Dominika, can you hear me? I think, OK. Hi, everyone. My name is Dominika Lesota. I'm a 20-year-old climate justice activist from Poland and is a member of the Global Youth Movement Fridays for Future. Together with my friends from across Europe, I used to fight for a safe and just future. But on 24th of February, we stopped fighting for a future. Because when your friend from Kharkiv goes you to say that he is running down to a bomb shelter because, as I quote, it all started, Dominika. And he promises to call you soon, whatever that means, you know that this fight is no longer for any hopeful tomorrow. It is about survival and it is about now. From that paralyzing Thursday morning in the cold February, the Russian aggression became the new daily reality for us. And what came to light is that the addiction of our societies to the fossil fuels, most importantly, Putin's fossil fuels, was making the unspeakable possible each day with nearly a billion euros spent on gas, oil, and coal by the European Union to Putin every single day.  Facing a fossil fuel war in the continent that for decades has been repeating its promise that no such brutality would ever happen again. But to say that all of this was unpredictable wouldn't be true. Because as Marian Turski, a very, very renowned Polish survivor of Auschwitz, once said, wars do not fall from the sky. And the current war did not fall from the sky either. But it is a result of a political and economic system that is designed by those in power for crises and for wars to happen. We have been betrayed, and I as a young person, especially if you'll be betrayed, having to repeat for all of those years at school in Poland that we will never make this happen again. I feel betrayed by the politicians who for decades have been choosing profits and friendship with dictators over people, over our lives, over my life, over the lives of my Ukrainian friends. And so what we are left with now is a world in which my friend in Ukraine needs to hide in a basement to survive, a world in which a friend from India texts me that thousands of the people in her town suffer from unlivable heatwaves, a world in which my friends in Uganda have to worry if they wouldn't be forced out from their houses so that another oil pipeline can be built, or a gas infrastructure, as happens in Senegal right now, a world in which ordinary citizens are left with a choice of either financing fossil fuels and Putin's war or running into energy poverty, and at the same time a world in which oligarchs, politicians, and fossil fuel CEOs can reap record profits because of the crises, the wars, and human tragedies. To them, all of these are financial opportunities. I do not want to live in a world like this. I think none of us deserves to live in a world like this, especially because there is an alternative. In Fridays for Future and in many indigenous communities and many resistant movements, there's a very famous slogan that another world is possible because it is. Our economies do not have to run on energy that is stained with the blood of people or distractions of ecosystems worldwide. Our political systems can be something more than a TV show featuring old white men addicted to money and power. They really can be something more than that. Our societies are more than ready for a transformation towards a fossil-free reality that puts people first and leaves no one, and I mean no one, behind. This other reality is within reach. But until it becomes real, we fight. I, as a climate activist since 24th of February, together with my friends from Ukraine and across the world, we have been fighting daily to demand those in power to stop betraying us, to stop their political theater, because what they do is a theater. It's not the duty that they were hired by citizens to serve. So we've been all over the place. We've been across Europe and Poland, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy. Everywhere we could go, we went, and we've been fighting. And the fight and the resistance is growing, because if you hear any opinions that because of the war, we have to sacrifice climate policy, you have to realize that you're talking to a very cynical person or someone that is completely not aware of how these things are connected because they are. And especially us people who care, who have the sensitivity and who have the energy and power to change things, we have to do our best to do so. And so I urge you to fight, because every degree of the warming matters, every fraction of a degree that we're able to limit matters, every million of euros that we're able to divert from Putin matters, every infrastructure, every oil cargo, every gas pipeline, every coal exploitation, we are able to stop matters. During this war, I think I realized finally that it's not that the end of the world is coming up. It's that ends of multiple worlds are happening right now. And we might not even be aware of it, because my friend who had to run down to the basement and then run away from Kharkiv and move away from his home, he lost his world. Because the friends in Uganda that I very gratefully have, whose villages, whose communities have to be completely destroyed because total energies from France comes there to build their eco pipeline, the world's longest pipeline, they are already losing a world. Many of the worlds have been lost, and we might not even be aware of it. And so I think the times that we're living in, you know, we are not able to save everything, but there are many worlds that we are able to save, that there are many worlds that we're able to treasure. And I think given the fact that some people in this world are so obsessed of sending the human to Mars, maybe instead of building alternative realities somewhere outside in the universe, we have to see the universe that we have in front of our eyes and make sure it's safe. On a final note, I know we're in Poland. We're in a country that has been, you know, for decades faced enormous challenges when it comes to transition away from fossil fuels. I think I, as a young person, to me the transition isn't an option. Then I think this war and the climate crisis that we're living in really made me aware that the fossil fuel phase out is not a nice to have. It's our only option to have any kind of livable future or a livable present. And so we need to fight for the just transition as if our lives depend on it because they do. And so I urge you to fight. I'm glad I'm not alone because sometimes during this period, which has been extremely dark for the past months, it felt as if the world is collapsing and I have nothing, no space to do anything. And I'm alone in that, but I'm not. And so I'm glad you're here. But we have a big job to do. But I'm happy we are in this together. And I hope that from today, we can leave this place and save some worlds that are left still. Thank you. Thank you. Summertime in Europe, people enjoying their vacation, talking about fun activities, sometimes being afraid of the new COVID-19 variation. The war in Ukraine captures our attention. But what about the climate crisis in this hot summer? This