July 3, 2025 • 20 mins
What do AI chatbot dangers, thirty young adults crammed into a tiny home, and a book-writing marathon have in common? They’re all part of this week’s rollercoaster ride in the Coulson household. In this deeply personal episode, Justin and Kylie share what lit them up—and what nearly broke them. From a powerful conversation about building community around our kids, to the sobering risks of digital "friendships," and the heavy toll of creating a book that could change lives, this is an episode about showing up, staying intentional, and doing better tomorrow.
KEY POINTS:
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The importance of intentional community building for our children’s wellbeing
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Why involving young adults in parenting conversations can have a powerful ripple effect
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The real-world risks of AI chatbots for kids—romantic roleplay, misinformation, and impersonating therapists
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How curiosity and loneliness make kids vulnerable to chatbot manipulation
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Behind the scenes of writing a parenting book: three years, 600 index cards, and countless sacrifices
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Why the upcoming book on raising tween and teen boys might be Justin’s most important work yet
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"One of the biggest predictors for mental wellbeing is connection—and building that village around our kids is imperative." – Kylie Coulson
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
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Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology
-
Parental Guidance (TV series)
-
Happy Families website: happyfamilies.com.au
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Register your interest in Justin’s upcoming book on raising boys
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Be Intentional About Community: Invite others into your home—even if it’s tight. Connection doesn’t need perfection.
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Talk to Your Kids About AI: Don’t assume they're safe just because you haven’t seen the risks firsthand. Pre-arm them with knowledge.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real parenting solutions every day.
This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We're so grateful
that you choose to listen. My name's Justin Colson. I'm
here with my wife and mum to our six kids.
Missus Happy Families, Kylie Colson Kylie. Every Friday on the
pod we talk about the stuff that has lit up
our world or the mistakes that we've made so that
(00:27):
we can do better tomorrow. We literally call our Friday
podcast I'll do better tomorrow. And today a little bit
of news from me about the latest.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Update on my boys book. It's I'm not going to
share it all now.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'll share it in a minute, but first we're going
to start with you.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
What has lit you up this week or where have
you gone wrong?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
What can we learn about being better tomorrow from the
week that we've had.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Well, this week has all been about parental guidance. We've
had some very very exciting conversations around viewing from Monday night.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Can I just talk about viewing for a sec. We've
had about a million people watch that show across Australia
this week.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
It's booming.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Channel nine is stoked. Everyone's happy with it. It's been
a big thing. If you haven't watched it, you've got
to catch up online now now okay, sorry, back to you.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
And over the last two seasons, we've actually never opened
our home up and invited people to come and watch
it with us. It's always been a family thing and
we've loved doing that. The kids absolutely love being together
to watch it. But this time we decided to do
something a little bit different and we spent a lot
of time with kids between eighteen and thirty.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
And yeah, so our responsibility at church we look after
We're involved with young single adults aged eighteen to thirty,
and we just love spending time with them and serving
them and helping them and being being useful in whatever
way we can.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So we invited them over to our place.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
And it's kind of crazy when you think about it,
it's a parenting show. All of these singles who are
not parents yet to join us, but they came. They
came in hoards. Actually, we had nearly nearly thirty people.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
And we have a very small hab We do have
a very small really small.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
And I guess if I could just round out the experience,
it was beautiful to have them here, and it was
beautiful to just be able to share that experience with them.
And my take home from that experience is if we
want to have good communities, and if we want to
build a village around our children, then we need to
(02:34):
be intentional about the experiences that we provide for not
only our own families, but the community that we're striving
to build. And over the years, we've done a really
good job of that to provide opportunities for people to
come together, because it's only in coming together that we
(02:54):
experience the kind of connection that safeguards us from all
of the nasty things that you're going to explore over
the next few weeks on the TV, but we're experiencing
it here in real life. Yeah, families are probably more
segregated than they have ever been in the history of life.
