Modern WisdomWhy Movies, Tech & Mental Health Feel Broken - Jeffrey Katzenberg & Hari Ravichandran (4K)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,006 words- 0:00 – 10:51
What Makes a Good Story?
- CWChris Williamson
Jeff, what made you so good at what you did? I don't actually understand what your skill set is.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, it's obvious that you're talented, but I, I don't actually know-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
You're not the first person to accuse me of
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I don't actually know what you're talented at.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
I'm not sure I, I am either. Uh, let's see. Uh, certainly a good storyteller. Um, you know, I think, um, you know what? I'm a truffle hunter. I, I know how to find a good idea, recognize a good person, a talented person. Um, I think that's probably the most valuable skill set, which is having an instinct for quality, for smarts, for, you know, ambition, vision, dreams, you know. Uh, you know, I've spent, um, most of my career helping other people realize their dreams, their stories, their ideas. Um, and, you know, in order to, I think, recognize a dreamer, you need to be a bit of a dreamer yourself. You have to be an optimist. You have to believe in, you know, uh, the unknown, the, you know, unimaginable, and, uh, you have to have a lot of enthusiasm. And so I think those qualities, um, are... I'm a happy person, an, an optimist, bottomless well of optimism.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. I've heard you say that you're a good home run hitter, but you don't do singles and bunts.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Well, yeah, that's sort of a different, that's, you know, (clears throat) sort of in my ambition column, you know, sort of different lanes that, you know, I like to take on things that are very, very, very challenging. And, you know, I, I, I like to say that, uh, you know, m- I'm... I, I like doing things that are, you know, improbable, if not impossible. That's kind of my home address. And, uh, you know, the outcome of that is, is that, you know, when you... One, you can't hit a home run if you don't swing for the fence. Um, and more ti- at least many times, you will swing for the fence and you won't get there, you know? So, um, you gotta accept that, you know, with success comes failure.
- CWChris Williamson
You mentioned, uh, being able to pick a good story, one of the core skill sets with 400 something movies, 80 animated, da da da. What, in your opinion, makes for a good story?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Um, well, there are many things. I, you know, one of... I, I've been very lucky to have many great me- mentors and teachers, um, uh, over my career. Um, one of which I actually never met 'cause he had passed away by the time, uh, I res- I arrived at the Walt Disney Company in 1984, which is Walt Disney himself, and he had this amazing (clears throat) archive of his work, his work process, his, uh, creative, uh, uh, uh, sort of blueprints. And, um, so many great lessons learned about storytelling from him, particularly around his animated movies. Um, one of my favorite ones, he says, "You know, there's no such thing, um, as a great story without a great ending." Seem pretty obvious, right? (laughs) Um, uh, there's no such thing as a great story, um... Uh, your story, uh, your story, uh, let me say it. "My movies are only as good as their villains," is one of the things that he said.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
And you think about, uh, that through, you know, uh, his filmography (laughs) and it's, it's pretty extraordinary. And so, uh, you know, for me, I, I look at, uh, uh, Ursula, uh, or Scar or, um, Jafar or Farquaad or Tai Lung or (laughs) I could go on and on and on, and because when I read that and I understood it, it became a, a kind of a north star, you said-
- CWChris Williamson
What is it about the villain?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Um, well, that may... Uh, how... The, the better the villain, the, uh, the greater the challenge for the protagonist, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
So, m- m- you know, whatever you have to overcome, um, uh, whatever you have to defeat, the greater that that is, the greater your victory is in it. Walt Disney said, "I make movies for children and the child that exists in every one of us." That's kind of the North Star of the company. It was for him, it was for my decade there, continues to be today in it. And so lots of these great lessons along the way around storytelling and what are the essential ingredients, uh, of a great story.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. It's interesting to think about the ending. There's this great idea from psychology called the peak-end rule, which you might be familiar with. Um, Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize, uh, found that across a person's memory of an experience, the most, uh, uh, memorable parts were the, uh, peak intensity, the highest, and then the end. So they did this study with colonoscopies. Uh, in one iteration of the study, uh, people went through it, and you can tell the amount of discomfort by the amount of movement, and they were asked to rate the discomfort afterward. "How did you remember it afterward?" Uh, in the next iteration of the study, different cohort, they did the exact same, but then just left the, um, endoscope in for a while, uh, uh, but didn't move it for a couple of minutes. So the final part, the end of the experience was less discomfort and the, uh, self-rated, after the fact, uh, pain was lower. So implications for that, if you're a comedian, finish on your best joke.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Mm-hmm. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
If you're a rock band, finish on your biggest song.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, if you are making a movie, you know, finish on an emotionally salient, real high energy sort of feel-good-
- HRHari Ravichandran
... uh, cutting board-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
As you were explaining this, and I was imagining all the different things that I could respond to you around colonoscopy, and I just thought, "You know what, just leave that one alone." (laughs)
- HRHari Ravichandran
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yep. But yeah, I, you know, it, it's-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's really true. It's really true to think about, huh, well, if you've got this compelling protagonist but you don't have somebody that sits up against it, where's the challenge?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
What's the victory?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 10:51 – 16:40
What Drives Jeffrey & Hari?
