S2:E11 Marc and Ed from Organization for Social Media Safety Join Interviews with Dads From LA, Cali

point are being committed, uh, that we don't know at the moment, though it's something that we're trying to get a better handle on, um, as we, as we work on the research piece of this.

I just realized a giant piece of stupidity on my part. I don't know if anybody else just saw what I did, so for that I am insanely, insanely sorry.

You weren't recording.

Oh, uh-oh, I never hit it. Um, and so we will continue. Completely stupid on my part. We'll redo the intros. Um, and you know, I've never done that before, so I don't know if I can on my end, if I'll be able to recover what we had. Um, if we did, then by all means I'll use it. But, um, yeah, so let's do the intro again and We'll start from there.

You wanna start, Ed?

Oh, sure. I didn't know. Sure.

We'll go ahead and tell the audience that I completely just botched this thing. We had a great thing going for what, almost 10 minutes probably, and I never hit record.

It happens.

Not a problem. So I'll jump in and I'll share my story again. My name is Ed Peisner, and again, thanks for having us here. So 4 years ago, my son Jordan was 14 and a half years old at the time. He was walking home from school. He had actually called me and said, "Hey, Dad, I'm gonna walk to the fast food restaurant and then I'm gonna walk home." And I said, "Sure, no problem." Again, he was, he had just started 9th grade at his local high school. And I was home with my daughter and I got a phone call that somebody, somebody called me, one of his friends called me and said, "Somebody punched Jordan." That's all they said. They said, "Someone punched Jordan, you need to come down here." So thinking nothing of it, thinking it was probably a bloody nose or something like that, I grabbed an ice pack, I drove down to the local place. And what I came upon was, you know, like a scene from a movie. It was the fire truck, the police car, an ambulance, just hordes of kids everywhere. And I knew something was wrong, so I ran over to the ambulance And I, you know, jump in the ambulance and Jordan's lying on a gurney. He is covered in blood. There's pictures all over the place of this. He's covered in blood. And the paramedic said he's got an internal brain injury. There's blood coming out of his ear. We need to rush him to the hospital. And I need to get off and they need to go. So I jump off the ambulance and as I was walking back to my car, I was asking the kids what the heck happened. I don't understand. And they began— all the kids were showing me on their phones a video of this boy walking up behind my son. My son was talking to a, to a friend of his, and this boy walking up behind him, you know, completely unbeknownst to Jordan. And then you see this other— the assailant, this other child, just swing and hit him in the head as hard as he could. You see Jordan just go down to the ground.

It's—

his beanie pops off his head. You hear the sound And I was dumbfounded, to be honest with you. I had no idea. What am I looking at? Why am I looking at it? That's the thought that kept bouncing in my head. Why do I see this? Uh, I, you know, jumped in my car. I recorded that so I could have a copy of it for the police. I ran to the hospital, you know, drove over there. Jordan was airlifted from the local hospital to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where he spent 6 days in hospital. He was in the ICU. We heard things like brain surgery, holes for pressure release, let's see if he gets through the next 6 hours, which is something I'll never forget hearing. And thankfully Jordan recovered. It took months and months for the swelling to go away. We left the— he had an epidural hematoma in his head. They decided not to operate and let that swelling go down on its own because there's other risks involved with operating. And Jordan eventually recovered. He's different today than he was before the incident. When we finally got home and I got out of the hospital, I knew I needed to do something. So I reached out to my assembly member in my district here, where his chief of staff that I met over the phone at the time was Mark Berkman. And Mark and I began talking, and Mark knew something needed to be done. I knew something needed to be done. Coincidentally, when I reached out to that office, it was 6 days after we got out of the hospital. I reached out to that office. Mark saw the video of Jordan, the assault. He had seen the video within a few hours of it happening. So that's the viral nature of how something happens. It just explodes over social media. So I reached out to Mark's office. I'm going to sort of hand it over to Mark and he'll tell you where we went from there.

Well, and let me interject. So at this point, you know, the fight wasn't from your son bullying somebody and this was retribution. This wasn't, um, your son was being bullied at school. This was— he never met the person, never knew who the person was. This was just a video challenge in a sense to go up behind someone, knock the crap out of them, and film it so you can get attention on social media.

And that's— yeah, yeah, you know, we'll never know the reason. I, I don't know. I'll never know what motivated this boy to do this. Um, But no, he didn't know him at all.

All right, Mark, tell us about the organization.