(03:15):
We live busier lives, and as a result, we become
very insular in our vision and the time that we
choose to spend outside of our family unit. And I
think that that's where our biggest downfall is time together
connecting with people. We love people, we want to love people,
we want to get to know. That's what makes our
(03:37):
life rich. And full.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I just think about growing up. We always had people
in a home when I was a kid, my grandma,
I remember none and pop used to always have people
over for drinks and card games and backyard barbecues and that.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And it's a lot of people they're anxious about it
that I want to go to the hassle.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It's worth it. It's so worth it.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Like it cost us some money and it took a
huge amount of time and there was a hassle, like
it was genuinely a big deal, and yet it was
so worth it was so worth it. My take home
message is worth spending some time. Hey, I'm just on
the parental guidance before we take a quick break and
then talk about my older better tomorrow. There was a
bit of criticism about the AI chatbot friend on social media,
(04:20):
some people saying, oh, AI ethics wouldn't allow that to happen,
Like when has a tech company ever done anything trustworthy?
Like they are completely untrustworthy. But there are people who
really believe that they're out there doing the right thing.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's amazing me because there's actually real life anecdotes shared
in the show of people who have literally lost their
lives as a result of interacting with these chat lines,
and you can't refute that.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
No.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
I mean it doesn't happen often, fortunately, but that doesn't
mean that there is not other harm occurring. You can
go to the most extreme and say, well, it could happen,
and it has, but that doesn't mean that it's okay.
I came across this clip from Tristan Harris. Tristan Harris
runs the Center for Humane Technology. He's a former Google
whistleblower who stepped out and just said, as tech companies,
we are doing the wrong thing. And the mendacious lies
(05:11):
that are being told by tech CEOs about how they
really are employing world leading technology to keep people safe,
it's just crap. And so he's been on Fox News
recently talking about AI chatbots literally the things that we
were doing on Monday night on Parental Guidance, and I
grabbed this clip. I've got to play it to you
because it says to all the nasayers and the people
(05:33):
who are saying, oh, we're being exploitative or we're seeking
clickbait extreme examples at highlights, that we're actually right and
raising a warning flag on this needs to be done.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Here's what he said, it diagnoses that kids are lonely.
But it's like saying the answer to loneliness is social media.
You know what is the last thing we should have
learned from social media? That these companies' business models are
to get more and more engagement and users. That means
more addiction. And we're now seeing us repeat the same
mistake of we're releasing these AI chatbots to children, and
there's this research in the Wall Street Journal that the
(06:06):
conversation with the kids are being sexualized or doing romantic roleplay.
The AI that Mark Zuckerberg is releasing says it's a
licensed mental health therapist. You'll say where it got its
degree and its license number, and this is a but
this is a B.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
This is an AI.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
That's impossible and it's illegal to do that.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So I've got some big reactions here, but I'd love
to get yours first.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
I think it's very challenging for families, who for the
most part, live and protect their children in very intentional ways,
to understand the dynamics of the big wide world out
there when their kids aren't specifically being exposed to this
kind of stuff. It just seems so far fetched. For
(06:46):
someone who's not experiencing it. And I know that over
the years, as you have shared lots of different things,
I've been like, what the heck does that even exist?
And when I talk to our children, they've never heard
of it, or they've never experienced or they don't know
someone who has. So Yes, you could very easily fall
into the trap of suggesting that this is just, you know,
(07:06):
overreaching on your part as a professional, sharing this stuff
in an effort to scare people into, you know what,
doing something good for their children. I don't know. I
don't understand the mentality behind their reactions.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Oh, we need to protect the AI companies.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
But we can't. We can't put our heads in the
sand and think that just because we're not experiencing it
that this is not a problem. This is all about
pre arming. Like literally, this whole conversation is about pre arming.
Hopefully your kids never come across this ever, but the
(07:42):
reality is if they don't, somebody else might.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Based on numbers that doctor Raf shared on the show,
it's highly probable that your children are going to have
some kind of experience with these kinds of friendship bots.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
And as a result, pre arming our kids to understand
and know what's happening, why it's happening, and how they
can protect themselves is imperative. It's imperative. It's not just
a nice wish. It's imperative.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Here's my twenty second take on what Tristan Harris had
to say and this issue of AI Chatbot Friends.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Number one.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
We saw in the show the sexualized conversation in one
of the four instances.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
The our and outright lies and the lies.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
But I want to talk specifically about that. He's highlighted
that the bots know that to addict somebody, you've got
to do and say things that are outrageous, that push
against or over the boundary lines, and sexualized conversations are
exactly the way to do that. And what kid isn't
at least a little bit curious. Now, we had four
children playing on these chatbots, but the reality is one
(08:50):
didn't do anything at all. She just was like, yeah,
not interested, and another one was also generally not interested.