- CWChris Williamson
Both of you guys are very driven. What's driven you-
- HRHari Ravichandran
No kidding. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... what's driven you independently to what you do what you do?
- HRHari Ravichandran
Uh, well, that's a good question. Um, you know, it feels to me like when there are large problems or big, like, big, big sweeping issues, um, if there's sort of a unique ability or skill set that, that I have, you know, whether it's, you know, uh, building a business around it or sort of, you know, evangelizing an idea or whatever, whatever it is, that's very motivating 'cause it feels like it's something, uh, unique that, that I, I kinda apply my perspective to that problem to be able to br- you know, bring that forth to lots of people that potentially have the same problem as well. Um, I think the build of it, in a lot of ways, for me, is extremely motivating 'cause it feels like a, a personification of the things that I know how to do, that I can actually put out there, uh, in a lot of ways. So yeah, I would, I would, I would say basically I've had points in my life where I've felt very mission driven, but a lot of my life has just been very purpose driven, I guess, is sort of the easy way I would think about it. Which is, uh, the purpose has been, "Hey, can I take what I feel or sort of what I'm able to see in my head and build things that others can get benefit from, others can see as well?" So, that's been a big driving factor for me in my life.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Jeffrey, what about you?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Um, well, so many things. You know, I mean, I think it's, you know, it's a sort of an alchemy of, of things that motivate me. I, um, uh, I found by accident along the way that the most beautiful thing in the world to me is actually laughter, and in particular, the laughter of children. It's why we tickle our kids. (laughs) We torture them by tickling them, but it makes us happy to hear that laughter. And, uh, and so literally as, you know, whatever, you know, somebody's greater plan coincidence, I land at a company where your job is to get up and make movies and TV and animation and things that bring laughter-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... to the world. That's, that, that is what, you know, um, you know, that w- that was a legacy that, you know, sort of I had the baton for a decade, um, and then went on to do it, you know, at DreamWorks myself. And, um, nothing made me happier than to stand in the back of a movie theater and listen to the laughter of an audience from something that, you know, uh, you know, we all had a hand in making. Um, I have a bottomless well of a need to win, so I'm, I'm, I'm always looking for, you know, that, uh, an outcome that is a, a success. And success is measured in so many different ways. And, um, uh, sometimes it is, uh, purpose-driven, and sometimes, as Hari's saying, it's, it's mission driven.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
The one we're doing right now started purpose-driven, and then, through a set of circumstances, became mission-driven, which in a way is maybe the most rewarding.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the difference between purpose and mission? I'm not sure.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Uh, in my mind, uh, a mission sort of is pushing towards, uh, some sort of an external outcome. Purpose is just who you are. Like, that's just how you're made up, and that's just, you know, whatever the situation, that's just how you react. Like, if you're a builder, you build. And sometimes if you get very mission-driven, you're building towards something, to be able to solve a problem. But, you know, if you're a purpose-driven person, uh, whatever the circumstance is, even if you're not motivated by an external outcome, it's just how you present yourself to the world in, in your work, I guess, uh, is how I see it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Yeah. Purpose, to me, is, uh, tactical and, um, mission, to me, is, um, uh, has just a whole, has t- sort of a humanity involved in it. There's some greater, uh, outcome than just being successful or just winning. That you, you're, there's goodness involved in it, that, that you're, you're gonna do something that is going to make a contribution to the world that's, you know, unique and, and, um, invaluable. And, mm, more often, it's by, by accident. You know, it's not y- these things happen to you. You know, people always say, "Well, how do you, how do you win an Academy Award?" And I go, "Well, that, there is no, there is no path to winning." It happens to you. You don't make that happen, you know? And, uh, so...
- CWChris Williamson
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- 16:40 – 23:04
What’s The State Of Modern Cinema?
