September 13, 2021 • 20 mins
The deadline for the Gavin Newsom recall vote is Tuesday. Over seven million votes have been cast so far and the final push will see President Biden hitting California in support of Newsom. We also saw a last minute development as actress Rose McGowan alleged that Newsom's wife called her with a message from Harvey Weinstein's lawyer 6 months before her accusations went public asking what they could do to help the issue go away. McGowan is also throwing her support behind Larry Elder. Ginger Gibson, deputy Washington digital editor at NBC News, joins us for more.
Next, Texas schools are surveilling students' online activity and many times they are doing it without their knowledge or consent. Trying to watch out for signs of distress, violence, or self harm, schools are using technology from companies like Social Sentinel, Go Guardian and others to monitor social media posts, email and other online activity. Ari Sen, freelance investigative journalist at the Dallas Morning News, joins us for how Texas schools are keeping tabs on students.
Finally, we have heard for a while now that sitting for prolonged periods of time can be very harmful to your health contributing to high blood sugar, high cholesterol and messing with your metabolic health. To counter the ill effects of sitting too long, a new study says that moving for 3 minutes every 30 minutes can be very helpful. Even just walking 15 steps improved the blood sugar of workers in the study. Gretchen Reynolds, Phys Ed columnist at the NY Times, joins us for what to know.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday, September. I'm Oscar Ramires in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. The deadline for the Gavin
Newsome recall vote is Tuesday. Over seven million votes have
been cast so far, and the final push will see
President Biden hitting California and support of Newsom. We also
(00:21):
saw a last minute development as actress Rose McGowan alleged
that Newsom's wife called her with a message from Harvey
Weinstein's lawyer six months before her accusations went public, asking
her what they could do to help the issue go away.
Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, joins
us for more Next. Texas schools are surveilling students online activity,
(00:42):
and many times they are doing it without their knowledge
or consent, trying to watch out for signs of distress, violence,
or self harm. Schools are using technology from companies like
Social Sentinel, Go Guardian and others to monitor social media posts,
email and other online activity. Already said in freelance Investigative
journalists at The Dallas Morning News joins us for how
(01:04):
Texas schools are keeping tabs on students. Finally, we have
heard for a while now that sitting for prolonged periods
of time can be very harmful to your health, contributing
high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and messing with your metabolic health.
To counter the ill effects of sitting too long, a
new study says that moving for three minutes every thirty
minutes can be very helpful. Gretchen Reynolds, this ed calumnus
(01:26):
at The New York Times, joins us for What to Know.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. Two million
people have signed a petition to recall this man. About
a third of them were the very people that voted
for him two years earlier. Of Hispanics voted for him
two years earlier. Now the majority of Hispanics for one
him gone. The majority of Independence vote for him two
(01:46):
years earlier, Now the majority of them one him gone.
Joining us now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor
at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for
having me. The deadline for the Gavin Newsome recall is
just one day. On Tuesday. Voters in California face two questions,
do you want to recall Governor Gavin Newsom? And the
second question is if you do who should replace him,
(02:10):
and right now, conservative radio host Larry Elder is leading
in those polls. You know, it's the last big push.
We're going to see President Biden out on Monday, hitting
the campaign trail with Newsome, and a lot of people
are saying that this is a big political tests of
Biden's influence as well. Right we've arrived at election eve,
So California voters all received a ballot in the mail
(02:32):
weeks ago, they all had the option to mail that
back there now can go to the polls on Tuesday,
So we've we've sort of already been in election day
for a week. But but you're right, President Biden will
travel to California this afternoon in order to campaign when Newsome,
and really what we're seeing here is a bit of
a referendum on COVID. Governor Newsom has tried to make
(02:55):
this about COVID, arguing that he has taken the necessary
steps to keep California safe and that if he doesn't
get reelected, that Larry Elder specifically, or any other Republican
will pull back some of those measures that he's taken.
And I think we're going to hear Biden talk about
COVID and about responding to COVID whenever he's in California,
(03:16):
just telling voters like, this is what we need in
order to keep our state and our people safe. You know,
it is the last day before the deadline for the election.
