Social media safety and children! with Marc Berkman, CEO Organization for Social Media Safety

Episode 63 of Ask Dr Jessica with Marc Berkman, CEO, Organization for Social Media Safety who will help explain ways we can protect our children from social media-related dangers.  The Organization for Social Media Safety is the first nonprofit consumer protection organization focused exclusively on social media.  They use advocacy, education, and technology development to protect against all social media-related dangers including cyberbullying, hate speech, sexual harassment and human trafficking.     

Marc Berkman serves as the CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety.  His organization has taught social media safety skills to thousands of students, parents, and educators across the country and developed essential social media safety legislation like Jordan's Law, the nation's first law to deter social media-motivated violence.

Website for Organization for Social Media Safety
*free training course: social media safety.org
“block and report”
BARK

Dr Jessica Hochman is a board certified pediatrician, mom to three children, and she is very passionate about the health and well being of children. Most of her educational videos are targeted towards general pediatric topics and presented in an easy to understand manner.

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The information presented in Ask Dr Jessica is for general educational purposes only. She does not diagnose medical conditions or formulate treatment plans for specific individuals. If you have a concern about your child's health, be sure to call your child's health care provider.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hello and welcome to ask Dr. Jessica the podcast where my goal is to give you quality medical information to help you along your parenting journey. I am your host and paediatrician Dr. Jessica Hochman. On today's episode, I am going to discuss a topic that I think many of you will appreciate. And that is how to keep our children safe from social media. Many of us parents fear the day our children asked to start using social media. So what do we do? Today I interview Mark Berkman mark is the CEO of the organisation for social media safety, and he will explain ways in which you can protect our children against all social media related dangers. Mark Berkman, I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you for having me. So Mark Berkman is the CEO for organisation for social media safety. And I have to tell you, I've I am so impressed with what you do, I can't wait to talk about it. And especially this year, I have a sixth grader, a middle schooler, and this is such a relevant topic in my life. I want to know everything I want to know how to help her navigate through social media and how to how to protect her as best I can. So why don't we start off tell tell us who you are and what you do. My name is Mark Berkman. I'm the CEO of the organisation for social media safety, we are the first and only consumer protection organisation focused exclusively on social media. So that means that we protect against all social media related dangers from cyber bullying, to the mental health impacts depression, suicide, human trafficking, hate speech, there's a, unfortunately, a long list of of dangers there that we don't have time to get into. We do that through a comprehensive consumer protection oriented model, which is just a fancy long way of saying that we have three departments working to make social media safe for families. So we do education work. We are in K through 12 schools across the country. We do advocate advocacy works. We work on public policy around social media safety, and then tech work. So we work on software and apps that provide real time protection against any of those dangers. Wow. So how did you get into this field? What What drew you to it? So I was, I was a chief of staff for a California State Assembly member at the time. So this was 2016. And there was an attack on a 14 year old in the San Fernando Valley here and in California. And while the end the 14th was named was Jordan, while Jordan was being attacked and associated, the attacker filmed it, put it on social media where it went viral. It's now been viewed, I think, by by millions of people. And so I, as I mentioned, was in the state assembly at the time, this went viral so quickly that it was in my inbox within a few hours. And we were we were well aware in the office that this wasn't an isolated incident that that a lot of these similar attacks were happening and being used and or motivated by social media. And so I ended up joining up with Jordans dad and Posner, who began advocating for legislation that we drafted called Jordan's law, which was first in the nation legislation to prevent what we now call social media motivated violence or attacks committed for the purpose of filming them, and putting them on social media to get those likes those shares those views. I'm sure while you might not have known the name for it, I'm sure your listeners are probably aware that that this is an ongoing issue. So we ended up passing Jordan's law in California in less than a year very quickly. Everyone recognised the need for that. But one of the things that became clear while we were working on that legislation was that there were all these issues going on with social media that were very apparent at the times is 2016. Cyber bullying, misinformation