Of course. So, and to continue with the story, it— when this happened, as Ed mentioned, it, it went viral so quickly, as these, um, are apt to do, that it ended up in my inbox within a few hours. And so within our office, there was there was definitely an awareness that this was not an isolated incident, and we all wanted to see what we could do. So we researched the issue, and it became clear that since 2006, which really is the birth of major social media in our minds, you saw at that point about 4 to 6 of these, these cases of what we now call social media-motivated violence. Attacks committed for the purpose of filming, putting them on social media to get internet notoriety, likes and shares and views. And so from 2006, what we saw was an exponential growth in these cases through to where we were in 2017. They were doubling every year to, to the point where you got to late 2016 and there were hundreds and thousands of these videos viewed by and liked by millions and millions of people, most of them young adults. So what we did was we drafted the nation's first law to deter social media motivated violence called Jordan's Law after, after Ed's son. And so we passed that in California in less than a year, which is very quick to pass a law that shows that everyone recognized the need here. And so the next part of that story is Ed and I looked around and, this is usually as a legislative aide, you have an organization or an association acting as your subject matter expert. And there was, there was no one really there doing this type of work for social media and social media-related dangers that we could find. And this is despite the fact that at this time in 2017, it was very clear that social media-related cyberbullying had exploded. Exploded. I just come out of the foster youth sector and human trafficking on via social media had become an epidemic, really. Sexual harassment, hate speech. This was 2016, 2017. So Russia's work to influence the election through Facebook and social media had become very clear. So we decided to establish the Organization for Social Media Safety, which is the first and only consumer protection organization focused exclusively on social media. So we protect against all those social media related dangers that I just mentioned. And we do that through a comprehensive approach that includes education. So, uh, we're in schools across the country teaching students and parents and teachers about essential social media safety skills. We do advocacy work. So we work on legislation like Jordan's Law at all levels of government, and we do technology development. So we work on software and apps that provide real-time protection against any and all of these dangers.

So, um, you mentioned, uh, FOSU, and, uh, I have no idea what that is.

I meant— I mentioned— I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

It was Foster Youth.

Foster Youth. Got it. Yeah, it sounds like FOSU, and I was like, I don't know what FOSU is.

Sorry, I'm—

I'm okay.

Um, yeah, the FOSU— Foster Youth in particular, all of— all of those dangers that I mentioned and more Foster youth are at particular, particular risk for all of them. And human trafficking through social media to reach foster youth is at really, really concerning levels as compared to the rest of the population of children.

How would they be identified as foster youth?

I don't know if they are particularly targeted as foster youth, but for a number of reasons they are more vulnerable. And so they're looking— yeah, they're looking for more. They're looking for relationships. And so people will catfish. These traffickers will catfish. So they will pretend to be other 14, 15, 16-year-old teens. They'll strike up a relationship and then they'll—

they'll—

which will go on for a few months and then they'll ask to meet up somewhere.

Um, have you guys gotten any legislation beyond Jordan's Law? That you're working towards?

Yes. So we've—

I'm just wondering, because I'm generally curious, I mean, what kind of legislation can be done to prevent this? I would think it'd be more in the hands of, you know, because my angle, the parents, you know, being heavily involved in their youth.

So we are only— in terms of the amount of legislation we could be doing, we're only restricted by our time and resources. We wish there was more. There's, there's a number of legislative initiatives that need to be happening. So we worked on issues like, like deepfakes, and that's a new technology that's literally been born and bred on social media where anyone can take your likeness and put it into a video that you have nothing to do with. And so it's being used most often right now to put women's likenesses into pornography, uh, obviously without their consent. And so it's being used to target women, uh, business owners, women in custody cases, female journalists, and it's just starting to work its way down to high schoolers and middle schoolers even. And so it's—

so we're talking about video, like video, which is meant to look like the other person.

Hyper-realistic video. You really— especially at this point. Yeah, it's, it's becoming a little more popular. We were on this issue early on. So now you'll see kind of comedic deepfakes pop up with celebrities. There was a big one that just went around with Tom Cruise. They are hyper-realistic. And so the dangers with putting someone into pornography, which I guess is a bit obvious, but obviously you're dealing with reputational damage and emotional damage because of the realism here in part. And so we introduced legislation and sponsor legislation in California to criminalize the use of someone's, uh, image in a, in pornographic video without their consent. We also helped pass legislation in California that would prevent the use of deepfakes to interfere with elections, which is another possible use of it. So that's, that's one example. We're working on a number of different things, from substance abuse to stalking to, uh, safety software, uh, and, and opening up platforms to that.

So there's See, I would have expected stalking to be in the normal, uh, you know, what do you— I guess restraining order type, uh, legislation. Like, you would think that would just be already be a part of it, of you can't contact them online or harass them, or, um, you know, what's it called when you're just putting out misinformation?

Uh, slander.

Slander them. Yeah.

Um, yeah, so it's— there's a lot. The issue with a lot of these legislative initiatives is we're trying to catch up to the technology. So the technology is creating dangers faster than the law and public policy can respond to it. So—

and that's not going to stop anytime soon.