- CWChris Williamson
What do you make of the modern world of cinema? We keep hearing about, is cinema in crisis? Uh, has streaming platforms made a dent in the ability for you to make movies in the way that you used to? What's your read on that situation?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Well, it's complicated. I think that people always want to s- distill it down to s- simple things. I think it is, for sure, a moment of extraordinary disruption and transformation. Um, every time everyone wants to declare movies and movie theaters dead, you know, something else comes along and sort of shatters that idea. And, you know, whether it's Barbie or Oppenheimer or Minecraft or whatever the latest thing is, is that when, you know, Sinners, you know, it's just, which is just a phenomenal, you know, movie, and, and it just gives people that sort of renewed, uh, uh, not only optimism that, oh, there's still a place for this. Um, but we l- you know, the world is changing all the time. You, you know, you can't, you, you know, you have to understand and navigate your way through it, and I think the industry as a whole is navigating its way through-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... pretty challenging, if not treacherous times, whether it is digital distribution, whether it is AI tools, um, consolidation of these companies, um, uh, you know, legacy businesses, um, uh, declining, and how do you transition to the next? And I've lived through a couple of them myself, and they are-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... they are really, really hard, and they're really, really challenging. And much of the time, you are having to navigate through really uncharted...... places.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
And, uh, so lots of uncertainty in that, a lot of fear, uh, with it. But, um, I, I still remain quite optimistic that, uh, movies are a great form of storytelling and a unique form of storytelling, and, um, they're not going away.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you make of this world where movies get ported out into series for streaming? We've seen this happen with Star Wars. We've seen parts of the Avengers franchise have this, like, oh, uh, Lord of the Rings, massive bet by Amazon, which, uh, I don't know the books, but, uh, not convinced how great of a investment that was. Um, what do you make of this sort of expansion out into other areas like that?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Yeah, I think it's, I mean, listen, there have been phenomenal examples of great success. Um, I just watched the latest season of, uh, Daredevil-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... you know, which is a spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff (laughs) . And it, I thought it was incredible. I mean, I was just completely mesmerized and engrossed in it, and following, just like, I can't wait for the, you know, the next season of it. And, um, it, it just, you know, I'm, I've been, uh, now almost, you know, almost a decade of Handmaid's Tale, and watched the latest episode last night-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... and my head almost exploded. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Um, so I thought Sinners, as I said, was a, just a remarkable movie.
- CWChris Williamson
I've not seen that.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
And, oh my gosh, you, you gotta. I mean, it's just, it's an incredible performance. It's incredibly made, it's beautifully written. It's, it's, it's special. And the audience somehow or another, they knew it, they sensed it, they got there, the word of mouth of it, you know? And so again, I'm an optimist, uh, in this. So, you know, also, it's not my job anymore.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
So it's easy for me to be-
- CWChris Williamson
Sidelined-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... to the outside-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, exactly.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... and, you know, like that old Monday morning quarterback. And I'm sure-
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. Correct.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... many people in Hollywood -
- CWChris Williamson
I'll tell you what's interesting on that, um, movies going to series is the inverse, which would be Peaky Blinders-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Oh my God. One of my favorites.
- CWChris Williamson
... full series, that's going to finish the entire narrative arc with a movie.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Okay. Have you seen Mob Land?
- 23:04 – 38:05
Jeffrey & Hari on the Star Wars Universe, & Gaming
- CWChris Williamson
Do you hear? Do you hear that? Very good.
- HRHari Ravichandran
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, what would you do if you were in charge of the Star Wars franchise? It seems like that's something that's on treacherous water right now.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Um, you know, I don't... It's always hard. I, I mean, I, I think that to stand outside of, uh, these and to be, I don't know enough to know. Um, but, uh, you know, George Lucas, along with Steven Spielberg, among the greatest storytellers of our, of our time. Um, and, you know, I think probably getting back closer to its roots is, um, where it will find its authenticity. And, you know, A- Andor's a, you know, again, you can see glimmers of brilliance. And I say glimmers, it's not a glimmer, it's a, you know, that's a glowing light of, you know, north star of something, you know, wildly entertaining and wildly successful. So the movies have seemed to have, you know, struggled a bit. Um, uh, but my, my guess is I would go back to the Bible. And, you know, find my aspiration, inspiration, and probably roadmap by, by getting back to its roots.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Do you want, I mean, you were asking earlier about the sort of, um-... switch in media, like maybe you start with a book, then you go to a different, you know, sort of a medium for, for, for a story. It's really funny, uh, with, uh, with my son, uh, during COVID, he got, he's, he's, he's a little guy, he's, he's probably three and a half, four at the time, and he got obsessed with, um, with, uh, Star Wars. Like, the, the story of Star Wars.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
And a- a lot of how he interacted with it was with the Legos video game. So that's how he started was, like, playing, uh, you know, playing with me. So it was like a way that we would connect, we'd like, you know, go through the story, go through all seven, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
In the game?
