 And welcome to Screen Time Reset. I'm your host, Lauren Pair. While the research on the harms of screen time is piling up, the government, both on the state and federal level, has for the most part been missing in action. The U.S. is lagging behind Asian countries that are mandating classes for parents and young children. And even going as far in the case of Taiwan is making laws against parents permitting their children use of excessive screen time. Officials in the U.K. are also talking about taking action as social media has been implicated in promoting self-harm among teens. Fortunately, though, a few bills are beginning to pop up here in the states. Maryland passed a law last year requiring schools to hear about best practices for screen use. And here in Hawaii, this session, Senator Ruderman, Russell Ruderman, introduced bill SB 433, which mandated and funded the Department of Health to create an information campaign on the effects of screen time, which is the first such bill in the country. It made its way through its first three hearings and was just one hearing away from becoming law. But unfortunately, the House Finance Committee opted not to hear it. Today is the deadline, so it almost certainly is not going to happen. But it was a good first step. And we have with us today in studio Senator Russell Ruderman, Chair of the Health and Human Services Committee and Representative of the Puna District here to talk to us about it. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Senator. Thank you for having me. Making time in your busy schedule. Thank you. Absolutely. So let's just first talk a little bit about the intention of the bill and what it set out to do. Well, I think the intention of the bill is to bring some awareness to the concerns over the overuse of screens, particularly among children, you know, especially trying to, I think it was going to create a public awareness campaign to basically educate parents and educators and kids about some of the hazards that's been putting too much time on the screen. Right. Yeah. And we actually work together on this bill and the other piece is a website, right? It was going to create a website with all the research for parents put together. Right. And by the way, Lauren, I have to give you credit. This bill wouldn't have existed if it weren't for you and your advocacy on this issue. So I'm really in support of your efforts, although I share your concerns about it. Thank you. And I thank you as well because I'm not a senator. So I don't get to introduce bills. And it was so great that you're supportive of this issue and that you're looking out for our cakey and clear your heart is in the right place on it. Thank you. And before we talk a little bit more about the bill, just I was going to mention that you have a young daughter yourself, right? I do. I have a three-year-old girl. I have three older daughters in their 20s, but I all started all over again. I have a three-year-old and I'm observing the effects of screen addiction firsthand. You know, we are, I think, more conscious than perhaps the average parents, but nevertheless it's pervasive. And she's pretty attached to her screen. She borrows mom and dad's iPads if she's not watching TV. And, you know, it's so tempting as a parent just like we used to park kids in front of the TV. It's the electronic babysitter. Well, now it's even more so because they're much more attached to it and much longer entertained. And it's more mobile, right? Like, I grew up with a lot of TV, but the TV stayed in one place and the iPad comes with you. That's right. And have you received, like, has your pediatrician talked to you about screen time and the effects that it has? No, we've never had any discussion with our pediatrician or anybody else for that matter. You know, it hasn't really come up. So I think it's an issue that's been unaddressed. Yeah. And if I haven't been made aware of it, I'm sure it's probably true for most people, you know. Only the consensus of the parents I talked to. Yeah. So your preschool hasn't brought it up either? Well, my preschool has a policy which we really like of they don't do any videos or allow any screens during the day. That's great. So that's great. She is in preschool. She spends seven or eight hours a day there. And that's away from screens interacting with live people. And I'm very happy about that fact. I'm appreciative. I don't know how many other preschools or daycares. Forgive me, she's in daycare, not in preschool yet. I don't know how many of those have that policy, but I appreciate it. It makes, you know, whatever happens in the evenings, at least I know she was away from that screen all day long. Definitely. I know that plenty of daycares do have screens because I've talked to a lot of parents where that's the case. And I know that just in general finding childcare can be very tough on the islands. But certainly if you find a place that doesn't have screens, that is really nice. Because like you said, that's a huge chunk of the day that you know. And that command means a little bit more work for the supervisors there. But more effort and more work, but I really appreciate it. Yeah. But they haven't talked to you about the harms or the best of screens. Oh, no. Nobody ever has, except you. So I just think that's so interesting to me that just shows why the bill is necessary, right? Because parents are not being warned about it. You know, it's almost as if we're so aware of the opioid crisis now. It's almost as if there's a new such crisis unfolding before our eyes that we have not begun to address yet. I think we have not begun to address this. Although this bill is a start, right? That's right. It is a start. Yeah. And so getting back to it, you know, your daughter and that personal connection, but is there more to why you think that this is an important issue that's important to address via legislation? Why was this a cause that you're willing to get behind? Well, I see it from several points of view. For one thing, I'm an employer, and I notice when young folks come in, they're different than they were 10 years ago. They have a hard time focusing. They have a hard time looking in the eye. They're very distracted. They kind of want to pull out their phone almost, you know? I mean, it's made people a little bit different. And I sort of view the world as a biologist sometimes. And