So, I'd like to take this moment to just kind of switch gears. We've had this wonderful discussion, and now we're beginning the plenary session portion of our evening's entertainment, and I would like to ask each of the panelists, and maybe each person can speak on this, what are the big, what lies ahead in the future? What are the big questions, the problems, the possibilities, and what kinds of that you see on the horizon for reproductive technologies, and for yourself having participated in this conference, what are the things that you envision yourself carrying forward into the future in your work? So, just a couple minutes for each person, and Keras, why don't we start with you? Sorry, can you say it again, a couple of things that we're going to carry forward in our own work? So, just future possibilities and problems that you envision are going to happen, and how do you think that you will be carrying these conversations forward in your own work? I think that the many of the things that have, a lot of things have come up, and they'll continue. I'm not sure that how quickly genome editing of humans is going to make it to the clinic, and I'm not sure whether the majority of jurisdictions will go for somatic rather than germline, as you've heard me say. I don't have a, in principle, much rather take it case by case and have an in principle objection to either, though I understand why people do. I think that we are very quickly going to be in a space where we don't, we're not sure what our relation to one another and to the machines we live with is. I think we're becoming in many ways that are really wonderful as well as really troubling, deeply hybridized with our smart homes, and our various kinds of augmentative and assistive devices, and our, actually, extraordinarily poorly designed in the sense that it's so easy to lose prostheses that we carry around with us. And I think that as the agencies shift, it's still possible to recuperate narratives of autonomy and self-agency in relation to our machines more or less, although we have a lot of areas around social media use and things where we have actually, often to the detriment of our youth, kind of lost that integrity of the self and opened up to trolling and all kinds of awful things in ways where the model of the individual doesn't hold very well, but I think it's coming very soon that there's going to be a really radical redistribution of agency and what that means for reproduction and everything that's structured and given meaning to life to date, even while there's all kinds of augmentative things I would love to, just love to have, that are not to do with abilities, they're to do with just knowing stuff, because I'm a nerd. Things I've learned from this is I just, I learned a lot from every single talk, content details and perspectives on the world. It's been really, really great. Thank you. Thank you, Alison. Yeah, I've learned quite a lot from these last couple of days, too. We've talked a lot about social injustice, about discrimination, about gender problems, problems of the world, both historical and now, but actually I'm a clinician working now with individuals who have a problem and I think we have to separate those two things. I don't actually think that anything that I'm doing in the clinic is going to solve the problems of the world and the social injustices. I think there are different issues. I think they need different solutions. But equally, I don't think that anything that can be contributed by the discussions and social science is going to help me with a couple in front of me that wants a baby. I can help them from a psychological point of view, cope with the problem that they have within the society that they live and the problems that their infertility is causing them, but actually it is, they are two separate issues. We also need, you asked specifically about where it's going in the future, what's going to happen. And I hope that you've got the message that actually things develop very slowly and that new things take a long, long time to get to the point at which they're going to be clinical treatments. So in the IVF field, the things that will improve are little technical things that make growing numbers in the laboratory better. It's never going to be 100%. But there are little things that are getting better. We will get better at identifying which patients are going to be successful. Because we know that some people who come for IVF might only have a 1% chance of success and others might have a 50% chance. The better we can predict that, then the less likely we are to subject those with only 1% chance of success to a complicated treatment that we think is not going to work. So there will be improvements that way. And then I think the thing that's going to happen over time and what will happen in the generation of the youngsters here is that some of these things will become normal in the same way that IVF was not normal 40 years ago, but is now normal and statistically given the age and population in the room, 2% of this population, people in the room here, were conceived from IVF. So we're not talking about something that is now something desperately new and to be worried about. It is part of what we are. And I think some of the things we might be talking about now in 40 years' time will be just that's what we are and to be something new. Thank you. Oh, so much. Okay, two minutes. I know. So I want to return back to that idea of relationality that I introduced yesterday. And to say that, you know, we spend a lot of time thinking and talking and investing in how to how to help people bring babies into this world that they want. And one of the things I really am interested in putting that in conversation with is, one, how we treat those babies once they're here. So it goes back to one of the questions and thinking about putting as much energy and investment in trying to give parents the ability to to to raise those babies in environments, both physical environments and social environments in which they can thrive. I think if we sort of laser in only to the point of getting the babies here, and then we leave left uncovered the entire rest of their lives in terms of really putting thought and innovation, social innovation, to thinking about how to make sure that they grow and develop as, you know, healthy, happy people, then we're sort of imbalanced in our prerogatives. Similarly, I want to put in relation to reproducing reproductive sort of reproductive technologies is the experience that many, many women have of what Dorothy Roberts calls reproductive punishment. Everything from the extreme examples of, you know, sterilization, but also the everyday subtle experiences of having your reproductive capacity demeaned in social relations. And let me give you a very concrete example of this. I was pregnant with my first son when I was 21. And the daily experience you do this is why she's my advisor. Okay.  And I think one of the things we can do as soon as we walk out this door, in terms of improving the reproductive capacity and well-being of all women that doesn't require shiny technology is to think about how we treat all women when we do see them when they're pregnant, right? So this is a low tech thing that we can do.  