matter still seems for too many people not urgent. The climate crisis is more critical than ever. Kenyan families, for example, can no longer produce food after years of drought. People from Bangladesh are increasingly falling prey to cyclones and tidal waves. Residents from Belgium and Germany, whose homes were completely destroyed exactly a year ago, still don't have new housing. Why are still so many people neglecting these facts and our actions not taken? Climate change is about more than just nature. It's about justice and the future of humanity. More specifically, that's one of my peers, young people who today often send the strongest signals and come together in the streets to demand action. If real action is not following, children and teenagers will be the biggest victims. Isn't this convincing enough to take action? There's a lot of talk about global warming, but pertinent change is yet to come. And meanwhile, time is ticking away. This leaves many young people together with me speechless. It seems that many adults do not take responsibility for the generation that will come after them and that only the short-term perspectives attract their attention. Are people really only thinking about money and about the short-term? Why is this? Surely, the climate is well reported in the media. Global warming can no longer be denied. I would suspect adults are interested in the future of us, their children and grandchildren. I assume a lot has to do with the lack of accurate information. Real change will only come if we are all properly informed. Top scientists are still too often ignored. Information change our mindset. And that, in turn, change our behavior. That's the power of information. That's how we have impact. Let's listen, too, and unite behind the science. Riding our bikes, more isolating our homes, eating less meat, and changing our consumption patterns have a real direct impact and also save money. To get accurate information, the importance of collective education is crucial. It should be there for everyone. After all, a school is a place where you can learn a lot, where you make friends for life and where, especially, every young person should have equal opportunities. I really do wish for every child to have a good education and living environment. Also, girls in Kabul, students in Kiev or young people in Palestine. It is a very foundation to provide equal opportunities. Sorry. Together, we must cost the strong base of information. The business leaders of tomorrow are in school today. This is a prerequisite to work on the climate crisis. On our earth, we are also all connected to each other. We all share the same planet, and the climate crisis makes it clear that everything is connected. Climate, education, social justice, oil, war, and our behavior cannot be separated. Solutions exist, both on a small scale, in our own behavior, as on a large scale, through international cooperation. By joining hands, we can meet these challenges. All people are connected. So let's not polarize and instead focus on what UNITE says. Let's commit to accurate information and constantly put those sustainable glasses on. Working together to minimalize climate change can be an invitation to dream together about the desired future of young people, about quality of education, about equality, about how we want to live and interact with our planet in the future. It is a positive invitation that we can embrace together. I came here two days ago from Brussels to Warsaw, and I didn't want to take a plane because it all fuels the war and the climate crisis. Still, the train hours and prices were far higher than those of the plane. So I came by bus, 23 hours long. In the durable Europe of tomorrow, we really need to invest more in night trains and other public transports to avoid these irrationally long sustainable journeys. To connect and inspire over the world, these investments are really necessary. Finally, it is important to include many young people in our search for solutions. So I thank the Green European Foundation for inviting young activists for this keynote speech. After all, the climate story is about our future, so we have the right to be taken seriously and to have a seat at the table at every level.  Will you join us in this positive story, connected to a brighter future? The youth will be grateful to you. Hello, everyone. My name is Maria Kurina. I'm a human rights defender from Ukraine. I was raised and born in Lugansk. It's eastern parts of Ukraine. And I haven't been at home for eight years, as well as my family. I came from a political opposition, pro-Ukraine, an opposition in eastern Ukraine. And it meant not to fight peacefully, it meant to survive every day. I'm really, really grateful to be here in Warsaw. Especially, because here I feel true solidarity, sincere solidarity, and sincere understanding what is going on now in the European continent. In my peaceful life, I've been teaching Japanese language in my alma mater university, Lugansk National University, and been dreaming about international relations career. I wouldn't have thought in even my nightmare, probably, to stand in front of an audience, convincing that Ukrainians have the right to live free, have the right to choose their own future, and have the right to be a democratic, transparent country with a rule of law and human rights priorities. I'm really grateful for all the support which Europe has shown already. I'm grateful for the fight which Europe joined. And I would like to express my gratitude, but I also would like to talk more about what is going on every day, every second in my own country.  I would like to be a voice of all those who are silenced now in Ukraine, all those who have been fighting for Ukraine and with colonial Russia, not even these last eight years with the start of occupation of Crimea and were in my homeland, Donbas. This colonial war, this colonial resistance has been going for 300 years, unfortunately, taking the best and the most prominent active representatives of my nation. And currently, all my friends are fighting. Some are fighting, women and men are fighting in front line from the very first day of the full-scale invasion. Some are fighting the way they can, finding their abilities to advocate. I can tell three little stories about three different generation of Ukrainians and different gender and different background. Those three are Roman Ratushny, Irina Danilovich and Maxim Butkevich. Roman Ratushny was a young, underaged person when the revolution of dignity started. He was one of those beaten in the middle of Kiev in the heart of Europe as a student, a schoolboy during the revolution of dignity first days. Roman was fighting big infrastructural monsters who wanted to build high-rise residential buildings in the middle of Kiev in a very great natural area. He has been persecuted by the government and he was hiding, but he fought this war. Now this land is not occupied by some residential buildings. Roman decided to join Ukrainian armed forces at the beginning in February of the full-scale invasion. Roman had a birthday lately. He could