- HRHari Ravichandran
... in the game. Like, he'd literally go through the entire book, you know, with the Lego characters basically, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- HRHari Ravichandran
And so ... And then he got, like, super interested, and then he's like, "Oh, wow. Like, this is cool. It's like a good story, and I know all these characters." Now, he's like, "Oh, can I watch the movie?" Which again, for a five-year-old, or four-and-a-half, five-year-old, it, it felt very advanced.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
But since he'd gone through that, you know, now he was like, "Oh, I, I know these characters. I, I understand what's going on." So he was excited about it. But what's interesting is, whether it's sort of the game or when I watched it, or when he watches it, like, the heart of the story is just, uh, the power of light over dark. That seems to come through, and it seems not, sort of, time-specific or media-specific. It just seems like, you know, as long as you can get that through, like, it just captures, uh, the audience and it
- CWChris Williamson
I totally hadn't thought about the ... Uh, you know, I know that the movie industry, the music industry, and the TV industry, I think all of those combined is smaller than the video game industry.
- HRHari Ravichandran
I think that's right. I think that's right.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, which, you know, tells us everything you need to know about how well video game designers understand human behavior.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
Right? They are better able to-
- HRHari Ravichandran
They're good storytellers.
- CWChris Williamson
Or maybe it may ... That's, that's maybe not fair. The, the, uh, um, degrees of freedom that video games are able to play with are able to access human psychology in a ma-
- HRHari Ravichandran
'Cause you're in it. You're in the story, you know? Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, you're, you're part of the ... You're a protagonist in this. But I mean, look at GTA VI.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know? I mean, that that thing is going to ... I... So there was a great Reddit post. I always, I'm always skeptical about these burner account Reddit post things because you think, "How legitimate is this?" But it was somebody who claimed to have worked at Rockstar, uh, throughout most of the process of this, and they were explaining about why the delay. Um, the single player campaign's been ready for six months now. It is completely bulletproof, everything's locked off. But the online experience that they knew GTA Online was gonna be this huge thing, they're prepping. Apparently, they're prepping for 70 million concurrent players-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Oh my gosh, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... on launch, 70 million concurrent players to do- Yeah, yeah. It will be the biggest-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Event. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... e- event, launch of a, any entertainment property ever.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah.
- 38:05 – 46:45
What Is Technology Doing To Young Kids?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so yeah, it doesn't surprise... I mean, look, given that, especially for yourself, you tried to make kids happy for a very long time. I imagine that you're quite concerned about what's happening with their mental health now.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Hugely. (clears throat) I mean, it's, it, it, it, it is so bad, Chris, that (clears throat) we are seeing, um, the pain and damage that is being done to a generation of kids. Uh, Jonathan Haidt wrote a great book about this. Um, but it's the world that we've been working in now for the last two years, and it's why we've become mission-driven.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
You know, uh, Aura, uh, which is this company that, uh, Hari founded, started out about how do you bring safety to... I'm sorry, security to us sh- for consumers on, on online. We're all online all the time in this, and we have become, you know, more and more and more vulnerable. Um, if I came to your home and robbed your home, I'd probably get a little bit of jewelry and n- no cash and, you know, probably some electronics and stuff. But if I broke into your phone and I got your Social Security or credit card or bank account, I could do extraordinary damage to you. You know, criminals go fish where the fish are. And if you look at the statistics, I mean, just t- here in America, uh, three years ago, home robberies was, uh, just over $3 billion a year. And, uh, digital theft was just under $3 billion a year. This last year now, home robberies are just over $4 billion and digital theft is over $15 billion. Right? So, all of us are getting (clears throat) assaulted left and right. There's no one that you talk to, I promise you, we have, raise your hand in this room, somebody has had, been scammed, phished, something negative has happened to them. We have one of our cinematographers here shaking their head. And if you haven't, then it's somebody in your family that has. It's that much of a tidal wave of-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... of problems. Well, that was great and that was, um, uh, I would say, uh, a, a, a great, um, uh, uh, a, a need. And, you know, there was a, a, a, uh, an, an opportunity to go solve this problem for consumers. People were, they were, m- many, many, uh, companies were out solving it for enterprise, for companies, you know, where we would hear about, you know, JCPenney getting all of their data stolen and this one and that one. And, and, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Sony had a huge breach.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Oh, yeah, yeah, huge, right? So, lots and, you know, billions and billions of dollars invested in, uh, cybersecurity. But for consumer, for everyday people, not so much at all. There's been very little innovation and that was the sort of brilliance that started, uh, Hari on this, of building Aura. But then, and I want him to tell his story, a year and a half ago, two years ago, he had a 13-year-old and he should talk about his own experience because, uh, this is where the mission-driven part of, of this kicked into gear for, for us.