisions for all of us. This is a nonpartisan issue, and I think you've experienced this, too, that, like, there are so many people from so many different groups. I don't think that the Screen Time issue, the Screen Time challenge, whatever you want to call it, it isn't a partisan issue, at least not right now. And I really hope it stays that way. I think there are different ideas about how we solve the problem, but I think we are at a moment in time where there's a pretty wide consensus that this is bad for kids. That's a victory.
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B
Yeah. And that's been interesting, tackling that with parents who are more willing now to act and push back on these companies. And there was a recent pet about Grok AI, like undressing children and babies. And Ultraviolet is a group that I think is uber liberal. And. But they had a petition that was really great. And so I shared the petition, have some conservative people being like, I don't want to share, or I don't want to sign a petition from the. But then there's also petitions from super conservative groups on the same exact. Asking for the same exact thing. So that is an example that, like, it's across parties.
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A
And we. We. Here's. Here's a great opportunity for literacy. We might want to stop and think about why we let that divide affect us, because who does that benefit? It benefits the tech companies.
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B
Right? No. Right. You don't have to agree on everything to agree on something.
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It's not a purity test. It's not a checklist of, you have to know in order to support this measure or this issue or agree that it's a problem, you don't have to agree on all the other checklist items. Totally. In fact, we don't want to agree with everyone on everything. And maybe not that this needs to get into, like, a deep philosophical. But I do really believe that's what the heart of this is, is, is a fight for our future democratic institutions and how we solve problems. Wow.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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Okay, next question. And this is jumping around a little on purpose, and I kind of like that because this is our theme. Like that's just all screen time issues. So a parent asks, how do I handle my kids friends having access to games that are older age rated but still enforce age ratings at home for her, her 10 year old.
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A
This is one of the things that I talked about in the testimony last week, is that, you know, parents can be doing everything right. You can never let your kid touch a screen or device until they go to school or a friend's house and then all bets are off. You know, they're giving an iPad at kindergarten or their friend has Roblox on their iPad at their house. So, you know, this is where parents are being put in a position that is untenable and extremely difficult. And for younger children in particular, you know, and this is how do we decide what does younger mean? I mean, honestly, I think below 13, at the bare minimum, it would still count as young children. That is gonna be conversations with your child from a values perspective and what's okay, not okay in our house and in our family, but also having to have these broader conversations with other parents. You know, like, hey, I'm really concerned about this. I mean, this is awful. But it has been true since I started saying this a few years ago. It's not a question of if your kids are going to see bad stuff, it's when. So you have to start having those conversations much earlier than we probably wanted to, you know, and we want to be the ones giving them that information about what can happen and what to do when that happens so that we can help equip our kids. But, you know, you can only control what goes on in your own house. And that's really a tragedy. Well, I mean, it's good, but it's a tragedy in terms of social dynamics. Right? Your child wants to go to a friend's house, but they're playing video games that are more higher age rating.
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B
I want to dig a little bit into your comment, like what does young child mean anymore? Because I think I hear a lot like, you give your kid a smartphone and they lose their childhood or their childhoods. And there's been this morning at my workout, a dad is talking about how eight year olds who have phones are getting each other's numbers and asking to be boyfriend and girlfriend. And I just thought, whoa, like that's too young for that. Too young for them to be communicating privately like that.
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And, and here's another anecdote that will show you the horrors of this juxtaposition. Middle school students who are still losing baby teeth still Losing baby teeth.
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Oh, God.
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Making sex noises in class, moaning and groaning and imitating what they see and hear. So you have literally baby teeth falling out while they're at the same time making these adult noises and experiences.
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Yeah. So protecting their childhood by not exposing them to these things is really important. And you can't control everything, but doing your best with what. Yep.
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Yeah. And. And you know, when we talk about childhood too, if we want to talk just from a brain development standpoint, I mean, the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed till we're in our 20s or even 30 years old. So if you want to talk about what is childhood from a brain development standpoint, 25. That's not what we think of. That's not what we're talking about. You know, we're thinking like, oh, 10 or 12. But you know, again, there is a reason that teenagers and young adults do impulsive and stupid things and we all did it. And that's because our brains weren't fully developed. So it's risky when you hand still developing brains, tools or toys or whatever you want to call them that are not good for them.
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Yeah. Ups the stakes a lot.
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Yeah.
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Okay, next question is about Alpha school, which I will love, I would love for you to describe briefly, but so someone says Alpha school is infiltrating public schools via the Department of Education. I don't know if you know anything about this, but what can they do to stop it? Do you have thoughts?
