Get kids off their phones!
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Summary
One of the clichés of our age is the teenager focused on their cell phone to the exclusion of all else, including friends and family. How often does mom s phone do double duty as a babysitter? This can t be good, and there are people trying to do something about it. Joining me today is Robin Shirk, a volunteer mom with Unplugged Canada, a movement helping families prevent digital harm by delaying smartphones and supporting a social media age minimum.
Transcript
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Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show
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of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, December the 4th. One of the clichés of our age is the
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teenager focused on their cell phone to the exclusion of all else, including friends and
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family. In fact, much of the time, they're not even teenagers. How often does mom's phone do
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double duty as a babysitter? This can't be good, and there are people trying to do something about
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it. Joining me today is Robin Shirk. She's a volunteer mom with Unplugged Canada, a movement
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helping families prevent digital harm by delaying smartphones and supporting a social media age
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minimum. Welcome to the show, Robin. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're glad to have you here.
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It's a bit of an issue, isn't it? Robin, how bad can this be? When the kids are wrapped up in their
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phones, they're not up to mischief anywhere else and turning over garbage cans in the back alleys.
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so why do we care what's unplugged canada and what is it that you are trying to accomplish
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yeah so broadly unplugged canada it's a movement of parents across the country
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that are really focused on preventing digital harm in children we're doing that through local
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support and helping parents delay giving their kids a smartphone if they choose to
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and also with national advocacy asking for canada to have a social media age minimum
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And all this is about protecting childhood and helping kids have a healthy age-appropriate
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development. Now look, every age has its own difficult things, right? And you know, when I
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was 10 years old, I was always in a book. And so I'd get this disembodied voice coming from
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somewhere else in the house, get out of the book and come and feel potatoes or go make your bed
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or something like that you know so in 70 years ago it was books today it's a smartphone has anything
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really changed yeah i think i would first of all it separates smartphone from social media because
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there can be um you know there's differences there and so if i was thinking about the kids
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interaction reading books or watching tv versus being on on social media those are just fundamentally
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different you know we didn't know what we released but when you look at social media now with the
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social comparisons and the you know the predator outreach and the manipulation through the
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algorithms it really is creating this compulsive use and these mental health harms that have become
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quite clear and just did not you know you did not see that happen when kids spent hours reading
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books or watching television for instance so we are seeing that this does feel quite different
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do you have a you know an example of somebody's family where things went spectacularly wrong and
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it was the smartphone that ultimately proved to be the problem yeah i i think the hard thing is is
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there's so many examples it's hard to pick just one when you think of you know teenage girls in
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canada today 12 of all teenage girls show signs of addiction it's things like withdrawal loss of
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control um so i think that's what we found is now this is let me stop you there when you're saying
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they're showing signs of addiction are you saying that they're addicted to their phones or that the
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phones make them addicted to something else drugs whatever um so addicted to the social media app
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itself so when you think about what social media is it's it's designed to create this compulsive
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use to maximize your engagement as they might call it and and we see that a third of teenage
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girls today you know 31 spend more than five hours a day on social media so what about teenage boys
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are they part of the problem too me so teenage boys are impacted they're impacted slightly
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differently so they do show those compulsive rates so it's it's um i believe it's about one
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in five overall uh for teenagers have that compulsive use um but for teenage boys some
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of the harms are a bit different as well they're they're more likely to be exposed to excessively
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violent content for instance um and groomed into you know some of those violent ideologies so it's
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it's you know the harms are a little bit different between boys and girls but they're both harmful
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so is this something that people grow out of you know one thing that we've seen is when you
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have harms like mental health um challenges like depression or anxiety is those can carry with you
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those can linger. Same things if you see really explicit content that's terrifying to you or
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disturbing. That lingers. Once you see that, you cannot unsee that. So in that way, I would say it
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lingers. Yes, you can't unsee the death of Charlie Kirk, can you? And I understand that's something
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a lot of kids go looking for, which is a frightening thought in its way. All right, so the kids have
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the phones why does anybody give a 10 year old a smartphone yeah i think you know there's there's
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smartphones and there's some of the harmful content that can come through unfettered access
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to the internet so if someone's going to give their their child a phone i understand you want
