-Good evening, everyone. My name is Wier Harman.
I'm the executive director of Town Hall Seattle.
And for those of you who joined us for this evening's
earlier feature, welcome back.
My name is Wier.
Like I just said, sorry, sometimes I just dive in.
On behalf of our staff at Town Hall
and our friends at Third Place Books,
it's a pleasure to welcome you to tonight's program
with Susan Linn and Nancy Pearl.
Susan Linn is a psychologist, an award-winning ventriloquist,
and an expert on creative play and the impact of media
and commercial marketing on children.
She was the founding director of Campaign
for a Commercial-Free Childhood, now called Fair Play,
and is currently a research associate
at Boston Children's Hospital and a lecturer in psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School.
Susan and her work have been featured on Today,
Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, The Colbert Report,
Washington Post, Politico, Time. It's a long list,
and she would be mad at me if I read all of them.
Her previously published works include 2004's Consuming Kids,
which had two different print runs with separate subheads.
The first was Protecting Our Children
from the Onslaught of Marketing and Advertising.
Actually, it might have been in the second.
My personal favorite, though,
is The Hostile Takeover of Childhood,
which is what it feels like.
Also, she's the author of 2009's The Case for Make-Believe:
Saving Play in a Commercialized World.
Not much you can say by way of introduction
around these parts for Susan's interlocutors,
so I'll choose my favorite details.
Nancy Pearl is a librarian and an author,
a critic -- that sounds harsh,
think of her more as a book guide --
and the person who back in 19, I think it was 98,
had the bright idea of inviting people across our city
to read the same book at the same time.
The above achievements landed her,
to my mind, the ultimate honor,
her own Archie McPhee librarian action figure.
Susan Linn's new book, Who's Raising the Kids,
is the subject of their discussion tonight.
Please join me in welcoming Nancy Pearl and Susan Linn.
-Ooh, wow.
Well, one thing that Wier did not say is that we're sisters.
So I'm the little sister.
-And I'm the big sister.
-Oh, wait, and one other thing.
We did not coordinate our outfits beforehand.
We just happened to be wearing the same top.
-Not at the same time.
-Right, yeah, okay.
-Okay, so, let me say, Susan,
first of all, I love the cover. -Me too.
-I think the cover is just absolutely wonderful.
If you haven't had a chance to see the cover,
it just, first of all, tells the story of the book,
but also kind of begs to have you open the book
and see how it all plays out in the book.
-In the emojis.
-Yeah, the emojis are great. So my first question, Susan,
is why did you want to write this book?
As Wier said, you wrote Consuming Kids,
and then you wrote a book about play.
And you and I had The Case for Make-Believe,
and you and I shared a childhood
that was filled with make-believe.
-Yeah.
-But then, why this particular book at this particular time?
-So when the New Press approached me
about writing another book, they thought,
and I thought, that I could just update Consuming Kids.
But once I started thinking about it,
I realized that what we needed was a whole new book.
Consuming Kids was written in 2004,
before tablets, before smartphones,
before Citizens United gave corporations even more power
in what's happening in this country.
And so, it had to be a new book.
But also, Consuming Kids was about the impact
of commercialism on behaviors. It was about unhealthy eating,
and the sexualization of little girls.
But not only did the world change, I changed.
And I'm much more interested in going deeper than that.
And this book, it's kind of like what anthropologists
call deep culture, which is not the culture,
but what makes us decide to do the things that we do.
So this book is about the impact of big tech
and big business on children's values,
their learning, and their relationships.
So it goes, I think, deeper than Consuming Kids did.
-You start every chapter with an anecdote from your life,
your experiences of working with kids in various situations.
Why did you choose to do that?
-I've spent my whole life,
my whole professional life thinking about children
and working with and for on behalf of children.
And I think the best way to help people
sort of get the complexity of childhood is through stories.
And so, I wanted to share those
and the ones that really moved me the most.
-Can you give an example of what was one of your favorites?
