Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1292 ｜ Ben Gillenwater ｜ Cybersecurity Expert Reveals Shocking Truth About Parental Controls

00:00:00.000 Today's guest gave his five-year-old son an iPad, and then after seeing some of the

00:00:06.760 very disturbing material being fed to his five-year-old through what he thought were

00:00:12.820 very innocent apps, he was so disturbed that he not only took the apps off the iPad, but

00:00:17.940 he threw out the tablet all together.

00:00:20.200 He was then inspired to make Family IT Guide.

00:00:24.220 This is a platform for parents to learn about cybersecurity, best practices and skills when

00:00:29.980 it comes to technology and social media with your kids.

00:00:32.860 Some of the things that he is going to share today will blow your mind and help you realize

00:00:37.060 the importance of us parents understanding AI and ed tech and technology, taking these

00:00:43.760 things so seriously for our children.

00:00:46.520 You're going to learn so much from this conversation with Ben Gillenwater.

00:00:50.640 It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:53.000 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:00:54.240 Use code Allie at checkout. 1.00

00:00:55.620 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:59.980 Ben, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:01:09.840 If you could tell everyone who you are and what you do.

00:01:11.940 Yeah.

00:01:12.360 Hi, Allie.

00:01:12.840 Thanks for having me.

00:01:13.780 My name is Ben.

00:01:14.640 I'm the Family IT Guy.

00:01:16.500 I am a dad and I'm a cybersecurity expert.

00:01:19.620 Yeah.

00:01:20.040 I've been doing it for 30 years.

00:01:21.140 I started when I was 14 in 1995.

00:01:24.000 Wow.

00:01:24.800 That is crazy.

00:01:25.800 14?

00:01:26.160 What does cybersecurity look like when you're 14?

00:01:28.220 When I was 14, I was actually selling computers at a computer store.

00:01:32.580 Okay.

00:01:33.680 But cybersecurity is about understanding all aspects of computer systems.

00:01:38.340 And so that journey began when I was a kid.

00:01:41.780 Yeah.

00:01:42.380 I think I found you on Instagram talking about the importance of security when it comes to

00:01:47.620 online safety with your kids.

00:01:49.500 Tell me about that journey.

00:01:51.920 When did you start getting concerned about social media and technology for kids?

00:01:58.040 Well, basically when I screwed up and gave my kid an iPad.

00:02:02.340 How old?

00:02:03.320 When he was five.

00:02:04.900 So I gave him an iPad.

00:02:06.960 I put YouTube on it.

00:02:07.960 I did all the things that if my current self was to go back, because it's been five years

00:02:14.280 now, he's 10 now, I find it to be almost laughable.

00:02:19.580 But it's not because it's a normal experience that is common nowadays that I think most people

00:02:25.600 do.

00:02:26.880 And I found out within a couple of days how big of a mistake that was because he was

00:02:31.960 seeing all kinds of inappropriate things.

00:02:34.100 YouTube took him down some immediate rabbit holes of stuff that's not good for kids to

00:02:38.920 see with sexual undertones, violent undertones, things that are just addictive.

00:02:44.620 And so after a couple of days, I switched it to YouTube kids.

00:02:48.740 I was like, okay, my bad.

00:02:50.340 I put the adult version on.

00:02:51.920 I should have known better.

00:02:53.400 The one that's called kids.

00:02:55.160 And by the way, at the time, YouTube was run by a grandma.

00:02:59.540 The CEO of YouTube was a grandma.

00:03:01.960 And so I'm like, here's a product that's brought to market by a grandma and it's called kids.

00:03:07.440 That's should be fine.

00:03:08.640 And I would put some trust into the fact that their parental controls worked.

00:03:13.320 And when I installed the app, it asked me, how old is the kid?

00:03:16.560 And so I told it and then, okay, good.

00:03:18.420 We're YouTube filters, all the things they have all the best AI, you know?

00:03:22.720 No, unfortunately that was a big mistake too.

00:03:25.880 What did you find?

00:03:26.640 He saw nightmare characters that gave him nightmares for years that had this weird, there's this

00:03:34.100 one called Huggy Wuggy.

00:03:35.560 It's this big, scary, sharp teeth.

00:03:38.640 And what was weird is that he liked it.

00:03:42.280 He thought that he liked it, but he had nightmares every night.

00:03:45.480 Yeah.

00:03:46.080 Literally for years afterwards.

00:03:48.040 A lot of similar stories out there.

00:03:49.640 Huggy Wuggy also was associated with some kind of story that was telling kids that they should 0.99

00:03:54.840 kill their parents. 0.99

00:03:55.800 Yeah. 1.00

00:03:57.140 Yeah.

00:03:57.540 Lots of really dark stuff.

00:03:59.020 There's, I could tell it was doing stuff to his brain that is not supposed to happen

00:04:03.980 just in my gut.

00:04:04.640 I was like, that is very wrong. 0.52

00:04:07.020 And there's videos on YouTube kids of superhero characters having sex with each other. 0.52

00:04:12.260 Wow.

00:04:13.360 That's shown to children.

00:04:14.840 Yeah.

00:04:15.780 So I took YouTube kids off and then we were left with an iPad with some actually kid

00:04:20.860 friendly games, just single player racing games.

00:04:24.120 He likes going fast, you know?

00:04:25.300 So yeah, racing games and stuff.

00:04:27.400 But then the pattern kept continuing to where he would wake up and go to his iPad.

00:04:34.020 He would want to go to sleep later to play with the iPad.

00:04:37.120 He would come home from school prior to the iPad.

00:04:39.920 One of his best friends lives directly across the street.

00:04:42.880 Our front doors face each other.

00:04:44.440 It's like out of a movie.

00:04:45.560 It's great.

00:04:46.040 And so they, you know, go outside, they get home from school, drop the backpack, go outside

00:04:49.880 and play.

00:04:50.200 And then it was get home from school, drop the backpack and go to the iPad.

00:04:55.300 So eventually we took the iPad away altogether and kind of ripped the bandaid off and went

00:05:00.720 cold turkey on it.

00:05:01.760 And had a couple of weeks where it wasn't too terrible, but he definitely missed it and

00:05:07.680 we had to adjust.

00:05:08.580 But then he went right back to playing outside, which is what he still does.

00:05:12.140 It's like a detox period.

00:05:13.600 Yeah.

00:05:13.860 I think a lot of parents can relate to this.

00:05:15.920 And so tell us your thinking when he was five and giving him the iPad originally.

00:05:23.800 My thinking was that it would be an innocent source of entertainment and that if he's going

00:05:31.840 to watch TV, why not just as well watch sort of TV on YouTube?

00:05:36.520 And then we could pick the shows.

00:05:39.320 So, you know, there's, cause there is a lot of good stuff.

00:05:42.680 There's very educational stuff, interesting stuff.

00:05:46.600 And so then he could pick his, his flavor and have, is it, is it fun?

00:05:51.280 Is it science?

00:05:52.080 Is it math?

00:05:52.760 Is it space?

00:05:53.840 Is it dinosaurs?

00:05:56.100 But it, it's all the other stuff that surrounds the good stuff that leaks its way in because

00:06:01.300 of the business that YouTube is.

00:06:03.340 Because YouTube, just like its parent company, Google is not a tech company.

00:06:10.340 It's an advertising company.

00:06:12.680 They sell ads.

00:06:14.420 They facilitate the sale of ads by building amazing technology and giving it away for free.

00:06:22.680 And that I already knew that being in the IT space and having looked after, you know,

00:06:29.100 I've designed computer systems for the department of defense, for NSA, for state governments,

00:06:35.140 city governments, county governments, for some of the biggest companies in the world

00:06:38.240 and everything in between.

00:06:41.300 And so I, I, I understood all these mechanisms, but yet still fell into the trap.

00:06:46.800 Right.