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah, look, I mean, I think we were talking earlier about purpose versus mission, right? And so I think, uh, being purpose-driven, you know, you see a big problem, you say, "Look, you know, I've got the skill, I'm gonna go try to solve it." Uh, the mission part of it, again, for me, uh, with one of my four kids, uh, again, this is sort of like the post-COVID thing we were talking about. Uh, I do feel, I mean, it's, uh, uh, both with her friends and with, with the, um, many of the people of her age group, um, there's both, uh, this isolation element where we're talking about where there's, you know, they're not mixing with kids their own age or higher ages, lower ages. But there's also this like, uh, shift in life from physical to digital. Like, I mean, th- they're, they're on their devices, on their phones all the time, all day long.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Um, it's in an odd way, like, the truth of their lives are not in physical land. It's almost on their device.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a great take, yep.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah. And we did, and, and we didn't understand this as more like a hyper ph- privacy-focused family. We don't look at kids' phones, we don't do any of that type of stuff. Um, and, you know, uh, it was about two and a half years ago she said, uh, "Hey, like, I don't feel great." It was actually like, uh, February, I think. And we said, "Look, you know, you're in the middle of school. There's a lot of stuff going on. Let's wait till the summer." Summer rolls around, uh, and we're like, "Okay, great. It's the summer vacation. Like, great, like, this, you know, there's not as much stress." It actually went the opposite way. She like, went, just completely dipped. Like, you know, it was hard to get her out of bed. She was, like, not in a good headspace.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Severely depressed. Um, and there was, uh, there was, uh...... um, you know, like, like, we were looking at her going, "Well, we, we don't know what's going on." It seemed to get... keep getting worse. You ask her, she goes, "Oh, everything is fine." Like, "I'm, I'm okay." You know, and, and but clearly, you can see she's not. Then she started going down the path of sort of a bunch of negative coping strategies, like, you know, things that kids ought not to consider but, you know, things that, that are happening much more frequently.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
And we had no idea, and it got to a point where we said, "I think we need to take her in to get care, like to get treatment." So, we take her in, I drop her off, and I would say probably this is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Like, you take a kid, you drop her off at a facility where you feel like she's struggling and you don't know what to do. It's, uh, you don't know if you're doing the right thing. Come back home, they don't let, uh, kids keep phones, uh, at this facility, so that's the first time I actually looked at her phone.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
And I said, "I can't believe this. This is insane." Like, how could we not know? This kid's going through so much stuff, there's so much happening, she's struggling with a lot of stuff. Completely invisible. Like, we could not... uh, we could not have guessed.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
And we said, "Well, wh- wh- are we, like, terrible parents?" Like, how, how could this have happened? Um, so that's when we started looking around to say, "Hey, is this just us?" Or, or, you know, like, is it happening? It's everywhere now. Like, I mean, I think people are starting to talk about it more and more, uh, but the stats are staggering. And, you know-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
So let me... Yeah. It's an epidemic, and this experience that... Uh, make an analogy, go back here. You know, when, when I was growing up, um, my parents knew where I was, what I was doing, and who I was with. Today, you can have a child, teenager sitting across the table from you, and you actually don't know where they are, what they're doing, or who they wi- or they're with. They're on this- the device. They may be physically, uh, here, but they're not. They're somewhere, they're somewhere else. And so, when from a parenting standpoint, for so much of, uh, the things that we need to do to help our children navigate successfully through all the things that our... we all go through, you know? That, that, you know, drinking, driving, smoking, drugs, sex. Like, they're... that's life. And as parents, you know you have tools, you have insights, you have the ability to help navigate your, your kids, uh, through that. And, and what we have found is, is when it comes to social media, there are no tools, and parents are actually right now, they're blind. They have no ability to see what's going on.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
I... The analogy I use is, is that, um, uh, uh, when, when your kid is gonna, uh, learn to drive, you know, you get a learner's permit, you go to a Walmart parking lot (laughs) where there's nothing around. And you help onboard them, you teach them, you show them the, the rules of the road, you show them how to respect the vehicle and how fast it can go and how long it takes to stop and all of the various things around it. And there is this process, this actually tas- takes several years before that first moment of a kid sitting behind the wheel of a car and you're giving them the keys to the car and say-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... "You're good to go. I know, I now you know the rules of the road." In the world of, uh, social media and the online world, there are no boundaries. There's no, there's no... You have no ability (clears throat) to navigate, to help your kids navigate, and that's the problem that Hari went out to solve. But I wanna just frame for you here, that's why I asked him to bring back my, my phone,
- 46:45 – 1:00:01
The Data Behind Keeping Kids Safe Online
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
because, uh, we started a beta version of, of, uh, this online safety. So remember, I said we started with online security.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
And then the mission became, out of Hari's personal experience, it was like a fa- a hard pivot to, "Let's expand this into, how do we protect our kids?" M- much more important than com- than protecting, you know, our, our bank account. So there are 2,500 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 years old that were on the beta version of this for three or four months starting in January of this year. So that's a pretty wide... 2,500's a very good sample both geographically and otherwise, and here are the stats. 46% of them are depressed, 35% have social withdrawal, 22% are up at night scrolling and being on when they shouldn't, when they shouldn't be, 30% with low self-esteem, 22% have, uh, self-harm suicidal thoughts, and the staggering 52% have eating issues. So, 80% of girls 18 years old and younger don't like their body shape.