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A
Well, I don't know about that specifically, but I would say EdTech has already been in or Big Tech has already infiltrated education. That's what ed tech is. And so, you know, Alpha schools just add that to the list of hundreds or thousands of companies and platforms that are already in public education trying to take it over. I get very angry about what I see as being done to public education. I mean, I'm a proponent of it, I believe in it, and I know there are a lot of challenges. But that also means they're vulnerable to well funded solutions that aren't necessarily what's in the best interest of kids or teachers for that matter. So I would say, you know, from a parent side, the resistance piece is very important in public education. And to me that starts with asking questions. I mean, I always say replace judgment with curiosity. You have to start by asking questions, know what your kids are using. I think a lot of parents are not clued in to the extent of what their children are doing on school issued devices. And again, not because their kids are doing things on purpose to be naughty, you know, or bad or they're children, their brains are not fully developed, as we just said. And so having those conversations is key. But I also think we have to advocate more assertively is what I would say. You know, I advocate for opting out where possible, but I can't tell you how many parents have said, well, I can't. You know, the school says you can't opt out of curriculum, you can't opt out of testing. To which I say, let's, let's explore this a little bit. Like, I'm not opting out of curriculum. Right. This is one thing Andy Liddell of Ed Tech Law center always says is like, you're not opting out of curriculum. You're opting out of data mining and surveillance and the Internet. Like, you know, again, YouTube comes up all the time, right? Because so many kids have access to YouTube at school, even if YouTube is blocked, by the way, because they're accessing it through Google Classroom. Right. You know, you can get embedded YouTube links. They're accessing TikTok videos through Pinterest. I mean, there's all kinds of ridiculous ways that kids find the workaround because they're super savvy. But you know, YouTube's own terms of service say that users have to be 13 or older. So to me, right there, no school has any business providing YouTube to any child below 13, but they all do. So I mean, that's just one like narrow thing that I think parents can take back and say, well, how do you justify this?
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B
Yeah, I'm, I've just been encouraged by parents. A parent reached out to me today actually, and her child is entering kindergarten and she's already trying to get ahead of this and she's saying, maybe I can get a doctor's note to exempt her from all. And I said, try it. You know, I've heard people do that. That didn't work, but we want to try everything, right?
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A
Yeah, and, and two things about that. I'm also hearing a lot of preschool age parents starting to ask these questions before they're entering mainstream school, which is amazing. Kindergarten teacher told me that for the first time ever at pre K kindergarten nights, parents are asking about screen time. That's different and that's great. The problem with doctor's notes or getting special exemptions or some parents who try to get like IEPs and 504s about screen stuff. And while I understand the strategy, one of the challenges is it then does undermine it for the kids who really do need accommodations Right. Like, I don't want this to be the exception. Right. That opting out is the exception. No child should be opted in unless it is because of a diagnosed very specific learning need. And that is going to be such a small percentage of students that it won't look anything like what schools currently look like.
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B
Yeah. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about the. So beyond the one to one? Because I'm also hearing from parents who are like, I'm more. I'm also worried about the smart boards and the gonoodle, like the, the teachers showing all of this stuff and it going on in the background. So can you speak on that?
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A
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny because I agree with so many of the people in the edtech activism space on so many things and I think one area where not everyone is on it's not that we disagree, but where I expand this definition of edtech further is it's not just student facing. You know, a lot of people will say, oh, it's just student facing products that are the problem. But I don't agree with that because first of all, the products kids are using have a teacher side. Right. So it's not like it's one side of that same platform. Right. That is being accessed or used by the teacher is also being used by the student. The other thing is that again, I go back to like, just because we can doesn't mean we should. Like what? And it's funny, I remember when smart boards were added when I was teaching in the classroom. This is back in like 2012, 13, they were piloting some of these like smart boards and I remember them putting it in and I was like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen because it's literally a whiteboard, but it's on a screen. Like I'm doing the exact same thing. But it's not. The advantage that I was told at that time was I could take my notes from the board and it would save them as a document.
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Right.
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In a file. But like, I didn't need to save all that. Like sometimes I was just scribbling notes, like vocabulary words or things that we were talking about. Like, you don't have to save everything digitally. Plus, if I wanted to go back and access that, that meant I'm spending more time in my computer looking at stuff. I'd much prefer to have those notes on a piece of paper. Right. Or, you know, if I really wanted to save it, I'd put it in a handout and give it to my students. So to me, I don't think the benefits justify the costs. That's kind of the biggest part of this. It's just, to me, it's just a gigantic waste of resources for very little benefit.