-Yeah, my cousin, Ellen, was taking care of me.
-My cousin, as well. I believe it's our cousin.
-As I was saying, my cousin, Ellen.
My cousin, Ellen.
Now I forgot what she did.
-She has a daughter.
-No, she doesn't. She has a son.
-Oh, a son, right.
Oh, that's right, it's your cousin, Ellen, right?
Okay, my cousin, Ellen, was taking care
of her 14-month-old granddaughter.
And she sent me a video.
And it was technically a terrible video,
I just want to say.
But I watched it, it was like seconds long,
and it just blew me away, this video.
And what it was, was her granddaughter
was 14 months, Arielle,
and she was sitting on a blanket,
playing with what are now considered
very old-fashioned retro and boring toys.
I mean, she had an old baby doll and a bear,
and there was silence in the room.
So she was safe, my cousin was there,
but Arielle had a chance to be herself, basically.
And so she was doing what babies do.
She was mouthing the arm of the baby doll with one hand,
and her other hand was kind of just exploring the doll.
And she got to the doll's toes, and she felt them.
And you could just see her mind thinking perturbances.
You know, I mean, so she felt them.
I know she wasn't really thinking perturbances,
but she felt them.
And she reached her hand up to her ear,
and then something wasn't right.
And so her hand kind of wandered up the doll,
and she got to the doll's ear, and she traced the doll's ear,
and then she traced her own ear.
And then she traced the ear again,
and she traced both of her ears,
and she did it one more time, traced an ear, traced her ear,
and then she just went on to something else.
And I still get chills when I even think about it.
It was just an incredible example of human learning,
and how babies learn if they're given the time,
the opportunity, the silence, and the safety to do that.
She got the idea of somehow that her body
was like that sculpture of,
you know, which is what a doll really is.
And it was her curiosity. Nobody was telling her to do it.
There wasn't an app saying,
you know, now put your hand on the doll.
It all came from her. She had a thought.
There was something she wondered about,
and she decided to explore it,
and she had the chance to do that and to finish it.
And that was just astonishing to me.
Not because Arielle -- I mean,
Arielle, you know, she's related to us.
She's brilliant and, you know, all of that stuff.
But that isn't what it is.
It's any neurotypical child could do that
if they have the opportunity.
And what this, you know, commercialized,
digitized culture does is deprive kids
of opportunities to explore, to learn who they are,
and to satisfy their own curiosity.
So that was, I mean, that's a long story,
but it is probably one of the ones
that really moved me the most.
And that's, you know, the opposite of my experience
at a daycare center, the toddler room,
which was just filled with all of these toys
that moved on their own,
and they talked, and they made noise.
And the room, it was so noisy in that room,
and the kids were just sitting there.
And, I mean, you couldn't walk without tripping over a toy
that suddenly began to sing.
And the kids were in just total silence.
I mean, they weren't doing anything.
So I mean, and that's a class issue as well.
I mean, you know, Arielle was being taken care of alone,
by her grandmother, one child, one adult.
You know, the kids were in a daycare center,
you know, that was filled with toys that were donated.
And, you know, so anyway,
that really moved me a lot, that discrepancy.
-And one of the things that I think runs through,
that's inescapable when you're reading the book
is this sense of how much difference class
makes and can make in the lives of children.
-Right.
I mean, we like to think that families have complete control,
or families, and parents like to believe that,
in a way, they have complete control over their children.
But children are vulnerable to all sorts of societal ills,
you know, as well as the benefits of society.
And so low-income kids, kids from low-income families,
spend, I think it's two hours a day more with screens.
And, you know, if your parents are,
you know, working serial jobs, if they're unemployed,
if they're stressed, you know, these single parents,
these screens are just so seductive
because they can occupy your child
for hours and hours and hours. So yeah, it is a class issue.
-One of the things that you did
when you were working on the book was immerse yourself
in these multi-player online games, like Prodigy.
Could you talk about your experience with that?