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to be able to message them maybe that you want them to be able to have a mac to know where they're
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going and there's certain circumstances where you might need it for medical reasons as well
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and and that's very understandable i you know we are seeing new types of phones come onto the market
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that don't have that unfettered access to the internet but do let kids have access to the
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services they need so for instance wise phone is one example or pinwheel for instance so i think
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it's reasonable for kids to want to be connected to their parents or to each other but it's this
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unfettered unsupervised access to these age inappropriate platforms in the internet is
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really where we're focused well of course you're always going to have a child who has the phone for
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the kind of valid reasons you've just talked about but then in any group of a dozen kids
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there's probably one whose parents see things differently and they can wander the internet at
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will and you see this little cluster of children gathered around the one who's actually got the
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phone and they're all looking at something that that intrigues and interests all of them and not
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necessarily in a good way so is it enough to get parents to like how do you how how does your
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organization see extending this so that scenario doesn't occur yeah so we recognize this is a
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complex uh challenge that requires a lot of angles so whether that's education um in schools or just
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in the home to be aware of the risks and the types of harms that can occur whether it's parent
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involvement in community support helping parents group together and say you know we'd like to delay
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giving our child this device until you know they're of the right age but that's also why
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we're focused on the national advocacy as well because there's some things that you know just
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are not age appropriate for children just as you agree children shouldn't be going to nightclubs
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or driving or or gambling in casinos there's some interactions online where the compulsive
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use design the harms and the risks just you know warrant the same level of youth protections
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and i would put social media in that category so that's that's why we're advocating for that
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some of these i'll call it national age minimums alongside the local community involvement and
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education awareness sorry the national internodes did you say what oh national advocacy so we're
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okay we're we're asking for canada to have a social media age minimum um keep up with you
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know proposals that are um you know like the bipartisan senate bill in the us right now or the
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suggestions for the eu uh to have an eu-wide minimum so you see our what what age would you
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said that if somebody said yep that's the answer you're onto a good thing we're gonna say it should
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be at this age what what would you recommend as the age when child should be allowed to
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get onto the internet and wander wherever they will yeah so i think it's it's really all about
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developmental readiness and what the what the research is showing right now is for social media
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specifically um girls are most vulnerable to harm around the ages of 11 to 13 whereas boys are most
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vulnerable between ages of 13 to 15. So that's why you're seeing countries internationally set
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that age at 16. And that's why we would recommend 16 as well, is to make sure you're kind of past
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those most vulnerable years before having these interactions. I hate to be a naysayer, but,
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and actually I'm not, I wish you all the luck in the world, but do you think that it is going to
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fly i mean there are going to be some people that there's obviously an organization that you're
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working with uh and i'm going to ask you about that organization in just a moment but um in any
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group of a hundred parents you know that there are going to be some who say yep we've got to keep the
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phones out of the hands of the children and then there'll be others who for whatever reason and it
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may well be that they don't want the fight uh it may be nothing more than that but they're not going
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go with you and then you've got some who are on and some who are off and here's a whole new source
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of teenage tension what do you think what are your chances i think well i would separate the
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the having a phone versus a social media age minimum for having a phone you know i'd support
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every family and where they're at and i recognize there's different circumstances there so you're
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right you're never going to have consensus on how families want to approach that they should
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have differences um now for a national age minimum for social media that actually has widespread
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support you know ipsos uh you know a polling firm actually surveyed 30 countries around the world
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including canada and they found the majority of people in every country they surveyed supported
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an age minimum and government enforced strong age minimum and among parents you know that support
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it was three and four it was the majority and uh you used to use one of the buzzwords that
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gets us alarmed and that is government enforcement yeah what what do you think the government
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could or should do about this you know just like how we don't let kids buy cigarettes or buy
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alcohol or gambling casinos it's the same way it's putting the responsibility on the platform
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And to be clear, that does not require a government ID.
