Smart Phones, AI, and Social Media - Will the Kids Be Ok?

0:00The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome back to another episode of After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings. Today, it's just me, Dina, and we are diving into a topic that feels very overwhelming for a lot of us, a topic that maybe we don't even want to think about, but we have to. Screens, social media, and now AI. And the terrifying question underneath it all, what is this doing to our kids? So if you have ever felt overwhelmed, outpaced, like you're already behind before your kid even has a phone, or maybe they have a phone and you have no idea how to navigate it, it's feeling out of control, this episode is for you.

0:41My guest today is Larissa May, and you might know her as Lars. She's just an all-around amazing person, and she's been living and breathing digital wellness for over a decade. She's the founder of Half the Story, a movement that's reshaping the way teens think about tech and mental health. And now she's the CEO of Ginkgo, the first clinician-backed AI tool built to help parents manage screen time, social media, and online safety with real peace of mind. And I know this can be an anxiety-provoking topic. Do not worry. This is not one of those tech doomsday conversations. This is the episode that puts the power back in your hands.

1:19You will feel confident walking away from this episode. We're going to break down what parents are getting wrong about screen time and how to fix it. Why our instincts to restrict and ban and control just aren't working. How to start open, honest conversations with your kids about tech, even if you've been avoiding it. And what you actually need to know about AI and social media and this new digital parenting world that we're all raising our kids in. We are doing it for the first time ever. And the good news, you don't have to be a tech expert. You just need to listen to this conversation. We're going to walk through it all together and give you real tools that you can start using today to protect your kids.

2:03Welcome to After Bedtime, where the house is finally quiet, but the real noise begins. The thoughts, the questions, the wondering if you're doing any of this right. We're Kristen and Dina, child behavior experts, moms, and co-founders of Big Little Feelings. And we're not here to give you more pressure or perfect parenting energy. Nope. We're here to tell the truth. The unfiltered, beautiful, brutal truth about what it means to raise kids and re-raise ourselves in the process. Because parenting isn't just about sleep schedules and snack hacks. It's about healing. It's about breaking cycles. It's about becoming the kind of adult you want your kids to grow up to be.

2:42This is the place where we say the quiet parts out loud, and we're so glad that you're here. Lars, welcome to the show. I am so excited we've made it to this moment. Me too. I am really, really, really looking forward to this conversation because I was thinking about it this morning. There have been so many times in our parenting generation here where we've been like, we're parenting in unprecedented times, but like this, the age of AI, of the internet, of social media. This is so brand new. Nobody's navigated this before. So I mean, I'm just happy we're here. And I think the craziest thing about being a parent now, it's never been easy to be a parent, but it's never been harder than it is because technology and humanity are converging, especially with our youngest minds.

3:33So hopefully we'll be able to unpack some of it. And I know that we all have a lot of big feelings about AI and technology, but there's also so much at the root of what our child's tech habits can tell us about their feelings, which is the part of the conversation that I think we miss out aloud on. So I'm excited to get into it. Me too. Let's talk about the hard stuff. Let's talk about how we as parents can talk to our kids. And before we dive into all that, just let's kick off with how did you get started in this? I mean, you built something truly incredible and truly so needed. How did this come to life?

4:10Well, like most founders, and I think this is why you guys built big little feelings, you build for the thing that you desperately need. And what was interesting about my journey is I've been obsessed with how technology impacts young people and humans for the last decade. And the reason why I was so fascinated by this is because I almost took my own life as a young child. And I also have lived with ADHD, but I was not diagnosed to much later on in my life. And I always had a really complicated relationship with technology. When I was in college, after almost losing my life and being saved by my RA, I was going to a psych IOP program for hours on hours on hours.

4:54And I found it really challenging that they would ask me about drug, sex, and alcohol, but not the technology that I was using. And the fact that big tech makes over$8 billion a year off of our minors' data, and that that data existed, but they weren't able to actually use it to get to my diagnosis was really challenging. And 10 years ago, I think the conversation for me was, how do we convince the world that social media and mental health are intertwined. And that was the idea of half the story, which was born from how can I as a young person get to the root of how tech is impacting people? And then 10 years later, now, what I saw is that the world is ready.

