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[soft music]

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[singing]

[woman 1 laughing]

What do I love about my daughter? Um...

What do I love about my kids?

-I'm going to cry. -I'll start crying.

My daughter is an old soul who teaches me

how to be a better person every single day.

I love his heart, like he... he loves big.

They are extremely smart and kind and opinionated which I love.

-He is so unique. -[man 1] They see the bright side of everything.

They have this altruistic love of people in the world.

-She's stunning and she's witty. -Very athletic, very charming.

Like he actually makes me laugh. I'm not laughing because he's so cute,

-he's like, legitimately funny. -Having these children to teach me

how to love has probably been the best way for me to learn how to love.

I just appreciate that they're good people, you know.

[phone ringing]

-Who's is that? -Is that...

How ironic is that. Talking about...

[man 2] It's around us, it's everywhere.

Uh...

[suspenseful music]

[typing]

A long time ago families were in extended communities.

They were local. They were small.

Children and parents largely worked together

with neighbors on things that just needed to be done for daily living.

I was born in the very depths of the Great Depression.

If you know anything about the depression, it actually began on the farms.

At that time I wasn't much to help,

but I can tell you later on I was put to work carrying wood, carrying water,

I knew how to shell peas, I knew how to break beans

and I had a little wagon so I was the water girl

instead of the water boy but that was the kind of things that we did.

You had responsibilities in the barn with the animals

from a very early age.

It's getting harder and harder to find 80, 90,

you know, plus-year olds that have that perspective. That we just have no concept

of what it was like to live in that kind of scarcity.

My mother was raised just like her great-grandmother was.

I was raised pretty much like my mother and dad

were up to a point and that's way with my kids.

They were able to change, but they had to change

so much faster than I did.

[upbeat music]

When you guys think of your parents and how they grew up what do you imagine?

So they had no internet, no smartphones, what do you think they did for fun?

Um, I don't really know how they would like communicate with their friends.

Faxing. That's one thing in the 70s, faxing.

If you've seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,

I imagine their life was like Charlie's.

It was definitely far different than what it is now.

Lots more kids outside.

A lot more like being outside than inside.

I was outside 24/7.

We were told to get out of the house, either in or out.

So, if you wanted to go outside, you were out all day.

I pretty much lived on my bike.

I would ride my BMX bike.

I fall in love with baseball.

[woman 2] But we would play kick the can in the middle of the street.

Capture the flag, to manhunt, to wiffle ball, to basketball, to...

We built a zip line and it was actually made out of clothesline

-which I would not recommend. -I remember getting up at 5:30

and helped my friend with his paper route.

He paid me with a donut, you know.

Yeah, if I wasn't lighting somebody's house on fire

or pouring sugar in a gas tank or something.

Yeah, you went outside. You went and rang the doorbell.

"You want to play?" And pick up somebody, sort of one house

-at a time until you had a posse. -Go to Scott's house.

Last time we saw the two of them, they were with Jennifer.

-Then you went and did whatever you want. -And before you knew it,

you had the whole neighborhood outside.

When the street lights came on we had to come home.

I had to be home when the street lights came on.

-When the street lights came on. -The street lights came on.

-Came home by dinner time. -Come in when it gets dark.

Came home when it got dark and parents would look at you quizzically,

"Why are you here already, if you're sitting around."

I feel like life was more authentic, like more genuine.

-Yeah, they got creative. -They got very creative.

I feel like that's our... why our like parents like

-stories are so much better than us. -They're so much more fun.

How do you think they got in touch with each other?

-They didn't. -[laughter]

-They never got in touch... -Maybe like the house phone.

They'd have to actually like dial the phone number.

Remember in the kitchen there would be that ringing sound.

We had the one phone in the kitchen

that had the really long cord.

-And it still hung on the wall. -Yeah, it still hung on the wall.

I can remember setting the dinner table and having

to take the phone cord over my mom's head.

I was rarely on the phone if my sister was on

and then I would spend hours trying to record her.

We also always had to have quarters on us too for pay phones

like when you're out and about. It's critical.

I would call my dad if I needed a ride home, if it got too dark.

I remember when call waiting happened, like what?

-What is this technology? -I had a pager

-in the tail end of college. -We didn't have a phone

until I was in college.

Everyone from the highway

to here would be on the same line,

so we I think we had nine people on the line.

I don't think I had an actual telephone until I was in maybe fifth grade.

But I think if we want to sort of be more real

and focus on what people are experiencing now,

we probably would want to be talking about the information revolution.

When I was a junior I was taking a class

and our professor was like, "We are going to communicate

with another college class in Sweden."

And we were like, "How... how are we going to do that?"

So we all went to the computer lab,

stared at this black screen and we typed in like

c:é\é all these numbers.

I remember thinking this, "Why would anybody do this?"

And she had this thing called AOL and there was this dial-up internet thing

-and it was like... [imitates beep] -[beep]

Then, all of a sudden, she's in this chat room.

So, what's everyone up to today?

Well, Linda Emerson called and she asked

if Dash and Peter can help Andrew and Lisa

learn about the internet.

What's a web page?

Something ducks walk on?

Ha-ha very funny.

And, frankly, I remember there being almost nothing to do

once you were online. It seemed really cool

and then you had no idea what to do.

It didn't feel life changing

until I think much later than that.

And particularly over the last 20 years we've just seen

this explosion of innovation and new technology.

I do remember the first time somebody said,

"You've never googled something?"

And I was like, "What's Google?"

Yahoo Meetups. I think they came before Myspace.

Facebook was born like the week our oldest son was born.

So when we look at him with his adolescent awkwardness

like that's... that's how old Facebook is.

My kids are way better

at using apps and mobile devices now than I am.

Kids are so intuitive with like the mobile devices.

They can pick up any mobile device and just...

it's so intuitive they know exactly what to do with it.

Just pick it up and be like, "There you go." You're like, "What did you do?"

I've seen kids run circles around parents.

At least now I have in-house tech help when I need it.

-You know, technology moves quickly. -It's like the Wild West.

-I try to keep up with the latest. -By the time I am aware

of what it is, they've gone on to the next one.

How do you keep up with something new every day.

It's exhausting. You can't just like,

"Okay, I got a [inaudible]."

I am not currently on any social media.

[woman 3] The use of phones has just ramped up.

[woman 4] I wouldn't even know how to navigate.

[girl] Everything's going crazy.

[woman 5] It's very difficult to opt out.

It's already too late.

The train has already left the stance... the station

way before I realized and I'll never catch up.

Do I feel like I can protect my kids from the dangers online? No.

They're going to have to navigate it and make decisions

for themselves without me, sooner than I want.

Its pace has been so fast that some of the...

what... we'll call them guardrails that are necessary

to keep an industry accountable

have been set aside in the spirit of innovation.

Right now we're effectively living in an experiment.

How is this going to affect us?

We'll find out with the current generation.

I... I will tell you that I'm probably going to be dead

and gone and I'll probably be thankful for it

when all this comes to fruition because...

because I think that this scares me to death.

[soft music]

The internet is awesome. It's a great place.

People use it for work, people use it for art,

people use it for socializing.

I don't know, it's just fun to take cool pictures

and show them off to the world.

I like checking up on people

that I haven't talked to since like the fifth grade.

Like you don't get to see them for like a month,

you can talk to them over FaceTime.

Staying connected, sharing photos

and being support to one another.

My partner calls it SMS parenting

because I just text them.

[Titania] The educational opportunities

of having the internet at my disposal,

-I can search anything. -What did I have?

I had The World Book Encyclopedia.

Just feeling a sense of security and safety with the ability

for the location tracking feature.

It's like letting everyone know where we are

and stuff, make sure everyone's safe.

If he's at a friend's house I could call,

-"Are their parents home?" -It's actually been a way

that we can keep track of them out there in the real world

where things really are scary.

Do you think the dangers online

are more prevalent or dangers in real life are more prevalent?

I think it's... I think I'm still more afraid of the real world.

I think my primary concerns did tend to be physical.