have been 25 only last days. He laid his life in Kharkiv region. And we have to continue to fight for these kind of people because such a person like Roman could have been the leader of our democracy in Ukraine. He could be a role model for other European nations and he paid the highest price for all of us, for my nation and for European values. Irena Danilovich is a nurse in Crimea who have been fighting with COVID inequality in labor and also she was contributing to our media as a citizen journalist. You know that journalism was suppressed in Crimea for all these years. Media were attacked and expelled. Free media was expelled from Crimea. She was contributing, not disclosing her surname and name. We have been searching for Irena for 13 days. She was kept in communicator in Crimea. We have been searching in every detention center in Russia and in Crimea. And only when we made outcry publicly internationally we found out that she has been held in local FSB building in Crimea for eight days. She was exposed to ill treatment. She was fed only once a day, taken to bathroom once a day and threatened to be taken to Mariupol where high hostilities were taking place or to the local forest. If she wouldn't say what those so-called law enforcement were asking her to say. She went through lie detector and she was forced to sign blank papers, blank white papers in potential exchange for freedom. Once she's done this, she was told that some 200 explosives in her bag were found. Now she's facing political prosecution, criminal, motivated prosecution. And she can face six years of imprisonment just because being vocal telling the truth, what atrocious human rights, gross violations are happening independently. And the last story is a story about very prominent and very special human rights defender and a friend of mine and a colleague of all human rights community in Ukraine, Maksim Budkevich. All his life, he's older than me, all his life, he was there to help those left behind. He was one of the most sincere anti-fascism activists in Ukraine. He was helping migrants and those persecuted. He was a BBC journalist and also contributing to different local medias in Ukraine. Maksim told in his Facebook that he put on hold all his human rights defense activities and he joined territorial defense and later the armed forces of Ukraine. 24th of June, when I had to speak in UN about atrocities Russia is doing in Ukraine, I got the message with telegram video where Maksim was kept by Russian forces. Maksim and his soldiers, he was a commander. And now Russian propaganda is telling worldwide that Maksim is commander of Nazi regiment, Nazi division in the Ukrainian armed forces. Can you believe in such perverted reality? The person who was finding peace, a pacifist, sincere true pacifist for all his life now is threatened. We don't know about his whereabouts. His family hasn't been contacted even once for all these two weeks. And we can, of course, unfortunately think that he can be tortured. We saw some signs of bruises on his face, no matter he was saying he's okay on this video. And we also can predict that they can create some a bad scenario, for example, to prosecute him for terrorism or whatever. The person who spent all his life protecting those left behind, the person who was promoting peace in Europe, he's known in Eastern Europe and in every corner. We ask for public international outcry for Maksim and his soldiers. Yes, he is prisoners of war and prisoners of war can be kept, but we ask for them to be released and for international humanitarian law be protecting them. What else can I say? My reality is war balance work reality, work war reality. Every day I'm exposed to monitoring and advocating about forced mobilization of my compatriots in the compatriots, about forced deportation and separation of families, about silencing and threatening thousands of Ukrainian active local communities, teachers, journalists, human rights defenders, activists, cultural actors and even religious leaders in the occupied territories. My reality is listening to some evidences of children who were taken to Russia and their grandparents have no idea where they are. And my reality is watching the hundreds of square kilometers of my land with grain and with wheat being burned now just because we are fighting for our democracy, just because we are fighting for international rule of law for our future. My reality is facing the threat of global hunger and my friends around the world from Africa, from South America contacting me and asking, is it possible to export grain from Ukraine where the Black Sea will be unblocked? And I have no answers now. My reality is seeing medical facilities or shopping malls or business centers targeted specifically during the day where there are a lot of people, civilians, innocent children there. And my reality is to know that my family is under constant threat and my friends are also under constant threat. Europe has shown immense leadership during the global pandemic. We were all united and those who had to receive vaccination who were left behind, they received it. I believe that this authoritarian dictatorship regime is a new plague, is a new virus in European continent that is already spreading around to other continents. And I believe that European Greens, which are the most progressive part of society in Europe, can take leadership and start to fight together with us in this battle to fight this virus. If we can unite, we can fight it and we can stop this plague spreading around the world. My colleague who invited me to this event once asked me where do you find the energy to fight when every day you receive news from the frontline, you receive news about the deaths of civilians, you receive news that your parents are listening to air raid alarms or have to hide. They don't have energy now to hide in basement, they hide in the bathroom because there are two wall rule now in Ukraine is the priority. I find my energy because I cannot betray those generations fighting before us and fighting now. I cannot betray this generation fighting for climate. And we cannot deliver climate changes. We cannot deliver women rights empowerment. We cannot deliver human rights defense if there is not peace in this continent. And unfortunately peace has to be armed better than dictatorship. In my nightmare only I can imagine that I will say it as a human rights defender where a human life is a priority. But unfortunately, Maxim Butkevich Roman Ratushny also were not prepared to take arms in their hands being journalists or activists, but they had to do it. I can finish with one song that also inspires me always with Nina Simone, American African singer and civil rights activist. I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart. Remove all the bars that keep us apart. I wish you could know what it means to be me. Then you'd see and agree that every man should be free. Let's make Europe and world free from dictatorship. Thank you very much. Thank you Dominika, Simon and Maria for your speeches. Hopefully people will listen, hopefully inspiring. So thank you very much.