And this is not mainly or only a matter of genetic issues. This is about the social etiology. This is about the social experience. And we have studies to show that the level of stress caused by racism impacts our reproductive health. This is low tech changes that we can make outside of the lab if we say that we really care about fertility. What have I learned so much from the individuals? But I think on a more meta scale, I've really learned that it is possible to design a conversation, to put together a conversation that really allows us to talk across disciplines expertise across the lay expert divide. And it says a lot about the care and thought that went into the planning of this, that when people say it's not possible to do, we have living proof that it is possible to do it. So, well, I think I spend my life trying to make sure that both men and women can determine when they want to have children and when they don't, so that they have more control over their lives throughout their lifespan. It feels to me as if the male contraceptive field is not challenged by the same ethical questions that the female contraceptive field seems to be experiencing. And so maybe talking on that would have raised more fears and questions and criticisms than the male contraceptive field seems to raise. I think it's it's it's important. What I learned, what I learned from hearing from hearing the speakers is that that we really can't believe that sterilization might be happening in a in today's environment without permission and desire for such an operation that that's terrifying to think about. I think the part as much as I enjoyed all the presentations of the speakers, I think the thing I enjoyed most was my session yesterday with the students. I found that incredibly energizing and fun. And one of the things that I came away from that was the enthusiasm that the young women have for having partners who are practicing male contraception. I think it's going to go on everybody's Facebook page available as a method to help with their profile. So I know myself and I know that I'm an optimist. So I'm going to offer sort of an optimistic view of everything. I think we've heard a lot of really great discussion about, you know, incorporating a wide variety of viewpoints and incorporating a very broad set of ideas into the way technology might get implemented and might get practiced. And I think that that's incredibly important to put together as we as we act on that. I think that it's really critical to take those viewpoints and account. But I think it's equally critical to not get too stuck in, to basically just not get stuck, to make a decision and to make a conscious decision based on that kind of input. And to recognize that inaction can be just as much of a decision as action can. Because there are patients that may be suffering from a disease. So to say, we're not going to go forward with this is a valid choice. But that is an action and people are affected by that action. And to say, we are going to go forward with a certain technology and this is going to affect people is also a type of action. So I'm very interested in gene editing. I think it holds a lot of problems for the future. I think that we do need to of course bring not just the technology of does it work technically, but also how does it sit into this social framework in which, you know, there have been movements that have used ideas of breeding and things like that in very negative ways. But I think that we can learn from that. I think we can take those negative examples and I think we can incorporate them in positive ways to try to learn from those mistakes. And like we were talking about just a bit ago, we can change the way we do things. So if we if we try to incorporate those things, and we then enact something based on that, and it's not working, we can do something about that. We're the ones doing that action, we can stop and say, oh, we're doing this, we're not doing it right, let's change it and let's do it. So it doesn't have to be these like, you know, one movement forward, it can be this constant path as we adjust what we're doing. And I think that that is at least for me, it's an empowering way of thinking about it because it removes that paralysis of choice where I need to get everything absolutely perfect before planning the next 30 years of what we're going to do. We need to get things as good as we can get it right now and make a step and then let's figure out did we make the right step and then make the next step and continue making steps. And I think that that way, at least for me, has a lot of promise for both helping people that are suffering from diseases as well as doing it in a way that's responsible to communities around us. Great, thank you. Sorry. I have to ask you, there was a question that I think I need to ask you that came through. So one questioner would like to know how you feel being the token male. And if you could just speak briefly on that and then we can move on. So I'm in the sciences, obviously, and there's this horrible thing that's happened in the sciences where most group leaders are male. And it's especially terrible because most graduate students and postdocs are women, right? So there's this crazy gap. And so to me, this is actually great and refreshing because I'm used to sitting on these panels of old white men and everybody has exactly the same ideas and it's really boring. And this is really great. It's much more intellectually stimulating in a lot of ways. Like there's a lot more interesting ideas and it challenges me and that's the best part about this kind of discussion. We've had about 200 years of watching all male panels. So to make up for that, we need about 200 years of all female panels. Then we can start to have gender balance panel after that. So anyway, I just thought I would bring that up. Thank you very much for addressing that. And I can authenticate that. I asked you that on the first night. And you said it's great. Thank you, Marcia. OK. My take away from all this amazing conversation is many new ideas for research questions and papers and lectures and courses. So I can't wait to do those right away. I want to reflect on our experience as speakers and listeners, as experts and audience. I'm struck by now some of us have shared some personal stories in that reveal the choices that we've made in our careers and our our choices about who are the beneficiaries of our research and how we identify with whom we identify in the long list of players and how we position our standpoints. And I made a little list, which I'm going to go through quickly because I can't resist the parents, the mom and the dad or the two moms, etc. The childless or infertile couples, the child who might suffer, the future progeny, those with or without access, groups marginalized and targeted with selection or deselection, the donors, the surrogates, the egg and the sperm, the clones and the robots. And I apologize for anybody I've left out. So we we make these choices of our standpoints and they're very complex and very personal. So my challenge as a as a teacher and as a researcher and an advocate is to listen and to try to expand my sense. I'll I'll share that the American Sign Language for them and for us. And I would like us to all reflect on how to expand our sense of us in our work. Thank you. We have time for a couple of more, a couple of questions from our audience. And one one question is what kinds of so sometimes we what we find is more important than what we're looking for. What have been the significant surprises in your research? I think sometimes people have this idea that, like, you know, science is here's a problem. Here's a solution. I mean, head to the solution that found the solution. And here it is. And Jacob, I loved how you were talking about like it's actually a much more convoluted journey. So what have been the surprises? I can start. You want to? Well, the tip. Can you start? I think it comes down to the process of science that you were talking about is that, you know, we don't get eureka moments. They are very, very, very few and far between even when it came to talking about the significance of stem cells. That was a year or two that there was a sort of it. I said, yeah, the light bulb went on, but it went on very slowly. It wasn't a sort of a moment when you suddenly wake up in the bath thinking, I've got it. It's much more complicated than that.  