campaigns, human trafficking, I've worked a lot with foster youth over my career, human trafficking and social media was just exploding. So all these issues and there was no consumer protection organisation focused on how to how to solve these risks or mitigate these risks. So we felt compelled to to start up the nonprofit. So what what is Jordan's law do exactly what so let's say somebody, let's say there is a violent attack that gets filmed and you see it, what? What can you do about it? Do you take it off the internet? So that would be great. No, Jordan's law doesn't do that, unfortunately. And it's it's a state law. That would be wonderful and something we're working on in general at the federal level. Jordan's law makes it clear that if you conspire to film a violent crime, then you are also held liable for the attack. back. And you and the attacker also subject to an enhanced or longer sentence. So really, it's to deter these types of attacks. And most importantly, we did it to use it as a teaching tool across the country. And we found that's been very effective. So when you talk to children, what advice do you give them? about social media? Do you have any actionable advice? Yes, lots, there's lots of it, unfortunately, actually, because that means that there's a lot of dangers that kids are dealing with. And a lot of them that they're likely to deal with the first step when we're educating students is making sure that they're aware of these dangers, because one of the main problems is they're not aware of a lot of them. And even ones that they think they're aware of like cyber bullying, they're not really aware of the specifics, why it's happening, how it's happening, and how to help stop it. So that's step one. And then once we teach them these dangers, we're teaching them how to either avoid them or most safely respond to them. One of the big tactics that we teach that applies to a lot of the social media related dangers is a tactic called block and report. So that means that when a child comes across dangerous content, offensive content in their social media feeds, they're taking that step to block the person that that put it on their their account, and report the content to the social media platform to get taken down. It's really important for two reasons. And if we want to look at hate speech, as an example, like I said, this applies to a few dangerous but hate speech. One, we want to help make sure that we're pulling this contributing to taking speech down. So it's not impacting our peers, and we're helping keep our whole community safe. But also, every time that we're requiring our children to go and block and report something, they're actually physically repelling the content. And they're preventing that content from becoming normal to them. It's a big problem with hate speech and cyberbullying. They're seeing this content over and over again, it becomes normal, they're more likely to participate in in spreading it when it seems normal to them. So that action of blocking and reporting is really effective at kind of bolstering their mental defences against that smart. Are there things that we should do at home in terms of blocking content? Are there Do you have any advice in terms of computers or iPads or phones? Any any apps that we should be downloading to help blog content? Perfect question. First of all, we have on our website, which is social media safety.org, we have a free course for parents. And instead of teaching one off tips, which a lot of parents are finding here and there on the internet, it's a comprehensive course that teaches a social media safety system for parents. And that's it, that's what we found was the big need. When we started this work, the parents didn't know what to do. We didn't grow up with this, of course, ourselves. There's a lot of confusion out there. And it's really hard to implement one off tips, right. And so it's that whole system and being comprehensive about it and setting it up. So in that system, we talk about the conversations that parents should be having with their children before they get onto social media, ideally before, what rules to set up. And then like you just asked what how to calibrate the settings on your child's devices and apps. One piece of software that we do recommend, especially as children are starting out on social media, and we're hoping that's later rather than sooner given all the dangers that are out there and the kids that are being harmed. But we recommend a programme called bark var K. And that allows parents to get alerts when dangerous content comes across their child's social media accounts. So special, like a dog barking, exactly like a dog bark, bark and a warning, protecting the child. So it's really good, effective software that we want to see all parents using. How do we find bark? Is it a? Is it an app? Is it something that you could find it on the web just by searching for ba RK bark? That's really, it's up there. And you can download it, it downloads both onto your children's devices in yours. So it's actually pretty hard for kids to to hack around. And it's a really effective tool. It's it's saved a lot of kids out there. I'm getting so nervous because the older my kids get they're more aware of things to you know, are rated things things that are that I'm worried they're going to start Googling and I'm nervous about what they're going to find. So would bark help protect from that? Yes, yeah, I mean, bark can Barbra there are a