5:38We know that technology and mental health are intertwined. A lot of people have read The Anxious Generation, but now you don't even need a screen to engage with AI. We have AI toys that I'm sure parents that are watching this are contemplating, do I get one for my kids? And now 30 % of parents say that kids from zero to eight have already used AI for learning. So these issues are starting earlier and earlier, and parents are just left in the dust. And that was the impetus of creating Ginkgo, because I knew half the story would be there to support, engage, empower young people, and create ripple effects for the world.

6:13But then how do we actually bring this into the healthcare space? Because parents and pediatricians and law enforcement are lost in the dark. Wow. Okay. That's a really great point. Yeah. And thank you for sharing so openly too. That's, that's incredible that you made it through that. I, you know, I'm so happy to share this right now. And I think one thing that's changing that I just really want to emphasize is that the last five years since the pandemic, we became really afraid about social media, technology, what our kids were posting on the internet because we were worried about their reputations.

6:53There was so much of a public persona. Our kids were stepping on digital stages. But now what's scary is if we want to use that same stage, AI is like the green room for our kids. We don't know what's happening in the green room. They're having these intimate sexual conversations through the lens of curiosity with these AI bots that quite frankly can't tell the difference between our child's data and experiences and adults. And that is changing so much in real time, which is why I think for so many parents, the way that we engage with our kids with AI that is so siloed and private requires a lot more heavy lifting than it did in the past, which was just how do I stock what my kid is posting online and make sure that they're not posting nudes or doing anything illegal.

7:42And that is the moment that is changing everything. And I think a lot of us are trying to understand what is this dark hole or this black hole? And how do we in a world where there hasn't been a legislation made in 30 years for a bipartisan issue to protect our kids move forward as parents to ensure that we can protect their emotional well-being, executive functioning and all of the things that really make us human? A hundred percent. So I was just at the gym this morning before coming here and I love my class. I'm one of the youngest ones in it, which means a lot of the parents in that class have kids who are older who are navigating this.

8:19And I was kind of chit-chatting with them like, hey, tell me some of the experiences you've gone through recently with this. Some of the stories that I heard were so hard to even imagine, like so alarming, but just like, wow, I can't believe this is happening. Like, let's see, it's kind of it goes to what you first said. I heard a few stories of like posting some nudes and then those get used for blackmail. And then the AI gets twisted in where now there's technology to literally take somebody's face and post it on something else completely different, which is a whole new landscape. And I know this can be very anxiety provoking.

8:59So I want to get into as well kind of the tools of like, in my mind, I think of it is how do we kind of prevent some of this to the best we can? And then if you're in the messy middle of it, how do we respond to our kids? First and foremost, I think it's always best to really start with what is the parent's relationship to AI and technology and then figure out how do we go from this place of the doom loop to the joy loop, which is a concept that I really believe in because the world continues to tell us our kids are going to die. There's all of this darkness. But quite frankly, if we can harness technology in a positive way and not just have the first time you talk about AI be when something goes wrong, your kids, especially if you have any neurodivergent children, can actually harness technology to use it to help them succeed better in the world.

9:50And so the first thing I really just want to say is that not all screen time is created equal and screens are a team sport. There was a study that came out recently from Girl Scouts where 52 % of the girls said they actually have trouble accessing their parents because the parent is on the device. And what I often hear from young people is that they feel that their parents believe that their emails are more important than their own emotions. And what that tells a child is that the first place that you should go when you're feeling dark is not to your caregiver, but it might be to this creepy AI doll that's made in China that is going to track your emotions and send them to some bespoke place on the internet that we don't know where.

10:35Or they might actually turn to chat as their emotional companion, which is something that I've tested a lot with. And unfortunately, we've seen the worst case scenarios of kids dying and learning how to kill themselves on open AI. And so the first thing that I think parents have to be doing is setting the example themselves. And I think what a lot of people don't know is that if you have a question about your child or you upload a photo of your child's face to OpenAI to say, is this a rash that I should be worried about? If you do that on OpenAI, it's actually leaving the family and going into the AI system.

11:13And so your child's data is training that algorithm. In other words, if you wouldn't have posted that same question about your child on Facebook openly in the 90s or the last 10 years, you certainly shouldn't be doing that on AI. And I think that's what's really sneaky about the method is that it feels really intimate and personal. The other thing is that when you're getting information or medical advice from open AI, it's not trusted from clinicians. And so what I started to see is that parents were getting lost in the wild, wild web. Like, where do I go for clinically sound advice regarding screen time or my kids' emotions?