- HRHari Ravichandran
80%?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
80%. And more than half of them are doing things that are unhealthy or harmful as a result of that.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Have, have you got any idea... I mean, those are shocking stats, but I always wonder about what the base rate is- ... with stuff like that. Have you got any idea what this would have been like 30 years ago? Because- Yeah. So it's really interesting. There's actually stats that, you know, they publish every year, uh, around this. The increase pre-COVID to post-COVID, like we're talking about, from before, uh, it happened to now, in many of these areas, are like several hundred percent. 'Cause i- it's really interesting 'cause you ask a really interesting question, because I actually had the same question, which is, "Hey, like, are we now just better at talking to our kids or identifying these things-" Is this just an endemic part of being a teenage girl but now we can, we can see it? Yeah. Yeah. And ca... now we can identify, right? So, so this is the same question I had. And I was like, "Well, you know, is it that now it's become more normal for kids to talk about it? Are the parents much more in tune with it?" So we actually went to Boston Children's Hospital, who's one of our big partners, and we said, "Hey, um, this is for what we're grappling with. What are you guys seeing? Like, what are you seeing out on the, on the floor? What are you seeing in the ER, facilities, et cetera?" Uh, their view, and this is now pretty universal with e- with every hospital, is, um-... we not sure wh- what's going on. There was li- li- life before COVID, life after COVID. Life after COVID, if there were like, you know, 10 kids coming in that had cut themselves so deeply that they needed care 'cause, uh, uh, especially with girls, one of the coping strategies they go through is cutting, which has now become very, very prevalent. Like, 11, 12% of girls cut. Um, they said, th- you know, oh, there's like 10 in a week. Now we're seeing 100. So t- so to me, I was like, wait, like something is actually happening here, like something's happening underneath. You know, is it a combination of social media, kids being on smartphones, the compression inside, uh, COVID land? But the, the, but the data is very, very clear. It's not self-reporting. It's not, you know, us identifying more of these cases. Something got messed up. Like I, uh, it's, it's hard to, um ... And we can't quite tell. Again, I think it's unfair to say, hey, like, you know, the phone made it all bad, it's causal, that type of stuff. Like, I don't actually believe that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
I think that there are many benefits that come from the technology, but I do think that some of these side effects get massively amplified. And, you know, like with my, with my daughter's, um, eighth grade graduation, the kid that did the speech, her speech was about how she'd been cutting herself for two years and now she's really excited that she's over it. They do figure out. They find their way. Many of them find their way through it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HRHari Ravichandran
So i- i- it is, uh, it is a, uh, it's a, it's a real, it's a r- it's a real problem, you know, so.
- CWChris Williamson
What's your current working hypothesis for this? I mean, you know, Jean Twenge has got her thing. Haidt's got his thing. There's some skepticism around Jonathan's, uh, data, which I'm sure that you guys have looked at too.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
And he's a good friend. I love him.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But, he, you know, he's like, th- there's a lot going on.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What we-
- HRHari Ravichandran
We have the data.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Like there's no ... Like ours is not ... This is not our interpretation or, uh, uh, projection of it. We're actually just seeing hard data. Where we had 2,500, now we've got 10,000 users on it. And, and we're, th- th- so-
- CWChris Williamson
When it comes to a mechanism-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... what, what's your, y- just some potential sort of causal explanations of what you think is going on here or-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... global, altogether type thing.
- HRHari Ravichandran
I mean, I can kinda give you my perspective. Again, this is just a perspective, so take it for what it is. I think that, um, we started giving kids smartphones, you know. So w- if you look at sort of the growth of smartphones and the great, uh, and, and sort of the growth of, uh, emotional sort of negativity, there's, uh, clearly it looks very, very correlated. Like, one's going up, the other one's going up as well. So it, it almost seems like when you unleash something, for it to get to a critical mass and see the f- the follow-on effect of it takes some time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Right? I mean, it's like opening Pandora's box in some ways. Like you open it, it doesn't destroy the world right away. Like, it takes some time for things to kinda get around and actually kind of, you know, ma- ma- make things, uh, rough. So I think we've hit this like critical juncture now where, uh, the amount of time that kids are spending on these, the amount of engagement they're getting from a lot more content that's now available, it's hit a tipping point now where, you know, it, and, and there's enough proliferation of that across, uh, the, the, you know, the world that w- it's starting to now percolate up. There's alwa- al- always like an underlying theme as kids are going through adolescence. It's hard.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- HRHari Ravichandran
It's just, uh, h- hard being an adolescent. So there's this amplification element. There is, um, enough of this happened for enough time now that we're now seeing the impact of it. I think it's been building up, by the way. I don't think it's like a-
- 1:00:01 – 1:07:24
Should We Ban Social Media For Anyone Under 16?
