Inside the Alarming Teen Mental Health Crisis—and the AI Solution That Could Change Everything | Ep. 257 with Jeffery Katzenberg & Hari Ravichandra

0:00Today's episode is sponsored by PipeDrive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I'm excited to share more about them later in the episode.

0:15So I have to say, I'm always very excited to have two guests on because I think it brings more perspectives and you each have a very fascinating background as to how you got here. But I want to dive right in because AI is the topic of everything. And there's a lot of reasons why AI can be good. And I think there's a lot of reasons why AI could be bad. But what you're doing at Aura, I think, would be considered AI for good. And I'd love to understand how you got to this point and why is this company so important to you both? Sure. Yeah, I could start. So we kind of find ourselves here, I would say, a little bit of a tourist, I would say, in some ways.

0:58Because, again, when we started the business, the focus was very much on safety and sort of the definition of safety. at the time, which was seven years ago, was very much around things like financial safety, making sure that your identity was safe, privacy, device safety, and those types of things. And about two years ago, I had a personal incident, and then that led to an addition of a variety of things inside our charter. I have four kids, and one of my kids actually went through a really hard time. I was basically struggling with mental health issues. And again, we're a very sort of privacy-focused family.

1:39So we'd never actually looked at her phone or her devices or anything like that. And as she was going through a real dip, it was the first time we actually started looking at it. And when we did, it was a pretty stark contrast between what we saw in real life and what was on the device in terms of how she was feeling and the way that she was engaging with different things and social media, et cetera. So this is like a moment of awakening for me as a parent, which was the truth of what's happening with our kids is really more on device than it is in physical life. And the problem is as a parent, you don't really know what's actually going on inside this device.

2:16It's a big black hole because kids are on these devices eight hours. They're doing lots of stuff on it. They're engaging with lots of different apps and lots of things are going on. There's real safety issues in the physical world from that. And certainly a lot of residuals from mental and emotional negatives that come from being on these devices for so long. And so in that situation, if you think about it, it's a real needle in the haystack type of thing because every kid is on different devices for different amounts of time and you've got different apps. If you're a parent, and we talked with a lot of parents and many said, look, when my kids asleep, I grabbed their phone.

2:50I spent 45 minutes looking through it. I don't know if I actually looked at the right stuff or not, but I tried to do my best. So there's a real problem area here and a real lack of knowledge. So to us, AI in that situation was the best tool for the job. And again, we were less concerned about what is the technology or what is it? We're not trying to build something just for the sake of technology, but there's a problem that customers are having, families are having from a safety perspective. And this happened to be the right tool to fit in, to be able to solve the issue. So with all the changes of gen AI, and it seems like AI tools and such are advancing at a rate that we can't even keep up.

3:26How do you see parenting transforming in this digital age? Jeffrey, do you want to take that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, in the age of gen AI, there's obviously as you started, there's good and there's bad. the good news is you know you can use these tools for good meaning being able to identify behavioral patterns being able to identify things that are trends about about your child and really using those as conversation openers how we think about it which is you know can you create this moment of connection where if your parent if the parent knows something that's very very relevant to the kid you know even if something as simple as say like you know uh i am really excited about you know something that happened inside this video game even like or something like that, it can create this moment of connection.

4:08It can kind of create this moment where you can have a conversation with your kid as it relates to technology, which is where a lot of their lives are. Now, the negative of it is it also sort of brings up lots of new stuff that we hadn't worried about from a safety perspective. One thing I'll tell you, recently we've been seeing lots of kids engaging with AI chat bots. This is not something we saw six months ago or a year ago. And many of these are meant to have age verification. They do not. and the nature of conversations that kids have with the chatbots are highly sexual with kids that are probably, you know, anywhere from 10, 11, 12 on up basically.