A third one had a bit of fun with it,
but it didn't go anywhere. The one child who really
did get involved was there for thirty five forty forty
five fifty minutes, and that's the one where the chatbots
started to share content that was explicit and sexual in nature.
(09:12):
The second thing that concerns me outside of romantic role play,
is that the bots are literally lying and saying, Ah,
they're human and b that they're licensed mental health practitioners.
I mean, this is frightening. I've spoken to a couple
of people in recent times who are using AI as
a mental health care.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
That is that I had to say the same thing that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I don't want to go and see a psychologist. Too
hard to get in, cost too much money, and you
often don't find somebody who's going to be the right
match for you anyway, and so they're using chat, GPT
and other similar resources as a psychologist.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It's just a terrible idea.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
This thing is not qualified in any way, shape or
form to be giving any kind of mental health advice,
not a person, and it's bad. So that's my that's
my I said twenty seconds, that's my two minute take
on the wrap up of what happened there After the break,
we're going to get your take home message on your
older Better Tomorrow story. I didn't actually ask you explicitly
what you take our message was, and I'll share my
(10:09):
older better Tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
For this week as well.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Okay, Kylie, are you shared about having thirty people in
the house and watching a parenting show with a whole
bunch of people who are not parents as your older
better Tomorrow?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
What was you take home message?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
One of the biggest predictors for mental well being is connection,
and if we want to pre arm and protect our
children in the best possible ways, being intentional about creating
and building a village and a community around them is imperative.
(10:50):
It takes intention, it takes energy, it takes time, It
takes effort.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Bring people into your orbit though, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
love it, love it? Okay, my odder bedit tomorrow. It's
really short, it's really simple, It's really sweet. I've been
working on a book about raising boys for three years now,
three years, and I finished the second draft this week.
I know, I know, and like I mean, I've been
(11:18):
working this year particularly, I've been doing twelve to fifteen
our days consistently to try to get this thing done.
And I don't know who's happy about me having the
second draft, rest few or me, but boys. The book
about raising tween and teen boys is it's progressing. It's
going to the publisher soon. Second draft done this week.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So let's just be completely upfront here. This is still
not finished. I am still holding my breath.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Has been This has been an odyssey, hasn't it. There's
been a saga, Yes.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It really really has, and I cannot wait to see
the end of this project.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I've never worked on a book the way that I
have this time. It's been so hard.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
So I don't know if anyone else wants to know this,
but just take us through the process, because it has
been a process.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Okay, so draft number one. What I basically did was
I got a whole lot of index cards, hundreds of
index cards, you know those three by five. I actually
got five by sevens because I've liked more space.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Because you're going blind.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
And every time I had a thought, every time I
read something, every time I found a resource, every time
I had a conversation with someone that sparked something for me,
every time something popped up on social media, I jot
it down on my five x seven card and put
it into the file.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And then at the start of the year, I decided
that I'd collected enough information. I had about five or
six hundred of these things. I clearly number one can't
include five or six hundred ideas but number two. But
I'm sure you tried number two. That would be a
five or six hundred page book. By the time you
get the idea and you flesh it out, that's a
lot of content. So I got all those index cards,
(13:00):
I put them into piles themes. Basically, this is this theme,
this theme, this theme. And then from those themes I
divided into chapters and worked out that I was going
to have a fifteen chapter book.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And that also pretty much.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Gave me the structure. So the structure of the book
is as follows. Here's the situation. That's Part one, five
chapters talking about all of the challenges that we're facing.
This is where most people are really strong and solid,
but then they peter out from there. I can't peter
out after just talking about the problems. So Part two
is the blueprint. That's where I talk about how understanding
(13:31):
what we need to understand about boys and their motivations.