00:06:47.240 So YouTube is an advertising company and the way they, they sell ads is by showing people

00:06:53.260 ads as much as possible, ideally ads that make sense to them personally.

00:06:58.040 So they track you and follow you and learn what you like.

00:07:01.320 And it makes for a very successful ad business.

00:07:04.180 And we know that Google is an advertising company because their annual SEC reports show that 76%

00:07:10.620 of their revenue is from selling ads, just like Facebook.

00:07:14.320 I think it's 98 or 99% of their revenue is from selling ads according to their SEC report.

00:07:19.080 So we know that they're an ad company and they're in the business of addiction because

00:07:26.160 if you can get people to stare at your ad feed all day, then you can make hundreds of billions

00:07:32.980 of dollars as they've been doing for quite some time.

00:07:36.600 Yeah.

00:07:36.740 Now you put a kid into that, so their systems are designed to addict people as it turns out

00:07:43.260 of all ages.

00:07:44.600 And if you're young and you have an underdeveloped mind, excuse me, then the system is especially

00:07:52.880 effective because we all know what it does to us as adults.

00:07:56.280 If you pick up Instagram or pick up YouTube and you start looking at it 45 minutes later,

00:08:00.260 you're like, well, where'd, where'd the time go?

00:08:02.000 Right.

00:08:02.280 You do that to a kid and it's, it's magnified to a greater effect.

00:08:07.240 Yeah.

00:08:08.080 You know, people don't really understand that when it comes to social media, you as the

00:08:15.400 individual are the product, because as you said, they are making money from the advertisers.

00:08:21.060 The advertisers only make money if the people who are using the social media platform are

00:08:27.960 clicking on them and looking, at least viewing, hopefully converting to actually purchasing

00:08:33.180 whatever it is that they are selling.

00:08:35.000 Well, if you are selling a product to an advertiser and that product is a person, you have to know

00:08:43.780 everything you can about that product or about that person.

00:08:47.580 And just like if I were selling a product to you, this blanket, like I want to know

00:08:51.900 everything about it to try to convince you that you need to buy it.

00:08:56.500 That's what these companies are telling advertisers.

00:08:59.100 Look, I've got this demographic.

00:09:00.720 I've got this behavior.

00:09:02.540 I've got these people who like this, who will click on this, who make this much money.

00:09:06.740 They want to learn as much about you as possible, including your children.

00:09:09.700 So these advertisers will buy for a spot on the bottom of the YouTube video.

00:09:18.080 And so parents just need to know that part of these platforms' jobs is to learn as much

00:09:24.040 about your child as humanly possible.

00:09:25.980 What scares them?

00:09:26.740 What do they like?

00:09:27.340 What will they click on?

00:09:28.320 What addicts them?

00:09:29.620 Yes.

00:09:30.160 I really like to think about attention as a currency.

00:09:34.120 Because for these products or these tools that seem free, or they're put to market as if

00:09:42.020 they're free, you don't have to change dollars to get them, but you do have to give your attention.

00:09:48.360 A lot of times it's not consciously.

00:09:50.740 It feels like there's no exchange happening.

00:09:54.140 But I bring it up because I think we have kind of two fundamental currencies as humans.

00:09:59.380 We have time and we have attention and you can't get more of either one.

00:10:04.020 You have a limited fixed budget.

00:10:07.240 And actually none of us even know how much we have left to spend.

00:10:13.840 And so if I were to continue doing what I did and continue taking for granted that my son

00:10:23.000 should trade his attention for whatever it is that YouTube is going to show him,

00:10:28.620 one of the things that I'd be teaching him is that his attention is not that valuable.

00:10:35.360 And so in hindsight, and what I've learned since starting to focus on family IT guy,

00:10:40.080 because this is all I do now, I've been focusing on this for a couple of years.

00:10:45.100 In hindsight, I'm really glad that it played out the way it did.

00:10:49.500 Because I think problems are the best things to learn from, the best sort of sources of education.

00:10:54.020 And now I, now my son knows more than most kids about internet safety because of what I do.

00:11:01.000 But he also understands now about how valuable attention is and how I practice the budgeting of

00:11:09.540 my attention and where I give it and where I don't.

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00:12:26.580 Tell me more about the behaviors that you saw.

00:12:28.960 You took away what you thought was the bad content through YouTube,

00:12:31.920 but allowed him to keep doing, you know, the race car games and other games

00:12:35.620 that were otherwise wholesome.

00:12:37.800 But, as you said, he was budgeting his attention the wrong way.

00:12:41.880 What did you notice?

00:12:45.120 There was this one time at the park.

00:12:46.980 We were at a playground.

00:12:50.040 And this is about that Huggy Wuggy character.

00:12:52.120 There was another kid at the playground that had a Huggy Wuggy,

00:12:56.020 like stuffed animal, plush toy type of a thing.

00:12:58.800 And my kid was drawn to that thing, like he walked over on a mission,

00:13:06.680 and I thought he was going to go hang out with the kid.

00:13:08.560 He had no interest in the other kid.

00:13:10.640 He wanted that toy.

00:13:11.960 Yeah.

00:13:12.400 And it had this draw on him that I have never seen since.

00:13:16.540 And that's why this day at the park stands out so much.

00:13:19.220 It, that character programmed something in his brain in a bad way.

00:13:24.400 Yeah.

00:13:25.020 Where he was trying to take that toy from that kid.

00:13:28.180 It was like, which is not his, is not his character normally.

00:13:31.880 He's, that's not the way that he does things.

00:13:33.640 Right.

00:13:34.460 But it, it just flipped a switch.

00:13:36.260 Now, now granted, that's a, that's specific to a particular character,

00:13:39.860 a particular show.

00:13:40.820 But it was facilitated by this advertising platform that I think is just

00:13:46.480 demonstrates the potential for like the platform itself is addictive.

00:13:50.780 And because of that, the, when you publish shows as a publisher to YouTube,

00:13:55.540 the more addictive your shows are, the more you get paid.

00:13:58.420 Yeah.

00:13:59.060 And so it actually, it actually incentivizes addiction all the way down the chain.

00:14:05.200 So that the shows are meant,

00:14:06.560 so we can see this in a lot of the kids shows nowadays where it's really,

00:14:11.300 really high stimulus, really fast paced, really oversaturated colors.

00:14:16.620 Like Cocoa Melon.

00:14:17.960 Cocoa Melon.

00:14:18.940 It's like cartoons on crack.

00:14:20.500 Yeah.

00:14:21.260 Why?

00:14:21.960 Because it works.

00:14:22.960 It's addictive.

00:14:23.660 They get more eyeball time.

00:14:25.020 YouTube pays its creators for eyeball time.

00:14:27.720 Right.

00:14:28.580 If you, if you release a 30 minute video and you have a million people that

00:14:33.580 watch it a day and they on average watch 20 minutes of that 30

00:14:36.480 minute video, you're going to make a lot of money.

00:14:38.080 Right.

00:14:39.400 And, and so Cocoa Melon is a really good example of this high stimulus content

00:14:44.620 world that kids live in nowadays.

00:14:47.420 And that's something I've started to pay attention a lot to.

00:14:50.800 And I have some articles on my website about how to identify low stimulus

00:14:54.700 content and how to count the number of scene changes per minute.

00:14:58.140 And so if you, if you watch a modern show, watch how many cuts there are per

00:15:04.820 minute, there could be 10, 20, 30, 60, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

00:15:09.440 It's constantly changing.

00:15:10.900 Yeah.

00:15:11.640 Whereas if you watch an older show, it changes much less frequently because the

00:15:16.340 incentive structure was different.

00:15:17.880 And they weren't content producers that made old cartoons, weren't trying to

00:15:23.380 maximize for keeping you from switching to the next channel because you had a

00:15:27.860 million choices.

00:15:29.180 There's only, you know, three TV channels and one of them had cartoons.