Any situation where they cannot physically defend themselves...

-Yeah. -...then that's number one for me.

That's scary to me and that's everything that's outside of the house.

I wasn't allowed to walk around the street.

I couldn't ride my bike around my street.

I'm a senior in high school, I still can't sleep over.

we couldn't do that now.

We couldn't walk down the street

and like go to a restaurant.

I mean that's just not really that safe.

Without worrying about being kidnapped or even...

-I'm going to throw out, raped. -Yeah.

Many parents today worry more about physical danger

of their children than they do online danger for their kids

because it's something that they can relate to.

[man 3] I don't know whether Jimmy's lost his kite or what,

but he's really asking for trouble climbing a power or a telephone pole.

Here's one, a rusty nail and believe me it's dangerous.

I remember my parents really, you know, teaching me

sort of very physical danger prevention things

like look both ways when you cross the street

and be careful who you talk to and things like that.

All of those things parents heard when they were growing up.

And so that's something that they can hold on to.

It's a fear that they remember whereas everything online,

oftentimes it's so far out of what they can imagine

because they're not using the technology the same way

that kids are that they can't even wrap their brain around it

enough to know what to be afraid of.

The greater danger is definitely mental versus physical in this world.

Um... I see it. I see it.

The biggest issues that have come up

with our kids have all been mental.

We've already been introduced to sexuality,

cyber bullying, marketing and persuasion.

The dangers for my kids that are more present

are way more mental and emotional.

I think parents are aware that

there are mental dangers out there,

but I feel like we're constantly as parents

you just tend to think that probably won't happen to my kid.

Statistically speaking our world is much safer outside in the neighborhood.

Those physical dangers are much less likely to happen

than the dangers that we're seeing online.

[soft music]

I remember in fifth grade like I saw all my friends slowly

like starting to get phones and I was like,

"Well, I want to be able to text my friends.

I want to be able to like...

do like fun things on your phone." Like it's a fun thing.

When Annabelle was five I gave them their first iPod.

I was... I was 11 when I started feeling pressured.

Like even before that people had cell phones.

Kids are ostracized. By the time they hit middle school,

they go in at sixth grade almost everyone has a phone

and if you don't have a phone then it's...

it's almost like a bullying thing.

You can do better than your peers if you have access

to some social media that allows you to engage

and know when things are happening and that you don't miss out.

Peers judge other peers by their knowledge of what's happening.

Certainly, in the last five years we've... we've seen

kids' usage of devices continue to increase.

We've also seen kids getting devices younger and younger.

The rates at which they're experiencing certain types

of problems continues to increase.

I'm Kelly Anne. I have worked in multiple different areas

with teens, children's hospital, a non-profit.

I met this group of girls when they were freshmen

and I have been with them now for four years so they're seniors.

They have access to me 24/7.

Like what's the max amount you think in one day,

in the past three years like if you had picked the one day you spent

the most time on your phone, how long do you think it was?

Oh, I'd say 18.

-[Kelly] Hours? -Maybe.

-It's like five. -The last two months

it's been eight, nine.

Ten, 11 hours a day.

Yeah, maybe like 12.

In the past 10 years or so

the time that they're spending on them has skyrocketed.

On average, maybe seven hours a day.

It's a lot of time when you also have to do

school and sleep and eat.

Seven hours a day is like a work shift.

There's a lot to do on your phone.

Like you can text people, you can play games,

take videos, pictures. There's a lot to do.

We've always had these things that captured our attention,

but there is a certain level of precision

with which today's technology hones in on our neurology and the way that we are wired.

Social media and other internet platforms make their money

by keeping users engaged. And so, they've hired the greatest engineering

and tech minds to get users to stay longer inside

of their apps and on their websites.

-I use Instagram, Snapchat. -Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

-Two Instagram accounts. -I can just scroll for hours on end.

-I use Instagram, Twitter. -Instagram, definitely.

-My favorite, Snapchat. -If I was to delete Snapchat,

I don't think I would like hang out.

I don't know what's going on with Snapchat.

There's this app called TikTok.

The social media games like TikTok and Fortnite.

Yeah, I look up from my phone after being there for 15 minutes

-and it's been like an hour. -Scrolling through Instagram.

Then I end up watching other people's videos

-for like five hours on end. -Watch Netflix for a time,

then go off Netflix to check Snapchat,

check Instagram, and go back on Netflix.

What I really do when I'm not online

is kind of just sit on my ass and like eat.

I call it the race to the bottom of the brainstem.

So it starts with techniques like pull to refresh.

So, you pull to refresh your news feed that operates like a slot machine.

It has the same kind of addictive qualities

that keep people in Las Vegas hooked.

[man 4] One of the central issues of Skinner's philosophy

of behaviorism is that just like the pigeon, man is a predictable animal.

Gambling systems have a schedule we call

variable ratio that explains why people gamble.

The psychoanalysts say people gamble to hurt themselves, destroy themselves.

Other people say they do gamble for the excitement and so on, but, nonsense,

you gamble because there was a certain schedule built into

the gambling device or system as in a horse race.

These same schedules will make a pathological gambler

out of a pigeon as well as out of a person.

It's interesting raising kids five years apart.

You know, John could leave his phone sitting somewhere away.

We've noticed that Jack's generation is of kids that can't do that.

They're so completely tied to their phone

and they don't even know life without a telephone.

Typically, when I get bored I do pick up my phone.

I tend to switch apps every 30 seconds to a minute.

They will, literally, melt their brains

-before they got off the device. -Yeah.

When we think about traditional drug use,

we know that the age of first use,

the earlier it happens, um...

the greater likelihood for addiction.

And so, think about, you know, with children their brain

is developing and if they are not having balance

in how they're using this and it's developing at a younger age

I just, you know, question how that will continue to impact them for years to come.

Young folks tend to have their reward sensitivity

and their social sensitivity develop much earlier

than their ability to regulate these areas in their brain.

Throughout childhood the brain experiences rapid maturation.

It begins in areas responsible for basic perception

and memory way in the back of the brain

and it ends in the front of the brain.

And in the front of the brain that's the areas

that are most important for having us regulate our responses

to rewards and our responses to social feedback.

And the highest order part of that

doesn't really develop in... into the 20s.

I... my biggest fear's when they get older that

they never put those things down and they're so disinterested

with connecting with other people,

like, in person, you know, that it negatively affects them.

Being a leader 14 years ago was easier.

The way kids are has definitely changed.

They have less or no coping skills.

They are also harder to kind of break

that outer shell and talk about hard things.

They don't want to, and or, they don't know how. It's wild.

They really just don't know how to get there.

One of the greatest consequences of screen time addiction

is just the lack of social development, social skills development,

being able to connect with other people.

And we're seeing a lot more of that

as we are becoming more aware

of what social media does to our ability

to have empathy, and to interact with others,

and to see their social cues, understand their social cues,

and react accordingly. We're seeing the difference that it's making but the kids aren't.

The disconnect of even just he with his friends.

I mean... I mean it is how they connect,

but how connected are they if they're all getting depressed and...

-Yeah, well, if they don't have anything to compare it with... -Yeah.

Like, you know, like you said it, we...

we have a comparison because we grew up differently,

because we didn't have the option.

We're incredibly social creatures.

That's actually what separates us,

not our intelligence, but our ability to work together

in communities, to thrive as humans.

A huge chunk of your brain is devoted

towards just understanding people's moment-to-moment

facial expressions because social signals

that come very rapidly are incredibly important to us,

even if in the moment we're not totally realizing

how important those social signals are.

Would any of you guys say that you struggle or

have struggled with anxiety or depression?

-Anxiety. -[Kelly] In high school?

-Oh, yeah. -[girl] Oh, yeah.

-Depression. -Yeah, me, too.

-Yeah, dumb. -Yes, definitely I have

an entire friend group who has latched on to each other

due to their connection with depression.

Because they both are prone to anxiety and depression,

I can't pinpoint whether or not it has anything to do with their device.