I mean, how much could be attributed to President Biden,
you know, one way or the other if he wins
or loses. Well, they're hoping is the attention that comes
with him being there or remind people. I mean, really,
what it comes down to, California is a state that
(03:38):
is much more democratic than it was the last time
it elected a Republican governor, and that was in a recall.
And Democrats really believe that this is about getting their
people to pay attention and show up that if you
everyone voted, that the Democrats will win in a landslide.
But if they can't convince Democrats this is important and
remind them of something they need to do, then they'll lose.
And so really they're hoping that it's about out attention.
(04:00):
It's about you know, you're more likely to be aware
of the president is there whenever he travels the state,
and that will sort of jog people to get that ballot.
Either mailed in or to show up on Tuesday and vote.
Seven million ballots have been cast so far, um a
lot of them or have been Democrats, So you know,
we'll see, we'll see what happens. Obviously, after Tuesday, there
was a wrench thrown into this whole thing, also by
(04:23):
actress Rose McGowan. She's actually going to join Larry Elder
on stage to share a kind of a weird story
related to Harvey Weinstein. She claimed that Gavin Newsom's wife
called her, emailed her six months before McGowan came out
with her allegations against Harvey Weinstein and basically said, uh,
you know, relay a message from his lawyer, David boy
(04:44):
saying you know, what can we do to make you happy? Basically,
like what can we do to make this story go away? Basically?
That's right. I mean, I really think this is just
part of the theme that has been critical of Newsome,
that he is an elitist, that he's out of touch,
that he dined at the French laundry and ignored his
own COVID rules. I mean, really, what they're trying to
(05:04):
say is, you know, he's not one of you. And
Larry Elder, the leading Republican who she has sort of
given her support to in doing this. Is a person
that many Californians know, they've heard on the radio for
a long time. Um, They're familiar with his voice, his name,
his story, and the argument being made that the newsom
is sort of out of touch and Elder is one
(05:25):
of you as somebody who's been around for a long time. Yeah,
just an interesting last minute wrench thrown into all of that.
So we'll see if that impacts anything as well. As
I mentioned, Tuesday is the deadline for that recall. And then, uh,
lastly before we leave, just another interesting story. Uh, an
interesting development for those that were in prison and released
because of COVID precautions through the Cares Act, some of
(05:47):
them might have to go back. Um. I guess they're
saying that, you know, once the emergency declaration ends for
the pandemic, maybe about a month after a lot of
people might have to go back. We're looking at maybe
in May that would have to go back that are
currently on home confinement. That's right, A great story from
my colleagues at NBC news dot com looking at this,
(06:08):
this real question about what is going to happen to
these people who were serving prison sentences. The Cares Acts
allowed them to be released um under the argument that
they weren't dangerous, they didn't pose a risk as society
and the crowding and the number number of people in
prisons was really an issue for the spread of the disease.
And do they have to go back, Yes, it looks
(06:29):
like they might have to go back a month after
the declaration is up. To be clear that that could
be a long time from now before we get to
the end of the declaration. But I suspect we're going
to hear more about this and people really pushing judges
or the president to take some action, because these are
people that have demonstrated they can abide by the law
while they're at home. They haven't violated these orders, and
(06:50):
it seems kind of trivial to make them go back
after all this time. Gener Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor
at NBC News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having me. You know, if you email your
(07:11):
friends something, it would scan that email message to detect
what it says to stand for, things like potential self
joining us now? Is Ari Send, freelance investigative journalist at
the Dallas Morning News. Thanks for joining us, Sorry, thanks
for having me. I want to talk about interesting story
you wrote about Texas schools and how in many cases
(07:33):
they're surveilling their students online and often without their knowledge
or consent. They're looking at things like their social media,
They're looking at things like their email, and things that
they're typing in on Google, all sorts of stuff. And
there's a few companies that are involved in all of this, uh,
Social Sentinel, Gaggle, Securely, Go Guardian, or some of the
top ones. And uh, like I said, you know, the
(07:55):
aim of this is to protect the students. They say,
monitors see if they're saying anything about sue aside or
hurting other students. But you know, there's a lot of
concerns about what's being done. So alre help us walk
through some of this. What are we saying? Like you said,
we walked through four different very common technologies from these companies,
Go Guardian, Gaggle, Securely, and Social Sentinel. And these technologies
(08:18):
really sort of do a range of things. So, for example,
Social Sentinel technology sort of stands public posts on social media,
mainly Twitter, whereas on the other end of this spectrum,
Go Guardian will track basically anything a student does on
their device. So what I was really trying to figure
out what this story was how prolific is this technology
(08:41):
and specifically how prolific is it in the state of Texas.