So surprise is perhaps the wrong word. Please, that it's worked out. Yeah? OK. So for my first major project as a PhD student working under CARIS, I was doing this work on stem cell research. And I went in thinking I was going to try to understand the class dimensions, the racial dimensions, the gender dimensions, because that trifecta, race class gender, is a thing in the social sciences that's available as a lens to understand social processes. And the thing that I was most struck by was, in fact, really thinking about the disability justice dimensions of regenerative medicine. It had not been on my radar at all, but as soon as I was in the field talking to people, listening to their ideas, and sort of immersing myself, it was this other axis of difference that was so relevant, but was not on my radar at all. It didn't go in thinking it was. And it's also the thing that I learned the most about. And so that to me makes it significant is that I didn't already have all this background and understanding. And so it stays with me as the most valuable thing that I learned from it, because it was completely new, but so relevant. And so that's why I'm a big fan girl of Marsha and all the work of disability justice advocates, because that was more my learning curve really took form. Great. Any other surprises anyone would like to share? I think one of the things that continues to surprise me is that things are really, really much worse than you think, and people are really, really much better than you think. Yes. Full stop. Yes. Yes. Actually, but I could just add on to that, that when things are really bad, the ways turning to certain fields of scholarship, turning whether it's to scientific information in the area, whether it's to reproductive justice, social studies of science, indigenous studies, African-American studies, disability justice scholars and their activism, so often is so nurturing, so enriching, and so I almost want to say, salivational. It can take me from a place where I don't know what we're doing to a place where, get it, I see you. I see you. This is going to be okay. We can do this. Great. So maybe I'll share like a science geek moment just because I don't know, I like geeking out. So I told people that the way Junimenting works, the way Cas9 works, it's this evolved enzyme that it's meant to work in bacteria for something else entirely. One surprising thing about my career that we showed in my lab and a bunch of other labs have shown in different ways and very surprising ways is that the enzyme itself does not work the way it should in bacteria and it's still completely a mystery why it works this certain way and that may be actually why it's so good at doing genome editing. So it's this thing that if you had to design something from an evolutionary point of view, it would not work this way. And it turns out it does instead work this way. No one has any idea why it works that way and the fact that it works that way might maybe why it's so good at genome editing and some of the other tools that are out there are not as good. And so this is one of those things where we go out, we make new discoveries about the world and now we're left wondering why and that's sort of the continual process of science is you make one discovery and you say why and then you get the answer to that and you're like well that's weird, why is that? And then you keep asking why down the road. And so I think that in the process of writing grants you always have to come up with oh here are my anticipated outcomes and all this sort of stuff and that makes things a little boring when you write the grant but the thing that I always hope for is that moment when you get the results and you're like I have no idea what the heck happened. I don't know what this means at all. No, those are fun puzzles. All right, so I have one thing that surprised me that not, there are many things that surprised me but one that I mentioned to someone earlier today and they liked it. That sperm biology is different than somatic cells than the rest of the cells in the body and it uses different biochemistry, it uses a different signaling mechanism inside that is much more similar to a bacteria. So I always say that sperm are just evolved bacteria. That's great. I wanna say thank you to all of you up here. I said at the beginning of this whole conference that we were gonna be zooming in and out a lot and we've been given so many valuable tools to think about, to reflect on, to share with others. Ruha and Marcia, you did a wonderful job bringing multiple lenses for us to kind of like think about this topic from a social justice and disabilities perspective and so we really, really appreciate that. Diana and Allison, you both, I don't know how you did it but you got into both the science of your respective fields as well as the regulatory aspects and walked us through like how much work has to be done in order to get things from the lab to the bedside table, I think Diana said. And Jacob, I know that you answered a lot of people's questions about like what is CRISPR? What can it actually do? And I think it's so important to really get an actual CRISPR scientist perspective on like what's the hype, what's possible and to bring that back down to something that's a little bit more realistic so that we can actually understand what it is that we're dealing with. And Keras, thank you so much for tying together all of the threads of these incredibly complicated topics related to reproductive technologies and the things that we didn't even get a chance to bring in, you did such a wonderful job of touching on areas that I encourage all of you to think about really. And there's so much more to explore on this topic that even in two days with such wonderful speakers just scratch the surface. So thank you very much for all of that. And thanks to all of you for the questions that you've raised. I wish, Lisa and I both wish that we could have answered all of them because there were many fascinating ones and it breaks our hearts to not be able to keep everyone chained here for days and days answering them. We have appreciated them and please don't feel if we didn't ask your question that we were not wanting to ask them for any reason. It's just there's only so much time. I have a question. Can we get the complete list of questions? I think so. That would be really great. I think the courtesy of paper and voice hive that we will figure out a way to make that happen. That'd be great. Thank you. That's a great suggestion, thank you. Do we have a couple of minutes or do we need to release everyone now? Now that you've asked it this way, I think we have a couple of minutes. Not to put you on the spot, Lisa.  It's party o'clock people. Really quickly, there was one question about, so how do you think we could keep this type of conversation, right? This really interdisciplinary conversation going forward. What are the other possible venues or I don't know, how do you feel that you can keep this conversation going together or individually or structurally? I have a question to like, so when I listen to some of the things you presented and I feel this outrage and I wanna do something to make it better, but I don't have any tools in my basket to do that. How do we, what do we do? Do you have any advice? I do, I have lots of advice. How long do you have? Just apparently only two minutes. So my view is that we all have a zone of influence. People who we talk to, we learn from, and I think everyone from someone who is, their main person they're influencing is a toddler on the playground to someone who's giving keynotes. I don't think one is greater than the other. I think we need to identify what our zone of influence are and the things that we think are important in terms of advancing society forward. We need to use some of that time and energy in our zone to try to deliberately work to develop conversations around that. Now how does that happen? I think one of the things, tangible things we can do and what I've done before with other kinds of related issues. So all of this that we're doing is being recorded, right? And so one of the things to think about is inviting people over to your house, showing a session, a recording, having a discussion. Perhaps we develop, like once comes out of this, is actually a reading list, a reading and media list of resources that people can use. Maybe you have a book club. Maybe you take some of the things we've been citing. Perhaps you email us and say, hey, I'm doing this book club discussion with people at my public library. Would you Skype in for a Q and A? We're so connected, we need to develop those connections in order to elevate the conversations that we're all having. So just thinking about how to tap into that. I mean, I have participated in that squarely in the realm of thinking about racial literacy, right? At my public library last year, I wasn't teaching, I was on sabbatical and I worked with an organization. They did most of the legwork, but we had a six-part series, weekly series in the public library. We didn't know how many people were gonna show up. Princeton is a pretty elitist, white town. We're like, who's gonna come out to talk about racial literacy? Six weeks in a row, 200 people showed up every single time from the high schoolers to the 95-year-old who had walked down the street with Einstein was there, right? And so people are hungry, not just for facts and information, which are the fingertips, but knowledge, but also conversations that are meaningful, right? And so part of what we can all do is think about how to stage and cultivate