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B
Right, okay. And you mentioned Jared Cooney Horvath's book and Digital Delusion. And everyone should get a copy. I'm digging for. I got a digital copy a while ago and now I'm like, excited to have the paper copy.
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Oh, yeah, I annotated the heck out of my copy.
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He's so amazing. I'm so happy to have him in our crew and just for parents everywhere to have access to him. And he breaks things down so. So clearly and simply, like, in a way anybody can understand. So I have a couple interviews with Jared, but that I. I bring him up because there was just lots of questions about, like, what can I do to help change the way my school district uses technology? So, like, to end with that, we've talked about it already, but what tips do you have for parents on that?
- [16:43]
A
Yeah, I mean, again, replace judgment with curiosity and start asking questions. I have an unplug edtech toolkit that has like a couple thousand downloads on it and there's a list of questions in there that parents can ask their schools. I think the other thing is we need to be more assertive about asking for the research that justifies why it's good because we're being asked to prove why it's bad. And I. I mean, pretty obviously bad. And we do have, you know, Jared's book is one example of a collection of that resource or research, but it isn't a net benefit. And, you know, one of the three parameters that, you know, in our activism space that we talk about all the time about any product, screen based product, you know, used by children, school or home, should meet three basic bare minimum requirements. And that is, is it effective? Is it safe? Is it legal? No, no and no currently for all three. So until the answer is yes to all three, none of these products should be in the hands of children. I would argue at home or at school. My activism is around school in particular, but that to me is a big one. I think the other final point I would make is just my first fish metaphor. Right? Like, this has been a lonely fight. I started asking questions in 2018. I mean, that's a long time ago. In this fight. When we look back at how much has changed, and I will say there were so many times I felt like the crazy one, the tin Hatter, you know, like just shouting into the void. Things are different today. And part of that is because other people are also speaking out. And so the metaphor I use about being a first fish is this school of fish swimming in the ocean. You know, how do you get it to change direction? Well, it takes one fish to peel away, but it actually takes a second and a third fish to follow before the entire school shifts. And of course, it's called Lula fish, which is just perfect for the metaphor. So sometimes what you're voicing as a parent, your concerns is what a lot of other parents are feeling but are afraid to speak up first. So it's actually the hardest part is being the first one, because once one person does it, others are going to follow for sure.
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B
Everyone's thinking it, but it's really scary to be that first person. I was, I feel like I was that first person. And it doesn't number on you, like if, especially if you're doing it alone. And I think that would be like my tip here too is like, find other families to go in with you from the start, if possible.
- [19:09]
A
Exactly. Yeah. And organizing around the country is happening at a totally different level, as you know, like, I mean, that's the good thing is there are groups all over doing this advocacy work. And I would love to see the merging of, you know, smartphone free childhood and phone free schools and you know, anti ed tech stuff. We're all fighting the same fight. We don't need to compete with each other. We're fighting for the same thing. And so finding a way to unify those efforts as well will make us that much more powerful.
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B
Okay, I want to move to what's happening in D.C. this week. And this will post just a few days after you testify in the Senate. So can you, can you tell parents what's happening?
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A
Yes. So senators on the. What is it? The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Technology and Transportation have invited a panel of us to come and speak on technology in childhood. So my specific ask, or the ask of me was in five minutes, please summarize the impact of technology on childhood. It's an exercise in brevity and is so much harder than an hour long speech. So it's going to be interesting. Well, this is being recorded before, but I feel like what I have to say captures some of the high level statistics. Right. I think sometimes just painting the picture includes the facts and then trying to draw the connection between, you know, like we were talking about earlier, like even though parents are trying to do everything right, you know, and we have work to do to Be clear, like, this isn't, you know, parents are not off the hook. We need help because there's not a lot parents are allowed to do. And that's probably, again, why it's so scary to confront our schools and our school boards, because we don't have a lot of power to make change. And, you know, if we were handing out fentanyl to kindergartners, like, I think people would be pretty upset by that. And yet we're essentially handing out drugs to children and then telling parents they can't complain, like, that's problematic.
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B
Schools who are supposed to trust provide safe experiences and safety.
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A
And I think that's one of the hardest things, is that I don't want this to undermine parental trust in education. And what I see is, like, some parents leave, and I'm one of my two kids. That's what we had to do. But I don't want that, you know, like, you know, I want public education to work for all. That's literally the purpose of it. And, you know, we should make it work for all.
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B
Yeah. It's fascinating. And that's a comment I get a lot just homeschool, just do this. And I. And I am. I'm leaving. I've already left public school, and we're. Now. We're in a charter, but then I'm going to do Waldorf because I'm like, I just.