And what we were able to determine through our reporting
is that more than two hundred school districts in Texas
have used this technology in the past six years, and
when you count up the number of students they had
in those years, that cover several millions. As you mentioned,
(09:02):
these services do different things. Social sentinel scans, social media posts,
public social media posts, so you know, that's one thing.
But for some of these other companies that you know
monitor the students on their devices, how's that done? Is
that an app that they have to download? I mean,
how do they get access to that? So normally the
school district pays for these services, and district ad managers
(09:27):
administrators set them up on those district devices. It's like
sort of an app or a web quortal that can
be controlled by the district's I T people or their staff.
So once that's in place, for Gaggle and for securely
as Auditor service, for example, it would track everything that's
used in the Google suite of services, so you know,
(09:49):
if you email your friends something, it would scan that
email message to detect what it says, to scan for
things like potential self harm or potential indications of violence
against another student. And have the school districts at all
reported any successes that they might have had with this,
(10:10):
because obviously there's some criticism surrounding all of this, But
have they reported successes with it? I did hear a
lot of anecdotes, particularly on the self harmed side of things,
from school districts saying we use this and we were
able to prevent some self harm in our district. The
problem with these anecdotes is that because there are a
lot of privacy issues at play here, particularly with the
(10:33):
student Privacy Loft FURFA, most of the school districts can't
be very specific about these examples, so it's really hard
to sort of evaluate those examples independently to determine how
useful the service was. Parents feel about all of this
surveillance and and not our schools being more forthcoming with
(10:55):
them about, you know, the monitoring that they're doing. How
how is all that playing out? You know, it's really
a range in terms of districts notifying parents about this technology.
Some districts you don't notify parents at all about this technology.
But I would say a large majority of the districts
that I contacted do say they notify parents, but the
(11:16):
way in which they do it is they send home
these technology authorized use policies which say something generally like
we will monitor email or we may monitor email, but
they don't mention sort of the specific technology. So I
find that a lot of parents actually don't know that
this monitoring is in place, or don't know the extent
(11:36):
to which their students may be tracked and monitored. Right,
And as we've been saying, you know, it does a
lot of different things the social media, the email and
just kind of you know, anything that they're typing into Google.
So there's a lot of different stuff there. The legality
of all of this, you know, where does that stand?
Because you know, for one of the companies you mentioned
the article, Socials Sentinel, they say, we're just monitoring public
(11:59):
social media a post, so there is no illegality there.
You know, we're not really getting in their privacy. But
people are arguing this on all sides. These technologies are
pretty new social sentinels started around the end of the
beginning of and because these technologies are so new, the
legal questions here are sort of wide open. The scholars
(12:23):
that I did talk to are kind of very uncertain
as to whether this would violate students First and Fourth
Amendment rights and sort of what in particular the technology
would have to be used for that legal question really
to come into play. What we do know is there
was a recent Supreme Court case about a student who
(12:43):
was punished for posting a message on Snapchat, and in
that case, the Supreme Court decided that the school district
had violated to that student's First Amendment Right now, It's
important to point out here that that message was not
identified using a monitoring service, so we don't know how
exactly the use of these monitoring technologies might play into
(13:06):
some of the legal questions here. Ari Sen, freelance investigative
journalist at the Dallas Morning News. Thank you very much
for joining us. Thanks for having me. They gave half
of them a phone app that alerted them every half
(13:27):
hour and said time to stand up, basically, and then
they had the people for three minutes do something. Joining
us now is Gretchen Reynolds is ed calumnist at The
New York Times. Thanks for joining us scretching. Thanks so
much for having me. We've heard for a long time
already how bad sitting for long periods of time can be.