number of of software companies out there that can monitor just the internet. We like bark because it actually goes into social media platforms as well. Not all of them and We're going to talk about that in a second. But it does have some good coverage into various social media platforms so can monitor that content as well. What about pornography? I've read some alarming statistics about how many kids are exposed to pornography from a young age. Any advice to prevent our kids finding pictures that we don't want them to find? Excellent question. So the viewing pornography increased substantially, actually, over the pandemic, which might make sense to a lot of people I guess. But a lot of those news were coming from children, children are actively consuming pornography, this and to be clear to your listeners is not a morality issue that has very serious potential impacts on child development. So it is a safety issue. The other point to I would make is that pornography now is social media. So it's directly in in our purview, as an organisation that focuses on social media, the videos are uploaded on the sites by the public. So what that also can mean, and we're seeing that it means a lot in terms of children watching pornography, is that those videos to get those lights, so shares in the views on the sites, they can get very disturbing very quickly, they can get very violent as well. And some kids are consuming this material hours per day. So this is a very serious safety issue. When it when it comes to what parents can do, again, you can set those filters up on your child's devices, so that pornographic content is filtered out, we recommend that for all parents, it's really I mean, children that will hide this behaviour, of course. So it's really hard to know if your child is checking out pornography on the Internet. So take that extra step when your children get on the internet in general, and put these filters in place. A number of companies do that, too. So just to say it again, that your website and whereas the course my website is social media safety.org The course will actually be one of those annoying pop ups when you were not selling anything. So it's good, but it's a pop up when you when you come on. It's also on the homepage as well. And I'm just thinking so my daughter's in sixth grade. We haven't bought her a phone yet, but I definitely want to buy her when we do buy her first phone. I want it to be a flip phone with just texting or just a phone ability and no search on the internet. Is that something that you agree with? what's your what's your advice? Yes, yes, yes. We do prefer that especially with with younger children. Across the country, there are kids getting on to social media apps that they're not ready for. And we're seeing a lot of harm. Because of that the the platform's themselves. So tick tock and snap will say themselves that if you're under 13, you should not be on those apps. But as all your parents listening, no, that's not what's actually happening on the ground. Kids are getting on these apps, and they're getting harmed. So one is just making sure that that kids are not getting on inappropriate apps for the phone itself. I mean, flip phones work, barque actually is coming out with a new phone, that's going to have a lot of these safety features built into it, which we're excited about. We haven't tested that phone yet, so I can't endorse it now but parents should keep an eye out for that that could be a good option out there. But yeah, I mean, keeping younger kids away from some of these issues is really going to lower the risk there. The problem though I should add and and I think every parent with a fourth grader through and up knows this is that you get one kid in the fourth grade on a platform like tick tock. Pretty soon that whole class is is on tick tock why because social media, shockingly is social medium, and tell these kids are conducting their friendships, strengthening their friendships. And so we want to be very honest with parents that there's a real trade off here that you can decide to to keep your kids off these apps and keep them safe from all of these risks which you know, we would lean on the side of that of course, but on the flip side, if your child's not on these apps there is a real social social detriment that's happening and parents are really in this lose lose situation unfortunately. I think you're really right because as much as I can control what you know what iPhone or not an iPhone, what kind of phone she gets in the future will be I can't control her friends and who she's around and you're absolutely right. A lot of those kids already have you know, the the newest latest iPhone and I'm not sure if they have any of these safety protectors in place. So it's really good to know that some that an organisation like yours exists, because I think you're right that mass education is, is the way to go. One of our most effective interventions to speaking of this list lose lose trade off. And what other kids are doing is we will work with schools and school districts and set up what we call community guidelines around social media safety. And especially for public schools. These are voluntary, of course. But what we're trying to do there is get all the parents on the same page when it comes to some of these issues. So age of entry onto the various apps and setting that at the community level. It's a very big impact. So you're not you're not facing parents aren't facing this