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for going to explicit sites like pornography sites,
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For example, using a $0 charge on a credit card
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and if that email address has existed for so long you know that digital footprint means that person
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is obviously of age so there's multiple ways to do this that are very privacy preserving
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and i think the owner should be on the platform it's not on the person and and what i'd say is
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it was just this past summer that canada itself launched a new national um standard for age
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assurance technology so we have the framework in place now in a way that we just didn't a couple
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of years ago. So we have the guardrails, we have the design, and we've seen it rolled out in other
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industries and other countries to know that it can be done safely and effectively without having
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to share too much information. You were describing a technology that we have
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that works in other circumstances that can be made to work for vetifying the age of children
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so that they're not on the internet uh what is that can you describe that again please yeah so
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it's called it's called age assurance technology and what that means is you know you're not
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checking a specific id but you have other ways you can validate someone is of age
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so you know there's multiple ways that can be done you're seeing that um being used in the uk
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right now for um you know for their explicit sites and the age checks there or in australia
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for joining a social media account so they explicitly say you do not need to use a government
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id in order to have your age validated so so the child would be trying to log on to a site and it
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would just give them a blank screen or you know sorry you're not verified or something like that
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is that is that what this would look like yeah so it's it would block you at the account setup level
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so you could see the links from the site but you wouldn't be able to make your own profile
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and making your own profile that's the reason why that matters is when you have your own profile
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that's when predators can reach out to you that's when you can have those social comparisons you
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know tracking tracking the likes all of those things and it also lets the algorithm really
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collect your data and walk into you and become more addictive because you're sharing so much
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information it can trace it all back to you so it's it's this idea that you should be um you know
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of an age to uh consent to sharing all that data and consent to understanding how you're being
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manipulated before you're put in that circumstance how exactly are children being manipulated what
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are the levers that get pulled yeah so there's what i'll call content rewards and social rewards
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so the manipulation on the content front is that's the algorithmic feed uh feeding your
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content to keep you engaged and the more emotionally charged that content is and the more
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kind of you know wow attention getting that content is and the more likely you are to stay
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hooked it's almost like pulling a gambling lever to see um you know slot machine lever to see what
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what pops up um so that's that's the emotional manipulation there is it can put you in this
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ultimately is about selling product to children right this is yeah these yeah exactly these are
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ads are platforms their entire design is to to sell you know to sell advertisements and keep
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you on there longer to be able to sell more advertisements to you so whether it's um you
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know manipulating the content to try and hook your emotions and keep you there longer or the social
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work looking at the number of of likes or followers or comments on on different types of content that
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you're interested in um all in those notifications as well you know someone telling you to come back
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in um all of those things are designed to catch and hook your attention and for adults you know
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that's that's fine we have the impulse controls and the critical thinking skills developed but
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for young children they haven't developed that yet so it's really preying on some of their
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their vulnerabilities and um just you know they just haven't had the developmental maturity
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uh to be able to to handle these situations the way that adults can okay tell me a little bit
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about your organization how long have you been around and uh what kind of pickup are you getting
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and then i want to take you to the petition that you're asking people to sign so first what about
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your organization so unplug canada it was officially formed last year and it was formed
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by jenny prez out of vancouver and what it is is it's a group of volunteers across the country
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so we've got chapters from nanaimo to nova scotia and we're focused on preventing digital harm and
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kids and that's through supporting families in our local communities if if they do choose to
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want to delay getting their child a smartphone it's to help parents band together and alleviate
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that peer pressure to have one um until they feel that their kids are of age to be able to handle
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that um and then the other piece is the national advocacy and this is the piece that is asking the
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government to put in a social media age minimum of 16 and also have stronger used data privacy
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rights for under the age of 18. so once they are old enough to be on these platforms these companies
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are not allowed to monetize and share and sell their data until these kids are old enough to
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recognize what they're giving away. Now you have already presented a petition
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to the federal government on this matter. We have. Is there any further possibility for
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people to engage by signing another one? Absolutely. I think in terms of engaging,
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I would encourage folks to sign the call to action on unpluggedcanada.com and also the direct
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participation. Writing a letter to your MP and saying that you would want to have these child
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protections put in place. We've been talking with dozens of MPs across the country and I've been to
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Ottawa three times in the last month back and forth for meetings. So it is gaining incredible
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momentum, and we're gaining cross-party, multi-party support as well.
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I notice you got a response to your first petition from Mr. Gilbo. He was one of the
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liberal ministers. He was one of the liberal ministers. He's resigned now,
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but there's not a lot of common ground that we find with Mr. Gilbo here at Western Standard.