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A
Even charters aren't without their problems on tech and Totally.
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B
And I had to opt out of the testing. And. Yeah. You know, obviously what you're saying is, like, 99% of parents, like, don't have that option, can't keep the kids home, can't afford the public, the private schooling. And so we need to. Yeah. Find a solution that is safe for everyone.
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A
And I also think this is something that I think, especially as women advocates in this area, you know, it's like, oh, well, you're gonna do that for your kids. And who are you to say? I don't know if you've gotten that. But, like, you know, the reality is we have the voice and the platform and the understanding of the problem in a way that we can speak about it. To try to. I'm not doing this for my kid. I'm doing this for everyone's kids. And it's like you do with. With what you have in the moment, you do the best you can, and that is going to look different for each.
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B
And it's so overwhelming, all consuming, distracting to have be. To be fighting that fight for my kids. And it's just my kids. So I need to settle them in somewhere safe. Yeah. And then fight the bigger fight. Like, I need the resources to fight this on a bigger scale.
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A
And you know, I was funny, I was thinking about this this morning, like, all of the tech executives. Okay, not all, because I don't know the exact fact, but I am guessing that a high percentage of tech executives send their own children. Not just that they themselves went through analog childhoods, but they are sending their own children right to these schools and to these private schools while they build products that are shoved into. I mean, private schools have ed tech too, but, like, primarily are going into public education. And so like, they are literally paying to operate these private schools while shoving. I mean, I know that's an obvious thing, but it kind of. It just blows my mind that, like, we're not making a bigger deal of this. Like, they know. They know and they act. They do something really different for their own kids. But our kids go to the public school to use the products they're making. I mean, again, that to me would be. You'd think that would have us all screaming out loud, but it's even worse
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B
for me than like social media executives not letting their kids use social media platforms because we're requiring kids to use it to get an education.
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A
I agree. I agree that the manipulation because of the expectation to use it for school is very different. Like, I mean, theoretically, parents can say no. Again, we've already established you can say no and do everything right and you still get your kid accessing stuff on friends devices. But like, you could be doing everything right and have the school coming in and doing the exact opposite or telling you you're. You have to do it.
- [24:18]
B
I know, and it's so I am grateful to see in this hearing because there's been so many hearings in on screen time, but this one really seemed to be prioritizing the ed tech conversation and bringing it into the main, like screen time conversation. Is that what you're getting from this?
- [24:32]
A
I hope. Yeah. I mean, again, that is what I'm hoping. And you know, in my. Well, this is retroactive. I know, sorry. I written my testimony to include references to the EdTech problem and the way in which this is not. Again, like we said in the beginning, this isn't a separate problem, it's the same problem. And I do think that some of the proposed legislation, like Kosma, which is Senator Cruz's bill, is connecting in my mind in a different way. The fact that kids are accessing social media content on social Media, school issue devices. Like, there's a link being made there between the smartphone personal phone problem and the edtech problem. And that's good in my mind to start that conversation.
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B
Right, okay. And I saw that. So the hearing is organized by Senator Cruz. He's the chair of that committee. Right.
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A
And Senator Cantwell, who's my Washington state senator, is the ranking member.
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B
Okay, awesome. And I. I looked up the Kids off Social Media act Cosma. So what I'm seeing is it keeps the age rating at 13 for social media, but potentially adds age gating. That it prevents social media companies from using algorithms to feed addictive content for kids under 17, and that it also blocks social media and other harmful content on federally funded school networks and devices. Did I get that right? Is there any clarification?
- [25:55]
A
Yeah, that's my understanding of the summary of it. And then I. I did read it closer, and there's all. There's always a few things because I value that people are trying to. I want to say that it can do more, just like many of the other bills out there. And I think one of the things that I'm learning in this experience is like, you know, I've done so much testimony at the local level. What federal. What the federal government can do about it is very different than what my local school board can do about it. Right. And so, you know, the metaphor again, I always use, is this like Jenga Tower? It's like we're pulling these pieces out from all over because bluntly, I am trying to dismantle the ed tech system as it currently stands. That is my goal. And not because I don't see a place for technology and education. I absolutely do. But as I say over and over again, educational technology is not the same thing as technology education. Tech ed is learning about technology. We need that more than ever. Kids need to know what an algorithm is. They need to know how to turn their computer on and off. I really think this is a really great experiment. And you could ask this of your followers. Oh, my God, how many? Okay, Nikki, how do you turn your computer off? Do you know how?
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B
Well, how about you ask me how. When was the last time I turned my computer off?
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A
There you go.