4:43And so that's the negative of it. You can actually sort of, you know, really take it to the extreme end, which is sort of what's happening here. So there's definitely good and bad. And it means that for parents, as you're going through this, this is now like a new skill you got to teach your kid. Like it's, you know, just like we teach our kids, you know, maybe 10 years ago, it's like, you know, how to use the computer safely or something like that, you know, or teach them to drive a car. One of the biggest game changers I've seen for founders isn't another pitch deck, another tool, or even another investor.

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6:30Really understand and respect the responsibility that we had as storytellers to mom in particular. and so when Hari got on to you know both the problem and the solution I felt very compelled in the ability to do good while doing good which I've tried to make a part as much as I can as many of the things that I have done in my career I've always felt great reward. And success is not an outcome in itself that's having good things, quality things, things that bring goodness into the world. And if you look at the landscape that aura has sort of, you know, found itself in the middle of, it's kind of shocking.

7:37And so just to share with you some statistics about teenagers today. So we did a pretty extensive beta on this before we launched it of 12 to 17 year olds, several thousand of them. And here are the statistics on this, which is the thing that really, I think, got us quite fired up about this. 46 % of the kids are depressed. 35 % have social withdrawal. 22 % late night scrolling. So what that means is when they should be sleeping, they're actually up and they're on their devices, which is maybe one of the most unhealthy things is possible, you know, for kids not to be getting a full night's sleep.

8:2530 % with low self-esteem, 22 % with self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and 52 % with eating disorders. So when you take that, and that's a snapshot that I think is highly accurate. And if that's not enough to send you into a pretty panic mode, there's something wrong. This is the next generation. Again, I'm not here to say that there aren't many great benefits and valuable things out of social media. It's not all in, you know, one dark lane in it, but there is one. And parents have been left literally without any tools, any ability, any access. They're adrift. They're adrift in the, you know, hanging on by their fingertips in the middle of an ocean with no lighthouses, no nothing.

9:18And that's what I am so proud of, Marie and Aura and what they have built. And we now hear it because we've got tens of thousands of people that are on this. and every day. And the beauty of it is it's not about spying. It's literally about observation and then coaching. Hari made the point here. Today, if you have a teenager and they're going to start driving, what happens? You have this onboarding process that takes place over two years. You get a learner's permit. You go to a Walmart parking lot where you can't damage anything. You know, you tool around there and, you know, they hit the brakes and, you know, you teach them.

10:06And as they get older, they get more freedom and they have responsibility. And so by the time they're 18 years old, you put the keys in their hands. You've shepherded them onto the world of driving. Well, here's a newsflash. The on world of social media is, you know, by a factor more dangerous than being in a car. And we should at least give parents the tools to onboard, you know. I like the idea of a driver's license for social media. I am under the thought process or impression myself and being a parent. I it's I'm so torn with social media. It's like you said, there's so many great things. But I personally almost feel like it could be the destruction of humanity in the future.

10:54That's just my personal thought. Yeah. No, I mean, listen, it's easy to go to the dark space in this and we we are, you know, we have a bottomless well of optimism. So we're not going to go there with you. You know what hiring feels like? Like searching for a needle in a haystack. You post a job, get flooded with resumes, but most just don't have the right experience or mindset. That's why I tell every founder I meet, use ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter finds amazing candidates fast, and right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash work. Here's why I love it. Their smart tech instantly pinpoints top talent and starts showing me the role.

11:35And you don't just sit and wait. You can personally reach out with their invite to apply message and connect with the best right away. If you're building something great, the team you hire makes all the difference. So ditch the other hiring sites and let ZipRecruiter find what you're really looking for. The needle in the haystack. four out of five employers who post on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day try it free at ziprecruiter.com work one more time ziprecruiter.com work zip recruiter the smartest way to hire but what we do want to do is we want to make sure that we give parents and kids the opportunity to go into this world armed and prepared to actually be successful in this, meaning getting the rewards of the world and not being taken down into places that they just do not need to be.