Exactly. Exactly. But our job is to get ahead of this stuff and to get public policy in there in a responsible way, obviously, because some of this is criminal law. But trying to, trying to keep pace, we're always going to be a touch behind, but we don't want to be as behind as we have been. So with stalking, Yeah, I mean, it's making sure— we haven't introduced that piece of legislation yet, we're working on it, but it's making sure that court orders do contain provisions for social media harassment because right now a lot of them don't. So that's— yeah, that's one of the issues.

Yeah, I just would have assumed because I know in divorce documents and restraining orders, the word Facebook is used quite a bit.

Right.

Which is—

but not universally in standard, in a way that's standardized, um, at the moment. So there are gaps.

So what are you doing on— what are you doing on substance? Because when I think, um, social media, I really don't think there would be an issue with substance abuse other than making it cool, um, or, you know, reaching out to influencers, maybe making it easier to buy. So now that I think about it, maybe there is more than—

there's a— it's a huge issue, particularly during the pandemic. It's exploded. So pre-pandemic, when we have some, some numbers, about 25% of kids said that they, um, had seen or interacted with drug dealers on social media. We expect that number is significantly higher now. So just to give you a story here, um, one of our board members, Dr. Laura Berman, who is a nationally known therapist, uh, she, she was on Oprah a bunch. She has her own show on the OWN network. So she's, she's, um, well known throughout the country. Her 16-year-old son, um, who was out by us in, in Los Angeles, he was at home during the pandemic. This was actually in February, so very recent. And he was on Snapchat and he connected with a drug dealer that he did not know. And these dealers now have fairly sophisticated operations running through social media. So you can essentially connect with a dealer and they have menus of drugs, a lot of them synthetic opioids, Percocet, codeine, and medications like Xanax. So her son Sammy ordered some Xanax off of Snapchat from a dealer. And it's basically like these food delivery services. The dealer comes and drops off the drugs to your house. And so Sammy went on a little walk picked up some Xanax, went to his room, uh, and took it. And unfortunately, uh, and this is another growing epidemic, the Xanax was spiked with fentanyl, which is an opioid that dealers use to increase the addictiveness of, of the drugs that they're dealing. But unfortunately, fentanyl is incredibly lethal at very, very small doses. And so Sammy overdosed and tragically passed away. And so we, we are working very hard on this issue because we're probably getting— again, we're in a statistical black hole here, but I mean, I get about 1 to 2 emails a day from parents where this has happened. So this is not an isolated incident. And we could tell you, and we just ran this experiment again last week, it took us about 3 minutes on various social media platforms to connect with drug dealers and get these drug menus. This is not a difficult thing. So we are, we are working on legislation on that. We're obviously educating on that as well. It's, these are all of our programs working together. And then we're working with third-party tech companies like Bark to enhance their capabilities around this issue. And make sure that they could get in and monitor these platforms for parents.

All right, I'm gonna ask you some more questions about that in a second. So how were they able to go back and figure this out? 'Cause Snapchat deletes everything, doesn't it? Or are you guys able to—

His friends. His friends. And I don't have all the details on that in terms of the evidence, and there's an active criminal case going on as well. That was gonna be my next question.

Were they able to backtrack and find the dealer?

I don't actually, I don't have that information at this point, whether they found the dealer. I know that the investigation is ongoing. I do know that they, that Dr. Berman was able to see some of these images. So I don't know if they were, some of them were left over on Snap. And I know that his friends filled in a lot of, Sammy's friends filled in some holes into this, into the story as well.

'Cause I remember Cuban, Mark Cuban, was trying to build a similar app called Cyber Dust a few years back because he was trying to create a competitor to Snapchat that genuinely would disappear, 'cause he was saying Snapchat can hold that stuff on their servers for, even though it disappears on your phone, it's still there. So I was just wondering if you guys were able to then help the, I guess, investigative team of exposing these people or not. By, you know, I guess developing a relationship with Snapchat or finding ways to access their servers?

Um, yeah, we have not been involved in the investigation. That's not so much our, our work, but we are involved now on, on legislating on this, both in Congress. We're doing the California state level too, hopefully, uh, and we've been educating and speaking out on it, and Dr. Berman's been speaking out about it on a, on a national level. Yeah, I mean, these platforms can be— some of these platforms can be very dangerous, and this is just one very serious example of it.

You're opening up my eyes. Like, I knew it existed at some level, you know, I never really put a lot of deep thought into it because my kids aren't quite there yet, so I just haven't been exposed to it. Certainly something that's been on my mind has been trying to protect their innocence to a point because that's the age that my oldest is, 10, uh, 7, and 4. So I'm trying to, you know, keep them from seeing things that, um, you know, someone that age doesn't need to see. Um, and there doesn't seem to be— that's why I'm going to be very curious on this tech side of what you're doing. Um, because pornography is probably my biggest fear. Um, you know, I'm not so much worried about them looking into drugs or anything, but, you know, a boy getting curious and Pornography is a big-time addiction. I mean, you see that and you're gonna wanna see it again. And so that's something I wish there were more softwares for, 'cause it seems like the ones that have gone out have not been super effective. There's easy workarounds. And so if you have anything to elaborate on that, on the tech space, I'd be super curious.