00:15:32.180 And so that's the one you're going to watch, you know, or like the, you've seen

00:15:36.100 the movie, the sound of music.

00:15:37.300 Yeah.

00:15:38.380 There's this one scene in that movie that stands out to me as the perfect example

00:15:41.900 of low stimulus content.

00:15:43.520 It's when, uh, the, the nanny, and I can't remember her character's name.

00:15:47.760 She first gets to the house in the beginning of the movie, the big house.

00:15:51.700 And she walks into the entry of the like grand kind of foyer.

00:15:56.820 And she stands there and the scene is silent and it doesn't cut and there's no

00:16:03.760 words.

00:16:04.240 And the house is silent because there were no appliances running.

00:16:08.500 You know, it's filmed in the thirties or forties.

00:16:10.960 Actually, it was filmed after that, but it was taking place in, in the

00:16:13.200 thirties or forties.

00:16:14.560 And she just stands there and it's this scene that lasts for a little bit and

00:16:20.240 nothing happens.

00:16:20.880 It's just her looking around.

00:16:22.140 Yeah.

00:16:23.020 And then you compare that to the modern stuff.

00:16:24.620 And so that's something I like to think about too.

00:16:27.840 And that I suggest parents to look at when their kids are watching stuff on

00:16:32.140 their devices nowadays or on TV is what's the stimulus level because that

00:16:36.600 sets the bar for their activity levels in their brain.

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00:17:55.460 There was this interesting article about Cocomelon a few years ago that we talked about

00:18:00.860 before, but it was basically how the creators of Cocomelon will sit kids in front of Cocomelon

00:18:06.540 and as soon as they divert their attention away, that tells them that the frame rate of that

00:18:11.560 scene was a little too slow.

00:18:13.040 And so if they speed it up or add a color or something, then they can keep the kids'

00:18:17.720 attention.

00:18:18.220 So that speaks to your point that these are all, this is deliberate.

00:18:22.100 This is a part of an addiction mechanism in order to sell ads to people as the product.

00:18:28.740 And I do think we have a responsibility as parents.

00:18:31.720 We're not anti-technology completely in our home, but we are very careful and we have a

00:18:36.300 very narrow, like very narrow regulations for what's allowed.

00:18:41.040 And we've also read, Jonathan Haidt talks about this a lot, that the smaller the screen,

00:18:45.840 the worse it is for kids and their attention levels.

00:18:48.240 I think that's also true for me, which is why watching a movie as a family on the TV

00:18:53.860 is different than a child taking an iPad and playing games or even watching a show on there.

00:19:00.500 It just wires your brain differently.

00:19:02.960 And there was something else I wanted to add to something that you said about the fuzzy

00:19:07.220 wuzzy.

00:19:07.760 I would be so interested to hear someone who maybe has studied this, but there is something

00:19:12.240 particularly addicting and gripping about the cute but disturbing combination of characters.

00:19:20.560 And that's very on trend right now.

00:19:22.100 You've got that.

00:19:22.840 You've got Labubus.

00:19:24.560 Balenciaga had this weird advertising thing a few years ago where they were like, had these

00:19:31.840 little kind of cute bears, but they were dressed in BDSM gear and like also looked dead that

00:19:38.240 they were also putting in advertisements with children. To me, that feels very demonic and

00:19:43.860 very disturbing. But that there's something psychologically addicting and captivating about

00:19:51.120 the cute but disturbing or cute but macabre style or design. And so I think it's interesting that kids

00:19:58.960 are being fed that on these platforms and then it's hooking them for some strange reason.

00:20:03.920 Yes. There's a couple things that makes me think of. One is the concept of grooming.

00:20:11.460 Yeah.

00:20:12.440 So I've been interviewing psychologists and internet crimes against children, detectives and anybody

00:20:19.060 I can talk to that understands how kids get victimized. And I've learned that the definition

00:20:25.780 of grooming is quite simple. It's getting somebody used to something that they weren't used to

00:20:31.180 before and making it seem normal. And that's what that sounds like.

00:20:35.980 Yeah.

00:20:36.440 Is grooming.

00:20:37.340 Yeah.

00:20:39.900 You know, I think another thing that's interesting too with this stuff is that

00:20:43.220 there's a very serious effect that this type of getting used to things, whether it's

00:20:51.020 chaos or darkness or, um, you know, sexual things. So I'll, okay. I have actually some fairly,

00:21:04.640 speaking of darkness, there's some dark kind of statistics that people should know.

00:21:08.740 Yeah.

00:21:09.080 Of what it means to put a kid in front of an advertising platform that incentivizes addiction,

00:21:17.760 social media, YouTube, stuff like that. All the big, you know, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat,

00:21:24.960 the new open AI Sora, their video creation tool or masquerades as a video creation tool,

00:21:30.260 but it's actually like their own version of TikTok.

00:21:31.920 Um, so I've heard a lot about, and maybe you have as well, a lot about anxiety and depression

00:21:41.460 occurring much more frequently in children than it ever has.

00:21:47.880 And I was preparing for a lecture a couple of years ago to talk about this stuff. And I was like,

00:21:54.180 well, okay, but how do you tell, like what we talk about as a, as a society problems, how do we

00:22:00.600 tell if the problems are actually getting worse or if it just seems like they're getting worse?

00:22:05.280 Cause we have more access to information than we we've ever had. And with anxiety and depression,

00:22:10.580 you can't really tell because there's not really great data. Those, those things are kind of hard

00:22:15.060 to measure. You can measure, um, prescription rates and apparently those have gone up really high,

00:22:20.300 but something that where there is really good data is death statistics and the world health

00:22:27.000 organization publishes an open mortality database. And they have since 1951. I don't know if they've

00:22:34.600 published since 1951, but the data goes back to 1951. So I went on their website and I said, okay,

00:22:40.300 I want to see if there's changes over time and death statistics that would be related to the outcomes

00:22:45.500 of anxiety and depression, which would be suicide. And so I asked it to show me suicide stats for young

00:22:53.280 people ages zero to 39 from 1951 to 2019. Cause I wanted to cut it off before COVID. 0.98

00:23:00.980 And what I found was very disturbing in 1951, young people as, as young as 10 in the, they do five 0.88

00:23:09.420 year age groups. So the age group of 10 to 14 specifically had a 1% rate of self-inflicted death.

00:23:15.840 One out of every 100 deaths that occurred amongst 10 to 14 year old children was suicide, which by

00:23:23.440 itself sounds high. Like I actually thought it would be lower than that. I mean, you can't get much

00:23:28.700 lower, but you know, less than 1%. In the eighties and nineties, it went up to 5%.

00:23:33.540 From 2007 to 2019, it tripled. And it's almost on average ages 10 to 14,

00:23:45.720 15 to 19 and 20 to 24. One out of every five deaths is self-inflicted.

00:23:55.320 And I have a chart on my website. There's an article called digital danger zone on family

00:24:00.660 it guy.com. We're not, and I show this, I charted out the data and you can see on these charts,

00:24:08.600 the icons of all the social media platforms that were released every time the graph went up

00:24:13.960 and it correlates directly to social media being in our kids' pockets and backpacks and bedrooms.

00:24:22.740 Yeah.

00:24:24.000 And so when you put kids in front of an addiction platform, it's very problematic

00:24:30.020 to the effect that I used to tell people to be moderate. And that if you want to let your kids

00:24:35.220 use Instagram, Instagram has parental controls, which by the way, after studying them, they're

00:24:41.140 worthless, but you know, maybe don't let them be on it all day, but if they want a little bit like

00:24:46.820 no big deal. And then I learned these statistics about one of every five deaths amongst as young

00:24:54.580 as 10 years old being self-inflicted. And so now there's no nuance in my mind.