Hi, and welcome to the very first episode of Screen Time Reset. I'm your host, Lauren Pear. For the uninitiated, Screen Time is the time we spend on smartphones, tablets, TVs, and computers. And most of us have noticed that the time we're spending on these devices has increased dramatically from the past decade or so when smartphones really became ubiquitous. And most of us kind of just fell into our habits with these devices. They do a lot of cool things and we just sort of adopted them without really foreseeing how central they've become to our lives and some of the unintended consequences they have on our brains, our children, even our social and political fabric. But now there's been some time, so research is coming out. We're able to see patterns emerge out of anecdotal accounts. And so the idea of this show is that armed with this information, it's time for us, both individually and as a society, to have a Screen Time reset, where we're resetting our relationships with screens so that we are consciously choosing our relationship and trying to harness the benefits while minimizing the harms. So that's the focus of the show. Our first mission is to educate on what screens are doing. And the second goal is to come up with solutions and really to facilitate those solutions when possible as well. Also, the focus is going to start on children and families. This is for two reasons. First, children are more susceptible to the seductive pull of technology. They don't have the prefrontal cortex development to exercise self-control. And second of all, they're also more sensitive to the effects of screens. So we're going to start there. Which brings me, I'll transition now into the topic of this first episode, which is getting the perspective of teachers who have been in the profession for quite some time on how they're seeing children change as a result of screens and the implications this has for both their academic and professional success. I think teachers really have a unique perspective because they spend more time with kids than anyone else. And they also see new cohorts of kids year after year after year. So they have this longitudinal experience that is so valuable and I think it's really key to learning about, to understand what's happening with kids and screens. So with that, I am delighted and honored to introduce and welcome my first two guests who are Joe Clement and Matt Miles. They are teachers in Virginia with over 30 years combined teaching experience. They are fathers and they're also co-authors of a fantastic book, Screen Skooled, which I highly recommend. It is just full of excellent research, compelling anecdotes, and really incisive commentary on this topic.  And with that, thank you so much for joining us. Joe and Matt, could you please tell us a little bit more about your background, maybe some important things that I didn't mention? And also, how it is that you became so passionate about this topic of screens and kids? Well, thanks, first of all. Thanks very much for having us. And thanks for the very nice things you said about the book and the work that we've done. We, as you mentioned, we've got between us over 30 years of teaching experience. I have more of that 30 years than Matt does. But we both noticed probably six, eight years ago that things were changing in the classroom. They were changing for the worse. And so we started to think of reasons that might be happening. We do what's kind of talking informally about it. And we started to read everything we got our hands on about why this was happening. And was anybody else noticing it? And we found that there were lots of people noticing it, not just teachers, but brain researchers and family therapists and psychiatrists and psychologists. And the more we read, the more we realized that there was a common link. And that link was screen time, the overuse of screen time. If you look at the subtitles, it's about overuse. It's not about just all technology's bad, blah, blah, blah. We both come to this with the backgrounds in IT. So we didn't come into this with an agenda saying we're going to try and submarine the educational technology movement or anything. We came into it saying why are we pursuing to have more trouble in the classroom? And this would be the answer to the most common and the study that we read, the people that we talked to, this was it. So we started to look at what was out there for about schools, kids and schools and technology in the mix. And there was a lot out there about how to use more technology in the classroom. But the real thing about the science behind that or what's happening with kids' brain and so we decided well, if there's nothing out there, we should write a book. So we wrote it and thanks for having it there, we forgot to bring one. But thanks very much for having us again. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad that you clarified that point because I think it's so important that you guys are believers in tech, you're users of tech. And so I'd like to start off by asking you what you see the big benefits of tech being and what has to be in place for people and students to really take advantage of those benefits. I mean, we're obviously having all the tech is bad. There's a lot of productive science to technology. One of the things is Joe and I wrote a book using a lot of the research we got from the internet. We're having a Zoom meeting right now on our laptops. There's a lot of great things you can do with technology, but it's our experience that when we walk around our classroom, we're not seeing kids doing productive things with their cell phones or not seeing kids doing productive things with their laptop. They're not having Zoom meetings or they're not using Excel spreadsheets or coding or... Primarily what they're doing, the research backs this up is they're playing games, they're watching movies and they're watching movies with kids playing games. There's something spectacular about how they're using technology and the average kid is using technologies for or they're consuming over nine hours a day of digital technology almost entirely, you know, this old self-amusement and passive consumption. They're not creating, there's all kinds of, you know, not worthwhile things, but they're doing the problem is the productive side of technology is way less appealing to an analyst in mind than the entertaining side. So it becomes quite a challenge for a teacher to pull the kids from the entertainment and give them the real-life productive side and I think that's what a lot of the people do. Yeah, absolutely. I think that it makes teachers' jobs incredibly challenging and it's a little unfair that teachers it seems are always sort of holding the bag on this that they have to be more engaging when it's just like you can't be as engaging as Netflix or, you know, whatever else is not a fair benchmark. So from your broad experience, like I said, I love talking to veteran teachers because you have this longitudinal experience. How have you in broad strokes seen kids change over the past 10 or 15 years? Well, the main thing would be, well, there are a couple of key areas. The social interaction has really taken a hit. The their ability to focus, their ability to solve problems is big critically. Those are the four we typically talking about. Socially, they're just they have trouble looking through the eye.  