(13:48):
Just being sedentary. It's not good for your body, not
good for your health. Obviously, there's a new study that
came out that basically says you should be exercising for
three minutes every half hour to counter the effects of
sitting for too long. On paper, that sounds pretty easy,
you know, six minutes for an entire hour, if you
can move around, that's pretty doable, I guess you could say, so, Gretchen,
(14:10):
tell us a little bit more about this new study
and what we're seen in there. One of the things
that study actually wanted to do is see if in
fact that is doable, because there has been quite a
bit of research into how to break up sitting time because,
as you said, we know it's not good for us.
It contributes to risks for diabetes and heart disease and
all kinds of things. So there have been a lot
(14:31):
of lab studies of how often should people rise to
reduce their blood sugar and so on, But they were
in the laboratory, and that's not an office, it's not
our home, it's not realistic, and they also often lasted
a day. So the people in the researchers in this
study wanted to set up an experiment in a workplace
(14:51):
that involved real people, and they would really try and
set the parameters of what is realistic in terms of
getting up, in moving, what would be possible that would
actually show results and wouldn't totally annoy every other co
worker or your spouse if you're at home. And so
they thought that it would probably be thirty minutes, because
(15:12):
that's often what showed up in the laboratory studies. So
they gave half of a group of people office workers
with sedentary jobs. They gave half of them a phone
app that alerted them every half hour and said time
to stand up, basically, and then they had the people
for three minutes do something because there's also research that
(15:35):
shows that just standing still is probably not enough for
our help. So they had them either wat and they
had to walk at least fifteen steps in order for
the app to count it as an activity break. They
could go up and downstairs. They suggested they do like
very light calisthenics hop in place, do a couple of squats,
(15:55):
but do that every half an hour. And what they
found was that people did do it. And this experiment
lasted for three weeks. It was in Stockholm, Sweden, so
I should also say that these were Swedish people. And
uh and the other thing too, which which I appreciated, right,
is they picked middle aged people, as you mentioned, workers
(16:15):
in an office setting, people that were high risk for
type two diabetes. So these are people that would be
most affected by like a prolonged life of sitting and everything.
You know, they're already kind of on the cusp, let's say,
so doing it with them, which I feel like a
lot of people in this country might be close to. Right,
it just feels like that's hitting the point even better. Exactly.
(16:36):
They really wanted to look at who were the people
of most at risk of sitting all the time, and
all of us are, but people who already have some
metabolic issues. In this case, they had some insulin resistance,
all of these things that could progress to type two diabetes,
which is severe. You don't want that. And so again
they did this for three weeks and by and large
(16:58):
compliance was pretty good. The scientists said that people didn't
mind getting up for three minutes. Some of them didn't
do the whole three minutes. They might take the fifteen
steps and quit. But by and large people said this
fit into their work life. If they worked in a cubicle,
they could just, you know, do some wall squats, walk
(17:18):
in place something. If they were working at home, they
could just walk around the living room. And so they did,
for the most part, comply pretty well, and at the
end of three weeks they showed results compared to the
control group, the group that didn't do anything. They did
have somewhat better blood sugar control, especially in the morning,
(17:40):
which is actually important because it looks like having really
high blood sugar overnight is particularly unhealthy. And so their
blood sugar overnight appeared to be better regulated and they
had far fewer of the sort of spikes and dips
that could be very dangerous in terms of blood shar control.
(18:01):
And this is the only change they made. They didn't
change their diets. They didn't start exercising, unless you count
this as exercise. And one of the interesting things too
with all of this is you mentioned in the article
you know you can blame the muscles in your legs
that's why it's important to get up and move or
do the squats, whatever it could be. But it's the
lower half of your body that really affects the entire body.
(18:24):
When when you're sitting for too long or just being sedentary,
those are huge muscles and usually if you're even if
you're standing up, if you're walking, they're contracting a lot,
and that means they need fuel. They're slurping blood sugar
out of your your blood stream, they're making sure that
your blood levels stay level. If you're just sitting, none
(18:44):
of that happens. That the muscles also when they contract,
they release certain enzymes that helped to break down cholesterol
in your blood stream. So if that's not happening, you
get heightened amounts of cholesterol, and that could happen in
people who were perfectly healthy, So people who are already
have some metabolic issues, it really exacerbates it to fit
(19:06):
for a long time. So for all of us, I
think the lesson of this study is healthy or not,
young or old, try and get up at least every
half an hour and move around for a few minutes.