conversations where you don't need an expert in the room to have the conversation. You can read about what the expert has to say, so-called expert. You can see the videos, but then you have expertise and knowledge and experiences that are relevant. So having those conversations, that's the starting point. It's not gonna solve the world's problems, right? But part of what we have to do is start to elevate the conversation and the consciousness and we do that in our own spheres of influence. And so thinking about what you can do, right? At your senior citizen's home, at your library, all of the context of community that we can start to use those spaces a little more deliberately. Thank you. Thank you. In my cases, as I mentioned during my talk, I'm very involved with this group, Science Fair, at the moment, and we've argued for something, so in the Human Genome Project, there was a small proportion of the budget was put for work in what was called ELSI, ethical, legal, and social implications. I don't really like the language of implications because it suggests that none of those issues arise until all the science is done and it couldn't be less true for everything to do with genomics. But the point of putting aside some proportion or internalizing or making it part of the money you get with a grant, that you specifically seek to collect data and address issues that are to do with social problems and social issues is the thing that I'm working the hardest on at the moment. So we do need to be tracking racism, sexism, ableism in many spheres of life at the moment, and I'm particularly interested in getting proper databases and internalizing it to funding initiatives so that that evidence is a really first rate. I probably concur with that about grants and every time you get an award or anything to do or you ask for permission, there is the box about patient public involvement and putting it in context. I think there is a difference between considering the reproduced technologies that we're trying to do and the sounds that we're trying to do and being aware of the social context in which we are doing it and taking the social problems and saying we are going to change them by the application of reproductive technology. And I think that's a bit of a balance here that maybe we're looking at a little bit too strongly because I don't think reproductive technologies are going to change the inequities of the issues that you were discussing. Access to treatment might, but the actual technology is not. There is an injustice due to the fact that some people can get that technology and other people won't get that technology. But in the context of engagement, being aware of what we're trying to do in the context of society is very important but being very clear about what it is we are trying to do and limiting it to those benefits. I'm big on listening, listening skills. I teach them in the first class in every course to get the students to talk to each other and to listen to each other. And a lot of what we're talking about at this conference is about sex in all the ways and the varieties of doing it and not doing it in alternatives. But I'm a faculty advisor to issues of sexual assault on my campus. And I'm amazed when I hear the stories of young women and men, what about sex is not being talked about? It's still a very awkward topic. And I think that's one of the biggest barriers to challenging all the issues around sexual assault. And I think that's true here. The issues of disability and race, for example, are silenced. We're embarrassed, we feel awkward, we don't wanna look stupid, and we don't have a way to go there unless we get awkward, get embarrassed, make mistakes, be willing to talk and listen in the areas that are really uncomfortable. Thank you so much. Not to end on an uncomfortable note, but I think I must acknowledge that we are actually at the end of our time here. Thank you so much again to everyone in this room and everyone beaming in from the internet for watching us for the next, for the last couple of days. We hope you'll join us for the banquet. That promises to be a really great time as well. Jad Abumrad from the Radio Lab podcast will be here talking about the liberal arts and the podcast episodes that they've done on the topic of reproductive technology, so please join us for that. Thank you so much, yeah. And thank you so. And I'll just add my thanks to all of you for being here and hope to see you next year. Yes, for soil.


Well, so great question by the way and of course the man that you've probably heard of all of you that a lot of people think is a quack Is Ron Paul if you want us to country go back to the gold standard. I know I love I love the man I there's probably two men that I love it's It's my father and this Ron Paul I Really love this man and the reason he actually went and And Ran for Congress he ran for Congress in 1971. It's not a coincidence. He ran for Congress in 1971 because of Nixon closed the gold window and he was watching the news and he was a doctor, of course and and nobody cares and he and he said people just sleepwalking through life nobody understands how important this is so he saw 40 50 years down the road what was going to happen and and That's why he's that's he's so consistent because that's all he's ever said he wants the country back on a gold standard He wants to do away with the Federal Reserve And he wants to do away with all of this, you know warmongering around the world But really how is it all financed it's all financed by this printing money And that's why gold is doing so well because there's less and less of it The financial markets understand because the people that are that are in charge of money That are bidding up bidding up the price of gold understand what's going on Does that answer so the true power remains in our vote? Exactly. Yeah, I would say the problem with the Constitution is it gives Powered attacks and the power to judge which are really the two core powers to the government So eventually it just takes over because without those two powers you couldn't but with those two powers that so eventually the guard the US government has really been able to The US has been so prosperous so far is because of how weak the government was but at this point it becomes so powerful So strong that it's starting to choke off You know freedom so that would be how I'd look at it


All right, wonderful. Well, it sounds like or it seems like folks online can hear us. So I think we will get started and I believe folks will just continue to trickle in and that's fine. So I have the pleasure of introducing our guests today. But first just want to say good afternoon everybody. On behalf of the Birkenstein Center's Institute for Rebooting Social Media I want to thank you all for being here, and a big thank you to the Petrie Baum Center for co-sponsoring today's event. Gaia Bernstein is a technology privacy and policy professor, co-director of the Institute for Privacy Protection and co-director of the Gibbons Institute for Law Science and Technology at the Seaton Hall University School of Law. She specializes in law and technology information privacy, health privacy, intellectual property, law and genetics and reproductive technologies, and her scholarship examines users interactions with new technologies across diverse legal fields. These days we spend more time online than ever. Some turn to self help measures to limit their usage yet repeatedly fail while parents feel particularly powerless to help their children. Professor Bernstein's new book Unwired gaining control over addictive technology shows us a way out. Rather than blaming users the book shatters the illusion that we autonomously choose how to spend our time online and chips the moral responsibility and accountability for solutions to corporations and demonstrates why government regulation is necessary to curb technology addiction. Unwired provides a blueprint to develop this movement for change to one that will allow us to finally gain control. Thank you Gaia. Good afternoon, and first of all I would like to thank the specialty Tony Gardner and the Institute for Good and Social Media and the Berkman Center for inviting me, and also the Petrie Flom Center who is co-sponsoring this. It's been very important for me to have both Center hosting this event because this book is in many ways about technology and about public health. So, many of you probably realize we use our technology a lot. We spend a lot of time online. And some of you may think that it's a problem. Maybe some of you have even tried to limit how much time you spend on your screens, and maybe some succeeded. My guess is, some, quite a few of you have failed. Maybe some of you try to restrict others, maybe kids, and maybe complain that the power is spending too much time on their phone. Did you try to convince them to spend less time? How well did it go? My guess is not so great. Now, some of you may be skeptics. Some of you may think, well, the ship is sailing this, and this is the way we're going to live our lives. And maybe this is not so bad. So I want to start by talking about why I think this is a problem and why I wrote this book. I often, when I pick up books and I think, why did this person spend three, five, seven, ten years on writing this book, I want to know why they got started. So I'll tell you a bit about why I got started. And so I was one of these girls who liked to play video games.  