That's not the worst thing in the world.  And what is what is somebody else experiencing? This other person that I'm talking to, what are they experiencing? And kids have gotten way worse over over years. And this again, this is just our observation. There's a lot of scientific evidence that they got worse at recognizing things like facial expression, body language and so on. The good news is that can be reversed. There are there are several like, I mean, for life, we're going to call them rehab camps where they sent kids for a week or 10 days or two weeks. And at the end of a week or two, even of being totally screen free, kids, empathy scores go way up and they start to recognize, oh, this means this person's in pain in some way. And and that makes obviously the job of the teacher more difficult with kids aren't empathic and they're not able to interact socially and and do simple things like say, hey, we didn't get the other work on this project. And if that becomes an assembly block, then, you know, we're really in trouble. They have wonderful time solving basic problems, following basic directions that almost we're trouble focusing. If you're if you believe it's out there in the literature, it's the average student is using three or four devices when they're trying to do homework, their phone, their laptop, their iPad, some sort of music player. And so their their attention has always been split from one device to the next. And then you get in a classroom where you're supposed to sit before it by minutes or an hour or an hour and a half. It's very, very difficult. And that has been that's become clear to us. So the last, like I said, six or eight years. And then one of the first things you were talking to other teachers, hey, are you seeing this and almost everybody we talked to you said, yeah, there are especially people who've been teaching for a while to agree. And that wasn't just in our ability to start to reach out to people in adjacent buildings and then around the country, eventually around the world. And it's a pretty ubiquitous trend. Great. Yeah. You know, my background is in economics and I also did some work in workforce development. And so I really think a lot about that that angle of it as well and what you're talking about the interpersonal skills, the problem solving, also deep thinking. These are things that I've identified. I think I coined the term human competitive advantages, which are things that we humans do better than computers. So it strikes me that in this age of AI, increasing rapidly and automation, that to stay relevant in the job market, it's really important that kids hone these human competitive advantages since they will be competing with AI and, you know, and automation.  Can you tell us a little bit about problem solving, too? I think that sometimes that can sound kind of vague. Do you have concrete examples of of how children's problem solving skills have declined? I mean, we've got, yeah, we've got plenty of it. And some of these are going to seem and, you know, you can look and say, well, that's just one kid in one situation. And if it was just one kid in one situation, that would be one thing. These are, we see things like this all the time. So the example of increasing the rate of any increase in them will travel at a different point. Right. And so the one that leads to my mind is that I teach economics and one of the simulations we do is productivity simulation, essentially, they're different sized teams and they have to cut out shapes in the team that have the high school activity, which is the output divided by the number of workers. When the game is usually won by the team will be the fewest kids because everybody has two pairs of scissors. You have 10 people on your team, we have two people on your team. So it's not really a fair game to start with, which is kind of the point of the exercise. But two years ago, I was doing this and every single time I've ever done this activity, the team of two has won it. And I noticed the team of two in this particular case where they were just sitting there and I walked out and I said, well, what's what's going on? And they said, well, we're we're trying to we're trying to fold the paper and cut and stuff. But these are right handed scissors and I'm left handed. One of the kids said, and I kind of stared at them and said, well, are you left handed to the other kid? And she said, no. And I said, OK, I helped them arrive at the idea that maybe they should change jobs. And so they, oh, oh, and they actually moved on how do you win a productivity simulation? And they didn't see an answer that translated to what they were trying to do. So they just gave up. And they were sitting there looking through their phone. And so that was the first time ever that a team of two had lost that game. And after that, I was really disturbed by the fact that it seemed like a pretty obvious thing. I think to most people that, oh, maybe the person's right handed, she needs the right handed scissors. The other person should be folding and tracing or whatever. And again, that's an isolated example of course. It doesn't mean that, well, OK, they obviously lost problem solving ability because they're cell phones. But there are things like that. I mean, we had a three hour show and we could cut in three hours worth of those. I always just add to that, too, you mentioned earlier the benefits of technology. But technology is used to exploit underlying skills. And when we see a lack of problem solving, critical thinking, creative thinking, they like research to become really hard for kids to do. Like Google is so intuitive, you don't need to be teaching kids how to use Google. They know how to type and click in a bar. What to search is where they really struggle. They don't know what to search. I say I'm probably storing the book about a kid who couldn't find any primary source, comes up to me. There's no primary source on my topic. And I said, well, what's your topic? And he said, the Bible. It's just an idea of so many kids are coming up and saying, well, I don't know what to search. And you have to kind of walk their hand. But technology is really great if you have underlying personal skills. Social media can amplify those. If you have creative thinking and problem solving skills, research and research databases are wonderful for that. But when kids grow up with this technological aid, they don't develop these underlying skills. And then there's nothing to be amplified. I mean, think about social media, for example. They don't have, a lot of kids grow up using social media. They're only method of communicating. And the quality of communications on social media is far superior to the community face to face. Definitely. And with that, we're going to take a break and then just come right back in and start up