- CWChris Williamson
let's just sort of dig in for a second, I think, about... Look, Australia's got a social media ban now for under 16s.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
It seems to me that although what you guys are doing with Aura is, uh, great and necessary, that the nuclear option is just to go-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... like, no social media for anyone under 16.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, uh, you could probably, for men- for males, you could probably look at no social media under 25-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... and make a justification for that.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yep. Yep. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Right? Prefrontal cortex, still developing. Mine feels like-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... it's still going now. Um, why should we not just be putting all of our efforts into lobbying the fuck out of government to say, "No social media for anyone under 16"?
- HRHari Ravichandran
Uh, well, I mean, I think besides the practical elements of can we actually pull it off, right, which is, again, a whole nother question. It- it, you know, we invented it because there was a reason, there's a human reason why this thing came to be. You know, again, you know, like most things for human beings, we push it to the edge and then we push it beyond the edge, and that's just how, you know, we're all wired. But, you know, there is... Like, I mean, there are kids that, um, are very introverted. You know, there are kids that, you know, wanna have a community. That- there are kids that want... That- that- that, you know, have that desire to connect with other humans.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
To learn-
- HRHari Ravichandran
A-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... to see things, to explore the world. I mean, there's-
- HRHari Ravichandran
So, there is a real need there. It's just that, like everything else, we just, you know?
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
You- you think about the access to knowledge that comes with being on this device-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... and the fact that that is, um... That barrier is, just goes down to almost, you know... You could be on the Maasai Mara in a, you know, uh (laughs) , in a hut there, and you could actually now have a device in the hands of a kid with the ability to learn and to see and-... traveled the world and traveled through history, and-
- CWChris Williamson
But (laughs) surely the, the vast majority of teenagers are not spending most of their time on their devices, uh, getting it to explain Charles Darwin's Origin of Species?
- HRHari Ravichandran
They're not. But, so let me ask you this. So how many hours would you think a kid spends on their device per day? Like a, somebody between, call it 11 and 18?
- CWChris Williamson
Six.
- HRHari Ravichandran
About eight hours.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Eight hours a day-
- CWChris Williamson
So probably more time than they're asleep.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah. So I mean, that, yeah, that's, that's exactly right. And, you know, you're awake for, you know, call it whatever, you know, 12, 18 hours a day. And, uh, you're spending the majority of it on these devices. And it goes from spot to spot. There are, you know, you actually do see kids are spending time learning. They're using Google Class, they're using, uh, things to make themselves more productive. There's more-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Language, Duolingo.
- 1:07:24 – 1:14:09
Why Parents Are the Key to Digital Safety
- HRHari Ravichandran
thing. And the other thing I'll say is i- in this battle, at least sort of in this battle that we are, you know, watching kind of, uh, you know, unfold every day, the, the parents are the front line, you know. There's, uh, it's not, you know, like regulations, all that type of stuff, it's, it's gonna have to work its way to that. But really, it's the parents that are in the front line of the problem. So the more they get educated, the more they understand that this is not like a weird thing, it's happening culturally everywhere and we're all sort of at a loss for what to do. And there's a-... like, this brewing problem that's happening and the more that becomes, uh, visible to people, saying, "Hey, now I need to actually go learn something. Like, I need to go learn-"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
"... how to, you know, interact with my kid when these things happen," et cetera. So, and so if you talk to a lot of, uh, clinicians and psychologists, that's what they tell you. Like, we, there's 6,000 of us, uh, cl- clinicians and psychologists. Caseload's going up through the roof. To train somebody to be good at that is gonna take a long time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Right? Decades plus. So where do you find the help? Like, it's the parents. Like, get them smarter on these issues. Get them to understand that, you know, g- and the, and the, and the desire and the motivation's there. They want to raise great kids that are happy, that are healthy, you know. So that's, uh ...
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about some of the other, uh, insights that you've learned from the data. That you've got, I mean, that one around the calorie tracking thing is just fa- it's obviously-
- HRHari Ravichandran
So, like, I'm gonna tell you a couple more.