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B
Or a month ago, two months ago?
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A
I don't know exactly. Or even the off button on our phones. Where is it?
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B
It doesn't. It's like you have to try two
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A
things and you have to go deep into the settings. And it's like all of that, again, is of course, part of the persuasive design piece of this is to keep us on and engaged 24 7.
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B
But okay, so when I see someone's phone and it's ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. The push notifications from every app and stuff, they don't need to know. Like you gotta like on Instagram and they don't really want to know, but it all comes default that way. And so teaching kids about taking that extra time when they do have that device to customize it so that you're not getting thousands of notifications a day, like as an example.
- [27:48]
A
Well, yes, and I would take it one step further is why is the default that the settings are on, make the default off. But of course we know again, this is a choice by technology companies to design it to be on because it keeps us scrolling. And so yeah, I mean, I agree that that could be part of it. I think even technology education is not just about the device itself and how to use it, although I think that's part of it. I'm talking about basic computer skills. Like children are not typing because they're using voice to text.
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B
Right?
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A
And or if they're typing, they're doing this with like single fingers to tap
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B
on iPad that you can't even. I know exactly.
- [28:24]
A
Often iPads don't even. Unless you intentionally buy the keyboards don't have keyboards attached. So even though I hate Chromebooks, I also think at least it has a keyboard. Right. Versus an iPad. And so, you know, there are basic digital literacy skills that I think are important for kids to have. Like how does a computer work? How does the Internet work? You know, these kids were born in a world where the Internet existed and I was born in a world where it didn't. And so I remember what it was like before. And what does that mean? Like why. Why should children understand how things have changed because of it? Well, just the fact that we can get information instantaneous is pretty fascinating. And how has that changed the way going back to literacy, right? Like how has that changed our own understanding of the world? The fact that like we have instantaneous information that's not always right or true. Right. You know, and then what we do with that, because what we hear first is what we remember and what we take in. And so again, to me, that goes all the way back to the very reason why we should delay it in the first place is because you want to give children opportunities to build those critical thinking skills so they know. Well, that's where weird that the AI summary of this word I just looked up is some non accurate, like they need to know that it's not accurate, but they won't know that if they didn't learn it in the first place completely.
- [29:41]
B
And that's the whole issue. And we're not, I don't think we're going to go and have time to go into AI here. More pervasive and worse than, I mean, it's making all of these problems worse, right?
- [29:50]
A
Yeah. And I, I can say in two sentences, AI, especially generative AI has no business in K12. Education should not be touched by students unless it is in a computer science class taught by a teacher in 11th or 12th grade. That's my opinion on it. And it's because it's an untested product that benefits tech companies, not children. That's it.
- [30:07]
B
Completely agree.
- [30:08]
A
That's it. Yeah, but that's not what's happening. It's making edtech worse.
- [30:12]
B
Totally. And parents go check your kid's school device.
- [30:16]
A
They have AI embedded in their EdTech products. Like, even my daughter, who I've refused the school computer for her in eighth grade, but I log in occasionally and look at her platform on our home computer. And they blocked chatgpt after I complained because the kids were using it to do homework. Because of course they were, because, duh, God, now they have Copilot and I, I, I. But why is so they block. It's so funny. You have to dig in a little bit. I went in and looked and I said, okay, write me an essay about the outsiders. Five paragraphs. As a seventh grader, right? Like, I just prompt. And it wouldn't give me the text, but it would give me an audio version. What? So it was blocked to the point where it like wouldn't type out the homework for me, but it gave me an auditory version of it. And so, so what would a savvy kid do? Pull out their phone, use a voice to text app, write down the essay, and then they would cut and paste that and upload that as their submission. And like, that's what my daughter said, her friends have said, is that, you know, well, yeah, ChatGPT is blocked, but we just go to Copilot AI and use that.
- [31:18]
B
Well, even worse than that, Google Gemini from Julie Fruman, who I've interviewed. Her son was doing a Math app at 13 and the. And Gemini pops up and says, do you want the answer to this math problem or should I show your work? Like it's prompting him to cheat without even him knowing it was even available there.
- [31:35]
A
And who's gonna get in trouble? Is the kid and that's wrong. So crazy.
- [31:39]
B
Yeah.
- [31:40]
A
No, and that's why one of the things Jared says all the time that I quote is just like, instead of asking what's the best way to take arsenic, we should ask, why are we giving kids arsenic in the first place?