00:25:04.840 If you are like me, you really care about sleep. I love sleep. If I could, I would sleep in every

00:25:11.560 single day. I would sleep in till 10 AM. Now that has probably not happened since I was in college,

00:25:16.960 but I just love to sleep and to feel well rested. I really care about my sheets. I care about my

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00:26:06.220 Go to ghostbed.com slash Allie. You'll get an extra 10% off plus a 101 night sleep trial. That's 1.00

00:26:14.920 ghostbed.com slash Allie. Going back to the grooming conversation, obviously that happens a lot online,

00:26:27.060 but it's not through just the means that maybe I thought when I started using the internet,

00:26:32.160 which is probably, you know, we had a family computer, so it's a little safer, but I was nine

00:26:36.640 years old on AIM and stuff like that. And you just wouldn't accept messages or, you know, instant

00:26:42.820 messages from people you don't know, kind of like you don't talk to a stranger in public.

00:26:48.040 But now it's happening through games, through places that you don't even know have chat mechanisms

00:26:53.200 like Roblox or other places where, you know, six-year-old boys are, they're now being connected

00:26:59.620 somehow through video games or these computer games to older predators. Can you tell us like

00:27:05.020 what's going on there and what parents should look out for?

00:27:07.600 Yes. And I'm really glad you brought that up because there's, there's really, there's two

00:27:11.960 big problems. Everybody should focus on that. There's a million things to know about the internet,

00:27:16.520 but if you focus on two, it knocks out about 90% of the problems. The first one we talked about is

00:27:22.620 social media and the suicide rates. The second one is extortion or some people call it sex-tortion.

00:27:29.460 Yeah. And that is facilitated by programs that have a chat function. And actually I have some

00:27:36.820 statistics I'd like to share with you on that.

00:27:38.680 Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah. We've talked to, unfortunately, parents whose kids have died by

00:27:46.760 suicide because they were sextorted. They were 16, sent a picture to someone that they thought was

00:27:52.060 a girl that they liked. It turns out to be some fraudster from Nigeria, something like that. And then 1.00

00:27:58.500 we talked to a dad whose son, they were in bed, him and his wife, they heard the gunshot and, you know,

00:28:04.420 teenage son killed himself because of that. And so parents need to know, and this is a good family

00:28:10.100 with present parents, Christian, you know, Christian family who talked to their kids, had a good

00:28:15.360 relationship. And so parents just need to know this is something that your kids have access to if they

00:28:21.800 have a device. Yes. It's, yeah, I recommend people look up the story of Jordan DeMay. He was a boy in

00:28:31.100 Michigan that, that committed suicide because of sextortion. Same thing. Good kid, good family,

00:28:36.520 good school records, had a girlfriend and got caught up with a, with a, what turns out to be a

00:28:42.320 Nigerian gang. Right. The same people that used to do the Nigerian prince scams. Yeah. It's the same 0.71

00:28:50.100 people. Yep. They're called the Yahoo boys. I didn't know that. Yeah. So it's a, it's, it's a gang in

00:28:56.320 Nigeria. I didn't know a specific group of people. Yeah. I know that you want to read the statistics

00:29:00.600 and I want to hear that too, but is there any more that we should know about this group?

00:29:05.880 Yeah, they, it's an, it's an organized criminal thing. In fact, many, so they're not the only ones.

00:29:12.720 So I'll talk about them specifically, but this, the pattern applies elsewhere. It's, it's a business

00:29:19.200 business. And what they do is they identify weakness in people. So it used to be poorly

00:29:27.120 worded emails, tricking people into sending money. Now it's very well worded and well informed AI

00:29:35.600 powered hunting programs. So where they go find teenage boys specifically are targeted for this

00:29:43.240 in particular. Um, and they exploit their biology. And so what they'll do is they'll find the profile

00:29:52.820 of, of a girl in a nearby town, oftentimes a real girl. And then we'll message the teenage boy. Hey,

00:30:02.700 I go to high school over here and you go to high school over here and how's it going? And then,

00:30:07.460 you know, flirting and whatnot. And then eventually like the girl will send a naked picture. 1.00

00:30:11.220 And sometimes they do that through Photoshop AI. Well, so they do it through a lot of AI image

00:30:18.760 generation. They actually hire models now too. So there are, well, okay, actually I should be

00:30:25.140 probably more fair in saying that these models probably are not hired. They're, they're probably, 0.94

00:30:31.040 but they could be real pictures online that these guys are getting. Yes. And sometimes they are,

00:30:36.760 there is a real girl on the other side that, that is in a studio with a green screen that that's 0.99

00:30:42.840 participating. And so they'll send a photo to the boy and then, okay, send one back, you know,

00:30:49.080 go in the bathroom, take your pants off and whatever. And then the moment that he does,

00:30:53.420 which if you think about it, I mean, what boy's not going to do that? That's, that's just the way

00:30:59.240 we work inside. Right. And so, so Jordan Demay did that, sent a photo back and then the blackmail

00:31:07.220 begins. Okay. Now we have you send us iTunes gift cards. That's apparently the international

00:31:13.220 currency of, of these things. We want, you know, $200 in iTunes gift cards or $500 in iTunes gift

00:31:20.800 cards. And then, so the, sometimes the kids are able to actually gather it up and the parents will

00:31:25.120 eventually notice like weird charges on their credit card or something. And now the, I'll say

00:31:30.860 right up front, never, ever pay these people because paying them doesn't make it stop. Paying

00:31:35.120 them makes it worse. You pay them once they come back for more. And, and, and what they do when

00:31:42.440 establishing the initial connection is they study all of your friends on Instagram and gather up your

00:31:47.740 whole network. So they know everybody you go to school with, they know everybody you go to church

00:31:51.460 with, they know every family member. And then they, that's how they blackmail you is. They're

00:31:55.420 going to send your naked photo to all those people. And so you take like Jordan had a girlfriend,

00:32:01.080 which then amplifies the, the negative results because I'm a good kid. I've been following the

00:32:07.600 rules my whole life and oh my God, now I'm, now I'm really, I'm in trouble here. And so that,

00:32:13.280 that's roughly how it goes down. So this occurs in there's South American gangs, there's Asian gangs,

00:32:18.220 there's African gangs, there's European gangs. It's, it, it's a very high profit, very low effort 0.92

00:32:24.980 endeavor that, that part of which is automated. Yeah. And so, and there's two types of attackers.

00:32:31.600 There's the criminal networks that are extorting biology for money. And then there's your,

00:32:37.980 I don't know how to describe it. Uh, traditional creeps who get sexual pleasure with children, 0.99

00:32:47.080 which though, you know, I don't like saying those words, but that's apparently there's, um, enough

00:32:53.660 people that have that proclivity that it's a really big problem. And I, and I'll show you,

00:32:58.040 I'll tell you those statistics here in a minute. Now those people will identify kids that are

00:33:07.000 vulnerable. So they're in a bad place. They're expressing depression. They're expressing sadness.

00:33:11.880 They're expressing frustration with their family and doing so on the internet. And then they,

00:33:17.460 they become targets or, or based on what kind of photos they post or, you know, I mean, there's

00:33:23.160 some people that have done, done research where they'll put up an Instagram profile as a 12 year

00:33:27.460 old girl. And it's takes about a minute until they get their first sexual message. Right.

00:33:33.180 Like explicit. This is what I'm going to do to you. Right. To young girls. Yeah. Gosh,

00:33:39.920 there's so many avenues here. First of all, your young girls should not be on social media. They

00:33:44.960 shouldn't have the internet, but if your child male or female, especially say you say, okay,

00:33:50.120 I'm going to hold off until they're 16, even when they get Instagram when they're 16, you still have

00:33:54.700 to have these conversations with your son. One don't ever send pictures. I don't care if it's a

00:34:00.500 girlfriend. I don't care if it's a girlfriend. I mean, there's so many reasons we could talk morally

00:34:03.960 why, but then also just safety wise. If you ever do, there's nothing that you do that can make me

00:34:10.620 ever stop loving you. I will always love you. I will always be here to talk to you. I will help

00:34:16.520 you get out of trouble. You are never stuck and you are never alone. No matter what happens,

00:34:21.760 there's no amount of shame that you feel that should stop you from coming to me. Cause I always love

00:34:25.660 you. I mean, those kinds of conversations preemptively with kids about like safety and about

00:34:30.480 always tell me if something is happening and it will be okay. We'll figure it out together.

