 And welcome to Screen Time Reset. I'm your host, Lauren Pair. So far in this show, we've talked to parents, teachers, authors, community leaders, and even a senator. But up until this point, we haven't heard from one of the most important perspectives on the issue of screen time. That's of teenagers and children, the so-called digital natives who are growing up and living and breathing screens and technology. Today, on our last episode before an extended summer break, we're fixing that. I'm happy to welcome to the show Buddy Leong, a local high school student. Thanks for coming on, buddy. So before we dive into the topic of screen time, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself? How old you are? What year you are at school? You play sports. What else are you passionate about outside of that? So I'm a current high school student. I'm a sophomore. I'm 16 years old. And outside of school, I like to volunteer my time by doing things such as a local organization called Winner's Camp, which is a leadership development camp. I'm also passionate about learning about finance and finance markets. I like reading the news and keeping up with current events. Very cool. And with that as the background, now we'll jump into the topic that we're here to discuss today, which is screen time. And I'm just curious, as a first impression of yours, what do you see as sort of the biggest benefits that technology and screens provide with teenagers like yourself these days? I think that at least for teenagers like myself, we have access to a lot of information. So at least for schooling, we are able to search up a question and get an answer back in a fraction of a second. And I think that's really awesome. Yeah. You mentioned being interested in finance as well. I'm guessing you used the internet to probably been a pretty big part of your learning on that subject. Is that right? Yeah, most definitely. But I think that's a little bit specific to myself because a lot of students aren't necessarily looking at financial markets as I am. I would say that that's really accurate, that most 16 year olds are not. But whatever their particular interest is, right, like whether it's like airplanes or environmental conservation or finance, it certainly is a powerful tool for that. Is there anything else that you think is like a big benefit that screens and technology provide today? I think that the entertainment uses are is a benefit for at least teenagers my age that we get to be entertained in moments where we could actually be doing something else. But we want to maybe have a little fun and spice it up and put on a show or something. Although that might be a double-edged sword, right? A little entertainment's good. And then you can slide into maybe a suboptimal point of entertainment consumption. What do you see as the biggest negatives of screen time and technology for a teenager these days? I think at least for a teenager my age, the biggest negative would be the cyberbullying aspect and the feasibility to get scammed because we're so accustomed to certain things that once they're changed very slightly to be maybe a scam to take our money, that we would just give our money up and it's very sad. Does that happen to like friends you know or anything? Well, I think at least impersonation has happened with a couple of my friends where there have been accounts that cyber bully them. And it's really not something that I think technology should be used for. Yeah, yeah. Are there any other big negatives you see about screens and tech use these days? Well, I think that especially with screens it's very easy to get addicted to it. It's kind of like sugar. Once you get a little bit of it, you want a little bit more and a little bit more. Absolutely. I'm a bit of a sugar addict working on reforming that, but it's challenging so that analogy definitely resonates with me for sure. And how often, because one issue that I see comes up a lot is that there's what technology can be used for, like learning about financial markets. And there's what it's most often used for, which probably isn't learning about financial markets. How often do you think students these days, like on their personal devices, say smartphones, because I know they're smartphones and computers. Let's just say smartphones for now. How often do you think they're using them for entertainment purposes? And maybe communication, which has some value, but when you're texting for hours and maybe not really saying anything of substance, again, there's an issue of how much of that is your time best spent. What do you see as the breakdown between that kind of usage versus researching a topic for school or for personal interest, but real education? I think that at least for research in school, I think that the usage of personal devices is only used for school when it's required. After that, it's just like me time and I'm gonna go watch a movie, go check out my Instagram and stuff like that. Keep my Snap Street going. Yeah, yeah, because that's to me, that's like such an important, because there's no doubt. I mean, because I am a little concerned about the amount of technology we all have in our lives now, I'm often sort of painted as being anti-type, which isn't true. I think it's an amazingly powerful tool and I think it's so important to always differentiate how we could be using it versus how we are in fact using it. So I was just curious to get your take on that. And one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on is because you struck me as someone who is thinking about their future far more than the average student, far more than I was when I was your age. As far as professionally, your interest in finance, I also know you're on LinkedIn. So it's obvious to me that you see how technology can be a powerful tool in collecting information, in connecting with other people. And so I thought that that's like such a valuable perspective to have a student but one that is using technology for these benefits that we see. But it was interesting when we were talking a little bit. Now even I know that you really try to have a pretty strict bedtime because sleep is very important. But it wasn't always this way, right? Like, can you tell us a little bit about your habits in middle school on your phone, for example? Yes, so around middle school time, that was when I was really what I possibly could classify as addicted to my phone and my devices. And I would stay up really late or early and just text away