Then well being if we can put together a blueprint,
now we know what we're supposed to do. And then
Part three it's another five chapters on the playbook. Okay,
so we've got the situation. Then we've got the blueprint
for moving forward. Then we've got the playbook, the actual
how to guide. I wrote the first draft. It took me,
(13:54):
I don't know, four or five months to get the
draft done after spending two years of collecting data and
putting it all together. And I thought so good, and
I was so excited. I was like, oh, draft number
two is going to be a breeze. I'll get it
done in two weeks. I've spent three months on draft
number two as well, because just there's so much to do.
So now I'm going through draft number three. That's what
I'm up to as of next week. Draft three is
(14:15):
the fact checking. It's putting all the references in. It's
cutting out a thousand words here, five hundred words there
are two hundred words there, so that I can get
the chapters to be the right length, because right now
it's about ninety thousand words, and no one's going to
read a book that long. And I think that it'll
take me about a month to get draft three done
or thereabouts, and then I'm going to send it out
to five or six people who have generously said that
they will preread the book. And I want them to
(14:37):
tear it apart. I just want them to say, that's
a bad example, or you haven't talked about this, or
I've got a really left leaning philosophy, or I've got
a really conservative leaning philosophy and I don't feel like
you're serving my ideals here. Or I've got a child
who's got this preference or that tendency and I don't
feel like they're seen in the pages of this book.
So that I can get as much negative feedback as
(14:58):
possible before I finished the drafting.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
You know that you are literally like one of a kind,
don't you, And most people are not asking for negative feedback.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So I'll finish draft three and then draft four, and
then I'm going to send it to the publisher and then
they'll have their editors go over it, and that'll be
draft five and six. So hopefully towards the end of
the year, this book will be behind us and it'll
be done, and then it just goes through the publication
machinations so that early next year people can buy my
book about boys.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
And then I'm having a holiday for a week.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think we need a holiday for a year.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
No me, I need a holiday.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
What I'm actually hoping.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I mean, when you write a book, you tend to
get a lot of phone calls and emails from people
who say, will you please come and speak about your
book at our school or our business or whatever. So
I probably won't get a holiday for a couple of
years once the.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Book comes out.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
But I think, in all honesty, this Boy's Book is
It's the most significant.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Book that I've ever written.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
It's the book that I've worked harder on than any
book we've ever talked about before, and it's the book
that has taken more from me than anything I've ever done.
Like I'm just I'm so proud of where it already is,
and I can't wait to see where it goes by
the time it goes through the last four edits that
I'm going to be doing now that I've done my
second edit.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
So I'm curious, now that you've shared all of this,
what your take home message is.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
No, don't write a book. That's my message.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
The cost I'm probably.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Being far too transparent here, but the cost to me
and to our family for me to get this book written,
I don't know how we calculate. It's just been staggering.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
It's interesting you talk about this, you talk about the process,
and you talk about I guess the cost, and that's
not even you know, kind of financial costs, the emotional, mental,
and physical costs that has It's the time have been
required of you and as a result of ours when
you sit down you read a book. I don't think
(17:00):
it ever crosses anybody's mind what it took for those
pages to be in front of you.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
You know, depending on the style of book you're reading, Like,
there is just so much that goes into this process,
and for a lot of people it is literally their
life's work.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
It's been three or four years.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
I've torture. As you're saying it, I'm almost weeping because
it has been an enormous toll. It's taken enormous toll
to bring it, and obviously I've still got six months
to go. I think this is like this is number ten, right, Yes,
this is my tenth book. This is my tenth time around.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
So it's not like you don't know how to write
a book number one, number two. It's not like you
don't understand or know the cost that's required. But this
specific book has pretty much pushed you to the edge
in just about every year.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I think it's pushed me over the edge a couple
of times.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, Is that just because you're getting old?
Speaker 2 (17:59):
No?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
No, I mean I've been invested in every book that
I've written, but I don't know that I've ever had
this level of investment before. I look at what's happening
in the eyes of parents who come up to me
after my sessions and say, I've got a son and
I'm worried, and I'm writing this book for them. I'm
(18:20):
not writing this book to have another book on the shelves.