12:33So if these platforms reached out to you and said, hey, we want to make some changes. We want to do some things differently. What advice would you give to them? The big thing is basically access to data, right? I mean, so like if you're trying to build an ecosystem of safety, a platform provider would have a hard time. And even if they did, by the It would only be partial because kids use multiple different apps, multiple different platforms. So if you came to a set of standards where people said, listen, we want to make sure that we want to make your kids' data accessible to you in an easy way.

13:05And if the parent says, look, I want to be able to analyze it. I want to be able to take a look at what's going on there. None of that is super easy. At the moment, you can't get information. Like if you're a parent, even of my 14-year-old, and I want to get a sense of, hey, how was she engaging with this thing? And I think that's part of my job as a parent, unless I extract the password from her or give her some sort of. Yeah, I've seen some countries that are looking to put some age restrictions and such. But if you were to give maybe one habit that every parent could start today, one digital habit or however you want to call it, that they could implement right now, what would that be?

13:44I would definitely say keep the kids away from their phones overnight. You know, it's a very simple, obvious thing, but we see so much sleep interruption and that's at a core part of kid well-being. It's a very simple thing to do, like take their phones and put it outside and even tell them, like, you know, like that's what we do at home now is, you know, because we were noticing on our app that one of my kids was actually up like at 12, one o 'clock, you know, on social media browsing through. And we said, look, we're going to put the phone here and I don't, you know, and if you really feel like you have to come get it, come do it.

14:13But when you add that bit of intentionality, you know, she doesn't. I mean, she doesn't come get her phone. And, you know, we've been seeing lots of positive benefits from that. So I never thought about that when it comes to sleep interruption. I've had I have sleep apnea. So if I don't sleep, I get very anxious, depressed. It really my memory fades. I couldn't imagine, like you're saying, if this is in the phases of our life when we're going through so much development, at least now, you know, my memory fades. I already know it's going to happen. But if you're a teenager, the long-term benefits of that, I mean, that could be detrimental.

14:48I am curious, just changing gears slightly, when it comes to you, when you look at success, you both have pioneered your industries from entertainment to technology and health. You've had what people would probably say is, you know, that I would love to be the two of you at some point in my life. Like I strive to be you. You are on my vision board. But what does success look like to you now? Listen, I shared it with you earlier in this, which is, is that for me, I love doing good. I love being successful. But having that come from things that just have a positive contribution out there in the world and whether it's making people happy or making them smarter or making them more successful themselves, like doing things that help other people.

15:47Have some kind of positivity around it are the things that I personally just am attracted to and I find the most rewarding. You know, making movies for all those years, particularly family films, the thing that I love most about it was laughter. And so the reward for me was to go stand in the back of the theater and hear 300, a family of 300, you know, kids and parents laughing at, you know, Lion King or Madagascar or Shrek or whatever it was, the reward was laughter. And being in the back of that theater and hearing that outcome from something that, you know, 500 of us spent four years working on was beyond the greatest feeling.

16:33And so in the tech world that I'm in today, I look for the equivalence of that. I think the thing that I tell myself and I tell my kids and I tell execs at our company is at the end of the day, really, the big thing to do is to just take a step. You don't need to kind of think about, oh, I'm going to go change the world. I'm going to go do all these things. I want to make a billion dollars. Whatever it is that motivates you or drives you. The difficulty comes when you've got that vision that's pretty far away and then you are in the present reality of where you're sitting. and so typically you know like a sense of self-belief self-worth and confidence comes from just taking a step and then take another step and then take another step but then it starts to compound it kind of gets there so just having a bias for action after you've got that big vision of whatever it is you want to go accomplish really helps ground it and then you know over time you get better you don't make the same mistakes over and over again you get smarter you get you know faster all of these things but this you know when when my kids are overwhelmed with homework i tell them the same thing, which is, hey, just take a step, like just go do a thing.