I think about evolution, evolutionary-wise, where thousands and maybe millions of years, we've spent our time looking at each other and listening to each other. And it not only teaches us how to speak and listen, but it teaches us how society works. We observe people interacting with other people, and that really is the foundation of our society. And now we have kids growing up in large part without that. You know, they're sitting around looking at their screen here, if they're sitting next to their peers. And then there is the extremely addictive nature of it that's scary in its own right, because, you know, it's an addiction in every sense of the word. And it's, you know, for us adults, we're making that choice consciously on some level, and we're responsible for our actions, but for kids, their brains are being wired in the first few years. You know, and I believe they're being wired differently as a result of this so much time spent looking at screens instead of other people. And we have no, we're conducting this giant experiment on our kids without any controls or even any real observation. We're not paying any attention to what the effect is on our kids. Yeah, I think that's spot on. And when you talk about that face-to-face interaction, that's also sort of the roots of empathy, right? That's how you start caring about others and being able to understand them a little better and read their emotions. And that seems to me the basis of a healthy society if people don't have empathy. Good point. Now really the glue of our society is how we all interact with each other and we're in danger of losing it. We're in danger of losing the norms and the respect for how we used to interact. And yeah, it's a great concern. Yeah. I think we'll look back on this ten years from now and think why did we wait so long to pay attention. I agree. Yeah. And the other thing that I find very, that's motivating to me is that kids are saying this is a problem. There was a study done, I forget if it was a survey, I forget if it was either Pew Research or Common Sense Media and 50% of teenagers admitted that they were addicted with 60% of parents agreeing. And my last guests were Mary and Paul and Councilman Mason Chalk from Kauai and they've done a bunch of focus groups. Their mission right now is one of them curbing the suicide in Kauai youth and so they did a bunch of focus groups not with any intention of talking about screens but it came up in every single focus group. Not the only thing that came up was the lack of time for adding to anxiety and depression and so in my opinion if kids are aware of this and are speaking out and saying they're addicted and to me it's like a most fundamental moral responsibility of a society to protect our kids. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. Yeah. So where in the process is the bill now? Well, as you mentioned the bill just reached a deadline I think today which it didn't meet. It did sell through the Senate without any no votes and one House Committee without any no votes it did not get heard in the House Finance Committee. You know at the end of session a lot of things come to a crunch. I can't say why. Sometimes we assume it's got to do with the fact that it was including some money and money is tight this year as usual but perhaps especially this year. And then there's other issues that come and take up people's attention at the last minute. Yeah. That may have been a contributing factor. Next I will continue to push this bill and we will reintroduce it or push the same on next year. Great. And I will be working more carefully. You know when a bill oftentimes a bill takes two or three years to get through sometimes ten. Right. But what happens is you look at where it stopped and then work on that. So next year I will have hopefully have some discussions with the Chair of the Committee where it didn't get heard and try to encourage her to hear it and see if we can't get over that obstacle. Yeah. That's fantastic. And getting through three or four hearings for first time legislation. I mean obviously better if it turned into law but that's still pretty good isn't it? It is pretty good. I mean really I mean only one out of ten bills passed in the end and very few that were being discussed for the first year passed. That is pretty good. That's encouraging. I appreciate you having that optimistic viewpoint about it. That's nice. And that's a perfect place for a break and then we'll be right back. Hey Loja. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters. Aloha. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation and world and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. And we're back. So next I wanted to talk about a few of the changes that were made and sort of this disagreement that I personally, in my opinion, have with the Department of Health but it's not just the Department of Health. It's something that I found time and time again when the bill did get through the Senate but it was amended in a way where they were going to talk less about the actual harms of screen time and just focus on encouraging kids to get outside and maybe mentioning something about screen time reduction but not really talking about the harms of screen time and I've heard this from other like relevant government departments. Again, it's not just our Department of Health. I even heard it recently. I was really surprised. I talked to a pediatrician who's connected to the AAP and he had a UH child psychiatry student with him and she was saying, we were talking about a research paper showing developmental delays for kids with excessive screen time and she said, but you wouldn't bring that up to a parent because it's sensitive and I thought that that was so bizarre because not that you shouldn't try to be sensitive but that's why it's important. That's why parents should care. We were talking about how convenient screen time is in my estimation for a parent to take it seriously and really put the effort to try to curb it, they need to be warned about the harms versus just being told without a real explanation like use it less. Where do you fall on that? Well, I also, I mean, it didn't get to a final form but when they diluted it a little bit to talk about, you know, screen time takes away from physical activity and being outdoors, that's fine but that's not what our focus was on