my life. And that was quite a big part of it. How late would you stay up? On typical nights, it would last ranging from 12 o'clock to 3 in the morning. Wow, you have to get up and go to school the next day. Yeah, or the same day. Yeah, well, right. Good point. And did you notice, like, did that affect your mood? Did it affect your kind of interest in class, anything like that? Yeah, well, I think that at least when you stay up really late or early and you're sleep deprived, you're just kind of like going throughout the day and you're not really aware of what's going on. So that affects or at least affected my ability to take in the knowledge that was being given to me and it really affected that. Yeah. What about your mood? Did you feel like a little more down, you think, or like irritable or did not really notice an effect on your mood? Well, I do think that I was at least a little bit more irritable and down because once you have a lot less sleep, you don't really know what to do with the little bit amount of energy that you have. So I would just like go through the motions. Yeah, definitely. I know that I'm certainly more irritable when I don't get my quality night's sleep. And so what shifted you from having that sort of relationship with tech to now being, you know, protecting your sleep and being conscious about it? How did you shift out of that pattern of staying up till early in the morning, texting away? Well, at least for me, after texting around at three o'clock in the morning for quite some time, me and my friends had a split. So I was removed from that little three o'clock in the morning texting session. So that actually helped me to better my habits and better my lifestyle, which I actually think is I'm better off without it now. Yeah, totally. Although the interesting thing for me that I don't even know that I really haven't an answer to, but something certainly for parents to think about is like what would have happened if there had been that split, right? Like, you're clearly so ahead of the game and in my opinion on, you know, again, looking to the future, using tech in the best ways. And even you were sucked in to that kind of like unhealthy usage. And it was almost something random that broke it. And so I wonder, what do you think about like limits on phones at bedtime, for example, you think that is like a wise idea for parents to do or? I think that especially a lot of teams like to look at their phone right before they go to bed and then put it down. So I think that if parents want to have a limit on that and have rules on that, that they need to strictly enforce it and have an iron fist and not break because if they do, then their children will be like, you're going to break eventually, so I'll just go with it. True. Yeah, that's one thing. I see some people suggesting like you should have a charging station in the living room or something. And personally, I think if parents are going to do it, you should have it in your bedroom. Obviously, it's going to be a huge temptation if you're a teen to just go to the living room and get it. Your parents are already asleep and you want to be back on your phone. Yeah, just my personal thought there. And so that allowed you to like reset your relationship. With tech. And now how do you keep that in check? I mean, I have to imagine when we were talking a little before, you do enjoy video games, right? How do you limit yourself? Well, at least for me, I can just tell myself, put it down, stop using it, take a nap or go outside and do something or maybe stop doing something that will not help me and actually do something that'll help me. So you just have that ability internally to switch. Yeah. Well, that's an amazing superpower these days. I honestly think that sort of ability is going to serve you incredibly well. It reminds me a bit. I mean, it's like an extreme case though, because I would argue that screens today are more tempting than marshmallows. Are you familiar with that marshmallow study? Yeah. Yeah, they find that delayed gratification is one of the top predictors of success and found that even, as you know, these five-year-olds or preschoolers or whatever, the ones that could hold out and wait a few minutes to get two marshmallows instead of their other option, which was the instant gratification of one marshmallow now that they had much better success later in life. So it seems like you're just able to do that naturally, which is amazing. And that's, again, I wonder, I think that limits can be really important because I believe that that study found about 30% of kids have that ability. So you're one of those. I'm wondering, what about the other 70%? Now they might need a little help in that. So another question about screens and how it's affecting us students these days is how it affects their attention, their ability to focus and pay attention. What are your thoughts on that? Well, at least in my classes, I see that a lot of times there are people who have their screens open and they're not doing anything screw-related or even sometimes they have their phones out, which is definitely not screw-related. And they can be playing a game on the side while the teacher's talking. And that's the attention focused towards their device as opposed to the teacher, which is actually giving them helpful knowledge to help them better themselves and succeed in the future. Right. Plus, if they were actually paying attention to the teacher, they would be practicing just their ability to focus. Period, right? Like, that's an ability we have to train. There is an interesting article by Daniel Goldman who wrote Emotional Intelligence and his focus has shifted to attention and it was actually an article posted in LinkedIn, which was if you want your kids to get ahead these days. Like, everyone thinks it's all about tech schools. He's like it's having them be able to focus and pay attention. Like, those are the kids that are gonna succeed because if you don't have control over your attention, you don't really have control over what you're doing with your life and where you're going. Yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah. And with that, we will go to break and we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m., aloha. Aloha, I'm Stan Osterman, a host here on Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness here on the island. We are a Hawaii non-profit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you go to thinktechawai.com and make a