And as I grew up, I really liked technology. I, when we just used Merrims for the internet, I was constantly connected, disconnected, connecting again. And then sometime around 2015, I felt that something was changing for me. I am an academic. I live in New York City. I often work in coffee shops. I would go into a coffee shop and I would put my phone next to me and my Kindle and my laptop. And I would notice that two and a half hours later, nothing was done. I felt tired and wasted. I thought, what happened? And I realized, well, what happened? I would text my babysitter at work email at the time where blogs were hot. So lots of problems from blog to blog, but very little work. And I started looking more and more around me and I have three children. And I noticed that the world around them was changing as well. I went to birthday parties and suddenly the kids were not playing with each other. The very same kids who used to run around 10 or 11 were sitting around the TV and were not even watching the TV. They were skipping, holding their phones, each looking at their phone. And I would go to shows, to school shows, but it was hard to see the stage. Why? Because everybody was holding up their iPhone or their phone. And I realized that I wanted to do something different. And I started the program through my law school. And that was 2017. And we went to schools. My law students went to teach kids. They just got their first cell phones. It was fifth and sixth grade. How to get a better online, offline balance. I spoke to parents. And at that point in 2017, I thought, okay, people are not realizing there's a problem. Once they understand there's a problem. We're using our screens too much and it's not so great. They'll stop. So I stood up there. And I spoke to parents and I had this list of self health measures. Do not have phones during meals. Do not let kids keep their phones when they go to bed. Every time I put the slide up, I feel very excited. I'll take a photograph of my slide. And I was going to write a different book actually. It was not titled, I'm Wired, Gain, Control of Objective Technologies. It was about the power of awareness. How when people will be aware and how we can use legal measures to make people more aware, things will be fine. Well, no, things will not go so well. So we're going on much more. We know where the problem is coming from. There's been lots of reports from whistleblowers, Tristan Harris and Francis Hogan who work for Facebook and reported to Congress. And we know that technology companies are needed to pay online for as long as possible because that's a business model. We get zero for free, we get Facebook for free, we pay. We pay with our data, that's something a lot of people talk about. We also pay with our time. Technology companies need it to be online for as long as possible so they can target and advertise it with us and collect more data and ask them to have us there to look at the ads. And how do they do this? Well, they're high teams of psychologists to target our most human vulnerabilities. So they're into full designs which are very sustainous in this model. And I'll have to give you one example. I'm sure some of you are more aware of the time and some of you may have less about it. So one example is about stopping cues. So the famous suit experiment. One group was given suit, a regular ball of suit, and they ate the suit. And another group was given a ball where they couldn't see the bottom. So they ate 70% more of the suit and they didn't realize they were eating more. That's what's happening all over the internet. Our stopping cues are gone. I think about an infinite scroll on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, there's never an end to pay. Keep going and going. This is not an accident. You think on YouTube, autoplay, you know, one video starts as the next one starts, same on Netflix, you're watching a show, the next episode starts immediately. But they took away our stopping. This is just one example. So I want to talk a little bit about why I think this is a problem. One of the problems that we're spending so much time online. And I framed this in terms of autonomy, and there are tons of definitions of autonomy out there. I'm going to focus on two. First of all, the idea that we should have the ability to reflectively make our life choices. We never really, really made the choice that we're going to spend so much time online. The average adult spends five hours online. Kids have a team say that, you know, constantly online. So the average adult spends five hours on their phone alone, not online. That would be actually better. So, and I think if you ask someone, do you want to spend five hours on your phone alone, most people would say no. So how did we get there? We sort of got there gradually. Something happened around 2009, when we got small firms and we got social networks, and suddenly we could be connected everywhere. Now we didn't make this big decision of spending so much time with small decision by adopting another app, another habit. For me, for example, I live in Manhattan, I commute to my law school in New Jersey, and I was thinking, okay, I don't have much time. I'm going to start texting my babysitters on the way to work. And then I want to stop doing my work, you know, so being more effective when I get to work. Then I joined Facebook because I was in the academic and I thought I'll get to meet our academic and field. Within a month of making what I thought were tiny choices, I no longer looked up from my phone on the train. A colleague could be sitting next to me, a student could be sitting next to me, I would never see her. So what happened was that we just made small decisions. Each student can have it, but the way these technology were designed, we end up spending much more time on each of these apps than we ever intended to. I did not think I'll spend an hour or so today, but I thought I'll spend five minutes every two days, but that's not what happens because these apps are designed in a way that keeps us there for longer. So, in a way, we're a bit like the frog in the water, the famous fable of the frog in the water. Because according to the famous fable, when the frog is in the luke warm water still jump out. When it realized that the water is boring, it's too late. That is what happened to us. I would say that around 2018, there was much more awareness of the problem. But by the time people realized what the problem was, our whole life was connected to screens, to smartphones, and on top of that, the whole business model of the internet was entrenched in this idea of getting things for free and using our time as a resource. So we never really made this autonomous decision of reflecting, not do we want to screen, and this is not about going back into my 5th century, but what kind of balance do we want between our online life and our offline life. So that's one way in which our autonomy was affected. Now, another definition of autonomy is as a means to an end. The idea is that it's going to have a time when we're going to make better decisions for ourselves. This is used a lot in the health care projects. So if we look now, I would say there were a lot of studies coming out for over a decade, but over the last two or three years, the data is very, very clear, especially about children. And I'll talk about all of it, but I want to emphasize what's what's the