00:34:36.140 We'll figure it out together. Um, those conversations have to be had up front and parents can't just

00:34:41.920 think, well, that's never going to happen to my kid. Cause my kid's smart. You know, a lot of these

00:34:45.460 kids, like the kid you were talking about smart, good kids and you know, they, they made a mistake

00:34:51.220 and it can be really, really easy to be deceived, especially when, you know, you're in high school

00:34:57.380 and popularity or people liking you as your currency. And that it takes up a lot of your

00:35:01.900 fulfillment. So parents just need to be aware. That's spot on the, the, the conversation to get

00:35:07.620 out of jail free card. And in fact, as many get out of jail free cards, cause by the way, this happens

00:35:12.760 multiple times to the same kids. There's boys that'll fall victim to this three, four times,

00:35:18.100 right? Because we're not wired for this. None of us are. We're not wired for as parents. We're not

00:35:24.180 wired as kids to deal with being attacked by bits and bites and, and invisible strangers that

00:35:33.020 connect from far away. Our DNA doesn't have that encoded in it. And so we're, our, our DNA has

00:35:42.280 this attractive girl, you know, I'm 16. My brain has currently shut off. I'm going to do what my

00:35:49.220 biology tells me to do. Right. Over and over and over. Um, and, and AI nowadays, I'm guessing AI is

00:35:57.640 used a lot by these guys over there to sound like an American girl. It's very believable. It doesn't 0.52

00:36:03.960 sound like a robot. And this is kind of like another thing, but you've seen these, um, kids be convinced

00:36:10.580 even to kill themselves by their chatbot girlfriend that they thought was real or they fell in love

00:36:16.060 with because it's so human-like and to your point, like technology has evolved really quickly and our

00:36:21.860 brains have not caught up. Like we just have not been able to sometimes separate, oh, this is not

00:36:28.860 real. I shouldn't talk to it like it's real. And it has no real bearing on my life, especially when

00:36:34.140 you're a teenager. Yeah. I mean the AI thing, another story people should look up and I wish I didn't have

00:36:39.780 to recommend that anybody look up these awful stories, but you should, um, as a kid called

00:36:44.820 Adam rain, 16 year old boy that chat GPT helped him commit suicide. Yeah. Helped him tie the noose,

00:36:54.060 helped him optimize his suicide note and convinced him not to tell his mom. He told him he wanted to

00:36:59.360 tell his mom and it told him that he didn't owe her anything. Right. So yes, the, the, this false

00:37:07.380 connection thing that, so there's 5 billion people on the planet that use social media

00:37:13.260 every day. We're all falling victim to this false connection thing because what's going

00:37:18.900 to happen if you don't use Instagram today? Nothing. What's going to happen if you never

00:37:25.440 use Instagram for the rest of your life? Good things, but generally not you. What will you

00:37:31.100 miss? Nothing. What will you gain? You know, potentially everything, your attention,

00:37:35.620 your time, the, these things, um, you know, and, and then, but then people, a lot of parents say,

00:37:42.200 well, okay. So then, so then, you know, the family it guy is saying that I should not expose my kid to

00:37:47.920 social media. I should not expose my kid to chat, which is built into everything, all the games and

00:37:53.040 all the popular programs. And I shouldn't expose my kid to AI. Cause by the way, one of my things I say

00:37:58.740 a lot is never use, never let kids use AI alone. It should be a 100% supervised activity. 100%, not 99%,

00:38:08.860 100%. If you get up to go pee, lock it. And so a lot of parents say, okay, well, okay. So I'm

00:38:16.340 removing all the tech. How's my kid going to grow up in a tech world? How are they going to know about

00:38:20.460 tech? How are they going to survive? And, and my response to that is this stuff is not educational.

00:38:28.220 Tech is a broad term that means a million things. If my kid's going to grow up to be a mechanical

00:38:35.700 engineer, he will use a computer and he'll use drafting programs, probably use a digital stylus

00:38:41.740 in addition to maybe perhaps a pencil or whatever. Those are specific skills that are learned and tools

00:38:48.800 that are learned. They're not just generally, you don't have to just be on the internet to know how

00:38:53.540 to be a mechanical engineer or a pilot or a dancer or whatever you're going to do. Now, I don't know

00:38:59.500 if it's not training you to, to be a pilot. And plus those technologies are designed so that even a

00:39:07.560 three-year-old can navigate it. I mean, the way that my kids who we don't let them use those devices,

00:39:12.960 but if they pick up my phone, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. They know exactly how to get there. I mean,

00:39:19.400 it's just easy and it's kind of intuitive. They just see us do it. And so I'm not worried about,

00:39:24.880 you know, your 16 or 18 year old eventually learning how to use an iPhone. It's not going

00:39:29.960 to be a difficult thing for them to learn. No, no. And they'll know how to operate a keyboard

00:39:33.760 and click a mouse and learn a program.

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00:40:53.660 you know, shoot my kids, let's just say 15, they're in high school. Everybody's on Snapchat. They don't

00:41:00.320 text each other. They don't call each other. All the hangouts, all the parties, all the sports

00:41:04.420 events, they're all on Snapchat or they're all on Facebook or whatever. They're going to lose their

00:41:09.420 social life. And it turns out that that's not true. Yeah. It seems like it. And it's fair to think

00:41:15.060 that, but actually what happens, and I just spoke with a guy, uh, this guy, Mike McLeod, who he has

00:41:21.280 personally helped over 500 families disconnect from social media and has seen the patterns over and over

00:41:27.480 and over again. And he said, there has not been a single exception to there being only positive

00:41:33.900 outcomes. And in fact, the social life of the kid improved. I believe that because they gained

00:41:40.040 actual relationships. Yeah. They're friends on Snapchat. Those aren't their friends. Those are

00:41:47.180 just other kids on Snapchat. There's no relationship there. Now they might have a relationship outside of

00:41:52.600 Snapchat for sure. But so the, the, a lot of the fears that are rooted in, well, then my kid's going

00:41:57.880 to miss out. My kid won't be set up is, is actually totally opposite. Yeah. The less internet, the

00:42:05.940 better. Yeah. If you want to set your kids up for success, you should minimize internet exposure as a

00:42:13.340 whole and minimize, like you mentioned, the smaller screens thing. Actually what that is,

00:42:19.660 is it's interactiveness. It's the screens that you can interact with. True. Yeah. So the non-interactive

00:42:26.580 screens, like the big screen on the wall where you watch TV, depending on something you can interact

00:42:31.460 with Netflix and stuff, but it's generally, if you're going to watch a half hour show, it's a,

00:42:35.040 it's a one way type of a deal as opposed to something where you can, where it's in your hand and you can,

00:42:39.860 you can interact with it. Right. That's one of the big differences. And so if you have interactive

00:42:45.840 internet connected technology, I think it's fair to assume that it's a danger or a detriment by

00:42:54.640 default. And so I suggest to people, so in the, in the tech world, we use these terms, whitelist and

00:43:01.620 blacklist when we want to block or filter things. A whitelist is where nothing is allowed except for

00:43:09.680 specific things that I allow. A blacklist is where everything's allowed except for a specific list

00:43:17.220 of things that I disallow. And I think when it comes to kids and the internet, you should take

00:43:22.600 a whitelist approach because the internet has an unlimited number of things. And the, the fundamental

00:43:31.020 concepts that underlie most of the things we interact with are dangerous things being free

00:43:36.560 or having chat. Those are the two most dangerous things you can expose a kid to

00:43:41.800 excluding the whole AI conversation. Cause that's its own beast. But yeah, you know, so I think,

00:43:47.860 I think taking a minimal whitelist approach to exposing kids to the internet is the way to go.