I don't need any more books on shelves. I'm writting
this book because they need it, and I'm writing it
because when I offer support to these parents, they come
back to me and they say, you saved my son,
or you save my family, or you change my relationships forever.
And therefore I know that while we don't raise suns ourselves,
(18:44):
we have six daughters. I know that this book is
going to change lives. And I know that if there's
a group of young people today who need help, it's
our teenage boys. So that took a turn that I
didn't expect, but yeah, that's my id. A better tomorrow
I've finished the second draft, and the drafts get easier
from this point, like they actually do get easier. I've
(19:05):
done the heavy lifting now, the fact checking and the
tiding up and chucking words out. That's only a that's
only a three to four week project. I can get
that done, honey, I promise. And then reading other people's comments,
that's only a couple of week project.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I can get that done, and then it goes to
the publisher. I have to think about it for a while.
So we're getting there.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
The book is coming out, so no, we're going to
throw in a link into the show notes. If you've
listened this long and you're still with us, we're going
to throw a link into the show notes if you'd
like to pre register your interests so that when the
book is ready, you can hear about it first and
get the goodies that I'm promising to chuck in as well.
When you buy the book, Jump onto our show notes,
Jump onto the website Happy Families dot com dot au
(19:43):
and register your interest in boys the new book by
me coming out sometime in the next I reckon nine
months and it'll be on the shelves.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I think, fingers crossed.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Thanks for listening the Happy Families podcast. We really hope
you have a great weekend and that this makes your
family have The Happy Family's podcast is produced by.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Mim Hammonds does research and admin and provides all the
support to make the podcast get to you. If you'd
like more information and resources about making your family happier,
you'll find it at happy families dot com dot you
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real parenting solutions every day.
This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We're so grateful
that you choose to listen. My name's Justin Colson. I'm
here with my wife and mum to our six kids.
Missus Happy Families, Kylie Colson Kylie. Every Friday on the
pod we talk about the stuff that has lit up
our world or the mistakes that we've made so that
(00:27):
we can do better tomorrow. We literally call our Friday
podcast I'll do better tomorrow. And today a little bit
of news from me about the latest.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Update on my boys book. It's I'm not going to
share it all now.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'll share it in a minute, but first we're going
to start with you.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
What has lit you up this week or where have
you gone wrong?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
What can we learn about being better tomorrow from the
week that we've had.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Well, this week has all been about parental guidance. We've
had some very very exciting conversations around viewing from Monday night.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Can I just talk about viewing for a sec. We've
had about a million people watch that show across Australia
this week.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
It's booming.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Channel nine is stoked. Everyone's happy with it. It's been
a big thing. If you haven't watched it, you've got
to catch up online now now okay, sorry, back to you.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
And over the last two seasons, we've actually never opened
our home up and invited people to come and watch
it with us. It's always been a family thing and
we've loved doing that. The kids absolutely love being together
to watch it. But this time we decided to do
something a little bit different and we spent a lot
of time with kids between eighteen and thirty.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
And yeah, so our responsibility at church we look after
We're involved with young single adults aged eighteen to thirty,
and we just love spending time with them and serving
them and helping them and being being useful in whatever
way we can.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So we invited them over to our place.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
And it's kind of crazy when you think about it,
it's a parenting show. All of these singles who are
not parents yet to join us, but they came. They
came in hoards. Actually, we had nearly nearly thirty people.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
And we have a very small hab We do have
a very small really small.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
And I guess if I could just round out the experience,
it was beautiful to have them here, and it was
beautiful to just be able to share that experience with them.
And my take home from that experience is if we
want to have good communities, and if we want to
build a village around our children, then we need to
(02:34):
be intentional about the experiences that we provide for not
only our own families, but the community that we're striving
to build. And over the years, we've done a really
good job of that to provide opportunities for people to
come together, because it's only in coming together that we
(02:54):
experience the kind of connection that safeguards us from all
of the nasty things that you're going to explore over
the next few weeks on the TV, but we're experiencing
it here in real life. Yeah, families are probably more
segregated than they have ever been in the history of life.