11:50And that was really the impetus for Ginkgo for me, which is, hey, it is actually not a standard to protect parents and their kids' data. That is the benchmark. How can we take a clinical library of data and build a trusted source where parents can go and ask anything and know that that information is not going to be used against their child in court in the future in 10 years? And that is so important because unfortunately, we're not living in a world where technology prides itself on trust is a moat. And that AI is not a place that we should be using for all of our diagnoses, especially chat GBT, in the same way that WebMD shouldn't have been the only place that we went.

12:33It's really important to use trusted sources like Ginkgo to ask your questions and then take that data to your doctor to let them interpret it. Because when you start interpreting this, one, you've already shared all your child's darkest secrets on the internet. Two, that data will be there forever. And three, you've probably put yourself into a tailspin. And I've seen all of those things happen. And so as a parent, I think you need to, one, get a hold of your own relationship with AI and technology, and two, ensure that you're not going to open source places to put your child's data there. Now, what I am really passionate about is this idea that not all screen time is created equal and not all AI has to be a dark place.

13:17And you could have a child that has an iPad. You give that child an iPad and they're mindlessly scrolling for three hours. You rip it from them and they come to the dinner table. The child's probably really angry, right? Now, there's another experience you could have with your child, which is, hey, it's bedtime. I know you really want to be on your device. Let's see if we can make technology activate your imagination. Imagine a song. Start writing a song. Sing one out loud to me. And if you take out Suno, which is a music songwriting app where you could literally wrap anything into it and it makes a song, within a matter of moments, your child has a song about their day.

13:58One of those is an individualized and highly unproductive experience where a child is oftentimes going to just suppress their emotions. The other is one that actually awakens the imagination, leads to parent-child connection around the device and leads to a greater, more positive outcome for your child. And so I think a lot of parents, like one of my biggest ground rules is you should never have the same amount of devices as people in a room because it inevitably means that you might all just be disconnected in your own worlds. Yeah. Yeah. And just kind of checked out. But you're right. you know, so many devices can and apps can be used for good, for creativity, for innovating.

14:42And then there are the ones that we should be a little bit more concerned about. And I think you're right that chat GPT, you know, open AI like that, it feels so deceiving sometimes when you're in it. It feels like, you know, I logged into my account. This is my account. It's private it. And it's not. So that's a really tricky one. It's sneaky design, sneaky secret design that gets you to believe that it's more private than it is. And that is incredibly dangerous in the technological world that we're living in. Yeah. But you bring up another really great point, which I've had to try to be really, really intentional around this in my house.

15:23what am I doing on my phone? What are my kids seeing? And sometimes if you follow us on Instagram, you'll see us post late at night about our day because we're away from our kids. You know, we don't want to be tied to our devices and our emails and our text messages while we're with them because of that message that it's showing them. And at the same time, it is so damn hard. Like I still will find myself just randomly without even noticing. I'll flip open my phone, flip open my Instagram, and I'm trying to train my brain now to be like, oh, wait, stop, close it, you know, immediately. Well, I think the amazing thing about technology is as we're going into January, I think a lot of people are thinking about what is my physical reset?

16:07What is my nutrition reset? But the reality is, is that if the average person is spending eight hours a day on technology for work, for teens, that translates to 30 years of their life. What we need to start thinking about is how do we start building in digital wellness into our life, which is the idea that through these small healthy habits, we can cultivate positive and healthy relationships with technology. The ironic part about this is that unlike physical well-being or nutrition, all things that we've had to learn along the way, I think that this is an amazing opportunity where parents actually have to say, hey, we together are going to figure out what this looks like in our family.

16:51And, you know, we have to figure out what this digital metabolism is for our minds and how your mind processes things versus mine, because every kid is created differently. And I think that's what's so nuanced about tech. And it's actually very much so like food in that your relationship with it is so dependent on where you come from, what you see from the people that are caregiving for you. And it's something that both parents and kids can learn together at the same time, which is one of the most beautiful opportunities that we have. Yeah, completely agree. And I guess, too, like if we get into the nuance and the weeds of this, how much do you think parents should be intervening?