Wretchen Reynolds, his ed calumnist at the New York times.
Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much
for having me. That's it for today. Join us on
(19:36):
social media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow us and
I heard radio or subscribe where every you get your podcasts.
This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright
and engineered by Tony Sargantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
(19:57):
was your Daily Dive
It's Monday, September. I'm Oscar Ramires in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. The deadline for the Gavin
Newsome recall vote is Tuesday. Over seven million votes have
been cast so far, and the final push will see
President Biden hitting California and support of Newsom. We also
(00:21):
saw a last minute development as actress Rose McGowan alleged
that Newsom's wife called her with a message from Harvey
Weinstein's lawyer six months before her accusations went public, asking
her what they could do to help the issue go away.
Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, joins
us for more Next. Texas schools are surveilling students online activity,
(00:42):
and many times they are doing it without their knowledge
or consent, trying to watch out for signs of distress, violence,
or self harm. Schools are using technology from companies like
Social Sentinel, Go Guardian and others to monitor social media posts,
email and other online activity. Already said in freelance Investigative
journalists at The Dallas Morning News joins us for how
(01:04):
Texas schools are keeping tabs on students. Finally, we have
heard for a while now that sitting for prolonged periods
of time can be very harmful to your health, contributing
high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and messing with your metabolic health.
To counter the ill effects of sitting too long, a
new study says that moving for three minutes every thirty
minutes can be very helpful. Gretchen Reynolds, this ed calumnus
(01:26):
at The New York Times, joins us for What to Know.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. Two million
people have signed a petition to recall this man. About
a third of them were the very people that voted
for him two years earlier. Of Hispanics voted for him
two years earlier. Now the majority of Hispanics for one
him gone. The majority of Independence vote for him two
(01:46):
years earlier, Now the majority of them one him gone.
Joining us now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor
at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for
having me. The deadline for the Gavin Newsome recall is
just one day. On Tuesday. Voters in California face two questions,
do you want to recall Governor Gavin Newsom? And the
second question is if you do who should replace him,
(02:10):
and right now, conservative radio host Larry Elder is leading
in those polls. You know, it's the last big push.
We're going to see President Biden out on Monday, hitting
the campaign trail with Newsome, and a lot of people
are saying that this is a big political tests of
Biden's influence as well. Right we've arrived at election eve,
So California voters all received a ballot in the mail
(02:32):
weeks ago, they all had the option to mail that
back there now can go to the polls on Tuesday,
So we've we've sort of already been in election day
for a week. But but you're right, President Biden will
travel to California this afternoon in order to campaign when Newsome,
and really what we're seeing here is a bit of
a referendum on COVID. Governor Newsom has tried to make
(02:55):
this about COVID, arguing that he has taken the necessary
steps to keep California safe and that if he doesn't
get reelected, that Larry Elder specifically, or any other Republican
will pull back some of those measures that he's taken.
And I think we're going to hear Biden talk about
COVID and about responding to COVID whenever he's in California,
(03:16):
just telling voters like, this is what we need in
order to keep our state and our people safe. You know,
it is the last day before the deadline for the election.
I mean, how much could be attributed to President Biden,
you know, one way or the other if he wins
or loses. Well, they're hoping is the attention that comes
with him being there or remind people. I mean, really,
what it comes down to, California is a state that
(03:38):
is much more democratic than it was the last time
it elected a Republican governor, and that was in a recall.
And Democrats really believe that this is about getting their
people to pay attention and show up that if you
everyone voted, that the Democrats will win in a landslide.
But if they can't convince Democrats this is important and
remind them of something they need to do, then they'll lose.
And so really they're hoping that it's about out attention.
(04:00):
It's about you know, you're more likely to be aware
of the president is there whenever he travels the state,
and that will sort of jog people to get that ballot.