- [31:49]
B
Right, Jared? Jared's got the zingers. I love Jared. So, okay, is there anything like, if you want parents to take away something
- [31:59]
A
today, I think if you're thinking about it and you listened to it, you're ahead of the majority of parents. And you know that the goal is actually to just start sharing this information with other parents nonjudgmentally, with curiosity, with empathy. To say like, this is so hard. How do you manage this? You know? And again, the goal here is to build a coalition, not to test for who's the most committed to a tech free life. Because that doesn't. Nobody wins if that's our metric.
- [32:27]
B
Right, Right. When you talk about a coalition, can you speak to how important it is to involve teachers in that?
- [32:34]
A
Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm a teacher. I spent 12 years in the classroom. I teach at the university level now. I am fiercely protective of teachers and what I find and you know, I think this is a generalization, but more teachers than not are not happy with the amount of technology used to at and for school. And I don't, again, I don't just mean kids bringing their phones, I mean the ed tech piece too. Even in, when I left the classroom in 2015, even around 2012, 2013, I was already noticing that when I as a teacher was being asked increasingly to use tech based tools like putting homework on a learning management system and grades, it completely changed my ability to be present in the class because I was having to go enter stuff on a computer. I was supposed to tell my students to go check the portal. They stopped coming to me to ask for help. They didn't have any curiosity about, like, oh, can we talk about this assignment? Why did I miss this point? Or what did I need to do better? And of course then the byproduct of that was parents started emailing me more. Why haven't you graded this? Driving me back to my computer even more. And this was over a decade ago. And so what I hear now, and I find this really worrisome, is that newer teachers who are primarily younger teachers, never knew a world in education where this wasn't the norm. They don't have a reference point for grading papers by hand. And actually I asked my university students because I would hand out they would upload their essays and I would print them off, write feedback on them, and hand them back physically. And one quarter, one student was like, this is the first handwritten feedback I've ever had.
- [34:09]
B
Oh, my God.
- [34:10]
A
And I was like, what? How can anyone assess writing? We know that we don't retain what we read online as much. The process of reading a student's paper and being able to, like, make smiley faces or, you know, put like a. Oh, I love this part. All of that feedback and, you know, and this. I think it was Jared that was saying this too. But, like, handwriting is personal. You know, there is something we communicate when we do that and we take the time. And that is part of the challenge, is that it takes time. I had at one point about 90 seventh grade students when I taught seventh grade English, and it took me six minutes per essay to grade their papers. And that, you know, 90 students isn't that many compared to today's classes. My daughter has 39 students in her eighth grade class. And rather than being offered support, the school is saying, use AI to assess their writing rather than reduce class sizes, which would actually benefit all of the kids. They're telling the teacher to outsource the assessment. Well, what's the point of teaching then? Especially since we know the kids wrote the essays with ChatGPT in the first place. Like, everyone loses. And so when I talk about teachers, I am fiercely protective of them, and I'm not coming for their job. Technology is coming for their jobs. I think there is a way to teach with technology and to be, you know, the leader in your classroom and use it as a tool to support you, but at what cost? You know, and that to me is where I, you know, I think teachers need us as parents to speak out because they're often between a rock and a hard place. I mean, if they speak out, they could lose their job. Right. Nobody wants that. But I know so many teachers, and I know you've talked to teachers too, who have left because of this.
- [35:49]
B
Yeah.
- [35:49]
A
And think of the loss that that is for the students who will never get those teachers who understood this.
- [35:54]
B
It's scary. That's really scary. I want to talk lastly about another way that parents, teachers, anybody can influence change when it comes to use of screens at school. I mean, general screen use. But we're talking. But to talk about school, and that's like to get involved in lawsuits against the edtech companies, which we have both done. And you were very much, much the leader in doing that. Can you first give an update on what's going on with your lawsuits. There's multiple.
- [36:23]
A
Just one. Yes. So we filed a case against PowerSchool in May of 24. We, meaning myself and the EdTech Law Center, Andy and Julie Liddell, and there's another co plaintiff in California, essentially. I mean, it's a long complaint. You can read it on EdTech Law Center's website. But essentially, it's a data privacy case, you know, arguing that PowerSchool products collect data about children and sell it to third parties without informed parental consent. And I'm summarizing that very, very briefly. It is an ongoing case, so I have to be very careful about what I say. As you know, I can tell you that at the end of January, we are entering mediation. And so there will be some interesting. Potentially could be an interesting experience. I don't know what to expect.
- [37:11]
B
So I don't think we need to get. Get too much into the, like, data thing. But I just want parents to understand how much data is being collected on our kids through those apps and devices at school that has nothing to do with learning. It's like when I got the files from Seesaw, it was thousands of videos of my kids and teachers and other kids.