data that's out there for children. So first of all, the impact and cognitive development, psychology studies, and on top of that great imaging studies show the impact of excessive screen time in many cases for this category on a cognitive development, learning, reading, and if you compare the scans of the brain with kids who are basically exposed to accept screen time, it looks very different from the brain scans of kids who were not. And there's a correlation to that cognitive assessments results. And I want to emphasize I'm not talking about toddlers. This goes all the way to 18. This is one thing mental health, there's been tons of publicity about that again, there was a big debate, there's been an increase in anxiety depression and suicide rates since 2010. And there were all kinds of factors that people were bringing up. I think we're beyond that debate now that a lot of studies would show the correlation between the social networks and smart phone and the increase in this more behavioral studies showing especially the impact on girls. So that's another there's also lots of concerning studies about attention this affects adults as well as kids, but for kids, it's much worse. There are studies about obesity. Now this studies, and then that applies to everybody showing that increasing this connection increase and hate. And the algorithms that make people still months longer are the same algorithms that make them angrier. Increase the basic feeling of not feeling well not feeling content. So the more the less concrete studies, but the art study, not just about kids and depression but also about adults, how their well being has been affected. So the question for time is, had we known this in 2009. We've chosen that for ourselves. Okay, so I want to go back to my talks to parents. And because as I said I saw 2017 by 2018 something felt different to me. I, I just felt that the parents were desperate with the powerless, they've tried to sell health methods, and nothing was really changing. At that point I realized I needed to write a different book, a book that is not about the power of the wordest but a books that looks at how to shift from failing internal battles with ourselves, each of us with our own computer and turning into a family battles at home. To changing things in the public sphere. And the first thing I did and that's really a big part of my book I decided to look into the past, because I was realized those similar narratives. And when you look at the side of against tobacco, the fact that against junk food, and later the fast to protect privacy in all the situation you have a corporation that is basically releasing a harmful product, the truth starts trickling out. And the corporations start using what I call the science wars, and they start using legal strategies and I spend a big part of the book trying to see what which of these strategies are important to take forward to contain a technology addiction technology of use. And I'm not going to talk about all of them I want to emphasize one of them which I think is particularly important. And that is the idea of self choice and personal responsibility. And this is a strong cultural item idea to be confused for ourselves, and very responsible for our choices. And that is exactly what tobacco industry, the food industry and the top industry have been using. I'll give some examples, when smokers are addicted to the tobacco industry, they went to court and the tobacco industry argued, well, you chose to smoke, but you're responsible for the lung cancer and other consequences and eventually for that. And they actually for decades, they want to solve you. Then, there is the food wars. So the same thing happens, a group of things the pilot is doing all the new because they ate every day of the dog, there will be, they suffer from diabetes. And again, don't argue, well, the teams, they chose to eat with us, nobody force them, nobody force them to superside their meals. So that they're responsible and not one this case, not only that the food industry went further, also states now have what's called cheeseburger laws. These laws basically provide that you cannot sue and the food industry for any food problems, any health problems resulting from food, and the prehungal in these laws in these laws are here to close faster self responsibility for people for their own health. Now, the tech industry's already been doing exactly the same. And game manufacturers were at the forefront of the fights. And when they were, they had to argue before the advocacy the advocacy had a workshop about food boxes and addictive feature in games. The first thing game manufacturers said, well, game is the one who want to play so they or their parents are responsible. But the tech industry went further. And they basically provide us a tools to think that you are making the choices. So the tech industry came out with these digital well being tools and I'm sure you're familiar with them. If you have an iPhone, you have screen time, you can see how much time you spend on the screen. You have to have an option of changing the settings so you will spend, you will live how much time you spend on a specific app you can even turn your phone great. If you go on Instagram, you can have these notifications saying you spent too much time you can turn it off for your child.  So the thing is, and not to mention parent control should never seem to really work. But the tech industry is basically provided us tools that do not go to the core of the issues. They did not eliminate the infinite scroll. They did not eliminate any of the many other addictive features. What they did was give us tools to make us feel that we have the choice. We're responsible and if we're successful. It's our fault. So, what's interesting about the self responsibility argument when you study the past and you can also see how it breaks. And in my book, I tried to show also the places, the vulnerability of the arguments. There are several places where this argument breaks. I'll talk about two of them. And one is when intent to addict is revealed. That's what happened with the tobacco companies for years want all the law foods or something shifted in the 1990s. Several things happened. One of them was that evidence leaked from the tobacco industry that they knew that cigarette or addictive and they were manipulating it. That was one thing. Now, we already have the evidence for technology, because Francis Holden I think had the most explicit evidence when she testified before Congress and said that years ago Facebook, which owns Instagram, basically had the information that Instagram was addicting users, they knew about the mental health problems. They knew the algorithms were basically there to make kids stay on for longer. And they made a decision. They made a decision to keep going and ignore it because that otherwise the revenues would be severely affected. So the evidence is already out there. The other place where the vulnerability, personal responsibility argument breaks is with children, because we don't think about children who people as people can make choices. We think of them as people who are unable to do that we're not responsible. We're more willing to accept paternalistic solutions for children. Again, looking at cigarettes. You know, in most states, kids under 21 cannot buy cigarettes. Doesn't mean they will not buy cigarettes, but some will still do that for your wealth. And we don't have these kinds of provisions for adults. And so basically, schools are required to their way kids and to send the beam out to their parents. You cannot imagine this happening at work you cannot imagine going to work and having your employer weigh you and sending her results somewhere. So there are lots of things that happen with children but do not happen for adults. And we're already seeing this most of the proposals to restrict especially social networks are targeted at protecting children partly because of the concerns concerning public health complications and poverty because their children. So the idea of the book is that we have to exert pressure in the public sphere in several ways. One is exerting pressure on technology companies to redesign their technologies. The other one is about changing how we use spaces, how we use technology and spaces. So I'll talk first of all about redesign, and there are many ways to do this but I want to explain what I mean by redesign. So I'll give an example from the food area. There's somebody called Frank Romero. He passed away the age of something. So for America in the 1950s, the cover the trans fat is bad. Nobody listened for years. He published an article since 1957. Still nobody listened. Well it took him decades but what's interesting is what happened to him actually eventually not just him but other people gave enough data to the FDA. The FDA in 2006 eventually required food companies to label the trans fats in the products.  