He's addicted to some games. I'm addicted to some games.

Sometimes when we don't get it we cry. We throw a fit.

I noticed my anxiety ramps up when I'm on my phone more,

but not from like any specific thing just kind

of the more time I spend in my head, the worse off I get.

A statement that I've been making at my talks

with high schoolers is, "Don't you all just sort of feel like

every moment of every single day,

we're all living in a state of low-grade anxiety?"

And they all just kind of look at me like, "Yeah."

So we are seeing many more kids

coming to school with diagnoses of anxiety and depression.

And we also know that the teen suicide rate

from 2010 to 2017 increased 56%.

My day-to-day life in the ER over the last 20 years I think, there's been

two very palpable changes. One is childhood obesity

and the other is mental health issues in terms of the volume and the frequency.

I have personally seen a difference in the number of children

who are coming to the ER with mental health issues

with non-suicidal self-harming

and suicide attempts and suicidal ideation.

His demeanor with me and his temperament, everything is different

after he has had hours of gaming or something with a friend.

Sometimes I feel like I want to give it up,

but it's such a big part of teenage life,

I guess you could say that I... I... I just couldn't.

A lot of like our lives are on our phones.

Like texting our friends, like that's on our phone,

like we have to be on it, if we want to like talk to our friends.

Like our school actually gives us information through social media,

so it's kind of just like it goes hand in hand

that you will be using social media and have a phone.

The lives of kids were sort of changing slowly

for a while and then, all of a sudden, phones,

smartphones were easy to get. Social media was easy to get.

Most people were able to afford that. Most kids were able to get on social media

and that's when everything kind of skyrocketed.

-I'm addicted to my iPad. -I'm addicted.

But adults not just teenagers are also addicted to their phones.

Parents are the primary determinant

as to how a kid uses technology.

In other words, if we want our kids to be

consuming technology differently then we first

need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves,

would we want them using their technology exactly how I do?

The race for attention has to get more and more aggressive.

And so, it's not enough just to get your behavior

and predict what will take your behavior.

We have to predict how to keep you hooked in a different way.

And so, it crawled deeper down the brainstem into our social validation.

So that was the introduction of likes and followers.

I post a lot. I used to...

like I almost like have like a mental schedule, like,

okay, like each month I'll post.

And like I'll edit the picture and like make it look really good.

Now I just kind of like post like when I want to

and I like definitely delete posts I don't get like a lot of likes.

I like to have a lot of likes on my posts.

Just to like... it just makes you feel good.

You feel better when people are like,

"Yeah, you're looking good." But then

at other times you feel horrible

because people aren't liking your post,

but you can see they looked at it.

No, I don't care.

I mean it sucks when my art doesn't get a whole lot of likes.

They call each other and say, "Do me a favor, like my picture. I need more likes on my..."

[girl] Like, it's really easy for you to be like,

"Oh! Look at this other girl. Like she got this many more likes.

-Like her body's this much nicer." -[Patti] Are they chasing likes?

Are they, as some young people say, you know,

I'll put a photo up and if I don't get 50 likes right away

-I'm taking it down. -And that got every... it was much cheaper to...

instead of getting your attention to get you addicted

to getting attention from other people.

And this has created the kind of mass narcissism

and mass cultural thing that's happening

with young people especially today.

I think people's online status does...

connect to their popularity at school.

I'd say they're kind of symbiotic,

like they both feed off of each other.

I have a 400 streak with this person. I'm better than you

or look at this, I got 600 likes on Instagram. I am better than you.

They just want to be famous. They just want people to adore them.

They're hoping to get famous. They're hoping to get popular.

They're hoping to get validated by strangers on the internet.

Clout addiction. Know what clout is?

It's not as if, all of a sudden, a separate part

of our brain evolved in the past 10 years

to separate out social signals from social media

from those social signals that we get in real life.

The... the social feedback is, literally, rewarding

when it's positive and it's, literally, punishing when it's negative.

Ms. Stanfield, I... I... I was a little confused by one thing you said.

Did you say Google doesn't use persuasive technology?

That is correct, Sir.

What gets the most likes?

-More skin, more likes. -[girl] Yeah.

Girls in bathing suits.

[boy] You have to sexualize yourself

or you have to post a bikini pic or something

that's revealing in order to get a lot of likes.

The more attractive you are the more likes you get.

-Hot girls get a lot of likes. -Parent's day and age,

you couldn't get on your phone and be like, "Oh, my gosh!

Look at Kim Kardashian's life." We have the ability to compare

-ourselves with other people. -We weren't really worried

about what we were wearing because everybody

in the whole world wasn't watching us.

The pressure to maintain

the perfect image online is huge.

On the flip side, if they post something

and either don't get likes or get poor comments

then it's hit with depression.

[woman 6] But you know what you look like. You can see yourself.

You don't need...

Yeah, but it's not how you look like...

-Yeah. -...this. It's like how you look like on that.

It's not checking to see if the hair is okay,

it's seeing if they look like the girl

that they saw on Instagram that was perfect.

Seeing people like that, it's like, "Why can't I,

you know, look like that?"

And it's weird because we know that

they're made up and they're not like a 100% authentic pictures.

Girls like strongly edit their pictures

and like you can tell like the wall is bent at their waist or like...

But it just still makes you feel like...

They're always ready for a phone. It's like they're constantly

prepared to be captured by something and be shown to the world.

[man 5] A man feels free, if he believes he is free

and he will believe he is free if he is conditioned

by positive reinforcement to think so.

You could be the meanest most horrible person in the world

and if somebody sees you have like 6000 followers on Instagram

at school or like you get a ton of likes,

they'll be your friends. They don't care what you're like.

Are you going to be on my side if I let you up?

Sure, chick, sure. I'm on your side.

Just let me up. I'll do anything you say.

When I was a student bullying was always in person,

in my neighborhood, the bully who lived up the hill

and we would be careful to not to go that direction

because if he was outside he would grab your bike and harass kids.

Get off. I want to ride it.

Oh, no Jake! Not my new bike.

Oh, I was bullied all through school.

I can remember the kid, who you all just kind of knew

was mean to people whether it was on the playground

or other places. I'm not going to say his name.

I'm sure he's a great guy now.

The bullying happened at school

-or on the bus. -The ways in which this person

could have access to my life were pretty limited.

In this case, it was the seven hours that I was at school.

Okay. Really? Come on, guys.

Now, it's always available.

It's going to follow them everywhere.

Have any of you ever been harassed online?

-Yes, 120%. -People are still just like mean.

[girl] They're called trolls. They just troll you and they try and make you feel bad.

Trolls are just kind of a part of the society we live in nowadays.

Our bullying did not go in front of the whole world on social media.

To them it feels like it went out to the whole world.

Personally, like I don't really get those. Well...

Where are the safe places for a kid growing up?

Because as soon as I get home everyone goes to their room

and the devices come out and everything that was horrible about what

just happened is shared over and over and over again.

By sixth grade he was like bullying me on Instagram

and my friends were telling me and I had no means to defend myself.

Well, honestly, I do think it's worse to be bullied online

because you don't know who you're talking to.

Big picture, he was bullied in a lot of different ways

and part of the way that

also showed up was through text message.

You know it was in person, in school, in the classroom,

divide and conquer as well as cyber.

And so, it was coming at him from all angles.

And it would never shut off, but the cyber stuff...

yeah, so I would block kid a, and block kid b,

and they would give Ethan's number... then they started texting Gavin.

They had Gavin's ID and messages were coming in through...

Gavin was what, six at the time.

-They were relentless. -He was the target.

It was relentless.

When I finally did get a phone in seventh grade, it...

it got bad because I also got Snapchat around the same time.

And so, I could now see what he was posting about me.

-Every kid sees this happening. -It's hitting a much larger and broader audience

than it ever used to, you know, and sometimes people pile on.

It's another thing when the bully gets 25 people

on a text thread and it's all directed at you.

It's just... it's a different scale and it's a different time.

It's an amplifier for the worst parts of us.