-Yeah. I mean, the difference is, in your mind,
between a game like Minesweeper and a world like Prodigy.
-Minesweeper?
-Minesweeper.
-You mean the old Atari one?
-Yeah.
-Well, no, you talked about that.
You can see we did not rehearse this.
Never mind. Talk about your experience with Prodigy.
Forget Minesweeper.
-Are you thinking of Minecraft?
-Oh, maybe I'm thinking of Minecraft.
-Okay, all right.
So in order to write about the games,
I really felt that I needed to play them,
or at least be with kids who were playing with them.
And so I did do that. But I was talking to a reporter
who had called me about something else.
And just as I was starting to write the book,
and so I said, well, can I ask you some questions?
Because he had a child, I know he told me.
And I said, have you had any experiences with commercialism
and the new technologies?
He said, well, do you know anything about Prodigy?
And I didn't.
But Prodigy is marketed as a math game for kids.
And that it's supposed to be a way to get kids to love math.
But basically, what it is,
is like a combination of Fortnite and Minecraft.
It is where the kids get to pick an avatar,
and they get to dress their avatar.
And then they battle wizards.
So it's also kind of like Harry Potter as well.
I mean, they just took from all of these things
that are popular with kids,
and they stuck them in this game.
And so they can fight. And they have cute little pets,
so it's also kind of like Pokemon.
And then if they win a battle, or if --
the battle that they fight, actually,
is they have to do a math problem.
But what I noticed is that the math could just be lifted out,
and anything could have been put in there.
It really has nothing to do with really understanding math.
I mean, there are lots of math games
that could be really useful and fun for kids,
but this had nothing to do with math.
And then it was filled with prompts to get your parents
to upgrade to a premium version of this game.
And this is a game that was being marketed
as free to schools.
And so the teachers would tell parents,
this is a great game to play,
or they would allow kids to play in class.
And eventually, it became a multiplayer game
where you could see other people playing,
and you could see which kids had the money to upgrade.
Because those were the kids that had better costumes,
or they got to fly instead of walking along in the dirt,
or trudging along in the dirt, and things like that.
So it had nothing to do with math.
It was all about upgrading, I think,
the idea of doing that in school
and pressuring parents to upgrade
because it's supposed to be good for teaching math.
I mean, it is just really terribly unjust, I think.
-Insidious. -Yes, insidious.
And these games, they're called freemiums.
So they start out free,
except you can't do the really fun stuff unless you pay for it.
And then the kids are kind of left there.
They can't play the fun things.
They don't get the best prizes, because you have to upgrade.
You have to pay.
And I think that it's important to remember that --
I mean, it's not that I'm anti-technology.
I mean, I worked in television,
and I tweet and post and do all that stuff.
And it's not that I'm anti-technology,
but the business model for making money,
this competition that the tech companies
are in for our attention at any cost,
and our children's attention at any cost,
and the idea that they make these games
specifically designed to be addictive,
I mean, that's terrible,
and it's really bad for children.
-What about those digital helpers like Siri and Alexa?
I know people who just, I mean, they just abuse Siri.
-Oh my God, they abuse Siri? -Yeah, they do.
-Alexa -- like shut up, Alexa.
I mean, they just are awful to it.
But I mean, how do you feel about using those?
-Basically, as somebody said, frankly, my dear,
I don't give a damn about how Alexa feels.
-Oh, I do.
-I don't, Nancy.
-I do. -I know. I'm sorry.
-Yeah.
-Well, Alexa is not real, Nancy.
-No.
-I mean, Alexa is not a person, and neither is Siri.
-Right.
-Do you understand that?
-Yes, doctor. I do.
-Yeah, I mean, it's funny about the personal assistants
because actually,
I'm increasingly concerned about those.
I mean, there's a lot of stuff about video games
and all the apps and things like that.
But the personal assistants are
increasingly troubling to me.