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But how did you rate his response to the petition when it received it?
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You know, I always know that tabling a petition is, that's the start.
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So, yeah, getting the attention of the government is important.
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And, you know, moving forward with multi-party legislation to prevent harm to children and protect children.
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So, you know, his response was a bit broader and it referenced several pieces of legislation.
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So that would be, that would be my response is I want to see us move yesterday.
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Well, you know, I took a look at his response and it's a very particular concern you have, the keeping younger children off social media.
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media, he took the opportunity to explain all about Bill C-9, which they couch in terms
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of protecting children, so it wasn't completely off topic, but it's also a bill that is about
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to be used, it seems, the reports indicate that, to restrict religious freedom as well.
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I won't ask you to comment on that specifically, but, you know, how confident do you really feel that
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Heritage Canada, which is the agency you're addressing, understands what you're talking about
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as opposed to using you as an excuse to talk about what they want to talk about?
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Yeah, I think to answer that broadly, I have no interest in watching my kids be held hostage.
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I want to see legislation to prevent harm and protect my children. And I think we need to focus
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on elements that have multi-party support that can get passed quickly. And so that's really
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where I'm emphasizing and that's where I would focus. Yes, you can talk about broader initiatives
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and broader efforts. And I'm not going to comment on that because where I'm really focused on and
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where my effort is, is on getting a social media age mineral. And this is a targeted ask. It has
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multi-party support, and I see no reason to delay it. Have you had any face-to-face discussions with
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government officials on this yet? Member of Parliament or somebody within Heritage Canada,
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perhaps? I have. Yeah, I did. I did get to talk quickly with Bobo as well. But I did talk,
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I have talked with four different ministers' offices so far, and as I mentioned, a couple dozen MPs, and I've met senators as well.
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So we are seeing a lot of traction and a lot of movement, and I do think we can make this happen, but we just have to show that this is what Canadians want.
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And we see it in the polling numbers, but emailing your MP to ask for this is really important to show that broad national support.
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Mm-hmm. Okay. How many, this is the last question. We're almost out of time. I'm sorry. But how many parents have responded so far and actually signed the petition?
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Yeah. So what I would say is, so the petition was only open for 30 days and it was a paper one. That was always kind of symbolic to get this piece going.
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So what I would really focus on is the polling numbers.
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It doesn't matter what poll you look at, the vast majority of Canadians want this.
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80 percent. So 81 percent said they want to see a government-enforced age minimum for joining social media.
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And, you know, there's different polls ask different age numbers.
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There was one that said 84 percent of Canadians agreed that kids should be 16 percent to join.
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But when you looked at the Quebec Select Committee report, it had 90% agreement in
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their consultation, including 76% agreement among teenagers.
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So we see Canadians want this and even teens want this.
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We're finding a lot of folks join because their peers are on it and they don't want
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to be excluded, but that doesn't mean they want to be fed all this other stuff and get
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That's very interesting because I hear informally from people who have younger children that kids aren't necessarily as into it today as they were even a year ago.
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Anecdotally, you seem to be saying the same thing.
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Yeah, I think you're seeing kids are starting to recognize the harms.
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We saw that when we went out collecting petition signatures for the petition we had.
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What surprised me the most, it was like the 18, 19, 20-year-olds were the ones that would take the pen out of her hand and just start signing and then start sharing their short stories of what had happened to their friend, what had happened to them, what they had seen.
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So, yes, I think kids that have been through it and have had experiences realize, you know, maybe you shouldn't be giving that to middle school students.
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Robin, we are out of time, but I must say that I really find myself in 100% sympathy with the aims of your organization.
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If anybody wants to get in contact with you, how would they do that?
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You can contact the email there, or it's Robin at UnpluggedCanada.com as well.
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You know, there's a lot of good that comes from these devices.
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it just has to be an agent it just has to be channeled doesn't it yeah i'm so so with you
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robin shirk uh volunteer with unplugged canada talking about the trying to take our kids back
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out of the grip of the of the uh smartphone social media revolution that's taken us over in the last
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decade robin thank you very much for being with us been a pleasure to have you yeah thanks for
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having me appreciate it for the western standard i'm nigel hanaford