I mean, the filtering software that's out there in terms of pornographic content is okay. It's capable. But when we get into social media, and that's kind of more static kind of website searches, when we get into social media, there's some, some issues there and some gaps in terms of tech capabilities. Again, we, we tend to recommend Bark. It does have a good reach, uh, good filtering. Um, but when you get—

so tell me a bit about Bark because I haven't heard of that.

So Bark is good because it's the— in terms of our space, it wasn't hard in terms of, uh, coming up with, with one of these companies to recommend because Bark has the most expansive capabilities in terms of social media. So what Bark does beyond— and they have basic filtering in terms of pornographic content on, on what we would call static websites that aren't social media, and they have time limits, which are also very important in a whole other conversation in terms of social media and internet addiction. But, but the main way that Bark works is that it will scan your child's social media applications and its use And it uses an artificial intelligence, basically algorithm, to flag concerning content. So if your child indicates anything towards depression or self-harm, cyberbullying, sexting, you will get an alert on your phone saying, you know, problematic content, check it out. I think we lost Ed there. But, Well, problematic content, check it out. So what this does too is it allows some degree of continued privacy for the child on the applications. And it just is flagging these problematic exchanges for the parents so they can get involved then. So it's both a deterrent and an effective early alert system for parents.

That's an app you can download on your phone?

Uh, that is an app you can download on your phone. Yeah, so you download it on your phone and you download it on your child's phone and other devices.

Okay, interesting. It's called Bark, B-A-R-K. B-A-R-K. Yeah, definitely look into that one.

Um, we're a consumer— I should say we're a consumer protection organization, so there's no financial relationship we have with Bark. So that's, that's our just our own assessment on it.

Okay, so they're a separate company.

They're a separate company there that you've identified as being competent. Yes.

Okay. So you guys haven't been working together in like advancing the development or you guys in partner to, to build it?

We speak, we speak with them frequently and collaborate, but we don't do that on a financial basis for us.

Okay.

And so they're independent.

It sounds like they're really analyzing keywords that are, I guess, that are being typed in.

It's a bit more than keywords actually, because they want to be refined in their trigger. Uh, so they're really looking at, at the content, uh, and using the algorithm.

Okay, so they're scanning what's being viewed as well?

They're scanning, they're scanning what's being viewed. It's the keystroke scanning. They don't— they, they have a data retention policy, um, like the other platforms, so they're not hanging on to the data forever. But, um, but yeah, they're looking at everything that's being viewed. They do image recognition and things like that.

Interesting. Well, that's good. Is there anything else being done on the technology front?

Right now it's, it's working with those types of third-party apps. Long-term, we have a number of plans on that. We feel like the whole space needs to continue to improve its reach, become more accessible to a lot of parents. Obviously these are paid services, so we want to make sure that Everyone has access to them regardless of your economic status. So there's a number of things on the horizon for us there.

Okay, because I don't like here, like, will Bark work with both Apple phones and the Androids and what else is there, Windows Phone or whatever else there is? Is it a multi-platform? Okay, and all the different variations of it?

Yes, there is, there is. I'll say there's more reach actually on Android because of iOS's architecture. That's one of the things that we're trying to legislate actually On iOS, the platforms can actually shut down— some of the platforms shut down their data so that Bark cannot access it. And so we're trying to open that up so that, that software like Bark can work universally.

Will it work with the apps like Snapchat where they're not retaining data?

So Bark works with Snapchat on Android. It doesn't currently work on iOS. Because their API is closed off. So we are working on that.

Yeah. So there's still some gaps. Yeah.

And so, you know, parents can say, or other people can say, just take your children off of those apps. And, you know, for Snap, we would agree, we would love to see less children on Snap. But recognizing the trade-off that if your entire grade, if your entire group of friends is on a given app, TikTok, Snap, Roblox, There's a real trade-off that parents have to face here, a real lose-lose. It's, do you have your child on that app and maybe it's not the safest app, or do you, do you keep them off and they're not communicating and interacting with their friends, especially during the pandemic? And it's a real concern. So if we can use and enhance safety through these third-party apps and software, it's, it's that, that's a potentially a win-win solution for us.

Yeah, yeah, I think parents— because there's a segment of parents out there that, um, and I just disagree fundamentally— that feel like a kid's phone is a kid's phone, we shouldn't interfere with it, a kid's room is a kid's room, we shouldn't, you know, go through it, and they have a right to privacy. And I just think, as the person that's grooming these, these kids, um, you know, and being a kid not too long ago, and, you know, the stupid things we do and say, uh, I just fundamentally disagree. I think, I think it's okay to invade that privacy and to know what's on their phone and to be insistent that certain things are not downloaded and to live a life with certain, you know, morals and values that is good for them long term, which, you know, would include avoiding a lot of the things you've been talking about.