And I bought -- because I wanted to write about Alexa for kids,
I bought an Amazon Echo Dot for kids.
And I think it's the fourth or fifth edition.
And I have to say, it is cute as hell.
You know, we're wired to just respond to cuteness.
I mean, it's this little darling tiger face,
and I unpacked it and honestly went, aw.
But it is Amazon's way of getting to kids.
And it has a feature where you can say, I'm bored.
Well, that in itself is a little problematic
because boredom is actually useful for children.
I mean, it's how they invent things to do
and that kind of thing.
But anyway, you can say, I'm bored.
So I pretended that I was a young child.
And I said, Alexa, I'm bored.
And Alexa said, would you like to play a game?
And I said, yes.
And so Alexa asked if I wanted to play a Barbie game.
And I said, no.
It asked me if I wanted to play a SpongeBob SquarePants game.
And I said, no.
It asked me if I wanted to play a Wizarding World game,
which is the Harry Potter franchise.
And I said, no.
And it asked me if I wanted to play
with an American Girl named something or another.
I'd never heard of her, but she was an American Girl doll.
And I said, no.
And then Alexa stopped offering me any alternatives.
So Amazon claims that Alexa for kids is commercial free,
except every single game that they offered me
was basically a commercial for their game.
So I had Alexa sitting on my kitchen table.
And I was writing the book in my bedroom upstairs.
And I don't know, a few weeks later,
I was working on a book, on a chapter in the book,
which is called Bias for Sale,
which is about the racism embedded in commercial culture
and commercialized culture.
And I thought about Amazon. And I thought, wow.
I had read Sophia Nobel's book, Algorithms of Oppression.
I don't know if any of you read that,
but it's this amazing book about the racism
embedded in search engines.
And what she did is type Black girls into Google Search
and get pornography,
which is not what she got when she typed White girls.
That's what started her journey.
So I thought, I'm going to just see what happens.
So I went downstairs.
And you have to ask Alexa for a question.
So I said, Alexa, what are African-American girls?
And Alexa said, African-American girls
are the fastest growing portion of the juvenile justice system.
-And you have this on tape.
-And I have this. Yeah, I got my phone.
I mean, I kept asking it over and over again,
because I couldn't believe my ears.
So then I said, Alexa, what are African-American boys?
Oh, and by the way, it gave a source,
which makes it, according to -- actually what it said was,
according to Georgetown Edu, E-D-U.
So then I said, Alexa, what are African-American boys?
And it was a little garbled.
But basically, it said, and I also have this on video.
It said, there were boys, and they were African-American.
And many of them were struggling with reading and learning.
So Alexa just told the child I was pretending to be
that African-American children are bad and stupid.
And the thing about this is that this was happening
just as the whole book banning thing was starting to emerge,
and teachers were being silent, and all these list of things
that teachers in certain states can't teach.
And teachers are being censored. Librarians are being censored.
Information is being withheld from children.
But a child can ask Alexa anything,
and there is no regulation at all
about what Alexa can say to that child.
Which, I mean, is just --
I mean, what kind of society is it that allows that?
-So this was not an easy book to write.
-Oh, you noticed that. It's those daily phone calls.
-I can't do this. I can't do this.
But what made it so difficult?
Was it the subject that you were sort of immersing yourself in?
-I mean, I was used to --
I mean, I've been immersing myself
in the commercialization of children's lives since 2000.
So it wasn't so much that. Some of it was the technology.
-And you felt that you had to understand that,
you had to ramp up to get it.
-Yeah. And so I think one of the things
I talk about in the book,
for those of us who are not science and math people,
the technology really kind of just seems like magic.
And we know it's not magic.
But trying to understand that, that was a big challenge for me.
And one of the things I have in the book
is the definition of terms
that I think will be useful for people
who aren't so familiar with the new technologies.
So that was really hard.
And the challenge that I set for myself,
which is to write about relationships,
learning, and values, that was a big challenge.