Let's take an example like Twitter.

It's calculating what is the thing

that I can show you

that gets the most engagement.

And it turns out that outrage... moral outrage

gets the most engagement. So it was found in a study that

for every word of moral outrage that you add to a tweet

it increases your re-tweet rate by 17%.

If they didn't have tech,

I swear they would have a black eye every day.

There are just so many more channels through which

I can be a complete jerk that don't involve me being

in front of you which is the great neutralizer

of cruelty because if I see you and I look you in the eye,

we tend to treat each other differently.

He was having a really difficult time.

He was very agitated and it was...

It had to do with his phone and I couldn't understand

because we'd found some text messages on it that concerned me.

And I asked him about it and I took the phone from him

and we talked, shared some tears and I said, "Really son, what's going on here?"

Couple days after Christmas the stomach pains got so bad we had to go to the emergency room.

I was convinced he had appendicitis, he was in so much pain.

He threw up two or three times.

His blood work's good. This is weird, we don't know.

And I knew in that moment it was anxiety. I knew it.

We got him through the other side, but there was a place there

where it was so dark I thought this is it.

That's... this is that tipping moment where we lost our kid.

Certainly the... yeah, there's an element that kids need to learn resilience

and they need to understand that people are not always going to agree with them

and they may even tease them. And there's an element

that that's okay because that's... we can't

train kids to expect that they will always be shielded

from any negative thing in their life.

That said it's important for a parent to know

where in the spectrum it is for your child

relative to where they are in their developmental cycle.

So it's definitely there. It's definitely there, but

I'm certain it's probably more behind people's backs nowadays.

Cyber bullying is definitely like Charlie said,

a lot more subtle than people like to make it out to be.

So what happens when somebody takes somebody off Instagram?

-Oh, it's a big thing. -It's a big deal. When you block

somebody on Instagram you can tell,

we all know the signs when somebody blocks you

and it's like a big thing because,

you know, this person doesn't like you anymore.

[Chris] That group photo where I don't tag that one girl.

Their parents may not pick up on that,

but that is a subtle way of saying, I'm not going to tag you

or I'm not going to like that photo or whatever it might be.

We've attached worth to those things and that's a little subtle jab

that kids are doing all the time. I see it. I hear it.

[Kelly] What about the constant awareness that

you're not invited to something or you're being left out?

I hate that. Nothing makes me more upset than that.

When people hang out or do something cooler than you,

they're going to post it and then it just shows like,

"Hey, you're not here.

You know, you suck."

I would actually like be like, "What did I do wrong?

I must have done something wrong like I need to fix something about my character,

like I just need to completely change myself.

Who would be the person that would be invited

and then make myself into that?"

It's not outright and it's not something

you can just see when you go online.

It's something that's behind the scenes

and it's something that affects someone

over years and years and...

and slowly changes the way they think.

[man 6] How easy was pornography to come across?

-Oh, boy! -[man 6] Yeah. Oh, boy!

-Yeah, like Mom, Dad, don't watch this. -I know.

I had a trunk and I had ways to hide it.

We had different methods of finding it.

We congregated at this one guy's house because he had

a VHS tape that had something on it that had been recorded from Cinemax.

Go up to your uncle, go to the bathroom up there,

we'd take a Playboy in there... run down

-the alley and look at it. -She brought out a few magazines.

"Quick, you can look real quick. Somebody's coming."

"Look at this!" And it was a Playboy magazine

and I was like, "Goodnight! What are they doing?"

And we thought, "This is our moment."

You had to be MacGyver to like

to get it, hold it, keep it.

But they had those sex hotlines that you could call.

-[man 7] Oh, yeah. The 1-900. -[female voice] Call me now.

Yeah, they were like advertising on the late-night TV.

But this was again a plan,

like a detailed plan that had to be enacted.

There was no other way to get access to this sort of thing.

In the 50s we had pinup girls.

Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe and in the 60s

we had Girly Magazines and then in the 80s

we had VHS and then there were chatrooms with webcams

and now we have cell phones in kids' hands.

[suspenseful music]

All the physical barriers, be it physical location, right?

Be it proximity, all those sorts of things,

be it people, maybe they had access to it, right?

None of those barriers exist anymore.

I mean it's completely different now. I mean,

it is like it's all video and it's all...

and watching XXX videos are a lot different than looking at a Playboy Magazine.

The Australian study that found that about half

of children ages 8 to 16 had exposure to pornography

and many of those were actively seeking it out.

27%, if you look at the unfiltered internet,

27% of all video contents on the unfiltered internet

is pornographic or explicit in some way.

If I imagine every day growing up, there was a coffee table

in my living room and there were four magazines

on that coffee table, one of them was pornographic

and three of them weren't and my parents just hoped

every day that I didn't look at the wrong one.

That is what the unfiltered internet is for kids today.

We have put little boxes of porn in their pockets

under the guise of safety, under the guise of overprotection,

under the guise of I have to get in touch with my kid

all the time, every day, 24/7,

we have given them access to pornography that far exceeds

anything that we ever were exposed to.

What about porn? Does ever... do guys all watch porn?

Okay, I like didn't even realize that, but pretty much every guy

has like an addiction to it but no one talks about it.

So say I'm like talking to them about it and they'll be like...

I'll be like, "Does that guy do it, too?" And they're like, "Yeah."

And I'm like, "That sweet innocent boy watches it, too?"

-Like everyone. -Everyone.

Everyone no, no, like every everyone watches it.

How many guys and girls do you guys know that watch porn?

I'd say all guys pretty much.

I think I know one guy in my school. I think

I've talked to one that I can confidently say

hasn't and nobody else.

You know, it's very prevalent

and like everybody knows it.

They watch porn for fun.

They don't even watch it for any sexual release.

They just watch it to watch it.

Do you think parents

really have any clue of how significant

of an issue pornography is in... in kids?

No. They're... they're pretty clueless.

-[girl] Yeah. -Okay.

What percentage?

It is on every platform,

even the platforms that parents think it's not on.

Just, for example, Twitter which is one

that most adults probably use. They probably know Twitter.

Snapchat is where explicit content on Pornhub

lives just seconds away from every user

through backdoors within the app.

The app knowingly allows

a well-documented list of porn performers

to make thousands of dollars daily

through their premium Snap accounts.

The people behind pornography know

how to optimize their content for search terms.

Pornographers, any new technology

that comes out they immediately saturate it.

They know about it before... as it's getting ready

to come out and they are ready with every strategy to saturate it.

At what age did like watching porn become common?

-I'd say seventh grade. -Yeah, middle school.

Ninth and tenth grade, I remember guys being like,

"Yeah, like I had an issue in seventh grade." And I'm like, "I'm sorry. What?"

What I say to parents is it's time for every parent on Earth

to leave the ignorance of the land of "if"

and embrace the reality of "when".

The film we'll see this morning will give the answers to these questions.

It will also show the earliest phases of growth

as well as the changes that take place during childhood and adolescence.

So when my parents were addressing the birds and the bees with me

there was no conversation.

I walked out more confused after the conversation than when it started.

We don't talk about those things at all.

Now, sex. Sex, sex, sex. Where were we?

It's absolutely normal to be curious about sexuality.

It's normal to be interested.

Don't have sex because you will get pregnant and die.

Just don't do it, promise?

Okay, everybody take some rubbers.

My dad had conversations with me

when I was a teenage girl.

Like I asked him and he was very blunt

-and just told me. -Do you think kids are using

pornography as sex education?

-Yeah. -Okay.

Because I feel like they don't want to like

talk to like a parent or like a guidance counselor

or anything like that because it's awkward. It's an awkward topic to talk about.

Like I said I have three classes right now

and they all are going like over...

like sex ed-type things and it's really boring.

So a lot of the times I don't like... I just kind of like tune it out.

This is a tool for sex education for a lot of children.

They are learning so many wrong things

not only about sex, but about relationships.

[girl] Guys, especially our age like...

they just like watch porn to like be fulfilled in their own ways.