trade off, especially with younger children. Are there I'm just curious, because I noticed this as a paediatrician that a lot of kids are are getting bullied, on their phones on social media. What should you What should a parent do if they're if their kid is getting bullied? What are the steps that a parent should take? First of all, you should take it seriously, I talked to far too many families whose child was was being cyber bullied and ultimately died by suicide, that that is a very real risk, one study. And it's only one study, so take it as you will. But one study found about 10% of cyber bullied us actively attempt or engage in suicidal action. And so parents absolutely need to be aware of, of that risk when it comes to cyber bullying. So you need to take it seriously. You need to consider mental health services, first of all, for your child and acting, you know, with diligence on that. But then you need to teach your child about blocking report. So we find again and again, cyberbullying victims, in that K through 12 range, will tend to passively absorb the harm over and over again. So showing steps where they can remove that from from their social media feeds is very important. Definitely, you know, communicate that with the school. Some schools are more helpful than others, I'll say, but communicate it with the school and make sure they're aware. Typically, if there is cyberbullying, there's often traditional bullying as well happening potentially on campus. So speak to a school counsellor at school, speak to an administrator and set up a plan there. And then again, make sure that your child feels supported and heard and validated. Absolutely no, I have even recently some scary stories that I've heard from families where someone will bully a kid a teenager into doing something recorded, and then threatened that it'll go viral, or they'll make it go viral. They don't do more things. And it's, it's so crazy to me what teenagers have to deal with, that I never had to deal with. Yeah, that absolutely happens. And I forgot what are are more important tips that we've already talked about. If your child has a history of being cyber bullied, or cyber bullied bullying, you want to consider that third party safety software like bark, to potentially help flag some of these issues as they come so that you can intervene. That's, that is a risk factor there and the safety software can really save a life. So think about that. But yeah, in terms of the example, you just mentioned, kind of the extortion over pictures and videos that have been sent. There's something called sextortion, where a child can be groomed into sharing vulnerable pictures, nude pictures, or videos, and then extorted into either sharing more or doing certain things. You know, some of the worst case scenarios we see come from that. And it happens with kids that don't necessarily have any risk factors in their background. They're kind of carrying on with their digital life, their social media life and sharing stuff. And all of a sudden this comes up. And that's a very real serious danger that parents need to be aware of now, and I know everybody listening can relate that this is such an important topic. And it's so it's so incredibly it's necessary to take steps to prevent what our kids are exposed to and to be on top of it. I'm just curious, can you can you sort of share some of the statistics that you are aware of in terms of cyber bullying and what, you know how often kids are exposed to this? Of course, so we engage in some research across the country, when we're working with schools, we have a new research partnership with UCLA as well, where we're looking into a number of these issues, using a methodology that hasn't really been done before. So our answer should be very reliable. We're going to be able to test things and find answers to very basic safety questions that we don't currently have answers to. So I preface with that, but but in terms of statistics that are very concerning, we find, and there are a number of studies out there on cyberbullying. So anywhere from a third of fifth graders and up to 40, even 50% of students are self reporting being cyber bullied. So really high numbers there. We're finding in our own numbers, which aren't necessarily nationally representative, we're finding about 30% of sixth graders on our sexting. I think one study puts that at 30% on a nationally representative level of 25%. Sorry, but we're finding about 30%. And that's sixth grade. Just so parents aware of that? Yes, yeah. I mean, so if you have a sixth grader, and you don't think that your child is aware of what sexting is, they're almost certainly aware of it, just so you know. So you have to have these conversations, I think earlier than we feel comfortable with, in terms of what we're sharing and doing online. And by the way, 50% of teens that are sexting, and this case, tweens, 50% of those students, according to one study, say report that they feel pressured, that they're coerced or blackmailed into sharing that sex. So oftentimes, the sex will get out there, or we'll catch a sex, we're not aware necessarily of the full story behind it. So parents and educators need to be aware of that statistic, as well. We're finding about 75 to 80% plus of fifth graders are seeing explicit hate speech regularly on social media. So another issue 90% Plus are seeing real explicit violence on a regular basis as well. So a lot of concerns here, there's there's a number of studies