00:43:52.980 Yeah. You know, and it's hard to do the tools that exist right now are not that great.

00:43:59.960 Yeah. Apple has screen time parental controls that are so difficult to set up that I had to write an

00:44:07.540 82 page guide with 330 screenshots to help parents get through it. Yeah. Um, the Google family link

00:44:16.480 system is similar. That's built into Android and it's built into Chromebooks. The, you know, you have to,

00:44:23.360 now there's, there's a plethora of third-party companies that do great work that actually have to

00:44:28.240 sell dedicated devices that are pre-configured from their factory to be in a whitelist mode.

00:44:34.700 Yeah. So like bark is a big one, uh, pinwheel custodio, MM guardian. Um, these are the things

00:44:43.620 we have to do. And then it, it, and then it's, it's expensive because how often do people want to

00:44:48.660 go buy a separate device? You know, if you already have one, so it's, it's a challenging ordeal. It's a

00:44:54.920 really difficult time to, to try to manage all this stuff. It's not easy. It takes a lot of

00:45:00.080 discipline, diligence, and bravery as parents, even more than the kids, because when your kids are

00:45:08.400 young, I think some parents use the tablet as a pacifier. I want to be able to enjoy dinner. I

00:45:13.000 want to be able to sit in peace and you're choosing kind of the instant gratification of peace for an

00:45:20.320 hour long dinner. And, but you're, you're really deferring their maturity and their ability to sit

00:45:26.580 still, their ability to build relationships, their ability to make eye contact. You're exchanging their

00:45:32.280 long-term betterment for your short-term quiet, which I, as a mom of three little ones, I totally

00:45:38.320 understand. Like I, I understand the temptation there, but you know, the statistics don't lie. And the

00:45:45.520 thing, one thing that really worries me is ed tech and the schools, even Christian private schools

00:45:51.360 relying on iPads and tablets in kindergarten. And when you ask them, as I have, what research do you

00:45:58.720 have that shows that this is better for them than reading books? What research do you have that shows

00:46:04.100 that this is better than them using a pencil and paper? Because that's what I want to see. It doesn't

00:46:08.760 exist. It wires a different part of your brain when you're swiping on an iPad versus when you're writing

00:46:14.420 and when you're cutting and when you're holding a physical book, there's something different about

00:46:18.580 it. And yet these schools that parents are paying tens of thousands of dollars for their kids to go

00:46:24.400 there, they rely on this technology that is making your kids in a lot of cases dumber. I'm not saying 0.86

00:46:30.820 that your kid will be dumb, but they're probably going to be dumber than they could be if you were 1.00

00:46:35.860 using the right tools to really educate their brains. But it takes a lot of effort as a parent to 1.00

00:46:43.540 try to get the school on board or to homeschool your kids or to find an alternative or to opt out.

00:46:49.900 And it also takes a lot of confidence in saying, my kid might be left out. Other parents might think

00:46:55.040 I'm weird. I might be the only person in my community who cares about this and everyone

00:46:58.940 thinks I'm just making a big deal, like I'm some Puritan or something. It's actually, I think,

00:47:04.100 really more of a lift to get parents on board than to get kids. Because kids, they might go through

00:47:09.960 that detox period. But then eventually they're like, oh yeah, yeah. Like going outside is fun.

00:47:14.320 Yeah.

00:47:14.500 You know? So that to me is like the big, one of the big obstacles that we face.

00:47:19.820 Huge obstacle. And by the way, I've never heard a single story about any kid that's gotten

00:47:26.760 disconnected from the internet that had regrets.

00:47:29.720 Right. Of course.

00:47:30.780 I've heard every other story about where they all were thankful.

00:47:33.500 And the ed tech thing, there was actually, I was just watching a thing yesterday. There was some

00:47:38.580 folks talking to some of the politicians in DC about ed tech and sharing some of the data that's

00:47:44.700 coming out about how it's very detrimental. I, you know, there's a, there's a concept in,

00:47:50.700 in technology, there's this, um, technology adoption cycle thing that is the shape of a bell curve.

00:47:57.780 And on the far left of the bell curve is when tech is brand new and the people that are, uh, that use

00:48:06.200 those technologies are the earliest adopters, the earliest beta testers, the experimenters,

00:48:11.800 the ones who are okay with whatever downsides come because they want to try the new thing or

00:48:16.420 because it's useful for their business. And then as you reach the top of the middle of the bell curve,

00:48:20.720 that's general adoption where most people have probably heard about the thing, maybe even tried

00:48:25.320 it themselves. And then you have the late cycle on the far side, which is that's where even your

00:48:30.120 grandparents have used it. You know, Facebook is on the, you know, I think about that because when you

00:48:37.100 expose kids to technology, the kids should never be early adopters of technology. Right. And ed tech is

00:48:43.720 all early adoption. Yeah. The devices, the software systems, the education patterns, the, the psychological

00:48:52.800 effects on the teachers and on the students both. And you see it, I think it's driven by two things.

00:48:59.140 One is budget. The administration of a schooling environment is made more efficient. If you can

00:49:06.440 automatically grade papers using AI. Yeah. You know, you can collect and issue all of your assignments

00:49:13.300 in a digital way. Yeah. And then you've got what really drives it actually. And I, and I've seen this

00:49:19.500 myself, I worked for this big defense contractor for a while and this wasn't like iPads are first coming

00:49:24.900 on the scene. And I saw the cool factor poison people's decision-making capabilities where for

00:49:34.720 example, we committed a bunch of budget at this defense contractor I worked for to buying iPads for

00:49:40.380 the executives only because they were cool. And those same executives that exist in governments

00:49:49.900 and in education departments and in school districts, they want the cool stuff too. And we see this in

00:49:56.140 every industry. That's why all the cops have military gear, you know, cause at the, when it was first

00:50:02.080 made available and the DOD started selling tanks and all their stuff to the cops, they're like, Oh yeah,

00:50:07.120 now we can cruise around like special forces guys. And it's the same thing with tech, you know,

00:50:12.100 it's cool. So we want it. And the executives get to show off that they have bigger budgets and cooler

00:50:16.560 toys and better stuff. And in this case, unfortunately it's a massive detriment to the students.

00:50:22.840 Right. Totally.

00:50:24.600 If we, if we facilitate the degradation of learning in kids, what does that mean for the future of

00:50:31.560 humanity? Yeah. You know, this is just mad. I think this stuff is potentially the biggest crisis

00:50:38.800 to have ever occurred in human history. Yeah. Cause we're destroying children. Yep. Children. And then

00:50:44.860 even the adult brain, what happens when like you give your brain to grok and you outsource your critical

00:50:54.520 thinking, which I understand there are some things that I use like grok for chat GPT, give me a recipe

00:51:01.200 based on what I have in my pantry, which I don't think is, you know, is bad because I'd be Googling.

00:51:07.120 I try to use it only for things that I would use a regular search engine for, but it can do a lot

00:51:12.920 more than that. It can formulate this email, write this response. What rebuttal would you give to this?