So then they're just like... like, if my girl can't do

the same thing that these people are doing, then something's off.

I don't want to be compared to like a porn star like...

-Wow! -There's like certain guys that I've hooked up with

and I'm like, "This is really aggressive.

Like this is too much for me."

And then I'm like... and it's just terrible.

I'm like this is so bad. Because I haven't had sex, yet,

like people... or like the guys will like ask

and I'm like, "No, I don't want to do that with you."

And they're like, "Are you kidding me?"

-Like, they get so mad. -Guys get this image

in their head that that's how intimacy goes

and that's how sex goes and...

There's definitely a bigger population

of guys that feel that way now than they were...

they were even like five years ago.

[Chris] The science is still emerging

but I just happen to live in the camp

that when young people are exposed

to large amounts of pornography,

it shapes the way that they see other people.

I happen to be somebody who at a very young age

was exposed to pornography.

I discovered a stack, you know, of magazines

when I was way too young and that planted a lot of curiosities in me

that I wasn't ready for, quite honestly.

I didn't know what to do with that.

And we could talk a long time about what that did to me

later in life and what that did to distort just my views

of sex and intimacy even as a, you know, a young adult

and as a married man, even leading to an addiction

of my own to pornography that was destructive in a lot of ways.

That was years ago but I can link all of those things together.

And I'm a guy that did not grow up in the digital age,

yet, I was exposed to something that I wasn't ready for.

I didn't have anybody who was giving me any sort

of baseline to compare that to,

so a combination of that early exposure plus the internet

became a very toxic thing for my life.

I feel like a lot of porn does... I guess... show

the women as more submissive and it kind of

puts that idea, I guess, in boys' minds.

It just leads to guys objectifying women a lot,

you know, and then they forget about the whole relationship part

and that's all they think of now is just sex because that's all they've seen.

I know we've been talking about like a lot of like guys are like

-into pornography, but like a lot of girls are, too. -[Free] Absolutely.

I don't even think parents have like the

birds and the bees talk anymore because kids will know about it

by the time they're like eight if they have access to social media.

-[man 8] Yeah? -It's just, honestly, I've thought...

But it's just faster now and it's younger.

[Patti] 20% of youth report that they came across at children,

you know, that it was unwanted.

But we can now be in different places

and we're in a group chat and somebody shares it,

everybody's got it if they open it.

And in the elementary schools that I'm in,

I typically hear counselors saying, "Yeah, we've got kids

that are already seeking that out in the elementary school age."

Sex is not something that is easy to talk about

with your kid at any age, but it's something that you

absolutely have to talk about, and at a younger age

than you might think because even if he couldn't

access pornography on his personal device

or through our home, you know, cable,

somebody on the bus probably could.

This mother proceeded to tell me, her son was 11 years old,

but when he was nine years old

he went to sleep over at a friend's house,

a family that they knew quite well.

And this son, his friend showed him pornography,

um, hardcore, really horrible stuff

on the iPad at the sleepover

and then proceeded to practice that pornography on her son.

That was when he was nine years old.

Okay, fast forward two years, he's now 11.

He's never told anybody about this,

but mom has noticed that, "My son just isn't happy anymore",

and she sat down and had a conversation with him

and found out through this conversation

that for two years he had held on to this secret

and he felt so much shame and guilt that there was something wrong

with him, that he did something wrong.

And so, for two years he held on

to this corrosive secret that started on an iPad.

The number one common denominator

of those who abuse other kids

is an early exposure to pornography

because what they see,

they feel neurologically compelled to do.

[soft music]

I guess my first boyfriend was...

I was college age when I had my first boyfriend.

We would have hay rides or winter roasts

or it was more... more like just groups of people.

Now, after you finished 4-h they had what they'd call

rural youth and that's how I met my husband.

We would meet once a month and... and maybe have a dance

or a lot of those square dancing and everybody was a...

would bring food and... and there were a lot of marriages.

My friend, Mary Lou and I both met our husbands through rural youth.

So that's how I met my... that's how I met my Mr. Right.

[soft music]

Dating in 2020. How do dating relationships begin?

A guy says you're hot, pretty much.

The guy will like add you on Snapchat

and then you might like say you like each other, but you know,

of course, it's over text it's not face to face.

-Then you guys might have a thing. -Hooking up with each other.

-Or when you like... -So you hook up before you are dating.

-Yes. -People don't really like...

go on any dates. It's kind of you just like hang out

or like guys just use you. It's true.

-[girl] Right. -We couldn't communicate in person

because we'd like built the relationship online.

I had like the same experience.

Only after about three months he asked for nudes

and when I said no, I don't send them, he dumped me.

[Patti] For many young people, sexting

could be considered the new first base.

Kids call it nudes. We call it sexting.

Yeah, no. Everybody knows what it is.

Everyone knows sexting is a thing.

My school... sending nudes is very common.

It's mainly between people who aren't actually dating.

[man 9] Do you know of anyone who's been affected by that

at all in your school?

-Affected by a sexting? -[man 9] Yeah, yeah.

Like have had an incident or a bad thing happen to them.

Well, yeah. Like nudes of girls go around the school all the time.

-[man 9] Really? -Yeah.

We are seeing more and more young people that expect to jump

right into sexual acts without the relationship portion before that,

without getting to know each other, without going on that first date,

without holding hands, without having that first kiss.

They're jumping straight to send me nude photos,

send me a video of you masturbating

and that's happening younger and younger.

But in eighth grade there was like two different groups

and it was like, the group of people that like did

like send nudes or like did all these things

and then the group of girls that like didn't do it.

And there was a very distinct... and it was eighth grade.

-And that's what divided the groups? -Honestly, yeah.

And like, now like, my brother's in middle school and like,

I... I sometimes hear him and then like

a bunch of kids I babysit middle school, like,

it's happening younger and younger. And...

I mean like, sixth and seventh grade.

Like with sexting, while the studies typically focus

on the ages of... of 12 and older,

I've been in schools, elementary schools where sexting

has already occurred with 10- and 11-year-olds.

We have a lot of teachers and counselors coming

like trying to discourage us from doing that type of thing,

but, obviously, people don't listen.

Like, if you have a teacher or just someone

like telling you constantly not to do it,

it makes you more just want to do it and like to try it out.

Is that amount of communication

needed before a boy feels

comfortable asking somebody by text for a nude?

You're pretty much lucky if you get about two weeks

into talking to them before they ask.

Or even sometimes they won't even like just like talk to you.

-Like they just... -[girl] Demand it.

-Yeah. -Or send their own

-without us asking. -Yeah.

And what about guys? Do they send nudes?

Yeah, they're disgusting. Who wants to see that?

-I wish they wouldn't. -No, one time I was with a friend

and we were... we were having a sleepover, woke up, good morn...

it was 8 AM. I was like, I don't need to see this.

They're more unsolicited like

most of my friends have gotten them and...

I feel like for girls for the most part

get disgusted by it.

What do you think percentage-wise

of girls have received them?

-High percentage. -Probably more than half.

-Yeah. -More than half.

[boy] Do a lot of people

you guys know send nudes?

In middle school...

-That was a huge thing. -Oh, yeah.

-You guys have huge problems. -Scandals.

They're... there are like these rings almost,

so they gotten caught and the police would get involved.

In middle school that's like the peak

of like which is totally messed up.

It's just so casual, but then when a girl does it

it's totally different and looked down upon kind of.

Some girls I know, like, they just like won't say no

because they're like scared of like the repercussions

because they don't want to be yelled at or called a prude, or like...

And you're constantly judged.

That's so true like they're either like,

"Oh, well she's a slut and will do anything."

Or, "She won't do anything with guys."

And there's really like no in between.

It's a no-win situation.

If you give it to a boy and then you're a slut,

then the girls find out about it,

then you're cyber bullied by the girls.

If you don't give it, then some girls will even jump

on the bandwagon, "You know, I gave it to so-and-so,

what's the problem? Why won't you do it?"

What do you do in that situation?