Yeah, I think we would say this isn't Social media is not like a journal in your child's room that they're keeping or writing letters or things like that. It really is essentially a portal to the world. So if you liken it back to what we experienced growing up, if you sent your child to the mall for— and this is the average— 9 hours a day, 6 hours a day, and at that mall there was drug dealing and cyberbullying and sexual harassment and trafficking, you would have some rules on that. You would have some guidelines. You would have some conversations about the dangers there. So it's— that's how we want people to look at it.

And, and that trust and that privacy is earned to an extent, you know. And same thing with parents back in the '80s and '90s. I would say, yeah, drop your kids off at the mall, go around, park, and then go into the mall and watch them from afar just to make sure they're doing what they said they were doing. They're going to the store, they're not going into, you know, if you, if you have said Spencer's is off limits, because that was the store I would go to as a teenager because you would see the cards and they would have some, you know, graphic images on them. And so me and my friends would head to that store. But if that was off limits, you want to make sure that, you know, they're actually doing that. Because, right, I mean, being a teenage boy, uh, and being a kid, you just— I know from living, that they're not always telling the truth, and that even if you want to believe what's going on, it, it's good to, uh, put that relationship to the test every once in a while and validate it.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But the— I mean, I, I think, yeah, step one with parents is understanding that these dangers are very real, uh, and while some of them are less common, like human trafficking, A lot of them are extremely common. Cyberbullying, about half of the kids on social media are being cyberbullied. Of those, 20% then go on to suicidal ideation. So there are mental health issues, particularly common children who are using social media over 5 hours a day. 75% of those are also likely to have suicidal ideations. So There are common severe dangers here.

And I just, I wonder how you prevent some of that because I mean, how old are you?

Uh, hell, that's a good question. I'm 43.

Okay, so you're in an age, Gravett, you remember going to school. Bullying was common when we went to school. I mean, it was still there. It's just, it moves a lot faster now and it can be compounded a lot faster now. Because of the internet, but it always existed.

Yes. Two things about the comparison between cyberbullying and traditional bullying. One is that cyberbullying can often be far more severe than traditional bullying was on a whole because you have a phone in between yourself and the bullying victim. And so studies have shown over and over again that these dynamics of social media and cyberbullying through social media decreases empathy, decreases remorse, so you're going to see more vicious cyberbullying. Number 2 is that the, the cyberbullying follows you home. It follows you everywhere. We have seen a number of cases, kids move schools, the cyberbullying follows them because everyone can see it. It's, it's on there forever.

Sure, it's more public. It wasn't you in the corner of the cafeteria with the 10 people that saw it, right? Right. It's now almost endless.

Exactly. So there's no refuge. It's constant harassment, um, constant damaging content coming at the child. So it, you know, the effects potentially are, are worse.

I, I always think about this from dad's angle. I mean, if that's happening to my kid and it's, it's becoming that problematic, you know, where we've tried to address it other ways, um, my gosh, screw the phone. It's a— if it's becoming that much of a problem I was just, I'm just, I guess I'm that kind of dad that would just snatch the phone, snap it in half and say, okay, problem solved. Yeah, it might still be out there, but you don't have to live it. Yeah, there's a, obviously it still has its reach because you have friends and everything that could show you, but, um, it at least takes, it would take away the 24/7. And I know that's not a great solution, it would just be a solution for my household beyond what I would do once I found out who the people were.

It's, it's, it is tricky to manage this as a parent, um, because also you have a child through no fault of their own is being victimized by cyberbullying. You know, if you're taking that device away, there's a punitive aspect that the child will see to that. Uh, they're also going to lose if all of their friends are communicating through a certain app or platform and they don't have that outlet all of a sudden because they're being cyberbullied. So these are These are tricky issues. What we tend to recommend to parents is the con— teaching the concept of blocking and reporting. So if the child is being cyberbullied, often they'll just continue to passively absorb that harm. But almost all of these platforms have the ability to block out the person, report the content to the platform, so hopefully get them taken— get the content taken down, get, get the user kicked off. And so they no longer have to see it come in.

Okay, so is that effective?

It is effective if it's done consistently, if it's taught, if it's done as a rule. Because also, I mean, and that's effective, we teach that for a number of different dangers from sexual harassment, cyberbullying, hate speech. Because what it's doing is it's bolstering the child's mental defenses against this content. Because if we're physically requiring them to go and say, I'm going to block this, I'm going to report it, they're mentally rejecting it. And so it works, it works well for a lot of different types of problematic content. You're on mute again.

Interesting. I agree. I got to remember to take off mute.

And by the way, Ed's trying to get back in, but he said he's getting redirected.