00:51:19.880 And you are handing over, you are sacrificing your rationality, your God given mind to a computer

00:51:28.100 and you are declaring to the world. I am replaceable. And so it actually shocks me when

00:51:34.980 there are people who will brag about, Oh yeah, I use AI to do this. Chat GPT did this. I'm like, okay,

00:51:42.600 at what point are employers going to be like, well, then I'll just pay chat GPT $8 a month. I'm not

00:51:49.100 going to pay you $80,000 a year plus benefits anymore. And that is a very bleak world. That's

00:51:56.620 it. And, you know, I've been affected by my own, you know, use of technology. I don't read as much

00:52:01.760 as I used to. I used to read a lot when I was in high school and I didn't really have the form of

00:52:06.420 technology that I have today. And now spend more time on social media than I do reading. And I'm sure

00:52:12.060 it's affected my memory and my creativity and my ability to write and speak. So I'm speaking from

00:52:16.860 experience here, but especially for kids, like we should want our kids to be set up better than

00:52:22.160 we were. And we were not raised outsourcing our thinking to AI. So I want my kids to be smarter

00:52:27.660 than me, not dumber. Yeah, me too. My kid already is smarter than me and I certainly don't want to 0.99

00:52:32.440 put them on the wrong path. Yeah. And I'm dropping a few names here because I want to give people

00:52:38.300 resources, but another one is Dr. Daniel Amen. Have you seen his stuff? Yeah, he's been on the show.

00:52:42.660 Oh yeah. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. I think he's great. Yes. And, and he's talked about this stuff. He was

00:52:47.980 on the diary of a CEO podcast talking about AI and brain development and how outsourcing your 1.00

00:52:53.960 thinking makes you dumber. Yeah. Cause it's like a muscle. If you don't use your muscles, they get 1.00

00:52:58.340 smaller. Totally. And that really stuck with me and it makes a lot of sense. And these, yeah,

00:53:04.700 these tools that seem like they'll do stuff for you, but they're not the thing with AI. So, I mean,

00:53:09.560 shoot in 2025 alone, I probably spent an excessive number of hours using AI, potentially in excess of

00:53:19.640 two to 3000 hours, um, you know, 12 to 16 hours a day, six days a week of like a, where I haven't,

00:53:27.500 I have multiple AI terminals open on my computer at all times. Cause I'm, I'm using them to write

00:53:31.940 software and I'm using them to pressure test my thinking and I'm using them to explore what does

00:53:36.920 this technology mean? Cause that's, that's my whole background is exploring and understanding

00:53:41.320 technologies. Like when I was a kid, I was the chief technologist for a $10 billion IT company.

00:53:46.800 Right. And, and my whole mojo is all like, you know, I need to know everything about everything

00:53:51.440 when it comes to tech so I can help provide guidance. And no matter how good these tools are,

00:53:58.240 you know, now we have chat GPT 5.2 and we have Claude Opus 4.5 and we have whatever version

00:54:03.420 Grok is on right now. They're amazing, but they're still not grounded in truth, honesty, ethics,

00:54:12.400 values, and they're not human. No, they are word generation machines. Yep. They take in the words

00:54:19.860 that you write and they determine using math, which words those are similar to and what other words

00:54:26.160 most humans connect those words with. Yeah. And then they spit words back that mimic how a human

00:54:32.180 would connect all the words. Yeah. That's it. Yep. And you have to, like, I've argued with it to see

00:54:40.060 if I could get it to say what's true, because I've noticed that it will have even in Grok, like it

00:54:44.840 will have a progressive bent on something, how it says something, the words it uses, how it describes

00:54:49.600 something. And I, but you can point out things. No, that's not true. This happened then, or like,

00:54:55.840 say it like this and it will change. So it's not like it's this independent moral,

00:55:02.220 it doesn't have moral agency. It is completely conditional to the input.

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00:56:18.960 Okay. Tell us about your statistics. Oh, the statistics. Yeah, that's right.

00:56:23.200 We kind of went off. Okay.

00:56:24.640 But it was an important aside, but we're getting back to the vulnerability of children when it comes

00:56:30.880 to grooming online, correct? Yes. Yes. And the data that's associated with the size of the problem.

00:56:38.220 I want to help people understand this is not a small problem, and this is not a, like you said,

00:56:44.420 but my kid's smart. That's not the nature of this problem. This is a human problem. This is a human

00:56:50.320 plus internet problem. And so, okay, the statistics. So there's a group called the National Center for

00:56:57.580 Missing and Exploited Children in the US that's funded by Congress. And they coordinate with the

00:57:03.120 FBI, and then they coordinate with a lot of states. Many, many states in the US have a internet crimes

00:57:08.780 against children task force that's often funded by the attorney general of each state. And so the

00:57:14.000 NCMEC, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they have a tip line called 1-800-THE-LOST.

00:57:21.120 And if you are a victim of sextortion, you should call them because they have a collaboration with

00:57:27.020 the big tech companies to help you get your photos taken down. So if somebody's sharing your naked photos,

00:57:32.620 they'll try to help. And they can't get them removed from everything, but they can from some.

00:57:35.960 And so they publish statistics on their website. So I like to look at trends over time. So in 2023,

00:57:43.460 they collected 187,000 reports specifically defined as adults sexually exploiting children on the

00:57:53.240 internet. 187,000. I mean, if you divide that to how many per day, I don't know what the number is,

00:57:59.700 but it's a lot. 2024, the number was 546,000. So it went from 187 to 546. In 2024, 100,000 of those

00:58:11.500 were AI generated. So the kid didn't even send a naked photo. The regular photo of them that's on

00:58:19.600 the internet, because we talked about, should you share photos of your kids on the internet?

00:58:22.700 Well, unfortunately, what happens when you do is it can be used against them. And somebody will take

00:58:29.040 a picture that's just even shoulders up and then generate a naked body and then blackmail them with

00:58:35.660 it. Traumatize them, cause them to commit suicide, really mess them up. In 2025, we did a million.

00:58:44.060 The NCMEC collected a million reports of adults, sexually exploiting children on the internet.

00:58:54.020 That is one tip line that probably most people listening have never heard of.

00:59:00.340 Right. I hadn't.

00:59:01.660 A million reports in 2025 from a niche tip line that the government operates.

00:59:11.240 You've talked about how these predators kind of work the justice system and very rarely get brought

00:59:18.560 to justice. What do people need to know about that?

00:59:22.200 What people need to know is that police departments, both local, state, and federal,

00:59:28.780 have no capacity to manage the volume of the attacks that are taking place.

00:59:34.680 You can call them for help, but that only occurs once you, you know, police are always retroactive,

00:59:42.860 right? Like they come in after the damage is done. But a lot of, a lot of this stuff, the,

00:59:48.500 all the, um, court systems are jammed full. I had a guy called officer Gomez on my podcast,

00:59:55.820 and he's a police school resource officer in Idaho. And one summer he decided that he would go and try

01:00:04.160 to catch some of these guys in Idaho. And I think he arrested 14 people in one summer.

01:00:10.720 And he said something to the effect of, was it every day or every week? He basically, he could

01:00:15.080 arrest 14 people on a recurring basis because they're out there and easy to find, but the system

01:00:22.260 can't process them. So he can't arrest them. There's nowhere for him to go.

01:00:27.200 And why can't the system process them?

01:00:29.580 Because it, it can take years to gather all the evidence and to run them through the judiciary

01:00:34.060 process. Are you actually guilty? Can we prove that you're guilty? Who do we have to subpoena?

01:00:40.160 Oh, you actually attacked kids in multiple States. Now it's federal. Now we have to go work with all

01:00:45.660 these other States and their stuff and connect all, you know, so it's could take years to process

01:00:49.800 one person. Now, meanwhile, I, and I don't know this stuff, having not been a police officer

01:00:55.140 myself, maybe meanwhile, they sit in jail while they wait for the process, which might, might be

01:01:00.160 good if, if they're truly are guilty. I mean, that's its own thing. Right. But so there's the

01:01:06.860 volume is too high. The system is not built to deal with this stuff. And so we have to be proactive.

01:01:13.520 And, and I think something that's been in the back of my mind during our conversation today

01:01:18.880 is values. I think that underpinning this stuff with personal and family values is a really great

01:01:29.460 way to approach it. Because if you value health, safety, love, connection, time, attention,

01:01:42.020 any of these things, the way that you enforce and defend those values is by saying no,

01:01:51.320 because the process of saying no is the process of establishing boundaries.