- [37:32]
A
Yeah.
- [37:33]
B
Personal information. And then when it comes to Power School, there was like a huge data breach. Right.
- [37:39]
A
Like last year, December of last year, I believe. Yeah. And it's not the only one. I mean, there have been others as well. So in 2019, Andy and I and two other parent activists formed the Student Data Privacy Project. And our goal at that point was to get parent volunteers to test the efficacy of ferpa, which is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy act, which, fun fact, was last meaningfully updated in 1974. So. So things have changed just a little bit since then. I know. That just blows my mind. And what we did in that was we had parents submit FERPA requests to their school, which is. They're right. Which is basically saying, give us everything you've ever collected about our children. Well, in 1974, that was going to be like, you know, a manila file folder worth of stuff. Today, with kids averaging 100 to 150 products per school, that's a lot of data over a certain number of years. And what we found, first of all, a lot of schools didn't or wouldn't or couldn't comply or kick it back to the tech companies and say, well, they have it. And they would kick it back to us, the schools, and say, well, the schools have it. Yep, exactly. But one example we had A family in Minnesota submit a request. And she let us look at her files, you know, 2000 files. And this carried over through remote learning. And so, you know, we could see all of the online learning videos that had been recorded. And some of the more disturbing ones were like, you know, photos of her child as a baby that she'd uploaded for an assignment, videos of her daughter, young daughter, doing yoga in online PE class. Like, videos had been uploaded and saved in the, you know, whatever the data centers where the data was being held, you know, and again, like, people might say, well, who cares about, like, the math test scores or whatever, but, like, you know, what if this child writes a story about her family's, you know, mental health struggles or alcoholism, or a family whose immigration status is in jeopardy, you know, like, or behavior records or mental health records or prescription medication records? These are the kinds of information that belong in the hands of school leaders only. And you know what, maybe a select few teachers that need to know what they need to know about their students. They don't belong in the hands of big tech. And worse, that data shouldn't be sold to third parties for big tech profit.
- [39:53]
B
It was so offensive to me that I haven't put my kids online in six years. And now and then we have the school capturing all that data, these companies saving it and sharing. Right. Sharing it and selling it to about three. With csaw, it was like three dozen other companies.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah.
- [40:10]
B
Totally insecure and not in my control. And that should be my right. Really, their right. It's like their digital identity. And we need to be protecting that, we schools, parents, like administrators.
- [40:22]
A
At the bare minimum, we should have at least been told that that was happening. Right. You know, and that's not happening. And I wrote about this in the fall, but the FTC amicus brief that came out, you know, basically was saying schools can no longer, because the school official exemption has happened, has been used as an argument for why schools can collect this information without consent. And basically the FTC amicus brief said, well, no, not. You can't do that. You can't rely on the school official exemption anymore. Which to me is a warning to school administrators. Like, it doesn't mean anything is happening yet, but it means that you could be held responsible for failing to get consent. And what I see could happen is tech companies could start going after school districts for failing to get parental consent. So again, you have now tech companies going after their own vendors or their own clients. Right. Like the schools themselves. And, And. And we don't want that. Right.
- [41:21]
B
Like the.
- [41:21]
A
Again, the goal here is not to destroy school systems, although I would argue that's not our goal. But that certainly is what's happening with tech infiltration in education.
- [41:30]
B
Yeah. And that's interesting because there's already thousands of school districts suing tech companies for addicting and harming children and resources that they're having to spend taking care of these addicted, poor, mental health children in their classrooms. Like, so that is a. That's not where we want to go. Like every. They're all stewing each other and bankrupting the system.
- [41:50]
A
No. In the hope it would be a wake up call to schools to say, okay, fine, let's see. What. What would it take for us to get informed parental consent on all these platforms? And when, you know, Internet safety labs found. I think it's like 125 apps per school. Well, does the. It. Does the one IT guy at the district of 40,000 students know what each of those terms of use, terms of service and privacy policy statements are? No. And so certainly parents don't. So again, if what this does. And these lawsuits that we're involved in, if. If what they do can be to force schools to think twice before signing contracts, and I'm talking multi year, multi million dollar contracts with these companies. That's a win. That's a good thing.
- [42:31]
B
Right?
- [42:32]
A
That's what we want.
- [42:33]
B
We want them to stop spending so much money on tech contracts that don't have efficacy and spend more money on teachers and reducing class sizes. And there's so many other value. I mean, what does Jared say? Like investing in air conditioning.
- [42:46]
A
Yes.
- [42:47]
B
30% learn better than investing in tech.