Once I see him pop up, I'll add him into the stream. Um, taking the bullies, or taking the, uh, yeah, the bullying, I guess, in a sense, head-on is, is the way to attack it, you know. From— this is from the parent's perspective, from clicking those three dots in the corner and reporting the, the content as abusive.

Yep, exactly.

Okay. And then blocking that person. Okay, exactly. Blocking is also probably the most tactical, practical approach to parenting from a cyberbullying standpoint.

Yeah, there is also the option to hide, so the, the, it can decrease conflict with a classmate so they do not actually see that they have been blocked, but, but your child is then not seeing their content.

Sure.

So some platforms offer that feature.

So what, I do not know if there is research on this, and I, and I know it is going to greatly vary because it did when we were in school, but are there certain topics that are most common in cyberbullying?

A lot of kids are being cyberbullied. Again, this is, it's almost constantly evolving here. A lot of middle schoolers, even elementary schoolers, are being bullied through platforms like Roblox or Fortnite, where people will use the chat feature there and they will gang up on a certain child's character. So that's one of the common things we're seeing, particularly over the past year. One of the more severe forms of cyberbullying with really a lot of the worst-case outcomes is outing a child. So if somebody happens to know or reveal someone's sexual orientation through social media, particularly in high school, It happens and will often, when I say worst-case scenario, that could often lead to suicide. So that is one of the forms that we are concerned with. Challenges and pranks on social media is another big thing, depending upon the age of the, of the child we are talking about. So there, there is a lot of different forms that, that children also will not necessarily associate with, with the term cyberbullying. So they'll think it's all in good fun. I'm gonna do this challenge and push someone over and film it, and they just don't connect that they're hurting someone else. They're so wrapped up in this, this world of social media.

So the only one I can really remember, because I don't— I just, before we started to understand that, I didn't spend a lot of time online in the social world— is the Tide Pod challenge. And I just remember that one being so stupid and just thinking, my gosh, I mean, if I, I didn't understand the kid's mindset, much less the parents that have had those kids. Like, how can we do something so stupid? And then at that point, my gosh, if they're going to do— I don't know if anybody died from that or anything, or if it was just a stupid challenge, but, uh, thanks, though. Uh, it was just so dumb. Like, why do you need to validate yourself or to even— in high school, if that had been a cool thing, or in middle school, you know, without the video aspect of it, I just would have said no. Like, I have no need to impress you by doing something so dumb.

There is an interesting dynamic. It's a great example you bring up because there's an interesting dynamic there that applies to a number of different dangers that parents and students need to understand. It's this silo effect with social media where you just see, you know, a certain group of people that are echoing things back to you. And so if you see your friends all doing the Tide Pod challenge and it's funny and getting likes and they're getting shares, it's a big motivator for behavior. It's the same dynamic with eating disorders. You go into this world where people are, you know, you hit #thinspiration on Instagram You can find all of these people that are on very unhealthy, dangerous diets and exercise regimens, and they're feeding you, uh, social legitimacy, social approval. You're getting thumbs up. You're getting, um, information that is inaccurate, but because you're surrounded with it, you're spending 4 to 5 hours a day with it. It becomes your reality. So same thing with ThaiPod Challenge and other—

so, so So I've always wondered, um, that's something maybe I'll have to put some real thought to, is why some kids need that, that validation so bad. They need those likes so bad. They need that approval from other people so bad, uh, because I mean, that's been going on forever. In the clothes you wear, um, the jewelry you have, the accessory you have, the, the new tech that you have, um, it's that, I guess, that need to feel cool. Has always been around. And that's something I just don't know why I was born with. I don't care about what the cool people are doing. Like, I was the athlete, and it's like somewhat popular in school, but I wore the same— whatever our football team gave us for clothes, that's what I wore. Maroon shorts and a gray shirt. Like, I didn't care about fashion. I didn't— I never had a watch. I didn't have, you know, any tech. My car was like a turquoise Ford Ranger from 1994. Like, it wasn't cool. Um, and I just, I never cared about, I guess, what other people thought about me. And I don't know what in my upbringing, um, created that, if it's just a personality thing. Uh, but I'd like to put a lot of thought, and I'd like to know if you've seen anything into it, and, and to how to create a household where other people's, uh, I guess how to raise kids where other people's opinions just don't mean as much as they seem to be meaning now. Like that you don't need validation from strangers, you don't need validation from the amount of likes there are, or from the type of clothes you wear, that you can actually be content and happy in your life living the way you want to live because it makes you happy.

I, I mean, there are, there are so many different answers to, uh, your great question, but I mean, from, from a social media safety vantage point, part of this is making sure that you're, as you let your children into the world of social media, which hopefully you're doing at the correct developmental stage with the various apps and platforms, you're doing essentially what we would call—

Hold on one second. And when you say that, you mean maturity, not age?