(03:15):
We live busier lives, and as a result, we become
very insular in our vision and the time that we
choose to spend outside of our family unit. And I
think that that's where our biggest downfall is time together
connecting with people. We love people, we want to love people,
we want to get to know. That's what makes our
(03:37):
life rich. And full.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I just think about growing up. We always had people
in a home when I was a kid, my grandma,
I remember none and pop used to always have people
over for drinks and card games and backyard barbecues and that.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And it's a lot of people they're anxious about it
that I want to go to the hassle.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It's worth it. It's so worth it.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Like it cost us some money and it took a
huge amount of time and there was a hassle, like
it was genuinely a big deal, and yet it was
so worth it was so worth it. My take home
message is worth spending some time. Hey, I'm just on
the parental guidance before we take a quick break and
then talk about my older better tomorrow. There was a
bit of criticism about the AI chatbot friend on social media,
(04:20):
some people saying, oh, AI ethics wouldn't allow that to happen,
Like when has a tech company ever done anything trustworthy?
Like they are completely untrustworthy. But there are people who
really believe that they're out there doing the right thing.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's amazing me because there's actually real life anecdotes shared
in the show of people who have literally lost their
lives as a result of interacting with these chat lines,
and you can't refute that.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
No.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
I mean it doesn't happen often, fortunately, but that doesn't
mean that there is not other harm occurring. You can
go to the most extreme and say, well, it could happen,
and it has, but that doesn't mean that it's okay.
I came across this clip from Tristan Harris. Tristan Harris
runs the Center for Humane Technology. He's a former Google
whistleblower who stepped out and just said, as tech companies,
we are doing the wrong thing. And the mendacious lies
(05:11):
that are being told by tech CEOs about how they
really are employing world leading technology to keep people safe,
it's just crap. And so he's been on Fox News
recently talking about AI chatbots literally the things that we
were doing on Monday night on Parental Guidance, and I
grabbed this clip. I've got to play it to you
because it says to all the nasayers and the people
(05:33):
who are saying, oh, we're being exploitative or we're seeking
clickbait extreme examples at highlights, that we're actually right and
raising a warning flag on this needs to be done.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Here's what he said, it diagnoses that kids are lonely.
But it's like saying the answer to loneliness is social media.
You know what is the last thing we should have
learned from social media? That these companies' business models are
to get more and more engagement and users. That means
more addiction. And we're now seeing us repeat the same
mistake of we're releasing these AI chatbots to children, and
there's this research in the Wall Street Journal that the
(06:06):
conversation with the kids are being sexualized or doing romantic roleplay.
The AI that Mark Zuckerberg is releasing says it's a
licensed mental health therapist. You'll say where it got its
degree and its license number, and this is a but
this is a B.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
This is an AI.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
That's impossible and it's illegal to do that.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So I've got some big reactions here, but I'd love
to get yours first.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
I think it's very challenging for families, who for the
most part, live and protect their children in very intentional ways,
to understand the dynamics of the big wide world out
there when their kids aren't specifically being exposed to this
kind of stuff. It just seems so far fetched. For
(06:46):
someone who's not experiencing it. And I know that over
the years, as you have shared lots of different things,
I've been like, what the heck does that even exist?
And when I talk to our children, they've never heard
of it, or they've never experienced or they don't know
someone who has. So Yes, you could very easily fall
into the trap of suggesting that this is just, you know,
(07:06):
overreaching on your part as a professional, sharing this stuff
in an effort to scare people into, you know what,
doing something good for their children. I don't know. I
don't understand the mentality behind their reactions.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Oh, we need to protect the AI companies.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
But we can't. We can't put our heads in the
sand and think that just because we're not experiencing it
that this is not a problem. This is all about
pre arming. Like literally, this whole conversation is about pre arming.