- [42:50]
A
30% yield in reading comprehension scores if you invest in air conditioning over technology in the classroom. Actually, that's in my senate testimony. So I'm gonna get. Because it's ridiculous. Like, and again, I think even from a, like a taxpayer standpoint and education funding, like, there's so much money that is going into the pockets of tech companies and that benefits tech companies, not children, not teachers.
- [43:12]
B
So can you. For parents to close out the lawsuit chat, like, for parents who are intimidated to do that or don't understand how the process works. Like, I was intimidated by it.
- [43:22]
A
Yeah.
- [43:22]
B
Can you just, like, clear up some things for them?
- [43:24]
A
Yeah. What I would say to parents who are intimidated or nervous about this, first of all, Andy and Julie are the nicest people in the history of the world. Yeah, I know that's exaggerating. But they're. And they're disarming and they're not, you Know, scary lawyers, they're parents, they got into this because they were worried about this from a parent perspective. And they just also happen to be really brilliant lawyers. And what they will do is they will meet with you at no cost. Like, this does not cost you anything. And I cannot emphasize this enough because I think that's usually the first hurdle for parents is like, oh, I can't afford a lawyer. I can't pay for a lawsuit. You're not going to like if you end up filing something. And that's a big if. You know, lots of steps before that. It's a contingency based law firm, which means they only get paid if you win. And that can take multiple years. And so I would say if you have any questions or concerns about the harms your child might have experienced. And you know, Nikki, you and I both know, like this is happening every day, every hour. The kinds of things that kids are accessing on these devices is harmful. There are many, many, many parents who should give them a call because there are things you can do. And again, the more of us that are raising these concerns, the more that the people in power may start to listen and say, oh, this isn't good that all these lawsuits are coming out. Right. And again, you know, the lawsuits are one means to an end. I think they have a big, they have the potential to pack a big punch. Um, but that may not be everyone's cup of tea. And that's okay too. You know, writing a letter, opting your kid out, you know, testifying at your school board meeting, finding other parents who share your concerns. Those things can make a big difference too. So it's okay if you don't want to go straight to file a lawsuit. Not everyone do not.
- [45:02]
B
And I want to just also add with the lawsuits, like there are families whose children have been preyed upon by like pred. Sexual predators on the school shoe device at school and their kid been, you know, know, sex torted and things like that like sue like to figure that out. Like, but so, but it doesn't have to be something major like that. It can just be that your kid is, you know, you don't have videos
- [45:26]
A
multiple hours a day. I mean that was one of the cases they filed was about a 13 year old who spent three months and watched 30,000 YouTube videos at school on a school issue device during school time. I don't think any parent would think that was educational screen time. Even if you could argue one or two of those videos. He learned something. Something. I mean he probably learned A lot. And none of it was related to the content of his classroom. Right. Like, so that's a problem. Like, that's not. Okay. That shouldn't be allowed to happen. And yet it is.
- [45:54]
B
Right. Okay. So. But you. You named a bunch of other ways to advocate, and all of those things are powerful, and we should. If we all do one of those things, like the power of that and the impact that we could have.
- [46:07]
A
The second and third fish are as important as the first ones. Exactly, exactly. Exactly. We need you. Yeah.
- [46:13]
B
Okay. Anything else you wanna share before we close?
- [46:16]
A
Just. I just wanna share what a sense of hope I feel about this for the first time. Yeah. I mean, again, like, this has been eight years that I've been thinking and writing and talking about this, and for the first time this past six months, I feel different. Things feel different. So I hope that gives parents a little extra courage to know that, like, if you speak up now, it's gonna land differently than it did a year ago. And that's a good thing.
- [46:41]
B
Yeah. That is incredible and a great way to end. And I know you have your website's thescreentimeconsultant.com. is there anywhere else you want to send?
- [46:49]
A
Yeah, actually, I love to point people to my substack, which is first fish.substack.com or First Fish Chronicles is what I call it. And so I'm actually. All of my current writing is going there, my testimony and everything, but lots of other resources on my website as well. And the toolkit is in both places. Yes. So please follow me there. And of course, ironically, I'm on social media. I realize that's the reality.
- [47:11]
B
That's ironic, taking them down from the inside.
- [47:14]
A
But I'm also an adult with a fully formed brain, so I can, like, make some different choices here.
- [47:20]
B
Totally. Luckily, I don't get a lot of that pushback anymore. I feel like we're. We understand the difference and so parents can get all that in the episode notes. And thank you so much for everything that you do and for being here today.
- [47:32]
A
Oh, you're welcome. And thank you for elevating all these voices. It really does help, of course.