again. So we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Hi, my name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay and aloha. And we're back. So I wanted to, you know, Matt and Joe were just telling us about how problem-solving skills have deteriorated. And I was curious if you guys could tell us more about how children's thinking has changed and deep thinking in particular. Actually, I wanted to start by reading the first paragraph in the third chapter of your book, which is reclaiming your child's ability to think and then let you expand on it and maybe give us a concrete example. One of the hottest topics in education right now besides how to incorporate more technology into classrooms is how to improve students' critical thinking. Over the last decade, teachers across the country have been moaned and marked decline in their students' ability to think for themselves. Formal stable activities such as creative writing prompts, formulating opinions, developing arguments or answering open-ended questions are becoming increasingly challenging for students. Many teachers have simply abandoned them because their efforts to generate deeper levels of thought seemed futile. Everyone is trying to figure out ways to improve critical thinking in students, but no one seems to be trying to figure out why these skills were lost in the first place. I thought that was alarming. I mean, as someone who isn't from education, I didn't realize that teachers were having so much trouble with these staples as you put it. So could you tell us a little bit more about that and maybe give us an example to illustrate? Sure, I think there's a couple of things going on. One of the, and this is not necessarily technology related, but the standards-based movement where there was a period of 10 or so years at least in our state where there was a tremendous value based on fact recall. I know this thing happened and put some bubble in the red bubble and you get the prize or whatever. You get the coin in the test. But you combine that with the environment in which the students' brain is operating today, which is the Google environment, and all period long students are allowed to have their cell phones or their laptop. They're looking things up.  And that's not really thought. That's just looking things up. And so they will, we are outsourcing our ability to think critically about something and we're replacing that with just, okay, well Google will tell me what date this thing is or whatever, you can look anything up. And when you can't look at it, is it your opinion about something or what was the effect of this thing on this other thing or there's some bigger issue other than just knowing a piece of information as soon as we've been struggled. And one of the shared parts is that it used to be that it was easy when you would see in a prompt, what is your opinion of blah, blah, blah, you get, okay, I don't have to know your opinion for this one. And you could just write your answer in and really you were displaying your knowledge because you would say this is my opinion and this is why I think that it's on. Now it's very difficult to get that out of students. What's your opinion on the 14th Amendment, the human protection of the laws and you'll get an answer like that's in section one of the 14th Amendment. Okay, yes it is, but what does that mean or why does it apply to you and how does it apply to your life, your school life? That to me has been the sharing part about the declining and deep thoughts.  Why is this and can you explain this and that's where they kind of think like Google. You know, and this is, we were talking to a group of middle schoolers a couple weeks ago, we asked them, what are some productive things you do with your technology? Kid Rick, Rose Dandy said, I have this app on my phone and I take a picture of the math equation and it instantly gives me the answer. So that's, they had the most productive use of kids and you know, the teacher went out that that was cheating and he was baffled by that. It's like he gives me the right answer instantly and what Joe just said too is that it kind of illustrates the evolution of that idea is we are outsourcing a lot of our cognitive function to our devices. You know, one of these pro-tech articles we read, you know, even he, the writers opened with a quote from a girl said when I lose my phone, I lose half my brain and I totally agree. When you depend on your phone to generate right answers your brain isn't doing that and that teachers, our goal isn't, we don't have a quota of correct answers we need to if by the end of the day we want to see that you can do it, your brain can do it. You can generate a right answer on your own and unfortunately kids aren't giving themselves that chance. I equate the phone to, you know, teachers can relate to the story.  Before any other kid has a chance to think about it and that's detrimental because some kids need that minute to think and recall. Now we have our phones doing it. Of course, the phone is the kid that ruins every question, you know.  Now recall is so important to internalizing knowledge and recalling information of the future. And that's bringing up, or kind of going back to what Matt said earlier. Earlier generations, people our age and older had developed these skills. And so the phone or the laptop or whatever could enhance those. And some of us are certainly guilty about sourcing our ability to think, but if you're 14 or 10 or even 16 or 18, you've really not known much of life without a device to do those things for you. So if you never developed the ability to think deeply critically, to solve problems and so on, I don't know how we're expecting kids to be able to do that. And the temptation for that is always, well my phone won't know. And that's really a good way to dial like that. Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. It's really interesting. And it's interesting too, because there's a chapter in your book that I really love the title of the chapter, which was the myth of the technologically enhanced super kid. And it seemed like there was this big push to convince society and also within schools that technology was going to make this new generation of smarter, better critical thinking, more knowledgeable students. And it's so interesting to see what you're reporting because it seems like the absolute opposite. It wasn't just false. It was like the opposite of what happened. So how did that myth become so pervasive? And what was the research to back it up? Well, big tech companies paid a lot of money for research, but any time you hear about the technology or the technologically enhanced super kid, you're hearing about the focus on what can be done with technology. And it's this absolute focus on all the positives. And it'll even sometimes, if you people spin, like how kids are learning from video games problem about solving some dexterity we hear a lot about. So, but that's not how kids are actually using it. So if you thought of kids who's only using their spare time to research and write and compose and do digital photography, and