Because you, you know, you can't win.

I don't think people think it's a positive

for doing that type of thing,

but it definitely gives you a lot of clout.

You have a lot of attention on you, like good or bad.

And so, people definitely like want clout.

They like do like almost anything

just for people to, like, pay attention to them.

If the good girl sends Johnny something

that she normally wouldn't, everyone's going to be like,

"Let's get more."

[girl] And then all the guys will go after her, too.

[girl] She's got like 20 new adds on Snapchat, three new DMs.

But behind closed doors people are like, "She is a whore."

And people act cool around her, but like

behind closed doors, people hate her.

Let's say your daughter was dating a football player.

She breaks up with him, she hasn't had sex with him,

but he says you need to give me a little something, something,

some pictures and then I'll stay in the relationship.

So she does it. She gets pressured and she does it

and they break up. Well, I talk to kids all the time,

"What happens when you break up with those pictures?"

Let me take it a step further.

"What happens

when you break up with your boyfriend

and his new girlfriend goes

in his phone and finds her pictures?"

-It gets distributed. -Especially with Snapchat

which was kind of more or less created for that exact purpose.

It gives people a sense of...

like, "Oh, it's not that serious.

The pictures go away." But...

we all can realize now and look back and say, "Well, no.

-That's definitely not true." -Yeah, once something is out on the internet,

social media will latch on to it, people will download it.

So it's like a dropbox and it was like, I guess,

some guy like went to our school, made it

and it's like, just girls nudes, just like just random people.

-It's what all the guys do. -Anyone can access to see it.

And there was like a list of like all the people that had accessed it,

it was even like people that you wouldn't think really, like,

good guys that you wouldn't think would engage in that kind of stuff,

but some girls had no idea that their pictures were out in the open for everyone.

All of these naked pictures and videos

guys get from girls they went to high school with,

they're in their college dorm, they go on a9 IB.

and they trade them like Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

I mean this girl that I grew up with she had

a sex tape actually and it was leaked.

I remember even I who didn't even go there had access to it,

but it was sent around and we were freshmen.

One of my most hated terms is "Not my kid".

Parents suffer from a disease called the NMK syndrome.

It's described as "Not my kid."

"My kid won't do that. My kid would never.

My kid's friends aren't like that.

My kid's school isn't like that." You're wrong.

Everybody's community is like that. Every school is like that.

Every kid has the potential to do any one of the things

that we're talking about here, no, even my own kid.

About 60% of the youth who experience

sextortion when it's... they're kind of blackmailed or,

you know, forced to send images,

threatened to send it, actually know their perpetrator.

However, we also then... about 40% met the person online

and sent the image.

[news program music]

[man 10] He chooses his innocent victim.

This time he will not think.

This time he is sure.

So, I grew up in the era of stranger danger.

So it was really the media that taught me more about strangers.

Dangerous people, you know, stranger danger.

If somebody tries to engage with you, run away.

-It's always like a van. -A white van with no windows.

You know, don't ever get into a car.

He's going to promise you a puppy and some candy. Don't fall for it.

We were told not to hitchhike because we would be kidnapped.

So in 1997,

we had a guy come from Brentwood, Tennessee,

drive up here to Naperville, met a 13-year-old

at the corner of her block, took her to a hotel,

raped her, let her go back home and she told her parents

that she met him on this thing called America Online.

[man 11] Call now for America Online.

A new way to use your computer to communicate.

My Instagram's kind of like a mix.

Like I would say half the people I know

and half the people I don't know are like friends of friends.

Three-fourths of it is probably my friends from like school

or acquaintances I know not just random people off the internet,

but there is, of course, that one-fourth

that is random people I've never talked to

or don't know looking at pictures of me.

When it comes to Tumblr, a lot of people like follow me

for my stuff and that's cool. I like to have them follow me,

but also there's sometimes people that I don't know but follow me.

-I friend a lot of people. I would just... -He just friends random people.

-I would just join games for no reason and just go, "add friend, add friend."

Braxton does end up, you know, I'll be in there

and he's on the headphones playing Xbox

and I'm like, "Who are you playing with?"

He'll be like, "I don't know, some kid."

-Have you ever gotten creepy DMs from guys? -Yeah, all the time.

-Have you been solicited by any creeps online? -Yes.

He was contacted by a stranger on Instagram.

"Oh, like I saw your page and like I'm really...

like, I'm interested in like sending you money

for like in exchange for a picture."

I had people like DM me saying that

I'm like I'm so beautiful and he'll buy me whatever I want.

So we at Bark, unfortunately, detect issues

around online child predation very frequently.

Last year alone we escalated 450 online

child predators to law enforcement.

And so, we know that it's a common problem.

Unfortunately, we think most parents underestimate the...

the commonality of that problem.

[Titania] We decided to go undercover

as multiple children on social media

and post innocuous content to see what would happen.

We had to be very intentional with everything we did.

We had to create personas.

They had to have believable date of births

and they had to know everything about the city

that they lived in and we had to create story lines,

and we worked closely with law enforcement.

[Brian] And, basically, just pushed... pushed go.

We put the... put everything live and we documented what happened.

[woman 7] Within the first hour of posting on Libby's accounts,

seven adult men contacted her.

By the end of nine days that number was 92.

The conversations ranged in severity

from making sexual comments to sharing and requesting

explicit photos and videos to manipulation and threats.

[Titania] We had to deploy an entire team, you know, around the clock

to responding because the... the rate at which

these messages came in was mind-boggling.

And, of course, when you're dealing with social media

and the internet, it's a global thing.

It's not just an East Coast thing or a U.S.-based thing.

There were men that wanted to talk to children

for nefarious purposes at all hours of the day and night.

We tried it with younger personas as well,

even... even an 11-year-old.

[woman 7] We launched our 11-year-old persona online.

It's 4:44 and go.

[suspenseful music]

One like from a guy whose profile photo...

-[gasps] -...is a penis.

One... That's one minute and seven seconds,

we have a message request. Although this...

I'm sorry, two more requests just came in. How much time?

-A minute and 40 seconds? -Yeah.

-How old are you? -[Titania]You go

to the profile, you know that that is a child.

It also says in the profile

that the child is in sixth grade.

-Another one. -[Titania] It's just lighting up

like the inbox is just boom, boom, boom, boom.

[phone ringing]

[woman 7] An incoming video call in less than five minutes.

[woman 8] They all say don't be shy.

This happens to all types of children.

This is not just kids who might be at risk.

You know, oftentimes it's a child who's simply bored in their bedroom at night.

And I cannot tell you how many children I see

in their bedrooms on livestream with tons of people

just watching them, asking them to do certain things.

[Richard]When parents allow their kids to have that device

in their rooms at night, you know, where are your parents?

Then come to grooming question, "Where are your parents?"

Are you on an iPhone or are you on an iPad?

What are you wearing? Your makeup looks so beautiful."

It's not uncommon for grooming behavior

to include showing minors' images

of pornography to help them to think that that is normal

and then that can be a progression in toward...

towards engaging them in sexual activity.

Do you want that? Do you want that as a parent,

strangers in your child's room while you're sleeping?

Would you leave the door open with a sign

that says my daughter's bedroom is

the second one on the left

and then go to bed?

We have traded

a false sense of safety and security

for actually putting our kids in riskier situations.

There are some that are just there for a quick fix.

They want to see something, a body part

or a live video and then you might not hear from them again,

but there are others. They use psychological strategies

to methodically groom children by forming a friendship,

by showing care and then it escalates

into more of a controlling relationship.

What do predators do with the pictures and videos they get from kids?

They keep it or they trade it.

Last year alone we received over 18 million reports

of international and domestic online child sexual abuse.

Between 2017 and 2018 video files reported

to NCMEC increased 541%.

We're seeing reports with graphic and violent sexual images of young children,

including infants and reports of on-demand sexual abuse

known as live streaming.

Unfortunately, some of those were people who wanted

to actually meet the child in person

which could have been just because they wanted to have sex with...

with a minor and sometimes we believe that it was

because they might be part of a sex trafficking ring

wanting to actually traffic the child.