Either mailed in or to show up on Tuesday and vote.
Seven million ballots have been cast so far, um a
lot of them or have been Democrats, So you know,
we'll see, we'll see what happens. Obviously, after Tuesday, there
was a wrench thrown into this whole thing, also by
(04:23):
actress Rose McGowan. She's actually going to join Larry Elder
on stage to share a kind of a weird story
related to Harvey Weinstein. She claimed that Gavin Newsom's wife
called her, emailed her six months before McGowan came out
with her allegations against Harvey Weinstein and basically said, uh,
you know, relay a message from his lawyer, David boy
(04:44):
saying you know, what can we do to make you happy? Basically,
like what can we do to make this story go away? Basically?
That's right. I mean, I really think this is just
part of the theme that has been critical of Newsome,
that he is an elitist, that he's out of touch,
that he dined at the French laundry and ignored his
own COVID rules. I mean, really, what they're trying to
(05:04):
say is, you know, he's not one of you. And
Larry Elder, the leading Republican who she has sort of
given her support to in doing this. Is a person
that many Californians know, they've heard on the radio for
a long time. Um, They're familiar with his voice, his name,
his story, and the argument being made that the newsom
is sort of out of touch and Elder is one
(05:25):
of you as somebody who's been around for a long time. Yeah,
just an interesting last minute wrench thrown into all of that.
So we'll see if that impacts anything as well. As
I mentioned, Tuesday is the deadline for that recall. And then, uh,
lastly before we leave, just another interesting story. Uh, an
interesting development for those that were in prison and released
because of COVID precautions through the Cares Act, some of
(05:47):
them might have to go back. Um. I guess they're
saying that, you know, once the emergency declaration ends for
the pandemic, maybe about a month after a lot of
people might have to go back. We're looking at maybe
in May that would have to go back that are
currently on home confinement. That's right, A great story from
my colleagues at NBC news dot com looking at this,
(06:08):
this real question about what is going to happen to
these people who were serving prison sentences. The Cares Acts
allowed them to be released um under the argument that
they weren't dangerous, they didn't pose a risk as society
and the crowding and the number number of people in
prisons was really an issue for the spread of the disease.
And do they have to go back, Yes, it looks
(06:29):
like they might have to go back a month after
the declaration is up. To be clear that that could
be a long time from now before we get to
the end of the declaration. But I suspect we're going
to hear more about this and people really pushing judges
or the president to take some action, because these are
people that have demonstrated they can abide by the law
while they're at home. They haven't violated these orders, and
(06:50):
it seems kind of trivial to make them go back
after all this time. Gener Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor
at NBC News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having me. You know, if you email your
(07:11):
friends something, it would scan that email message to detect
what it says to stand for, things like potential self
joining us now? Is Ari Send, freelance investigative journalist at
the Dallas Morning News. Thanks for joining us, Sorry, thanks
for having me. I want to talk about interesting story
you wrote about Texas schools and how in many cases
(07:33):
they're surveilling their students online and often without their knowledge
or consent. They're looking at things like their social media,
They're looking at things like their email, and things that
they're typing in on Google, all sorts of stuff. And
there's a few companies that are involved in all of this, uh,
Social Sentinel, Gaggle, Securely, Go Guardian, or some of the
top ones. And uh, like I said, you know, the
(07:55):
aim of this is to protect the students. They say,
monitors see if they're saying anything about sue aside or
hurting other students. But you know, there's a lot of
concerns about what's being done. So alre help us walk
through some of this. What are we saying? Like you said,
we walked through four different very common technologies from these companies,
Go Guardian, Gaggle, Securely, and Social Sentinel. And these technologies
(08:18):
really sort of do a range of things. So, for example,
Social Sentinel technology sort of stands public posts on social media,
mainly Twitter, whereas on the other end of this spectrum,
Go Guardian will track basically anything a student does on
their device. So what I was really trying to figure
out what this story was how prolific is this technology
(08:41):
and specifically how prolific is it in the state of Texas.
And what we were able to determine through our reporting
is that more than two hundred school districts in Texas
have used this technology in the past six years, and
when you count up the number of students they had
in those years, that cover several millions. As you mentioned,
(09:02):
these services do different things. Social sentinel scans, social media posts,
public social media posts, so you know, that's one thing.