that's how they spent the eight hours, nine hours a day on technology. Yeah, they may be better off than they were before, but that's not reality at all. And there's such overmuch a disconnect between what we see as kids and what parents see kids using technology to do. What we're told kids are being doing by companies who happen to be selling that thing's technology. Most parents or most teachers, people who interact with kids on a daily, they just wouldn't look at a kid on the phone and be like, I'm glad you're doing such wonderful things on that, but you turn on an ad or something like that. That's what you're inundated with is a research and we're being inundated as teachers is all again, focus on what they can do with it. And it's not at all based in what they are doing. Yeah. And there's a chapter in the book also called the education industrial complex. And part of your question was how did you get that way? And you got to mention this, but if you're a principal or a superintendent and your school district is struggling and schools all over the world are constantly being called on to do more, and it should be and held accountable for making sure the kids are reaching their potential. If you're a superintendent or principal and you're worried about the way your school system's doing and somebody comes to you and says, hey, we got the answer. We've got, and they take it to lunch or whatever and they give you a quick presentation and they show you all these cool tools and things like that can be done. You're gonna buy in.  So that's a lot of bang for the buck for the tech industry to focus on schools, particularly in big school districts. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of alarming, but that's the reality and it's important to realize that. So, we are running short on time and unfortunately I wanted to delve more into sort of the complaints about employers these days with the newest batch of students that are graduating and there's some really fantastic examples in this book on that. I can know having worked last year for a state senator that the business leaders in our district were certainly complaining about interpersonal skills, motivation to show up on time and a lot of the things that are hit on in this book that are so important and again, there's a great discussion in here on it. To wrap up, you know, I like to be solutions focused. I mean, what are your takeaways and what do you see as a solution to this issue? Yeah, I think the first thing is you have to have a reasonable expectation of what kids can do with technology. A child's still a child and you can't just hand a kid something that is a toy for eight or nine hours a day and then expect them to realize the full potential. We have to have reasonable expectations. If you want a kid to use more productive, less entertaining side of technology, you have to have parental or teacher oversight. Over that you have to keep them on task and you have to pull them out of that entertainment and have reasonable expectations for kids. The great thing about kids is they're always just gonna be kids. So that's, I think, the person, the foremost. Second thing which is that parents have to ask themselves and their teachers and their schools how is this thing, this device or this app or this way of doing things better than the non-digital version, the non-screen-based version, the analog version, for lack of a better word, like if you're talking about online textbooks, there are a lot of school districts now are going to online textbooks. That's a cost savings, I guess. But is it better for kids, is that really what's better for kids? Well, there's tremendous amount of research showing that people, not just kids, people learn better from paper textbooks, not digital textbooks. So we have to have a reason that we're using a digital tool. We have no problem at all with using digital tools or any kind of tools when it makes sense, when it's better with the best available option for a kid. For example, I would give, I had an astronomy class in college and the inside front cover had a star map and the book was printed in Iowa that I would school in Virginia. And so the star map was good some of the time for part of the map if you were in Iowa. And that's not very helpful, that's a paper version of a star map. But if you put Google Sky on your phone for free, you can point it at the sky. During the day, and it'll tell you what's in the sky or point it at the ground or point it at the other side of the earth and dump. So that's really useful. That's a way better use of, that is far superior than a paper star map. So the second thing we would urge all parents and teachers to ask is why is this thing better that we're doing with this digital tool? How is it better than non-digital? And the last thing is don't be afraid to speak up. If you're a parent that schoolwork systems are surprising or accepted as a parent, especially over teachers and students who they're used to complaining about things, parents can impact change.  Try to say, this is what, is there an alternative to this because I'm trying to set screen limits for my child and this is making it very difficult. So to speak up, it'll be the instrument of change, I guess. I was just to check on parents have a key role in all this. Yeah, I'm completely with you guys there and I think that's such an important point. And that leads me to make a quick announcement that I wanna make that next month I'm gonna be starting a group or a network of parents who, if you're watching this episode, you agree this is an issue and you wanna elevate this issue in your school, shoot me an email at screentimereset at gmail.com. Next month I get to try, it'll probably be a Facebook group connecting parents so that they really have that support because a lot of the parents I talk to who care about this issue, they feel very alone, they're not connected or aware of the other parents at their school that care about this issue. And even if it's via Facebook and it's not all from the same school, just having that support, people to learn from, people to get encouragement from, I think that the passionate parents are out there and we need to connect them. So I said this show is solutions focused and that's a way that I hope to help facilitate that. And with that, I want to thank Matt and Joe so much for being with us again. I also wanna say one more time, fantastic book. I've read it myself, it's completely marked up, so good. Please get it. And I also wanna thank the great people at Think Tech for making this all possible.  I really commend you and honor you for that, especially since it can sometimes be uncomfortable and I'm sure there's plenty of other amusing content vying for your attention. So thank you so much and until next time.