[woman 7] It was a tough decision, but if Keith

wanted to meet Libby in person, we would let him.

[girl] I've never done anything like this before

so I'm a little nervous.

[girl] Yeah.

Are you okay with me being 15?

The project has also resulted in numerous arrests and that's... that's great.

Unfortunately, it's a drop in the bucket.

The average internet predator has 250 victims in their lifetime.

One person has that many victims in their lifetime,

if they're not caught. So what happens in the law enforcement arena

that cops are not getting this technology training.

The problem is so big.

I mean we would need to employ so many more officers

trained in dealing with this issue.

[Brian] When you're a law enforcement professional

and you're looking at more cases than you can ever possibly get to,

unfortunately, a lot of those get triaged

so low that they never actually get investigated.

And so, unfortunately, that allows predators to keep doing

exactly what they're doing without as much consequence.

[woman 7] I think about how I would have felt

as a young impressionable child.

I would have kept the abuses to myself

for fear of being shamed and blamed.

I would have suffered with it secretly and quietly.

It's important really to never start that process

because as a child, once you're in it,

it's very hard to get out of it, very hard to come forward

and tell your parent, "This is what's happening to me."

Do you think your parents know that this happens?

-Oh, no. -No.

I wouldn't be allowed to have a phone.

If they knew what was going on, it would be stripped.

And so, if you as a parent or a caregiver

can be an open, honest, soft place for your child

to come and say, "Hey, look everybody makes bad choices.

I'm here for you and we'll get through this together."

There's no bigger God's gift than a mother's intuition.

When a mom knows something, feels something,

there's something wrong with their kids.

And God's given it this to... to moms to protect their babies

whether the babies are six months old or 40 that never goes away.

So, I always tell moms to follow that

and never lead them astray.

The best line of defense by far

is to have active and engaged parents who understand

what their child might be encountering online.

Children are, unfortunately, left to deal with this

all on their own and they're not, you know,

we're talking about 10-, 11-, 12-, 13-year-old kids

who are not equipped to deal with this in a vacuum.

And so, it really takes that... that guardian

and parent support system.

[slow music]

[Doris] We always knew where our next meal was coming from.

I don't want to say that, but there wasn't much money

and in that middle... that time we had had... um...

we'd had a tragedy, we lost...

my sister, older sister died of pneumonia and that's the...

we talk about the good old days, but we didn't have

the medical care back then that we have now.

And then, in the following February

my mother had a little...

a little sister, Carolina,

and she had a heart defect and couldn't be saved.

So my parents lost two children in less than a year.

[man 12] You know, the kind of things you did and...

Sure, yeah. Jack is... I have two boys,

John and Jack. Jack's younger of the two.

John's 21, Jack was 15.

Jack was a very outgoing, typical teenager at 14 and 15.

Rambunctious, outgoing, very compassionate, pretty much an empathetic kid.

He was a really sensitive person and I think that was

one of his best attributes because he could tell when you were feeling...

feeling down and without even asking you or having a conversation with you,

he just could like pick that up, total empath.

He was so kind to other kids and I wonder if that sense

of kindness made him more susceptible to feeling...

[man 13] Was there much talk of... I mean do you remember

there being suicides or anything like that?

Never. Never. I'd... I'd never have heard that.

We were worried. We were more worried about physical illnesses,

but I don't remember...

I don't remember there being a problem with suicide.

You know I have always liked technology

and I will say that it was hard to keep up with it,

but I would stay up sometimes very late trying to figure out

what my son was doing on his phone

and figuring out how to use all the same apps that...

that he used, so that I...

never got behind on that stuff but, you know,

that's a really difficult thing to do.

I knew that it was working because Jack told me one day,

"Mom, I give up. I... you're too smart.

I cannot keep up with you and I'm just going to tell you everything now."

And he did, except one thing.

Definitely the worst day of my life was getting that phone call from my parents.

He didn't do it on purpose and he didn't do it to hurt us,

you know, he was just in a lot of pain.

[slow music]

Jack struggled for nine days in the hospital

and then after about six weeks we were able to crack his phone.

Someone said that there was, you know, some stuff

on sale at Home Depot that would help you,

basically, off yourself and...

and other kids would just come right out and say... text,

you know, "Just go kill yourself."

And then this is not uncommon.

He's not the first kid that's had that happen to him.

Why did I not know anxiety was and why do you know?

I guess they've made it... they've been a little bit better about...

But even then, they only made it known to us

-after four kids killed themselves. -[girl] That's true.

In Littleton alone, at the beginning of the year

there were multiple suicides before school even started.

At children's hospital, there is a new program

for 10-year-olds and over and they say,

"Have you ever thought about killing yourself?

Have you ever tried to hurt yourself?

How do you feel about that?"

So I work in one of the busiest

pediatric emergency room departments in the country.

At any given time we can easily have four or five,

sometimes six patients who are there waiting

for mental health evaluation or waiting to be transferred for inpatient treatment.

You hear from the CDC that suicide is the second leading cause of death

in children ages 10 to 24.

Colorado suicide is the number one cause of death

for individuals 10 to 24.

Every day we send out, you know, over...

over a dozen imminent suicide alerts, every single day.

It was such a rare occurrence to see that.

Now it is commonplace.

Has something changed about us biologically?

[woman 9] From 2000 and 2007 the suicide rate seemed virtually...

was... was pretty stable and had if anything some years

fluctuated down, but then we saw a beginning trend

and it became evident over time

that it was increasing from 2010 to 2017.

Not only teen suicide but child suicide

like 10 or 9 years old.

I said, "All right, sure. What do you got?"

He goes, "Well, Friday night I had two ten-year-olds,

on Snapchat. One thought it'd be a funny idea to talk

the other one into committing suicide and she did it.

She's dead."

So, 43% of 1.12 million children

that presented to the ERs for suicidal ideation

or suicide attempt were under 11 years old.

Whether these children, these young adults think that they're not worth anything,

I guess, I don't know, but people can't deal with things now.

But I feel like a lot of people in our generation

are like way more sensitive than they should be.

If one insignificance happens it will just trigger

like every past thing that's happened in their life.

There's always a competition like with school

you're competing for the best rank.

With social media, there's this unspoken, I guess,

kind of competition for like most followers in a sense.

If you're losing that competition I... it hurts,

like it shows, you feel it in your heart.

Constantly comparing myself to others.

Constantly, you know, wanting that thing

or needing to be checking or not falling behind in notifications.

So whatever kinds of stresses are attached to that,

but you couple that with the fact that,

"I just don't know how to deal

with anything coming my way."

And I just think at times for some kids

it's just a toxic combination.

Suicide is always the result of many... many factors.

As we are not teaching kids as many skills to self-regulate

and deal with difficult emotions,

well one thing that a device

can be is a great way to distract.

Not being able to have my phone for a week would definitely...

like, I would get really bored and I feel like I would be stressed out.

Typically, when I get bored I do pick up my phone.

Like I had people to talk to, but they got bored.

I don't know it's just like something that I do when I'm bored.

Oftentimes it's a child who's simply bored.

Yeah, I'm pretty much bored.

-And I get so bored. -Sometimes when I'm bored.

-Because they were bored. -When they're bored.

-Boredom. -He is so bored.

My mindset just got worse and worse just because I felt

so unproductive and I wasn't doing anything.

And I felt like that's pretty common, you know,

most kids are bored, cooped up, and feel unproductive.

At 12, here again, I was helping my dad.

We were still... we were still milking cows,

we were still raising hogs, carrying water,

we still didn't have electricity.

I had to have the tractor gassed up,

everything hooked up and ready to go.

I mowed their lawns, some housework for those folks.

I didn't even know the word "bored."

And if we continually interrupt that boredom

with distraction with screens, I think that we are removing

kid's abilities to deal with their own thoughts.