But for some of these other companies that you know
monitor the students on their devices, how's that done? Is
that an app that they have to download? I mean,
how do they get access to that? So normally the
school district pays for these services, and district ad managers
(09:27):
administrators set them up on those district devices. It's like
sort of an app or a web quortal that can
be controlled by the district's I T people or their staff.
So once that's in place, for Gaggle and for securely
as Auditor service, for example, it would track everything that's
used in the Google suite of services, so you know,
(09:49):
if you email your friends something, it would scan that
email message to detect what it says, to scan for
things like potential self harm or potential indications of violence
against another student. And have the school districts at all
reported any successes that they might have had with this,
(10:10):
because obviously there's some criticism surrounding all of this, But
have they reported successes with it? I did hear a
lot of anecdotes, particularly on the self harmed side of things,
from school districts saying we use this and we were
able to prevent some self harm in our district. The
problem with these anecdotes is that because there are a
lot of privacy issues at play here, particularly with the
(10:33):
student Privacy Loft FURFA, most of the school districts can't
be very specific about these examples, so it's really hard
to sort of evaluate those examples independently to determine how
useful the service was. Parents feel about all of this
surveillance and and not our schools being more forthcoming with
(10:55):
them about, you know, the monitoring that they're doing. How
how is all that playing out? You know, it's really
a range in terms of districts notifying parents about this technology.
Some districts you don't notify parents at all about this technology.
But I would say a large majority of the districts
that I contacted do say they notify parents, but the
(11:16):
way in which they do it is they send home
these technology authorized use policies which say something generally like
we will monitor email or we may monitor email, but
they don't mention sort of the specific technology. So I
find that a lot of parents actually don't know that
this monitoring is in place, or don't know the extent
(11:36):
to which their students may be tracked and monitored. Right,
And as we've been saying, you know, it does a
lot of different things the social media, the email and
just kind of you know, anything that they're typing into Google.
So there's a lot of different stuff there. The legality
of all of this, you know, where does that stand?
Because you know, for one of the companies you mentioned
the article, Socials Sentinel, they say, we're just monitoring public
(11:59):
social media a post, so there is no illegality there.
You know, we're not really getting in their privacy. But
people are arguing this on all sides. These technologies are
pretty new social sentinels started around the end of the
beginning of and because these technologies are so new, the
legal questions here are sort of wide open. The scholars
(12:23):
that I did talk to are kind of very uncertain
as to whether this would violate students First and Fourth
Amendment rights and sort of what in particular the technology
would have to be used for that legal question really
to come into play. What we do know is there
was a recent Supreme Court case about a student who
(12:43):
was punished for posting a message on Snapchat, and in
that case, the Supreme Court decided that the school district
had violated to that student's First Amendment Right now, It's
important to point out here that that message was not
identified using a monitoring service, so we don't know how
exactly the use of these monitoring technologies might play into
(13:06):
some of the legal questions here. Ari Sen, freelance investigative
journalist at the Dallas Morning News. Thank you very much
for joining us. Thanks for having me. They gave half
of them a phone app that alerted them every half
(13:27):
hour and said time to stand up, basically, and then
they had the people for three minutes do something. Joining
us now is Gretchen Reynolds is ed calumnist at The
New York Times. Thanks for joining us scretching. Thanks so
much for having me. We've heard for a long time
already how bad sitting for long periods of time can be.
(13:48):
Just being sedentary. It's not good for your body, not
good for your health. Obviously, there's a new study that
came out that basically says you should be exercising for
three minutes every half hour to counter the effects of
sitting for too long. On paper, that sounds pretty easy,
you know, six minutes for an entire hour, if you
can move around, that's pretty doable, I guess you could say, so, Gretchen,
(14:10):
tell us a little bit more about this new study
and what we're seen in there. One of the things
that study actually wanted to do is see if in
fact that is doable, because there has been quite a
bit of research into how to break up sitting time because,
as you said, we know it's not good for us.