And so trying to find ways to make that readable
and interesting to people,
and also to be telling the truth about those things,
that was a big challenge.
And thank you for all your support.
I can't do this.
-What about the arrangement of the chapters of the book?
I assume you didn't write them in that order.
But you had to come up with a way of ordering them
in the book that would follow, have an internal logic. Or not.
-Do they have an internal logic?
-Well, I'm...
-Yes, they do. You were supposed to say yes.
Yes, they absolutely do.
-Yes, they absolutely do.
Essentially, there are --
I mean, it starts out, I think, with a note to the reader,
which was -- I was writing this book when the pandemic hit.
And I thought that I would just be able to be isolated
and just write the book.
And instead I just felt like what I was writing about
wasn't really relevant.
-Yeah, right.
-Except then it turned out it was absolutely relevant,
because the techniques that the government at the time
was using to talk about COVID
were all marketing techniques, basically.
And then I did big picture things,
like what children really need
and why corporations can't give it to them,
and about nagging, and the corporate --
the ways that corporations want children to nag their parents
and get them to nag their parents,
and how disruptive they are.
And the way that branding has taken over everything.
So I was buying all these books, like You
Are the Brand, and Brand This, and all that kind of thing.
And the branded presidency that we had.
And so I started out with a big picture.
That has an internal logic to me, anyway.
And then I had two chapters about relationships,
and two chapters about values, and two chapters about learning.
-Well, one of the most important chapters, I think,
in the book is the chapter that gives advice or help
or support to parents who want to know what to do.
I mean, here's this situation that you describe,
that we all live with, and what can parents do.
-Right. Yeah.
First of all, people ask me what my goal was in writing the book.
But one thing my goal was not, was to make parents feel guilty.
I mean, to have parents feel guilty that they're not coping
perfectly with this tech-induced commercialism
that is bombarding their children.
That wasn't my purpose.
And of course, parents have a role to play.
But it's really important to me that people understand
that this is a societal problem. It's a problem for society,
and it needs to be fixed by society.
And that not only that,
that the digitized, overly commercialized culture
that so many kids wake up to every day is toxic,
not just to children and families,
but really to all of society.
And that there are things that we can do about it.
So I am going to answer your question.
But I think that I have a chapter
about the importance of activism,
and I do profile some activists in that chapter.
And I talk about how far we've actually come.
I mean, there are actually bipartisan bills
that got out of committee in the Senate,
and may or may not be heard by the Senate this session.
I hope they are.
But that would go a long way to -- they're not perfect,
but they would help protect kids
from manipulation by tech companies.
But social change takes time,
and so there is a chapter for parents.
And one of the things is that
whatever you're doing in your family around technology,
try doing less.
You don't have to cut it out altogether
if that's too hard for you. Do less.
And one of the things that I recommend is wear a dumb watch
instead of a smart watch when you're with your kids.
Because one of the things that research is showing,
that when parents are involved in a screen
or involved particularly with their phones,
they don't even register their kids
calling them like at a playground.
They don't register it as much.
And when they do respond, they respond with anger.
And that works both ways.
I mean, kids immersed in technology or kids
immersed not just in screens but in tech toys,
they don't respond when their parents call them,
and they are more irritable as well.
Try having tech-free meals.
Everybody, put your phones away and have a tech-free meal.
Some families carve out one night
a week where there's no technology.
And the amount that we're on our screens,
I mean, we are our children's first teachers,
and they model what we do.
And so the amount of technology
that we use influences their kids.
And I'm not talking about work.
I mean, if you have to work online, you have to work online.
I'm talking about checking social media,
all that, scrolling, and that kind of thing.
And I found when I got my smartphone,
I stopped wearing a watch
because I didn't need it because I had my phone.
But I noticed that every time I picked up a phone
to see what time it is, I did other things.
I checked my email. I did whatever.
And the idea that they thought
of putting everything in this one device is so brilliant
and so diabolical. And so I went back.
I dug my watch out, and I wear a watch.