Exactly. Maturity, age, there's a number of different circumstances, risk factors, including mental health issues, behavioral issues. There's a lot of factors that go into deciding whether you're gonna let your child onto some of these, these social media apps, what, what the other kids in, in the school are doing as well. Um, so I, yeah, that's, I mean, that's step one, making, making sure you're doing this at a developmentally appropriate time and that your child is ready for it. So we have on our website a, uh, free course for parents virtual course for parents that we just put out. It's called Buckling the Social Media Seatbelt course. And what we've done with that, that, that we consider to be very innovative, is we've created a system for parents. And this goes to answering your question: what do you need to do before your child gets on these applications? And it's— we want parents to think about 3 things. Uh, have you had the necessary conversations with your children to make them where various, and how to safely react to them when they arise. So instilling the appropriate values and principles, what social media safety rules do you need to have with your children, and how to calibrate the settings correctly for the devices and apps so they act essentially as guardrails, safety guardrails for your children while they're, while they're on their sites. So if we're talking specifically about how to make sure that, that their values are in the right place, they're not out there searching for likes and views. Part of that is all— the answer is all three. So having the conversations about what social media can do to people's motivations and their views of reality. If you're spending too much time on social media, those likes and those views and those shares take on a real level of social capital. So maintaining a healthy amount of time. Maintaining a healthy perspective as we go into it, setting those rules so that we're putting the phones down at times when kids are most likely to use them and strengthen their habitual use, and swapping out other healthy activities that are going to help combat this view that I must get likes and shares and views. So, you know, actually playing and interacting with other children in person and getting those those phones down for a healthy amount of time. So, and I could keep going on. The answer to how do we make sure that our children aren't driven by likes and shares and views, unfortunately, it's not a simple answer. It's a number of things that parents need to think about, but thinking about this system of conversations and rules and settings when it comes to social media is going to help there.

Yeah, that— and so I agree with 100% exactly what you just said. And then on top of that, the conversation we were just having before, which is just being, you know, raising kids that are content in their lives outside and inside of social media, um, and I think a lot of that comes to how the parents live their lives. And so, I mean, there's a lot of, um, you know, full-grown adults that have kids out there that are still living like they're in high school, trying to be cool, trying to fit in with the other neighbors, trying to up with the Joneses, buying the newest outfit, buying the newest car, buying a better house that they can afford, just so that they can fit in better, so that they can be validated. And then we're wondering why these kids need to be validated so bad, because they're seeing that from the parent side, because their parents are— they just aren't content in living whatever life makes them happy. They're trying to live a life that makes other people say, oh cool, let's give you a like.

Yep. Here's the thing with social media. Everyone is posting the perfect— the A, yep, the A their kids get, the home run at the game, their amazing 30 seconds at a party that actually wasn't that great. Kids are doing that, parents are doing that. They're posting the perfect picture at the perfect angle with the perfect Facetune editing going on. Kids are seeing that, adults are seeing that. We're losing kind of our ability to understand failure, to— and its important role in eventual success. And we're losing our grasp of what real life really is. That's adults and kids. I mean, Ed can talk about this. He's the only person I know really that will post, I had a terrible day today, or this went wrong, because he wants to teach that, that what we're seeing— and again, this is 4, 5, 6 hours a day, adults and kids. What we're seeing is not reality. What we're seeing on social media is not reality.

Absolutely.

It's staged. Yeah, absolutely.

Yep. Yeah, no, absolutely, 100% agree. I mean, the failure discussion we can have an entire podcast on. I'm such a big proponent of failure. I have that discussion with my kids all the time. And, you know, just because I, I was a small business owner and, uh, you know, failure to me is like the key to life. You know, I was a wrestler in high school and college and did sports and You know, failure is how to get better. And getting my butt whooped was how I learned. And those are very real things. And you're absolutely right in the fact that a lot of people just don't want to fail. And a lot of it ties back to what we were just talking about, the needing approval from other people. They will be embarrassed if people find out they failed. Though I think the discussion needs to go the opposite way of like, you absolutely need to fail and you need to be able to put that out there and it not affect you.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

Exactly. I mean, one of the non-social media things we need to do as parents too is make sure there's an emotional safety net there, that it's— kids know that it's okay to fail, that we model failure for them, that they have a core group of people that are providing emotional support so they don't need to make all of these people out there on social media be their number one fans. They have that support so they can go out and they can fail.

Validation and unconditional love at home. Yep.

Amen.

How do you guys fund yourselves?

Well, we rely heavily on small donations from people across the country in a big way. So any support that we get from people allows us to continue to do this work, to push legislation, to increase our educational efforts. So that's That's incredibly important. You can find information for that on our website at OFSMS.org. That's short for Organization for Social Media Safety. That's also where you can find our free virtual course for, for parents with a lot of the tips that we, we talked about today. So we also bring in revenue while undertaking our, our mission of social media safety by working with schools across the country. So we go into schools and we teach students, we have parent workshops, we consult with the schools on social media safety guidelines and policies, and we also, to the extent that we are, we are appropriately funded, we do that on a complimentary basis for Title I or low resource schools as well.