It contributes to risks for diabetes and heart disease and
all kinds of things. So there have been a lot
(14:31):
of lab studies of how often should people rise to
reduce their blood sugar and so on, But they were
in the laboratory, and that's not an office, it's not
our home, it's not realistic, and they also often lasted
a day. So the people in the researchers in this
study wanted to set up an experiment in a workplace
(14:51):
that involved real people, and they would really try and
set the parameters of what is realistic in terms of
getting up, in moving, what would be possible that would
actually show results and wouldn't totally annoy every other co
worker or your spouse if you're at home. And so
they thought that it would probably be thirty minutes, because
(15:12):
that's often what showed up in the laboratory studies. So
they gave half of a group of people office workers
with sedentary jobs. They gave half of them a phone
app that alerted them every half hour and said time
to stand up, basically, and then they had the people
for three minutes do something because there's also research that
(15:35):
shows that just standing still is probably not enough for
our help. So they had them either wat and they
had to walk at least fifteen steps in order for
the app to count it as an activity break. They
could go up and downstairs. They suggested they do like
very light calisthenics hop in place, do a couple of squats,
(15:55):
but do that every half an hour. And what they
found was that people did do it. And this experiment
lasted for three weeks. It was in Stockholm, Sweden, so
I should also say that these were Swedish people. And
uh and the other thing too, which which I appreciated, right,
is they picked middle aged people, as you mentioned, workers
(16:15):
in an office setting, people that were high risk for
type two diabetes. So these are people that would be
most affected by like a prolonged life of sitting and everything.
You know, they're already kind of on the cusp, let's say,
so doing it with them, which I feel like a
lot of people in this country might be close to. Right,
it just feels like that's hitting the point even better. Exactly.
(16:36):
They really wanted to look at who were the people
of most at risk of sitting all the time, and
all of us are, but people who already have some
metabolic issues. In this case, they had some insulin resistance,
all of these things that could progress to type two diabetes,
which is severe. You don't want that. And so again
they did this for three weeks and by and large
(16:58):
compliance was pretty good. The scientists said that people didn't
mind getting up for three minutes. Some of them didn't
do the whole three minutes. They might take the fifteen
steps and quit. But by and large people said this
fit into their work life. If they worked in a cubicle,
they could just, you know, do some wall squats, walk
(17:18):
in place something. If they were working at home, they
could just walk around the living room. And so they did,
for the most part, comply pretty well, and at the
end of three weeks they showed results compared to the
control group, the group that didn't do anything. They did
have somewhat better blood sugar control, especially in the morning,
(17:40):
which is actually important because it looks like having really
high blood sugar overnight is particularly unhealthy. And so their
blood sugar overnight appeared to be better regulated and they
had far fewer of the sort of spikes and dips
that could be very dangerous in terms of blood shar control.
(18:01):
And this is the only change they made. They didn't
change their diets. They didn't start exercising, unless you count
this as exercise. And one of the interesting things too
with all of this is you mentioned in the article
you know you can blame the muscles in your legs
that's why it's important to get up and move or
do the squats, whatever it could be. But it's the
lower half of your body that really affects the entire body.
(18:24):
When when you're sitting for too long or just being sedentary,
those are huge muscles and usually if you're even if
you're standing up, if you're walking, they're contracting a lot,
and that means they need fuel. They're slurping blood sugar
out of your your blood stream, they're making sure that
your blood levels stay level. If you're just sitting, none
(18:44):
of that happens. That the muscles also when they contract,
they release certain enzymes that helped to break down cholesterol
in your blood stream. So if that's not happening, you
get heightened amounts of cholesterol, and that could happen in
people who were perfectly healthy, So people who are already
have some metabolic issues, it really exacerbates it to fit
(19:06):
for a long time. So for all of us, I
think the lesson of this study is healthy or not,
young or old, try and get up at least every
half an hour and move around for a few minutes.
Wretchen Reynolds, his ed calumnist at the New York times.
Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much
for having me. That's it for today. Join us on
(19:36):
social media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow us and
I heard radio or subscribe where every you get your podcasts.
This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright
and engineered by Tony Sargantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
(19:57):
was your Daily Dive
The Daily Dive News
Popular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.