17:35Like, because I think a lot of questions that parents have right now is how much screen time should kids be getting? what should they be allowed to watch, not allowed to watch. Now we do have apps, by the way, that can try to limit where our kids can go. And I think there are some pros to that, but I think they're failing in a lot of areas. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Well, what I will say is I think parents are certainly intervening because on average, there are 500 screen fights a year in a household, which is a little bit over three days of time, call it 96 hours. So we know that parents are intervening, but I think the way that most solutions have been built are actually not built to support parents to intervene in a way that gets to the root of the problem, which is the child's emotional need.

18:29Screens are really just a symptom for something deeper that your child is longing for. Oftentimes we hear from young people and through the research that when they're passively engaging with technology, which is equivalent to pulling a family sized bag of chips and eating it in front of junk TV because you feel like really lonely or sad, which we've all been there. A kid's version of that is mindlessly scrolling on TikTok and spinning out or crashing out, as they would say. What's really important as a parent is before even thinking about what is intervening and pulling a screen in a way is actually teaching your kids how to digest technology differently and what that passive consumption looks like versus active consumption, which could be, hey, you know, we're going to pull out the drawing app on our iPad and we're going to have a drawing competition or, you know, we're actually going to do a Duolingo competition and try to speak three lines of Spanish in the next week.

19:28When you add a play, you add human connection and you add a positive output with a very clear intention that starts to train the child's mind. 20 to 30 minutes a day of creative, proactive, intentional technology use actually starts to strengthen that muscle and take them out of that passive consumer stage into I am an active creator in the digital world and I do not have to be a victim to this algorithm or this system. And I think that's really where it starts, but it's certainly not where it ends. And part of why, when I think about the future of Ginkgo and what we want to build is I saw, and I've even been to funerals, of kids who were stalked to death.

20:10When a parent pulls away a kid's device and says, go to bed or sit down for dinner, without really understanding why they were behaving a certain way online, it actually breaks a lot of the trust that the parent has with the kid. And unfortunately or fortunately, trust is the most powerful human technology in the world. And at the root of this, what I started learning from a lot of kids is they were like, hey, my parents getting a ton of false alarms about things that I'm not even doing. Therefore, I don't feel like I can talk to them about maybe someone's bullying me or maybe I'm having a really hard time reading at school.

20:46And that's why I'm spending more time on my device, because I'm actually trying to get through my homework, but they think I'm doing something else. And there's kids when they don't feel heard, they just start building a shell around them. And so my approach to this is that screen should be a two way street. The way in should be emotional connection. And on top of that should then be the concerns about surveillance, because you'll never be able to actually support your child if you're stalking them without really being able to understand what their needs are. Y 'all, you know that I love nothing more than a matcha latte.

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26:16But on your own, you're like, you know, do I take their device every night? And one of her friends takes it literally every night, checks every text message, everything going on on that phone. And that's the question is like, what does that do to the trust? And technology is here to stay, right? So in a lot of ways, it's how do we teach our kids to be realistic about it, but to have the skills to stay safe and have those really honest and open conversations. And again, it goes back to like, how do we be preventative? But then when something does happen, when something goes wrong, how do we have grace and create a safe space for our kids so that we can really process it all with them?

27:02And the social media, you touched on that. I mean, I was deep in the research a few weeks ago on this. It's so alarming how the algorithms truly work. They are designed to keep your brain addicted, to keep you scrolling and in there as long as you could possibly be. That's the priority. And that's terrifying for our kids. It is. And I think we're now, as a parent, we all want our kids to be safe, but we also want our kids to be fulfilled humans. To some people, that means they call it happy. To other people, it's productive, whatever that is. I think that what we really need to emphasize and understand right now, and this is a big turning point in our world, is that it's no longer about just screens or mental health.

27:50You don't even have to believe in those terms, even though I would have a problem with that. We know that the average human has 400 emotions per a day. The problem with technology and our kids is that the younger that kids are getting on technology, the less connected they are to themselves. And what's really at risk here is that our child's emotional intelligence is at war with artificial intelligence. And if we do not have the skills as parents to actually protect that critical executive functioning, which quite purely is the only thing that differentiates us from technology, is our ability to emote and say, I feel you, I hear you, I've walked in those shoes.