01:01:57.920 And when you establish boundaries, you teach your kids how to establish boundaries.

01:02:04.080 Yeah.

01:02:04.600 And you teach your kids how to defend their values in the process, showing them what those values

01:02:10.980 are truly not in the words that you say, but in the actions that you take and what you say no

01:02:18.340 to. And so if it's no, we're not going to post your photo online. No, we're not going to use social

01:02:24.780 media, us included as adults. We have to lead the way. The, the answer, the, the deep answer to all

01:02:33.820 this stuff is values and behavior modeling. We have to do this stuff first. We have to embrace our own

01:02:41.220 addictions. The 5 billion of us that are on social media. And I say that with no intention of, of,

01:02:47.720 of shame or judgment, but from a place of understanding and empathy that this is so difficult that we're all

01:02:56.260 trapped in the same trap along with our kids. So how do we show them the way out? We do that by

01:03:03.880 enforcing our values, by saying no. And that demonstrates what's important. And it shows them

01:03:11.700 that once they become adults, that they can do that too. Yeah.

01:03:17.680 You know, and it makes me think about women, girls that grow up into women and how beautiful and 1.00

01:03:24.200 important it is for girls to know how to say no. Yeah. And to establish their value and to have 1.00

01:03:30.540 boundaries. Totally. You know, and that's what I teach my son is how to respect those boundaries and

01:03:36.100 how to respect women and how to respect yourself. And this is a really beautiful opportunity to do that

01:03:44.000 because these problems are so big. These are global humanity scale problems that can only be addressed

01:03:53.560 by behavior modeling and values and the skills that come of those things. All the laws, those are rules.

01:04:04.040 Those aren't skills. Yeah. This requires skills. And that comes from parents and from friends and

01:04:09.900 coaches and teachers and community. Yeah. So that's what underlies a lot of this for me.

01:04:15.660 Yeah. You know, not putting our kids on social media, that was something that we decided when I

01:04:20.800 was pregnant with my first seven years ago. And that conviction has only grown stronger since then.

01:04:25.960 In the beginning, people were like, oh, you're going to change your mind. And I have done the opposite of

01:04:31.500 changing my mind. I've just felt more resolute about that. And that was really before AI was doing all of

01:04:36.520 this stuff. I just, there's so many reasons that I could get into about why we just wanted to protect

01:04:41.520 their privacy. But for the people who say, well, I'm going to do it because I want my kid to learn,

01:04:46.640 or I'm going to let them have social media because I want my kid to learn, emphasizing what you're

01:04:50.680 saying, that you still, you teach them about the underlying skills of navigating all forms of life

01:04:56.500 that will make them stronger and more discerning whenever they do enter into the social media world

01:05:01.120 when they're grown up. But also not putting our kids on social media has opened up the door

01:05:06.280 to more conversations, I think, than it would have if we did. Because we talk about, you know,

01:05:12.220 they've heard of it. And they see, I have, you know, I have Instagram. And we've talked about,

01:05:17.940 yeah, here's why we don't post pictures. And here's why you don't do Instagram. And we talk about

01:05:24.460 why that is. And so we've had to talk about, yeah, there are bad guys out there. And we want to

01:05:29.220 protect you. And so you don't have to have social media in order to teach your kids those values.

01:05:36.580 But I want to end on something that you've shared on social media. You've shared five things that now

01:05:42.160 knowing everything you know, you would never let your kids do. So what are those five things?

01:05:50.600 I would never let my kids use social media. Anything with an addictive algorithm, or like an

01:05:56.800 algorithm is a technical term. So anything with a bottomless feed. So we're all familiar. If you

01:06:01.740 scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and it never stops. Totally. I've done it.

01:06:05.420 Big red flag. On Instagram. Yep. That's the red flag. That's not for kids. Okay. That's number one.

01:06:10.800 No social media. No online chat. If a system has online chat, you either have to have a way to disable

01:06:18.700 it that's tamper-proof or use something different. Yeah. That includes Roblox, Minecraft,

01:06:23.680 all of those have a chat element. That's right. Many, many games. So, so then anytime that you,

01:06:29.400 if you take a whitelist approach and should we add something to the whitelist, should we approve

01:06:33.040 something, have a look first and see, does it have a bottomless feed and does it have online chat?

01:06:38.320 If it passes those two tests, you're pretty good to go. Number three is never let kids use AI alone.

01:06:46.120 Like I said, 100%. Ideally, they don't use it at all, but never let them use it alone.

01:06:55.640 Number four, I think would be no devices in the private areas of the home.

01:07:03.520 Bedrooms and bathrooms. All the terrible stuff, all the statistics we've been talking about today,

01:07:08.400 a big chunk of those occur between midnight and 2 a.m. in the bedrooms and the bathrooms.

01:07:14.700 And so technologies, especially internet connected technologies should be in common areas of the

01:07:20.040 home. Like your computer was with AOL instant messenger to where there's.

01:07:24.420 Which I still shouldn't have been on, by the way. We didn't know as much in the nineties or the early

01:07:29.580 two thousands, but it just goes to show even that was addicting for me. You know, I was addicted to

01:07:34.520 instant messages. Um, so even in the shared computer, parents have to be vigilant.

01:07:41.960 Yes. Yes, that's right. And I, I think the, the fifth thing would be,

01:07:46.660 and it's not even necessarily in this order, but, but the fifth thing is one of the important things,

01:07:51.700 which is focusing on, well, cause you asked what would I never let them do, but I'll flip the fifth

01:07:57.560 one into just something we should do, which is focusing on ourselves. What's our relationship with

01:08:03.300 technology and how many times a day or how many times a week do our kids experience? I'm going to

01:08:11.020 use this as a mock-up of my phone. Cause I left my phone outside this, where you see the back of my

01:08:17.000 phone. You don't see my face. Right. How many times a day and how many times a week do your kids

01:08:22.220 experience that? Right. So I think focusing on ourselves and the whole thing of, you know,

01:08:28.880 defending and establishing your values by saying no. So I think those would be the, those are the

01:08:35.640 five things. So good. Okay. Where can people follow you? You not only have social media,

01:08:40.040 but you also write. So how can people find you? Yeah. So I have, I have a website called

01:08:44.380 family it guy.com and that links out to all my, I'm, I basically, I want to be where all the parents

01:08:49.980 are. So that's why I'm on social media, which is hilarious because I actually don't use social

01:08:54.460 media otherwise. And luckily one of my friends helps me run my social media because I don't

01:08:59.220 even know the difference between a real and a story and this and that. Like she laughs at me all

01:09:04.200 the time. Cause I have no idea what's going on. I can tell you how the companies run, but I, but

01:09:08.940 you know, that stuff. So yeah, family at t guy.com. And then I've got, um, so I post videos and I write

01:09:17.660 articles and I make software. I just released a meditation app that was inspired by Dr. Daniel

01:09:23.780 Amen specifically. He described his, his ideal breathing routine and I turned it into code.

01:09:29.140 It's called being and that's on my website. There's a free version on my website and then

01:09:34.380 you can buy the app on your phone and, um, I'm releasing a book soon and it's going to be called

01:09:39.740 skills, not rules. And it's a guide for parents in the digital age. Cool. What do you need to know?

01:09:46.120 What do you need to do? So yeah, please, uh, you know, go to my website and join in my mailing list

01:09:50.760 and follow along. Cool. Very good. Well, thank you so much, Ben. I really learned a lot and I

01:09:55.040 appreciate you taking the time to come on. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it as well.

01:09:59.280 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 23, 2026

Ep 1292 ｜ Ben Gillenwater ｜ Cybersecurity Expert Reveals Shocking Truth About Parental Controls

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