this bill. There's plenty of messaging and research about the need to get exercise and I would hate to have this get lost in that shuffle. I'm all for getting kids outside and exercise but what we're trying to focus on here is the actual harm to our brains and our psychology that comes from this and that's a subject that's virtually untouched and yes, you're right. I mean, we can't be shy about talking to parents about these hazards. It would be like saying I could go back to the opioid thing because I think it's such an addiction issue. It would be like giving somebody their first course of opioids and saying and not mentioning oh, by the way, they're addicting and it can ruin your life because it's sensitive. You just can't do that. That's contrary to the public good. You have to talk about the issues. You have to, as you said, give parents the information they need to first of all be concerned and then justify their actions and be committed to making a change because every day God is going to push against that and you have to have reasons to be committed to change. Yeah, I think the opioid example is a perfect example because you don't tell someone no, don't take more than you're supposed to. You need to explain, as you said, it's highly addictive. It can ruin your life or else if you don't have a reason and it's kind of fun. You'll say another one, right? It's too easy. And I think that I'm glad that you're focusing on the addiction point too and that that's not lost on you because it is so important and it is something that yeah, it's I think one of the most important things because if you look at addicts it tends to ruin your life. You can't derive joy from relationships or things outside of the addiction and I think that's one of the real concerns, right? Is that kids we're seeing that in kids, whether it's with video games. We are seeing that and I think we're seeing an explosion of suicides amongst our youth and we don't exactly know what that is but it would be very foolish and unscientific to ignore the fact that that's correlated with this exponential increase in screen time and gaming too. Both things are related. Yeah, and it coincides so well I believe it was between 2007 and 2015 that the suicide rate for teenage girls doubled for boys it was up 30% which is still very substantial and it was right in the middle of that period in 2012 that the saturation of smartphones among teens hit 50%. So it would be quite a coincidence if it wasn't connected and I'm not saying that that's you know, completely conclusive 100% evidence but I also find that I'm not sure that that's the right way to think about like we don't need 100% sureness that it's causing this I think that at this point with the evidence that's there the burden of proof should be that it isn't hurting kids. You know people often say correlation does not create causation but from a scientific point of view what it does say is you better sit up and pay attention there's something going on here if one isn't causing the other then we need to find some other explanation for that correlation that correlation is meaningful and I don't think I don't think there's any way to avoid the conclusion that these things are related screen time use lack of social skills lack of social time lack of social ability is related to depression and suicide. Absolutely. And I think certainly with correlation there's even an extra element like if you have like a long time series when there are two sharp rises at about the same time that's extra concerning. Well at the very least it says we need to look at it we need to find an explanation for it and then you add in the fact that again with focus groups and kids being aware of it themselves when you see that data kids are saying it themselves educators are noticing it it's sort of all consistent with each other and coherent. Kids are saying it themselves unprompted while talking about other subjects that's actually that's big news to me because normally we ignore our bad habits and our addictions and we deny that I mean also if a kid is ready to to admit to out loud that they have concerns that we have a problem with this there's that awareness but it just shows how deep this issue goes. Absolutely and that's I'm hoping they're doing such great work over there on Kawhi I'm hoping that we see other that Oahu sort of see what they're doing and follow suit and conduct these focus groups with students and I don't think that we ask kids about these issues enough they have more opinions than I think a lot of people they love not saying they don't love their social media too they do, they have a love a conflicted relationship but I think that a lot of adults kind of assume that it's all love and in fact it's a lot more complicated and they're more aware of the the pluses and minuses than you might assume from reading about how they love their phones and are always on them moving a little to back to the fact that you have a daughter and just from your personal experience how do you see it affect her when she's on it when it's taken away from her what do you notice? The first thing I'd say I notice is the same thing that's true of adults that are on their phones or iPads is they don't pay attention anymore to what's going on around them they ask someone a question and not only do they answer they don't even hear it you know and I see that in my daughter if she's on her iPad I can ask her a question I can wave a toy in front of her whatever it's like she's completely blind to what's going on around her until you take that away and then sometimes you go through this little crying or protest period and then she'll be okay at least so far while you're engaged in that you really are tuning out the rest of the world to a really surprising degree to me a lot even more so than what used to be when we were just watching TV when you're watching TV you ask someone a question usually they'll answer someone's on their iPad they usually won't answer once again it goes to my concern about losing our social skills and our social mores or losing the actual fabric of our society if we are not paying attention to the people around us and what they're saying to us I mean that's really important to me we have to listen to each other pay attention to each other for us to have a society that works is based on any kind of compassion or empathy as you said