So what happened consumers became aware of the issue, but even more importantly food companies became aware is actually a good thing to have zero trans fat on your product. So they start changing the composition of the food. So from 2006 to 2012 trans fats levels and blood tests of Americans went down 58%. So that's what I mean by redesign exacting pressure so the product is changed. Now there are lots of ways to exert pressure, which I've discussed in the book, class action legislation, but I want to give one example here. So let's talk for a second about Minecraft. So Minecraft is a game which was sold in education on game. Many, many parents I know regretted the moment they gave this game to their kids because they could not get the kids off. Now, imagine now we know from the research on warnings that if the warning is very, very clear and very sure, very blunt but also at the point that we have to make a decision. It's much more effective. So imagine if you parent had to download a game for a kid, but instead of having just the age or violence it actually set the level of addiction. You cannot imagine in parents they would download that game for the kid. What I predict would happen was would be that the game companies would change some of the features which are the most addictive ones, and the game will become less addictive. So that's an example of pressure for redesign. I want to talk a bit about spaces. So spaces, spaces can be in be if you can design space technology overuse. If any of you have been recently to any of the New York City airport. You cannot sit on a table without two to four iPads, you cannot have a conversation you can only have space to read a book with no space. So that's an example of designing for overuse. There are ways to design differently. And I want to talk about a really, really important space and I think that's the classroom, because what I did in this book I documented the legal movement that's all really going on I spoke to lawyers and I wanted to emphasize that even though I interviewed who has in the book this is not just a legal thing. I think people can do a lot in one place where people can do a lot is influencing school choices on the school level and on the district level. The federal policy for technology in the classroom is the more difficult to do the better than the policy for over a decade. Now, the mega study did not find that more technology, technology actually taught kids better than teachers, not only that, even the goal of bridging the gaps was not fulfilled for that. On top of that, we have tons of evidence of how streams are not good for kids, our kids don't learn well from screens. There was some kind of spouse for a while because teachers didn't really want to adopt new teaching measures. So, for one, things with standing still memory got a pandemic, and teachers had no choice. So they started adopting gains. So they adopted Roblox, and they adopted their Minecraft, and they started posting the lectures on tech talk. And the pandemic is over, but teachers now teach in a different way. And it's important to understand that what happens in school does not stay in school because if my practice school work, then how can you tell your kid to get off my path at home. If you're on screen for hours in school, your homework will be on screens as well. So, there are so many points of change, just thinking about how to use technology in the classroom. I'll just, I'm giving you some of the examples. So, right now, the policy is maximizing technology and more technology than better. And is this specific technology better than a teacher? How about evaluating? Maybe it's good to have game quizzes because kids are more motivated, but maybe just more convenient for a teacher doesn't have to grade. And are the kids really learning? These are decisions we've had to be examined. Now, limiting screen, according to age, it's clear that younger kids have second-world screen time, and a lot of screen time is not good for anybody all the way to 18. There could be guidance for that. And now, evaluating existing technologies. We, at law schools, people always argue about laptops and law schools. I always allowed laptops because I could not read my own handwriting, so I thought I could not ban laptops, but I never ever understood why we have Wi-Fi. Why do I have to teach when my students are on Instagram or shopping on Amazon at the same time? Now, these are law students, but to think about a middle school child or a high school child, how are the kids supposed to learn when at the same time they can go and take talk? So, evaluating. Is the Wi-Fi classroom adding to the educational experience or attracting cell phones in school? France banned cell phones in school, not just in classrooms, but during recess because the kids were not talking to each other. In the US, some individuals' schools banned laptops. In schools, sometimes they banned as well in recess, but most schools didn't even evaluate it. Again, maybe kids need the cell phones because that makes them feel safer than being in connection with people, but maybe not, at least evaluated. So, the idea is that we have to stop blaming ourselves for failing and to target our energies somewhere else, shifting from our internal and home battles towards the public sphere. I want to emphasize, by no way do I mean returning to a screenless, unconnected world. I just think we never ever made a decision of what is the best balance for us. And I think we should make it a pandemic of the opportunity to think about whether we want to create a better balance. So, thank you. Thank you. We'll now begin a Q&A. So, if folks in the room have any questions, Helby and I will pass around the mic. Thank you very much for the interesting talk. So, I'm a communication professor, obviously I'm doing the research on mobile video and all that. Although the empirical, the evidence is a bit mixed though, so in the addiction side, because if you actually think about the cause of it, an addiction has a time increase. We could think about different measure of the addiction first, and then if the time increase actually leading to the difficult outcome, then there is another conditional variable we have to think about. Because I think that that's more important, just think about addiction in a way that time, because as you mentioned at the last part of your talk is that because teenagers and kids actually connect to the video game because they actually enjoy not only that, they actually increase their social character. And then all your study in the social media actually increase of crime actually has no impact on actually classroom, you know, longing. So, there is some of the conflict, the evidence, although I definitely agree that, you know, some of the problem actually exists, that my question would be that comment be that how we actually find the nuance, the argument here because, as you said, there's no way we could actually solve the problem from those kind of devices. Right, so thank you. So I think that there are two things here. There's the issue of whether it's time that said creating the problem. So I think for social networks that have been a lot of research to see whether mental health is just a result of using social networks generally, or whether it's more time. And the data does show that the people who are most affected with those who spend more time on social networks. Now for games also games that's been actually it's interesting because there's been more data than for anything else because the more research on this topic than social networks. So the data shows that 129% depending on the study qualified for what the WHO or is it decided is a gaming addiction.  