And I really do think that when you're with kids,
one easy thing you could do is not wear a smartwatch.
-What do you want readers to take away from this book?
-Yeah.
Well, I think it's kind of what I said, that the digitized,
out of control commercialism that kids wake up to every day
is toxic. It's toxic.
And it's not just toxic for kids and families.
It's toxic for all of society. And this is a societal issue,
and we have to deal with it that way.
We have to accept responsibility for the well-being of children,
not just in this country, but in the world.
And one problem, I think, is that we think of parents
as owning their children. So if a child's having trouble,
it only matters with the family or within that family.
But that's not true.
I mean, we all benefit from healthy,
functioning, curious, creative kids.
The whole world benefits from that.
-Let's see if there's any questions.
Otherwise, I will go on talking, asking questions.
Okay, here comes the microphone.
-Hi.
So I had a question kind of on the positive side of technology.
Or I guess I'll say I remember fondly myself
getting a computer, an Apple II, when I was seven years old,
and playing games like Think Quest
and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.
And I fondly remember and look back on drawing
and learning how to draw on my computer
and just a lot of very positive kind of learning activities.
And so that was a time before these things
were so commercialized and there wasn't upselling
to paid versions of things and so forth.
But I just wondered if you had any thoughts
on other positive things that parents or people can do
with respect to technology in kids given this environment.
-And I do also want to say again,
I'm not anti-technology. And I see the benefits of it.
And in fact, going back, I mean, television seems so quaint.
But television had a profoundly positive influence on my life.
I became a ventriloquist because of television.
I mean, our parents moved their lips
when they talked and stuff.
And of course, there are positive things
that kids can do with technology.
I mean, I think the whole idea of building robots is really --
that's interesting to me, that kids can do that.
Any program that allows kids to create --
really, really create,
to draw on their own or make music
on their own that's not telling them what to do,
that can be really beneficial. And yes, the games are fun.
My problem is not with the technology
except to acknowledge how incredibly powerful it is.
My problem is with the business model.
And that I don't think it's good for children
to spend most of their time with people
whose sole interest in them is financial.
And that's basically,
when kids are spending a lot of time with tech,
that's basically what they're doing.
Yes, they're not with the actual people,
but they're with the products that those people have designed.
And I think that the people that children spend
most of their time with,
it's in the best interest of everybody
if those people's primary interest
is the well-being of children. And so what we're doing,
and we have this whole thing in this country
about don't talk to strangers and fears of strangers.
But we're allowing kids to spend hours and hours
and hours a day with complete strangers
who really don't care about them.
That's my concern.
I don't think kids should be exploited financially.
And I don't think that their vulnerabilities
should be exploited. And the thing about --
I mean, television was problematic enough.
I mean, as I said, I wrote Consuming Kids
before smartphones, before tablets.
But the other thing that's happening in this country
is the surveillance.
And kids are surveilled now all the time when they play.
And when kids play,
I mean, that's the window into their hearts and minds.
And so we have these tech companies
knowing an enormous amount about our children
and what moves them and what they're afraid of
and what grabs them and then exploiting that for profit.
That's my problem with big tech.
-Other questions?
-How would you summarize --
just to sum up the whole book now,
how would you summarize what you think is lost,
either individually or as a society,
when commercialized technology has so much access to children?
-Habits and values and behaviors are formed in childhood.
I mean, they can be changed
with different experiences as you grow,
but a lot of who we are comes from our childhood experiences.
And commercialism doesn't just sell products.
It sells values and behaviors.
And the primary value that is being sold to kids,
and us, but it's being sold to kids, is materialism
and that the things we buy will make us happy.
And in fact, the things we buy may make us happy
for a little while,
but it's not any kind of sustained happiness.
What makes us happy are relationships and experiences.
And so yet, our kids are constantly being told
that they need stuff.
And that hurts not just children,
because kids with more materialistic values
are less happy, it turns out,
than kids with less materialistic values.