- CWChris Williamson
... harrowing but fascinating.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah, I'll tell you a couple more. Like, you know, if kids are l- on social media for half an hour before they go to sleep, their sleep is interrupted more often.
- CWChris Williamson
How are you tracking sleep?
- HRHari Ravichandran
So basically, when kids wake up, they pick up their phone.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Yeah.
- HRHari Ravichandran
So we see traffic on their, on their device, or if they have a wearable, we can track that, that information as well. If they're kind of, uh, uh, going to sleep. We see, for example, like, and, a really interesting thing, we do see that if there is a lot of activity outside of your digital life, it's a huge positive thing. Like, so you could be on your phone for four hours a day, five hours, it's fine, if you're also going playing sports and you're, you know, hanging out with your friends and playing soccer. Like, you know, those types of things are very positive.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you know if they're doing that?
- HRHari Ravichandran
Because you can tell on the, on geotracking where they're kind of ab- you know, out and about basically. So you kind of, like, start to correlate with them.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, okay, as opposed to the person who's just in, at home for most of the day-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Just scrolling the whole time-
- CWChris Williamson
Yep. Okay, okay.
- HRHari Ravichandran
... and, like, on, on their devices. That there isn't ... And you can see the amount of activity that they have, right? And then other, like, another interesting tidbit I'll give you, like, boys and girls are very different. The patterns are quite distinct-
- CWChris Williamson
Hm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
... for, for, for the two. Boys that are on gaming platforms for long windows of time don't seem to have the same negative outcomes as girls on social media.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- HRHari Ravichandran
I think it's because for boys, uh, d- developmentally, I think, it is sort of a way of interacting. They're rambunctious on these platforms. It's just like, you know, like in, in, i- it's more close to real life in some ways. There's not as much a, "Hey, look at this person doing this thing," you know. So when girls are on social media, it becomes what is this view of how I should be? Because I'm seeing this influencer be a certain way, they have a million followers, they're doing these types of things. And so, that seems to somehow end up driving behavior a bit more in girls. And again, we're only talking about in this window of time, like, we're saying-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
... like, you know, 12 to kinda 16, 17. Um, but those are, I mean, really interesting to us that, you know, 'cause if you know these things, if you have a boy, you're like, "Okay, well, this is kinda the stuff we need to go do to make sure this kid's okay," you know, type of thing. So, uh ...
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
And here's a f- kind of fascinating, 'cause we're talking about, you know, what's drove us into this area is watching sort of these 10 to 18-year-olds. But here's a really interesting thing about it, which is... So that, we're focused on at first, 'cause that's where it's a, it's a crisis. I mean, it's just a tsunami of just tragedy, right? But interestingly enough, wouldn't you be interested in somebody objectively giving you insight and analysis of your online behavior? Meaning, how much time you're spending on there, uh, you know, w- what are the things that you are doing that are healthy around that? What are the things that you are doing that have negative implications for you?
- CWChris Williamson
Like a wearable tracker for your digital-
- HRHari Ravichandran
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... consumption.
- HRHari Ravichandran
For your mental and, for your mental-
- 1:14:09 – 1:23:24
The Impact Of Wearable Devices
- CWChris Williamson
I, uh...I think that that idea of some kind of wearable tracker, but for-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
You don't have to wear anything. You can re- (laughs)
- HRHari Ravichandran
Just look at
- CWChris Williamson
For- for all of ... But the, the insights from a wearable-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... coming out of, you know-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Your activity.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that, that ... I would, I would-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
But that's-
- CWChris Williamson
... use that in a heartbeat.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Exactly.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
Th- that wearable is actually more about your physi-
- CWChris Williamson
Physic-
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... physical.
- CWChris Williamson
Of course, yeah.
- HRHari Ravichandran
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
... physiology. This is actually about your mental, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JKJeffrey Katzenberg
We can tell now by that eight hours a day what you're doing on that device, your state of mind, your ... You know, where ... when you're happy, when you're not. What's making you happy?
- CWChris Williamson
Can you also ... I, I don't know whether you're gonna break some degree of, um, data protection here. Can you use the front-facing camera to do micro-expression stuff?
- HRHari Ravichandran
You could. I think there's a little bit of ... When you start looking at images, there's CSAM regulations that you have to worry about.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HRHari Ravichandran
What sort of, uh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
TikTok's got it in their terms of service, so.
- HRHari Ravichandran
I know. (laughs) So-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HRHari Ravichandran
You know, honestly, I think that, um, even just tabulating stuff and saying, "Here's sort of what we're seeing for broad patterns,"-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- HRHari Ravichandran
... we see users like, "Wow, like I didn't know that." Like, that's really ... Like, like Luke posting, you know, even-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
Episode duration: 1:59:30
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