Okay, cool. And I guess, so what's on the horizon? What are the big things you guys have coming up? That you're excited about getting, getting done?

I think we're incredibly excited about being able to go back out there and work with schools again in person and end the virtual work. Ed is pre-COVID and hopefully soon post-COVID is on a perpetual tour of the worst motels in the, in the country. So I know that he's very excited to begin that work again. We had to put on the shelf a number of really crucial initiatives because of the pandemic. So, uh, we were going to work with foster youth in Los Angeles County to tailor our educational program to them. As I mentioned, they're being— they're at exponentially higher risk for a lot of these dangers. So we're excited to pick that back up. And then of course we have legislation that we're working on both in Congress and right now in California that we're, we're very eager to see get passed.

Now, so do you two see the irony in what you're doing a little bit? That you're trying to combat social media because of how fastly it travels and how much great reach it has, and you're going and trying to do this stuff in person? You better have some sort of social media campaign or way of reaching out because, you know, as you already know, that reaches the greatest amount of people in the shortest amount of time.

Absolutely.

It, it's helpful for us to say to parents and students that we use social media. We use it for its beneficial applications. There are good uses of social media. Our mission is to make social media safe for everyone, not to end social media, though we wouldn't cry about that, but it's, it's not practical, and we recognize that—

that you won't end it, right?

Exactly, exactly. It's not gonna happen. But— and we recognize that there are— there are good uses of it. So— so we use it. We'd like to model how to use it appropriately. We probably could get more views and go viral if we were attacking some people on social media too for some of the silly things that they say about social media safety, but that's not How we do it, uh, and then I talk about that all the time.

Yeah, are you doing, are you doing digital campaigns though to push out towards that teenage demographic?

So we're not doing, um, educational initiatives for students on, um, on the digital side. We are doing that for parents. What we found time and time again is that doing it in person with students is incredibly effective. And the effectiveness of kind of virtual campaigns is unclear at best.

Okay.

So we are, Dr. Berman's about to put out a big public service announcement on this issue of social media and substance abuse, which is going to be distributed through social media. So that's also an upcoming initiative.

Well, I'm assuming—

it's itching to get back into the schools.

Yeah, I'm assuming you wouldn't be offended if I kicked out a few, maybe on your behalf.

Uh, absolutely not. That's, that's how we get, get the word out. So we— that would be greatly appreciated. Perfect.

All right, um, is there anything you guys wanted to make sure got said, or, or, uh, topic to cover or anything like that before we, before we wind things down?

If people want to get that course for parents and dads, we include— we are two dads, so we love this podcast. That again is on our website, which I also assume will be in the show notes.

Oh, absolutely. And I saw the only thing I would wrap back to is that like in Ed's specific case, this wasn't a scenario where he wishes his kid had known jiu-jitsu or karate or was an aggressive fighter or maybe just wasn't, uh, you know, tough enough or something like that. Like, this wasn't the case. This wasn't that he didn't have the mental ability to handle bullying. This was simply he was standing there and because of social media, because of the way things travel, because of the incentive to do stupid things, he got cracked in the back of the head not knowing it was happening. That could happen to anybody. It could happen to the biggest jock in school, could happen to coolest kid. It could happen to the weakest kid.

Yeah.

And there's no— and almost as a parent, like, there's no— you know, unless you're just like some sort of insane Navy SEAL slash undercover spy that has eyes in the back of your head and just always knows what's going around you in a 360-degree circle, there was no, uh, amount of parenting that could have, uh, that could have stopped that.

No, not at all. And, you know, You're right, everything you just said, 100% correct. He just— this was random, you know, he couldn't have done anything about it. The, the part that blew me away, and obviously the assault on my son, forget it, that's, you know, I still dream about that nightmare-wise. But the fact that kids were liking the video, that's the part that sticks, like that they clicked on like and they were— it was being shared like you know, you share, you know, here's a stick of gum. It's just that piece got to me so deeply that people were watching what could have been, you know, the last day of my son, like, sure, and they were liking it. So that's the part we're trying to change and teach.

Yeah, so the, the parent, for their, for their child, can only do so much. Our organization exists to affect the perpetrator of that assault, to change the laws, to change the tech abilities so that the perpetrator is not watching violent videos all day long and this behavior is getting normalized to everyone. So we exist to protect against the things that an individual family, an individual dad cannot protect against no matter what they do.

That's fair. And I'm glad there's— I'm glad there's some good people out there taking on that fight head on.

Trying.

Thank you. Yeah.

All right. Well, Mark, Ed, thanks for coming on. Thanks for— I learned a lot in this one. I can't wait to dig a little bit deeper into it.

Excellent.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you for having us.

Have a good one, guys.

You too.

Take care. Bye-bye.