donation to support us now. Mahalo. Welcome back. So we were just talking about, you were mentioning that on the focus issue that you noticed this coming up in the classroom and I do some teaching as well and I've certainly noticed that there are students looking at things that are not related to the classwork they're supposed to be working on. So what do you see as like the benefits of having your computer in the classroom? Well, the main and possibly only benefit that I would see having the computer in the classroom is that it would be easier accessibility to information so you can just type in your question and get an immediate answer which you could always ask your teacher the question but of course if they don't know then you could search it up and the only major benefit beside that would be for note-taking and taking down stuff that you're learning hopefully you're learning something, you know? True. True. You take notes by hand, is that right? I think you mentioned that before. At least for me I try most of the time to take notes by hand because it helps me to remember what I am putting down on the page and it allows me to put in my own words about what the teacher is giving me and I get to try and make my own interpretation of what I'm learning on my own page. Yeah, well I think that you're like intuitive really onto something there because research seems to show that we do remember things better when we actually write it versus just typing it so that makes a lot of sense, that's a good reason and so how would you, so I do hear what you're saying about like the instant access to information although again I wonder if being able to wait a minute for information has some value like being able to take a note like look this up later and then follow up and go back and like stay in the moment versus you know flitting hair while the teacher is maybe saying something else or whatever, do you think that the benefits of that benefit of research, the access to information and note taking, in your mind does that balance out the distraction element that computers inject? I don't necessarily think so because at least for me I noticed that when students have their computers open it's immediately a distraction from what the teacher's saying not only is your attention completely focused on this one thing that you're doing in your computer but it's completely taken away from the information that you're receiving from your teacher so it does create a distraction just by being open and being on it. Yeah, even if you're not like looking at ESPN or whatever, yeah, yeah that's some, it's interesting, has this like ever been a topic that's been brought up at school where they're asking students their opinions on sort of the pluses and minuses of having technology in the classroom? Well at least for my freshman year we had a class that would talk about relevant issues to teen life and being a high schooler and this is one of the topics that they did bring up but very shortly and it wasn't very in depth. What did they cover? I would think that they would, I can't quite remember but I do think that they covered cyber bullying and the negatives of technology usage as opposed to the benefits. Did they talk about, because there's so much talk of like social media, mental health, cyber bullying which I do think is important but I find that a lot less high schools even bring up sort of the distraction point. In that like teen focused class did they specifically talk about like the academic implications of distraction or strategies for time management or some of like that side of screen issues? Well at least for screen issues they didn't talk about time management but on other, did not, but in a future session they did talk about how we should be managing our time and using our time wisely and allocating different times for homework, social life and of course personal time. And I think that that class was actually quite helpful but if we were talking about the, talking about screen time usage then it would be almost little to no relevance. Yeah and that was only in ninth grade. Was there any class like this that you took in middle school or this year you were a sophomore? Any equivalent class? No we don't, or at least for my school we don't focus on educating. I don't think we focus on educating our students necessarily primarily on the dangers and benefits of technology. It's just more of if it comes up and your teacher thinks it's relevant to talk about in class then we'll maybe have a mini class discussion about it. Got it. And so there was also no forum where any like administrators were trying to talk to students about basically weighing the pros and cons of like having computers in the classroom or something like that. And not that I know about. Yeah and to be fair I mean I haven't actually heard that happening at any school so far but it's interesting to me that it hasn't just because that's a big reason that screens and technology continue to be in the classroom. It feels like there's almost this underlying assumption that they provide this great academic benefit and you know there are some benefits but it seems like that discussion should really be there should almost be a debate or something with both sides really making a strong case or it could take the form of a discussion too. It doesn't have to be adversarial but it seems like students would certainly be an important voice to since they're the ones learning getting their thoughts on how it's affecting their education. Most definitely. I think that if the students had a say in what the administrator should be doing with technology usage then I think that the administration and policies would be quite different than they are now. That's very interesting. I hope all the parents and teachers and administrators out there are listening to that. So that's the school perspective. Does your doctor talk to you about like health harms associated with lots of screen time? Yeah I think last time I was there she like gave me a little paper and like here's the dangers. Here you go. Oh, did you remember what they said? They asked me about my screen time usage and if they deem it unhealthy then they'll talk to me more in depth about it but after that I don't really think there's much of a conversation that needs to be had. Well that's great that she and so it was actually a list of the harms not just telling you how much time you should be on it but it was a sheet with harms. Very cool. Yeah, good on your