Hopefully your kids never come across this ever, but the
(07:42):
reality is if they don't, somebody else might.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Based on numbers that doctor Raf shared on the show,
it's highly probable that your children are going to have
some kind of experience with these kinds of friendship bots.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
And as a result, pre arming our kids to understand
and know what's happening, why it's happening, and how they
can protect themselves is imperative. It's imperative. It's not just
a nice wish. It's imperative.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Here's my twenty second take on what Tristan Harris had
to say and this issue of AI Chatbot Friends.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Number one.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
We saw in the show the sexualized conversation in one
of the four instances.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
The our and outright lies and the lies.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
But I want to talk specifically about that. He's highlighted
that the bots know that to addict somebody, you've got
to do and say things that are outrageous, that push
against or over the boundary lines, and sexualized conversations are
exactly the way to do that. And what kid isn't
at least a little bit curious. Now, we had four
children playing on these chatbots, but the reality is one
(08:50):
didn't do anything at all. She just was like, yeah,
not interested, and another one was also generally not interested.
A third one had a bit of fun with it,
but it didn't go anywhere. The one child who really
did get involved was there for thirty five forty forty
five fifty minutes, and that's the one where the chatbots
started to share content that was explicit and sexual in nature.
(09:12):
The second thing that concerns me outside of romantic role play,
is that the bots are literally lying and saying, Ah,
they're human and b that they're licensed mental health practitioners.
I mean, this is frightening. I've spoken to a couple
of people in recent times who are using AI as
a mental health care.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
That is that I had to say the same thing that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I don't want to go and see a psychologist. Too
hard to get in, cost too much money, and you
often don't find somebody who's going to be the right
match for you anyway, and so they're using chat, GPT
and other similar resources as a psychologist.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It's just a terrible idea.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
This thing is not qualified in any way, shape or
form to be giving any kind of mental health advice,
not a person, and it's bad. So that's my that's
my I said twenty seconds, that's my two minute take
on the wrap up of what happened there After the break,
we're going to get your take home message on your
older Better Tomorrow story. I didn't actually ask you explicitly
what you take our message was, and I'll share my
(10:09):
older better Tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
For this week as well.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Okay, Kylie, are you shared about having thirty people in
the house and watching a parenting show with a whole
bunch of people who are not parents as your older
better Tomorrow?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
What was you take home message?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
One of the biggest predictors for mental well being is connection,
and if we want to pre arm and protect our
children in the best possible ways, being intentional about creating
and building a village and a community around them is imperative.
(10:50):
It takes intention, it takes energy, it takes time, It
takes effort.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Bring people into your orbit though, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
love it, love it? Okay, my odder bedit tomorrow. It's
really short, it's really simple, It's really sweet. I've been
working on a book about raising boys for three years now,
three years, and I finished the second draft this week.
I know, I know, and like I mean, I've been
(11:18):
working this year particularly, I've been doing twelve to fifteen
our days consistently to try to get this thing done.
And I don't know who's happy about me having the
second draft, rest few or me, but boys. The book
about raising tween and teen boys is it's progressing. It's
going to the publisher soon. Second draft done this week.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So let's just be completely upfront here. This is still
not finished. I am still holding my breath.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Has been This has been an odyssey, hasn't it. There's
been a saga, Yes.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It really really has, and I cannot wait to see
the end of this project.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I've never worked on a book the way that I
have this time. It's been so hard.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
So I don't know if anyone else wants to know this,
but just take us through the process, because it has
been a process.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Okay, so draft number one. What I basically did was
I got a whole lot of index cards, hundreds of
index cards, you know those three by five. I actually
got five by sevens because I've liked more space.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Because you're going blind.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
And every time I had a thought, every time I
read something, every time I found a resource, every time
I had a conversation with someone that sparked something for me,
every time something popped up on social media, I jot
it down on my five x seven card and put
it into the file.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And then at the start of the year, I decided
that I'd collected enough information. I had about five or
six hundred of these things. I clearly number one can't
include five or six hundred ideas but number two. But
I'm sure you tried number two. That would be a
five or six hundred page book. By the time you
get the idea and you flesh it out, that's a
lot of content. So I got all those index cards,
(13:00):
I put them into piles themes. Basically, this is this theme,
this theme, this theme. And then from those themes I
divided into chapters and worked out that I was going
to have a fifteen chapter book.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And that also pretty much.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Gave me the structure. So the structure of the book
is as follows. Here's the situation. That's Part one, five
chapters talking about all of the challenges that we're facing.