But we're in the middle of this global warming crisis.
And we're selling kids on acquiring all sorts of stuff
when the manufacturer of that stuff
is really destroying the planet.
I mean, I don't know if any of you are familiar
with what are called L.O.L dolls.
They're plastic. They come --
basically, it's like seven layers of plastic
that you unwrap to get to the little doll in the middle.
They're hugely popular.
And just as children around the world
were doing the very first protest about the environment,
the American Toy Association
named these L.O.L dolls the toy of the year.
And if we want the planet to survive,
we can't be teaching kids that having things or materialism
is the most important thing,
that they are defined by what they buy or what they own.
Does that answer your question?
-Sure. I think there was one more.
Yeah.
-So I know you mentioned earlier
that this is an important thing,
not just from a US perspective, but a global perspective.
Did you take a lens when you were looking at this
of what this looks like in other cultures
or in other societies,
or was it mostly focused in the US?
-It's mostly focused on the US, but I did.
I did look at what's going on in other countries.
And one thing that's hopeful is Britain,
a couple, maybe a year ago, maybe a little more than that,
passed -- this isn't the name of it,
but it's something like a child-friendly design code law,
which says that people creating websites,
if there's a chance that a child may be using it,
have to take the well-being of children into account.
And that they can't use the same kind of techniques,
like the variable rewards and the kind of techniques
that keep kids on all the time.
They have to take the well-being of children into account.
But I also looked at nagging in other countries
and how in the United States, my colleagues and I took
on what's called the nag factor
in the United States in the early 2000s.
And so you don't see it so blatantly
in advertising literature in the United States.
But in other countries, like India, for instance,
basically they talk about just right out there,
you need to get the children to nag their parents,
and that kind of thing.
I think certainly in developed countries,
the commercialism is obviously --
it's more pervasive than it is in other countries.
-Any last questions before we finish up?
-One more.
-I just wondered, my sister-in-law
didn't come with me, and she has a one and a half year old.
And I just wondered,
do you think this book is directed more at school age?
But actually, from your story at the beginning,
which I was really moved by, you were talking about babies.
So what age is the book mostly about?
-It's mostly about young children, school-age kids,
but there's a lot in it about babies.
One story that I tell
is I was walking through a park near my house,
and there was a mother sitting on a bench
and a toddler lugging an enormous branch.
And the mother is looking at her phone,
and the toddler is pulling this branch.
And he goes, mom, mom. And she goes, uh-huh, uh-huh.
And he gets closer, and he goes, mom, mom.
And she goes, uh-huh, looking at her phone.
He gets right up in front of her.
He goes, mom, mom. She's staring at her phone.
She says, uh-huh. And so he slugged her.
I don't believe in corporal punishment
for parents or children,
but I have to say my sympathies were with the toddler.
There's a lot about young children in this book.
-Susan, to finish up, one of the questions --
in the chapter Making a Difference for
Everybody's Kids, you answered the question.
You know, somebody says, well, I get what you're against,
but what are you for?
And I wondered if you could read that,
because I think that's just a wonderful, wonderful paragraph.
-Thank you. -So meaningful.
-Do you see it?
-Yeah. So I do get this a lot, actually.
Well, I get what you're against, but what are you for?
So here's my answer. I am for a world
where children are universally valued for who they are,
not for what they or their parents can buy.
Where family and community values
no longer compete with commercial values
for precedents in children's lives.
Where kids have lots of in the real world time
with their friends
and with the adults who love and care for them.
Where their friendships can flourish without interference
from and monetization by tech and media companies.
Where tech and media programming
is designed to enrich children's lives, not corporate coffers.
Where their experience of nature is actual and unbranded,
where opportunities for wonder abound.
Where what and how kids are taught in school promotes
learning, critical thinking,
and democratic citizenship, not consumerism,
and not unthinking brand loyalty.
-Susan, thank you.
-Thank you.
-[Indistinct]
-Thank you.