pediatrician. So I'm curious what you would do if you were running your school? You were the principal. What do you think would be a sensible policy for I guess smartphones and then separately for computers? Well at least in my chemistry class my teacher has a little basket at the front of the room where the students put their phones in when they come in and they can grab them when they leave which eliminates somewhat of a distraction and I think that's actually a good policy but also when the students are in class I think that they should at least have their screens closed unless asked to have them open to look up a question or do a little bit of research and maybe even possibly take notes. Yeah, yeah and what I'm hearing from you is the default being not to have it out versus the default has kind of become having it out. So maybe you have the option because they can be useful but there's no reason to have the default being your computer up and running when it's so riddled with distractions. Well it's definitely just like I said before just by being there and open is a distraction it just takes you away from your educational and learning. Very true, I mean they find that with like when you have a smartphone on the table even if it's like face down, right that just kind of like you don't have the same focus on the person in front of you because your attention is a little bit pulled towards the device just cause it's there. What about for parents like I know a big question that parents are really struggle with a lot of times like when to give their kid a smartphone? How would you think about that if you were a parent? Well I think that at least for parents they should be thinking about when they're gonna send their kids off to do things on their own and when if they might want to be able to communicate with their kids and how much cause you really only need a flip phone to call your child you don't necessarily need an iPhone or an Android to text and call and play games on you just really need to be in contact with your child and know that they're doing okay. Yeah, so then that's the flip phone so then when would you give your kid a smartphone? I know it's asking you to think rather futuristically but roll with me. Yeah, I think that at least for me when I would give my kid at least an iPhone would probably be around their fourth, fifth, sixth grade middle school years because the social norm comes into play of course that if they don't have it then they're not fitting in. What if there was no social norm? What if you set the social norm? If there was no social norm I think it's a really challenging question because I think that the technology is a big harm to teenagers which is when at least I would give my kid an iPhone and that the social aspect and the cyber bullying happens right around that time which is really quite sad and unfortunate. But that's at least- So why would you give your kid a phone then? Versus just a flip phone? That's a good question. I think that at least now if there was no social norm there would really be no reason to. I think that the phones are a good marketing tool to market games and different markets like the gaming industry. Yeah. And I think that's probably one of the most major things that sets a flip phone and an Apple iPhone or an Android phone different from that flip phone. Definitely. And I would love to see just the flip phone coming back is like almost training wheels for a real phone. Seems like all the kids are going right to the smartphone. Still pretty cool to be able to call from a little like floating device and text when you don't have that ability. Why not give the power and joy of like new technology to kids and increments, right? Like let them get down the texting and the calling and before that phase. So now I also wanna run two ideas I have by you and just get your as far as when we think I try to talk about solutions. You mentioned how you would think about your policies if you were running a school and you agreed that the student voice is an important and powerful one. So I have this idea. I think it'd be so cool if schools set up like a debate tournament or something with students talking about different, one debate topic could be whether or not computers should be in the classroom. Another could be on smartphones. One could be on the mental health whether it's good for students because it allows them information about mental health resources versus the cyber bullying. What do you think about that? Well, I think that that is definitely a viable solution at least for a debate. I think once they're given a topic they have to choose for or against and then do lots of research and make a convincing argument as to why or why not this thing should happen. And I think that if the administrators go to those tournaments especially with the topics being on screen time and phone usage and computer usage and overall just technology usage then they would be able to see at least in the student's perspective both sides of the argument. Absolutely. And I think it'd be really interesting for parents to see that as well. So I have this other idea that could be a little more controversial because it does involve schools like they issue the computers and things like that tracking the data better and looking for correlations between students that are on it longer hours and performance and things like that. I know that there's a lot of concern about privacy. I really hear that and agree with it. At the same time like let's be real we give our teams devices and there are all these big companies that are scraping all sorts of data on them. So in a sense I feel like that ship has sailed. All these big companies have the data to figure out how to manipulate kids into spending money in loot boxes and games or whatever. Why shouldn't schools have it at least to be trying to help students have healthier behaviors that have more optimal academic and maybe a mental health outcome. Definitely agree, definitely agree with that. Cool. Well we are out of time. Thank you so much for coming on buddy and I would be curious to hear what you think. Do you agree that computers are a distraction in the classroom? Do you think that their benefits outweigh that? What are other policies that you think that schools could consider to attack this issue? You have any ideas? Feel free to comment below or send it on over to screen time reset at gmail.com. Thanks so much and till next time. This is Lauren Pair for Screen Time Reset.