Performance Lab Mind or Mindlet Pro? Which entropic supplement should you choose? Let's find out! Hey, what's up? Greg here, the founder of your inception. Welcome to my channel, where you can learn top secrets about entropics. Subscribe below to start a journey. Today, in this video, we're gonna talk about two very interesting entropic stacks. I know those names sound a bit strange, or very similar at least, there's a lot of mind in it, so Mindlet Pro, Performance Lab Mind, but you will eventually get used to those names. I'm pretty sure about it. In this video, we're gonna talk about the similarities between both products. We're gonna look at the differences, and at the end of the video, I'm gonna share with you which one to choose. So if you're ready, let's begin. So the first important similarity between both entropic supplements is that they were designed and developed by the same company, Optinutra. Now, some of you might know that, but I'm pretty sure most of you have no idea that Mindlet Pro and Performance Lab Mind come from the same company. The reason for that is that they are marketed as completely different products. They are sold by different brand names, so they basically look like they come from different brands, but the reality is they come from the same brand. Now, this is great because you can be sure that both contain very high quality entropics, but at the same time, it doesn't be troubling because you might find that at least one of them have certain issues because why would one brand develop two very similar products and sell them under different brand names? I mean, it doesn't make much sense, does it? So another similarity among both products is that they are both or they were both designed to improve your cognitive performance. So that was the goal with Performance Lab Mind and with Mindlet Pro to basically help you increase your focus, improve attention, improve your memory, and that's what they do really, really good. And the third similarity is that both contains high quality entropics, they're non-GMO, they have no additives, no artificial colors, no other ingredients that you don't want to have in high quality supplements. And that's true and that's similar for both of the entropic supplements. So as you can see, they have a couple of stuff in common, but let's look at the differences because there are quite many important differences. So first of all, Mindlet Pro consists of 11 entropics and Performance Lab Mind only has four. And that's a huge and the most important difference that you should know about. So Mindlet Pro is much more advanced, much more complex entropic supplement, whereas Performance Lab Mind is, it does contain a few very high quality and very good entropics, but if you compare it to Mindlet Pro, it is just more complex, more advanced. And the reason for that is that Mindlet Pro was developed to be used as a standalone entropic supplement, whereas Performance Lab Mind was developed to be combined with other entropics or entropic stacks, basically. And that's the main difference here. And because of the difference in ingredients, then Mindlet Pro provides much better short-term effects. It increases your focus, it makes you feel better, it helps you perform better in the short-term, and you can definitely feel some effects when you take Mindlet Pro there, mild effects. There is no doubt about it, but you can feel it. Whereas when you look at the Performance Lab Mind, yeah, you know, sometimes I was able to feel some effects, sometimes I felt nothing. It's really hard to say because the effects are so mild and it's obvious, you know, with four ingredients in, those are really good, but it's really hard to say that you get some short-term effects. So if you look at just the short-term effects, Mindlet Pro is a much better choice. But also if you look at the long-term effects, I mean, Mindlet Pro has so many more high quality inetropics and like, our favorite, Lyonsman mushroom. It's an amazing inetropic you wanna take, right? So if you look at the long-term effects, I mean, there's no doubt, no doubt that Mindlet Pro will perform better because it just contains better and more ingredients and more inetropics. Now, what's gonna happen with Performance Lab Mind? I don't know, I think it's a great stack. It does contain some high quality ingredients, but again, if you just look at the long-term effects, there's no doubt Mindlet Pro is our winner here. By the way, guys, if you have any questions, do let me know in the comment section below. Use a hashtag, ask your inception, and I will weekly answer some of the most interesting questions that I will receive. Now, another important difference is that Mindlet Pro is more expensive than Performance Lab Mind. Mindlet Pro costs around 65 bucks per bottle per month, whereas Performance Lab Mind costs around 40 bucks per bottle per month. Now, can you compare the pricing? Is this a fair comparison? Well, I think it's not, because Mindlet Pro is so much more complex, right? So it's difficult to compare two things where one of them is so much more complex and so much more advanced. Yes, if you're on budget, then there's no doubt Performance Lab Mind is a great product to take, right? There's no doubt about it. And if you just compare the pricing, there's again no doubt that Performance Lab Mind is better priced, but if you take all the factors into consideration, the ingredients, the short-term, the long-term effects, and so on and so on, then I believe the pricing comparison, it's quite unfair towards Mindlet Pro because it is so much better product that, you know, I think it really doesn't matter if it's slightly more expensive, but that's my opinion. Oh, by the way, guys, I have revealed seven special secrets about Entropics that no one else will tell you about. To get them, download my free handbook below. So what's the final conclusion? Which Entropics Supplement is better? If you look at the factors, all the factors that we mentioned, if you look at my experience, the short-term, the long-term benefits, if you look at the ingredients, also if you consider pricing, I think there is no doubt that Mindlet Pro is a much better product. Now, keep in mind that Mindlet Pro was developed to be taken as a standalone Entropics Supplement. And if you're more like, more into experimenting with Entropics, if you're like combining different Entropic and Entropic stacks together, then Performance Lab Mind might be a product for you because you can easily combine it with, for example, Performance Lab Energy, Performance Lab Vision, and some other Entropics that Performance Lab Rends develops. Or you can also combine it with some other Entropic Supplements, not a big deal. With Mindlet Pro, you really don't have to combine it with anything else. Okay, it misses, or it doesn't contain caffeine, it doesn't contain LTN, it just has to be added if you really wanna have a much stronger short-term effect, but that's about it. So in my opinion, I would always choose Mindlet Pro A5 to choose between these two products, but at the end, it's a new to this side. All right, guys, if you wanna know more about Mindlet Pro or Performance Lab Mind, you can check the comparison below, you can check my experience, our links are below, so just check it out. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me and don't forget to follow your inception on Facebook and Instagram. Hope to see you soon, guys. Take care.