as well on on human trafficking, and they vary there. But But I think it's safe to say that a majority of trafficking, and sexual predation cases right now against children are coming from social media, or originating in social media. It's so scary, and I'm just thinking about how when I was a kid, how, how different this, this is now, you know, we take if we use Canon camera and took a picture that might embarrass somebody, you know, you had to develop it. And then there's one copy, maybe two copies. And now I mean, oh, my goodness, like you take a picture. And just to think that it could go viral in a matter of minutes. It's so scary. It's it's really a different world that kids are facing. And as I said before, we didn't grow up with it. So it's really hard for parents to navigate, how to guide their children through these challenges. And as you're talking, I'm just thinking, I mean, it sounds inevitable that our kids will be exposed to things that we don't want them to be exposed to things that are harmful. It seems ever more important that we communicate with our kids talk to them know, as you mentioned early on in this conversation that we let them know, you know what, what to report and what to talk to us about. Because I imagine this having some stability at home makes a big difference. It really does have it, you know, going through our safety system, again, having those conversations and setting those rules. And calibrating those settings makes such a difference when your child's entering this world of social media. Now, as they get older, through high school, the rules and the settings are gonna become less important. But those conversations really remained very important. And also what we're trying to do there is set up safe habits. A lot of our behaviour, even as adults are, especially as adults on social media is habitual, and even instinctual. We'll see something will like it, and we'll share something. And so we're trying to set those habits up with kids early, so that they're navigating this in almost an automatic way that is safer. Now, Mark, I know you're a dad, can I ask you personally, how are you going to approach this with your with your kids? It's an excellent questions. So my 11 year old is not so thrilled with my my job all the time. She sees other kids out there, you know, her age with social media. But I mean, I will try my best to follow my own guidance. And we do I mean, she's not on these these apps yet. And we're gonna wait to what we think is a safe age. We've done the work of calibrating the settings. So to the extent that our kids are on the internet, we feel like it's as safe as it can be for them. Now, given the tools that are available. You know, we've given them our rules. I've I've started to have the talks with my 11 year old to prepare for one day when when she's able to get on to some of these apps. But it's challenging me even for us, it's challenging she she sees it out there she she wants access. So I'm not gonna say it's not hard. And again, there's there's trade offs to it even even in my own house, there's a new movement now to do wait till eighth where we hold off on giving kids cell phones till eighth grade, is this something that you think you'll do with your kids? Some most of the way till eighth movement is around waiting too late for social media. And I think that it's fine, it certainly would dramatically increase safety across the country if everyone followed that. The reason though, that I think parents in general are not following them or seeing kids way, way younger on social media specifically, is because there's a lot of different platforms, there's a lot of different ages that those platforms may be appropriate for kids. So the kind of while it's very simple and easy to follow, the one way till eighth guideline isn't necessarily working. There's also not a sufficient amount of research yet to show to parents and educators, that eighth is kind of the deciding line between excessive risk and safety. So we do want to get there. With my kids, I mean, I'm hoping that we can follow way too late for social for a phone with all the safety features activated and filters on and rule set. us personally, we might go down to seventh grade, it's a very family specific decision, it depends upon your child's risk factors as well. So I would caution for that. There's a lot of risks out there, there's also a lot of benefit to having them explore and have some degree of autonomy and learn skills. It's just this short balancing act. It's hard. It's true, there's a lot of benefit from you can learn so much from the internet. So you're right. The right internet, but let's be honest, kids are not on tick tock looking at calculus notes or NASA videos. You know, for the most part, the use, as a lot of things we say as a counter argument to some people that say that you might be missing out on the benefits. That average use of kids using social media at these younger ages is not beneficial use your cell saying because it's mostly the TIC TOCs. And it's right now, this changes year to year to what evolves. But right now a lot of it is passive Tik Tok use and swiping through videos that are not necessarily appropriate for kids. We didn't get into Snapchat at all. But that's a mess. In terms of benefits versus risks. I don't know why young kids need the ability to send self deleting messages. And it leads to a lot of really bad outcomes. A lot of cyberbullying is happening on Snap a lot