And then that carries the risk then of being in a situation

where parents are fixing everything and you combine that

with situations in high school where parents

have fixed everything, "I've not been taught

how to deal with my own thoughts,

life is kind of hard.

I have no idea what to do with this."

I think I'm still more afraid of the real world.

-When the kids are outside, I don't give them freedom. -I really wasn't allowed

-to walk around the street. -We couldn't do that now, just walk down the street.

-Without worrying about being kidnapped. -There's not a lot of freedom

when they go out in the front yard or they can't ride

their bikes by themselves to the park.

I couldn't ride my bike around my street.

-I'm going to throw out, raped. -Yeah.

I mean that's just not really that safe.

But I get it from the parents' point

because there's a safety thing, too.

Out there in the real world

where things really are scary.

Interesting that you guys think that because

what I'll tell you is that, realistically,

the physical world meaning kidnappings and

that kind of stuff, it's actually much safer now.

[soft music]

[Sujit] It's easy to become fearful of your child stepping foot outside.

It seems like there's so much imminent risk with all these things.

So it's more of an issue with one in the parent

and then for the kids, you know, it is it's hard to engage

in a world where it seems like every day or every week

or something there is something horrible happening.

What makes you think that?

Yeah, I think it's because like it's so...

like populated, like, the news and stuff.

Like you hear all these, like watching the news

and, like, really just seeing all the dangers

that are out there in the world.

[woman 10] Most of the bodies are still inside the school.

Well, they wore black trench coats...

[man 14] Police say the six-year-old died

after a blow to the head.

Some wore Nazi crosses...

[man 15] We are beginning to learn more about...

...as mothers and their children.

[man 16] NBC News, Los Angeles.

There is some tension at least.

[man 17] The Virginia Tech shooting still haunts the...

[slow music]

We live in a town, a community of 300 million people

with inflow of information that happens all the time,

you actually kind of wonder, "Can I have this?

Are my kids okay to play outside in the yard

for an hour without me sitting there watching them?"

And I'm thinking, "Man, when I was in seventh grade

I was going around my entire town on my bike."

-We were told to get out of the house. -"Hey, man. You want to play?"

-Ride my BMX bike. -I lived on my bike.

-Play kick the can. -Built a zip line.

-...the paper route. -Rang the doorbell.

-You had the whole neighborhood. -The lights came on.

-Put off into the woods. -Home when lights came on.

That whole town was in a way

an extended family of yours.

This is- this is... why am I nervous? This is so dumb.

I've been conditioned by everybody around me that this is scary.

-This is not scary. -That anxiety is something we as parents have

to really kind of do some self-examination

with and understanding, wondering what part are we involved

in terms of potentially transferring some of that anxiety towards our kids.

They have to be allowed to fail.

There's no way you can ever prevent pain,

you know, or anguish a 100% of the time and,

in fact, it might not be healthy.

[slow music]

[Kelly] Do you guys feel like teachers and adults

and parents in general have kind of abandoned

helping you through the social media thing in life?

It's also like we shield stuff from our parents, too,

-so like they don't know. -[girl] Really sneaky.

I don't blame them for not being able to help

because we don't ask for help.

I definitely feel like us as kids kind of

got put in a... in a tough spot, you know, in between two worlds.

This is all new for us as parents.

We... we... this... this technology and this...

in this world has kind of crept up on us

and there is so many of us who could do better.

Like my parents would be like heartbroken that their kids have to go through this.

Over half of tweens and close to three-fourths of teens

experience issues regarding mental health.

And then we get into cyberbullying and that's over three-fourths.

Then we get to sexual content and for tweens it's around 70%

and then for teens it gets even higher.

Our society is just become too isolated,

just losing human touch and there's no human touch

to kind of heal the... the scar or the... the pain.

[girl] Why do you think all these suicide and depression rates are skyrocketing?

It's because of social media and nobody's doing anything about it.

[man 18] We gave the stuff to ourselves

because we wanted it and now,

we get to watch it happen to our children.

Kids right now are going to experience the worst

-of what we're going through. -For most of the things that parents

can't stand about technology, it's our fault.

I don't want to trade my influence for their access

to a million different sources of influence that may not be credible.

Some parents say, "I'm not going to do anything. I give up.

It's too overwhelming. I'm going to cross my fingers

-and hope that they do okay." -As a family,

it is the one thing we fight about more than anything.

If I had the option to turn things back

and give our kids of today a life without

social media and smartphones, I would absolutely do it.

I would absolutely take away the internet for my kids.

Yes, I would have rather grown up without the internet.

I mean I would do it immediately, take it all away.

If social media was gone like completely,

and nobody had it, it'd be a positive.

[Chris] I do long some for my children to know a bit more peace,

a bit more calm, a bit more boredom.

You can't go back. You can't go back.

I know we can't go back, but I wish we could make

children realize that life is precious and it's a gift.

And we need to really...

just really value it.

[Sarah] Do I wish that we could just throw

all the technology away?

I kind of do, honestly.

But I know that that is not the solution.

I think we're going through a painful process

of adaptation to something

that's fundamentally changed our culture.

But the opportunities for these kids in this world

are so much more vast and, yes, it's more complicated

and it comes with its own set of worries and concerns,

but if you take the control out of it

and you focus on just trying to teach them how to be people

in this world with all the things coming at them.

Technology is amazing.

I think it's a great thing as for human culture and stuff like that

if we can control our consumption of it.

[Brian] So, new technology almost always comes with unintended consequences.

Um, you know, we didn't have car crashes before we had the car, right?

The car's a great invention, but, unfortunately, that resulted in car crashes.

And so, the answer was not stop driving cars,

the answer was we invest in driver's education

and we add seat belts and airbags and lane assist

and we're constantly looking for technological solutions

and educational solutions to make that technology safer.

[woman 11] How do we keep our kids safe?

Oh. There's so much to that. I think what we need

is a mass public awareness campaign so people understand what's going on.

One thing I have learned is that if you tell people this is bad for you,

they won't listen. If you tell people this is how you're being manipulated,

no one wants to feel manipulated.

As parents, though, we decided

we are going to become the experts.

They need to start to see us as the experts

rather than just everybody out there.

What's awesome is all these parents are, you know,

becoming innovators and they're like, "Wow,

there isn't this safety thing that we need.

And so, I'm going to invent it." There's so much more help now

than there was five years ago.

[Free] And there are ways that it can benefit them hugely,

but it's not going to benefit them and they're not going to use it

only for positive stuff unless we educate.

The best filter that your child will develop

is the one between their ears.

So having an adult they can go to

that they trust is critical.

And having an adult that's interested and able

to have the conversations with them is critical.

And they'll say, you know, "I want to talk to my parents,

but they just don't get it." And maybe they don't,

but they should try to get it because once you crack the shell,

oftentimes these kids are just dying to share.

The best thing that you can do for your child

is make sure that they feel comfortable talking to you

about these types of issues and, unfortunately,

most parents are relatively ignorant about

the types of things their children are experiencing online

and aren't prepared to help them even if the issues do come up.

So, you're my child, I love you.

So if something is... goes sideways that we missed,

I want you to know you have the open door and we're not going to give you

any consequences for coming to us because you're going to make mistakes.

I want a kid to kind of run, so I'll go, "Oh, Mom. I already know that." "Good.

Just honey, wanted to make sure, you know, why?

Because I love you so much

that I want you to know this thing." Right?

If a kid isn't to the point where they're just

a little bit annoyed by you going there again,

then you're not doing it enough.

[Sarah] At some point they will be taking flight and will be leaving our home

in just a few short years

and I want to know that we gave them everything that we had.

[Free] I mean that's the truth. Even my husband who is the most...

he's not a very emotional guy,

he will call me up in the middle of the day and be like, "Gosh!

She's just amazing. She's an amazing soul."

[Chris] And I just so desperately want those young people

to have other voices in their life.

Adults who will look at them and say, "That's not who you are.

That's not who I see. This will come and go.

I see you. You're going to be okay.

I love you." And they just need to hear that.

We all need to hear that.

[slow music]