17:33It doesn't matter what the thing is, just do one thing and then do another thing and then do another. So I think compounding towards action, I find to be very helpful for me personally as well. We tend to see from our audience, or they at least let us know that learning about the challenges of the guests is really inspirational for them. Was there ever a moment for, I'm sure there's been many moments, but is there a moment that stood out where you just wanted to give up because entrepreneurship can be really freaking hard. But there's some reason you just kept going. Every single chapter. I don't know what give up means.

18:11I honestly, it's a my mantra, which is sort of been mine from literally childhood forward has been two words, exceed expectations. And so no matter where what it is that I'm doing, no matter who I'm engaging with, you know, trying to get something done a little bit faster, a little bit better than, you know, I was expected, you know, exceeding the expectation of my bosses, exceeding the expectations of my, of the audience, exceeding the expectation of a customer, like just that. And by the way, it doesn't mean you achieve it every time you set out to do it, but at least setting that goal of wanting to just do a little bit better than what is expected of you by others.

19:00And I would translate that into my life. You know, I've been married 50 years. I'm still trying to exceed the expectations of my wife. Maybe that's a good thing, right? If you, if you exceeded expectations, who knows what happens then, but you know, you're, you're getting there, but sorry, Ari. Yeah. Look, I mean, adversely it's, it's, it's always there, right? I mean, you know, there's, it's a very thin line between, you know, when you feel like you have escape velocity and things are going to take off and the day prior thinking, I mean, It's all done. Like I just need to give up and it happens.

19:29And it's really interesting to me. I think, you know, you always find that around the time you feel like you're about to give up, you give it a little bit more time. That's when things start taking off. And that's happened over and over again in my life. And now I've kind of learned from it, which is, hey, if I feel like I want to give up, I just got to go another step, another step, another step. And then suddenly you're like, wow, like, I'm so glad I didn't give up. And so I think it's pushing through your mindset anchored around the journey versus the outcome helps get through adversity a bit more easily.

19:59So let's say, final question, you're in your 20s or maybe you've been fired from your corporate job because AI replaced you. Now you want to be an entrepreneur. What would you both look at right now in this current moment in terms of if someone is going to start a business today? I mean, where we started is where we end. Definitely AI is going to change the world. Whether you believe it's going to be for the good, for the bad, for whatever it is, it will. Again, the velocity of change has been mind-boggling to me about how much has come along in the last 24 months and the potential impact of that.

20:36And again, the way I see it, if no more innovation happened in AI, there's still so much that's been done in the last two or three years that it's going to take a decade for it to get its way through the business world, et cetera. And that creates lots of opportunities. And I think, you know, in my mind, anything that you start with first principles, like where is there a real customer problem that with my skill set and with my abilities, I'm able to solve it in a novel way that's unique. and a lot of those things are now coming with some sort of AI footprint. Those principles haven't changed.

21:08The tools you use to get there are a little bit different now than it used to be when I was in my 20s. Well, I'm excited because entrepreneurship is alive. I've been addicted to vibe coding. I don't know if you've been doing this, but I've made like, it's actually bad because if you're someone like myself, you just ideate all the time. It's like every day I'm making a new app that I'll probably never use, but I'm so excited that people can make something and not have to raise money, not have to raise capital right away. They can get to MVP. They can get to use cases without raising millions. And almost anyone can do it with at least$50.

21:45I'm really excited for the future. But if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more about Aura and everything you have going on, how can they do so? My email is haria.ora.com, H-A-R-I at Aura.com. So feel free to drop me a line. We'd love to hear from you. Well, Jeffrey and Hari, this has followed both of you for a long time. obviously Jeffrey, the things that you did had a major impact in my life growing up. Cause my dad and I, when we would spend time together, we were watching movies and that's what we do. So, um, both of you, if I thought 20, 30 years ago, I'd be sitting here having this conversation.

22:18Uh, I probably would be lying to say I would, but it's been a super honor to have you and how you're going to impact the world. Thank you for all that you do in joining us today. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it. Thank you.