of the sexual predation. Drug dealing is really rampant on Snapchat. So we we really want to see older teens on Snapchat and younger teens move away from it. So that's an example of how platforms can be different kind of in their risk profile as well. I just keep thinking about the developing brain and how that exposure, it's just so much for a young brain. I really I don't want to sound antiquated, but I do think it's, it's, it's too much for them. I mean, that's exactly right. There are very real dangers, just from the content itself. So we talked about pornography, drug and alcohol content, kids are seeing that on a regular basis, that increases the likelihood they're gonna have issues with substance abuse, sexually explicit content, and the violent content, all of that has impacts on child development. And they're not ready to see that that content yet. But also, their brains aren't developed to be able to make some of these choices safely when they're on social media. Any parent of a younger child right now, with texting is most likely seeing issues on how children are navigating texting and the social dynamics there. We need far more research on this, but in all likelihood, it's probably a safe theory that their brains aren't developed enough yet to be able to navigate texting in a safe way when they're younger. You know, what else I think about is I want my kids to trust me, you know, I don't want to be I don't want to be snooping through their messages or reading what they what they discuss with their friends. So I want to entrust my kids, but I can see that's tricky because you do want to be sort of paying attention to what's going on, right? It's really tricky in a way again, that our parents didn't have to navigate. You know, it's a lot different sending your kid off to the mall versus putting them on social media in a digital world for six or seven. hours a day, which by the way, is kind of the average we're finding about five to six, with strangers that are uninhibited by normal kind of social pressures. And so they're just not they're just not equipped to enter this world without some additional safeguards. So, you know, what we recommend is explaining to your child and why you're setting a certain role, the exact reasons how common the danger you're trying to protect against IS, and keeping those that that why up, really helps, you know, keep the trust going and showing yourself that you trust them. But there's just some necessary guardrails that need to be put in place, because there's a lot of dangerous things happening on social media. Right. I mean, I definitely want to respect their privacy and their discussions with their friends. Absolutely. But I think you're absolutely right, that the safeguards are crucial. Yeah, I mean, which also going back to bark again, that's why we like software like bark, because in theory, bark is sending you alerts when something dangerous comes across the account. And, and you don't have to sit there and look at everything they're doing, which a lot of parents are doing, they'll duplicate their child's account on their device. So they'll look at everything or they'll do a physical audit, which is far more invasive than just getting those alerts when when something dangerous is actually happening. So Mark, your, your the work that you do, it's so incredible, it's so admirable, I'm so glad that you're out out in the out in our universe, tell, tell everybody, where can they find you? How can we support what you do? Appreciate that. So we're at social media safety.org, you can find all of our resources there and our parent course, as I said, we're in K through 12 schools as well. We're still booking for this school year. So information on how to book us for your school is on that website, as well. We have a number of legislative initiatives that are coming up in Congress, and various states this year. So keep an eye out for that as well, for petitions contacting your elected official in support, and you can keep up to date with that and ongoing tips and news as well through our newsletter, which you can find on our website as well. So just to reiterate, a school can contact you and you guys will come and do a presentation for a school in California K through 12. Yes, K through 12 schools, our student presentations are fifth grade and up. We do present parent presentations in schools as well. So yeah, Any school can can contact us and have us come on down and teach your teacher community. We want parents to be aware. I mean, parents do walk away from our presentations with some new concerns, but but we want parents to finally feel like they have some tools to be able to navigate this issue. No, I think that's absolutely right. I think what that's why what do you do is so, so wonderful, because you're giving actionable steps for parents that are concerned to help protect our children. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for doing what you do. And I will make sure to put a link to your website in the description below. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Ask Dr. Jessica. Hopefully you can apply this information in your own lives to keep your children safe from social media. Also, if you are enjoying this podcast, it would make me so happy if you would write a podcast review and share it with a friend. Last week's episode reached 13 countries and I really owe it all to my listeners who are sharing this podcast and helping it grow. See you next Monday.