So I think there's definitely a relationship between people who qualify for clinical addiction to the time that they spend on this kind of gaming. That's a very interesting talk. In your talk you mentioned about old parents feeling powerless. In my experience, I have come across two kinds of powerless parents, one that each people having just one or two kids, and since they want to pass away their heritage. So they feel powerless. If they have many children, they do not care about one child being rebellious, but at the same time if the parent is poor, then if they depend upon the children for survival, then again they feel powerless. So in what context did he mention about parents being feeling powerless. Okay, so I think that's a great question. So first of all, yes, obviously parents in certain environment have very serious problem thing about and this may not be the first issue for them. They may be grappling with poverty, they're grappling with crime, and these will be more in their mind. On the other hand, as I said, I ran an outreach program. I ran a program in six schools in New York or New Jersey, and it was a broad spectrum of schools. So we had public schools in Newark, private schools in Manhattan. So yes, so maybe some of the parents in some of the public schools were less concerned with the kids were affected. The kids were affected in the very same way. So it's true that some parents would think more about other issues first, but I don't think the problem is a class problem. The problem affects all of us. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for your interesting speech. And I think this topic is also really important. I'm when and as a father of two children. I really concerned about nowadays, young children, they just live in this kind of environment that they are surrounded by the internet computer 3C product. And as a parent, I also want them to have has the ability to access these kind of technology and to have a connection with the social network. I don't want them to, you know, adapt to the internet. So would you provide provide us a better way to find a balance between these two sides. Thank you. I really appreciate your problem because I think you really express the company, the difficult place parents are at, because first of all, as a society, we believe that technology will promote progress. And parents in the way believe that the kids need technology to do well in life. On the other hand, they're seeing what's happening to their kids, they're seeing that they're not connecting that they look tired, they're spending so much time on the screens. And so they don't know what to do. So I think the goal is to redesign our technologies. I didn't talk about it so much in my talk, but I think there are certain principles that we could implement because I think in a way our vision is narrow. We think about the technologies the way they are now. So we think, oh, if it will not be social network so we know free speech for kids. No, there could be other group connections online where kids can maybe connect without likes and comments. But there are certain things which are easier than saying all social networks have to go. There are certain, and there are certain designs which are addictive and are there for no reason, but to get to the back on the platform. So what I think the most vital one from all of them is snaps tricks. So snap streets is a design on a snapchat where a kid gets a sauce streak with a friend, they send the street to friend and live 24 hours, they get the street back they started the street between them. And now they start counting the days and it goes on this char and snaps here to 123 days, 150 and they get special badges, and they do it with all the friends. That's a reliable job. Now you don't have to put anything in the street you don't have to put a photograph, you have to put any content. The only goal of this thing is to get people back on the platform snapchat. So they can see the ads. What happens if you don't, if you can't miss one, it's all gone. This is devastating. Kids use the full charge of their friends. And that's why so many find your own at home with the parents that you did not do your homework and taking your phone away. They didn't just take their phone away, they took their friends away. So, so there are, there are many reasons at this which are so I would say no hanging fruit. There are there for no good, but to keep us online for longer. But there's a bigger issue. And the bigger issue is the business model just further before because as long as we have a business model in which time is a resource, they'll always be new designed to get us to stay there for longer. So I think that's more time consuming. Eventually, this business model would have to change. And there's antitrust measures against big tech which creates some change in the tech industry, for example, if Meta which owns Instagram Facebook and what's up, who is working up, we might eventually see more competition and more innovation, maybe different models like pay as you go or we have some subscription models as it is. But this obviously takes time. So I think a big thing I have noticed and I wrote about in the book, it's not one thing. It's not going to be one magic, you know, Supreme Court cases will say let's take all the addictive features away. There's going to be lots of action and then different venues that will change things. We have a question from our virtual audience. Any thoughts about making smartphones illegal for anyone younger than 18 and allowing flip phones only for children younger than that. And the context is that in America specifically, there is a lot of gun violence in schools and generally need to be able to call their family. So, think the answer is not not go so far. But I think that's another one of the principles I discussed is we don't have something in the middle. We have flip phone for kids and we have small phones, which connect us to everything which the default options are more connection and more notifications and limitless time. So, I think, if we had in the awesome, you know, some stuff called like a live phone which gives you an option to only have some of the features like a Google map or, or an alarm and balls. You know, Apple came up with a phone which would give you a middle of the way solution. I think parents could give it to their kids doesn't mean the kid has to be on, you know, the internet on social networks on games, but the kids could find their way home they could connect. I do not have something that's, that's really, really, really good option right now. And there's a reason for that, because I think that Apple Google want to give us really good options. Thanks a lot for your talk I very much enjoyed it. I have a very, very specific question about the book that I read Oliver Bergman's time management for mortals I'm not sure if you know the book. But I think in his book he talks about business models, which are contributing to that problem but also the underlying urge of people to get distracted. So could you maybe comment on that as well. So I did not read that specific book, but so I'm not sure which business model is referring to, could you give me an example. The business model mentions the role of corporations designing designing websites and apps in this addictive way. So he's just I mean his claim. Yeah, so his claim is basically that yeah this exists so these tools are designed in a way to make us addictive but he claims that even when these tools are less addictive. We still have this urge to seek for a distraction and yeah so. Right, so I think it's true and that's I think when I start out I said that basically tech companies use our human vulnerabilities. I mean we want to be like teams have always wanted to be like, but when you take the fact he's want to be accepted. And you put them on Instagram, and they know where what everybody is doing all the time and how great they look it just makes things worse. Yes, so we always will have trouble paying attention will always have trouble, you know, focusing when we need to, but right now, when I'm sitting there and I have three email accounts. And I'm trying to check all these other things online all these windows are open. And my phone is beeping that's making it a bit too much and I'm never going to change completely who we are, but we're gotten to a point that we are is changing and that's part of the problem. Wonderful. Well, it's no other questions. Professor Grinch and you, if you don't mind maybe sticking around and maybe folks might have additional, but thank you so so much thanks everyone for joining today. Maybe a last round of applause.