how long does it take her to get over it typically her little protest periods how long do those last if it's up to me it's probably 5 or 10 minutes my wife is better at distracting her by the way if you take it away and then oh look here's something else so I could get better at it but I think it's so far it's pretty quick but she's only free I mean really I'm a little disappointed in myself that I even have allowed her to get to this point because I was aware of this all along but you know it's just as I mentioned it's just so tempting when you're busy your attires are here watch TV for a while or something so right now she can recover from that and change gears quickly but I don't know what the long term effect of that is yeah and I do I mean I have a lot of empathy for parents I'm not a parent you know I was well I have a three year old nephew who's a lot of energy adorable so fun but man they just don't stop and I was in DC a few months ago and I have friends with 23 year old boys and yeah spending a few days with them was certainly like I can definitely see how it would be very appealing and almost necessary at some points to take a break so that's um yeah it's important for awareness and I mean I would add to like I'm not a screen time purist I don't think that no screen time is necessary or anything like that but it is so easy to slip into more than you mean to and more than you realize I think really we have to get to a point where we sort of have a timer whether it's on the device or elsewhere where okay I'm gonna look at a screen for an hour or half an hour and maybe I'll spend another hour on it later in the evening but we have to have I think those external limits and we have to accept them and embrace them and force them I don't see any other way around it I think that's a good first step I think that's very true and then there are some apps out there now um the screen time app that Apple just rolled out last year um allows you to track it and actually allows you to set limits for your kids so that's cool it took them a while to do that but finally at the end of last year they did and then there's moment which is for tracking I'm really with you there I think that just the willpower it takes and energy and time it's a herculean task and if you have technology that's able to set those limits I'm reminded of I went to a little workshop this is probably 10 maybe 10 years ago 10 years ago so that was kind of new at this time and the guy who was traveling he writes for Mac magazine I can't remember his name and he was doing a presentation about the iPhone it was new it was fun and someone asked him do you have any concerns about it yes I have a big concern I'm concerned that it's one more way that we're all distracting ourselves from each other and we're all being worried in some little thing and this was you know 12 years ago and looking back on it he was so right on and this was an Apple advocate this was a technology enthusiast who clearly saw this emerging problem yeah and that's what I think it's so interesting too that Steve Jobs you know limited his kids tech and Bill Gates like the people that see ahead and really get the industry they had that sense I think that's very telling and those guys not only know more about tech than we do but they're really smart I think that's very telling that they severely limit their kids screen time I think they didn't get an iPhone until they were 12 or 14 or something it speaks volumes the strongest advocates for these technologies realize that we ought to be careful about our kids and what it's doing and it's just one more piece of evidence when we're talking about the correlation and kids mentioning it and educators bringing it up and then you have the heads of the technology industry themselves limiting it it all points in the same direction which is why I feel again like the burden of proof now is proof it doesn't harm kids because there's enough there for so just to sum up I'm thinking about solutions I think that the bill is a great measure and that's certainly one solution and it sounds like I guess you were talking about you know apps and timing for parents you know you don't need an app to set yourself an hour limit you just need to have a little awareness and I don't know that we ought to rely on an app to tell us to get away from the app you know it's also ironic if an alarm can go off that's useful but just because the bill didn't pass this year doesn't mean our Department of Health shouldn't become concerned with this and become active about it they tend to not do anything unless they're forced to unless you give them money for it but that's not their mandate their mandate is to pay attention to things affecting our health and I would think that we're all in this and there's no reason nobody needs to wait for a bill to pass to decide to take some action on it I hope that we can convince the Department of Health and the Department of Education to take this seriously and begin to do something about it I agree with that that's a really good point that this is an issue that's serious enough both on the health front that it's really time for the government to step up and to support parents everyone likes to blame parents it's a whole society issue and parents need more support and better information it takes a whole village to ruin a kid what a perfect way to end it but maybe we'll just add a slightly positive note to that a village to protect our kids and warn our kids and I think that the bill you put forward is a great start the bill we put forward and now it is on the radar of the Department of Health and they do say that they see this so you're right introducing the bill again is great but government can act even without that and I commend you Lauren for really your state's biggest advocate on this issue and looking back on it you're going to be one of the heroes in trying to call attention to this I appreciate that and this show is no small part of it it's very important that we're doing this and I appreciate Think Tech for giving you this forum me too, thank you to Think Tech and to Jay Fidel well thank you so much for coming here to talk about this with me and for your willingness and advocacy and speaking candidly and publicly about it really appreciate it thanks for tuning in and until next time this is Lauren Pair signing off for Screen Time Reset