This is where most people are really strong and solid,
but then they peter out from there. I can't peter
out after just talking about the problems. So Part two
is the blueprint. That's where I talk about how understanding
(13:31):
what we need to understand about boys and their motivations.
Then well being if we can put together a blueprint,
now we know what we're supposed to do. And then
Part three it's another five chapters on the playbook. Okay,
so we've got the situation. Then we've got the blueprint
for moving forward. Then we've got the playbook, the actual
how to guide. I wrote the first draft. It took me,
(13:54):
I don't know, four or five months to get the
draft done after spending two years of collecting data and
putting it all together. And I thought so good, and
I was so excited. I was like, oh, draft number
two is going to be a breeze. I'll get it
done in two weeks. I've spent three months on draft
number two as well, because just there's so much to do.
So now I'm going through draft number three. That's what
I'm up to as of next week. Draft three is
(14:15):
the fact checking. It's putting all the references in. It's
cutting out a thousand words here, five hundred words there
are two hundred words there, so that I can get
the chapters to be the right length, because right now
it's about ninety thousand words, and no one's going to
read a book that long. And I think that it'll
take me about a month to get draft three done
or thereabouts, and then I'm going to send it out
to five or six people who have generously said that
they will preread the book. And I want them to
(14:37):
tear it apart. I just want them to say, that's
a bad example, or you haven't talked about this, or
I've got a really left leaning philosophy, or I've got
a really conservative leaning philosophy and I don't feel like
you're serving my ideals here. Or I've got a child
who's got this preference or that tendency and I don't
feel like they're seen in the pages of this book.
So that I can get as much negative feedback as
(14:58):
possible before I finished the drafting.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
You know that you are literally like one of a kind,
don't you, And most people are not asking for negative feedback.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So I'll finish draft three and then draft four, and
then I'm going to send it to the publisher and then
they'll have their editors go over it, and that'll be
draft five and six. So hopefully towards the end of
the year, this book will be behind us and it'll
be done, and then it just goes through the publication
machinations so that early next year people can buy my
book about boys.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
And then I'm having a holiday for a week.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think we need a holiday for a year.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
No me, I need a holiday.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
What I'm actually hoping.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I mean, when you write a book, you tend to
get a lot of phone calls and emails from people
who say, will you please come and speak about your
book at our school or our business or whatever. So
I probably won't get a holiday for a couple of
years once the.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Book comes out.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
But I think, in all honesty, this Boy's Book is
It's the most significant.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Book that I've ever written.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
It's the book that I've worked harder on than any
book we've ever talked about before, and it's the book
that has taken more from me than anything I've ever done.
Like I'm just I'm so proud of where it already is,
and I can't wait to see where it goes by
the time it goes through the last four edits that
I'm going to be doing now that I've done my
second edit.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
So I'm curious, now that you've shared all of this,
what your take home message is.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
No, don't write a book. That's my message.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
The cost I'm probably.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Being far too transparent here, but the cost to me
and to our family for me to get this book written,
I don't know how we calculate. It's just been staggering.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
It's interesting you talk about this, you talk about the process,
and you talk about I guess the cost, and that's
not even you know, kind of financial costs, the emotional, mental,
and physical costs that has It's the time have been
required of you and as a result of ours when
you sit down you read a book. I don't think
(17:00):
it ever crosses anybody's mind what it took for those
pages to be in front of you.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
You know, depending on the style of book you're reading, Like,
there is just so much that goes into this process,
and for a lot of people it is literally their
life's work.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
It's been three or four years.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
I've torture. As you're saying it, I'm almost weeping because
it has been an enormous toll. It's taken enormous toll
to bring it, and obviously I've still got six months
to go. I think this is like this is number ten, right, Yes,
this is my tenth book. This is my tenth time around.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
So it's not like you don't know how to write
a book number one, number two. It's not like you
don't understand or know the cost that's required. But this
specific book has pretty much pushed you to the edge
in just about every year.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I think it's pushed me over the edge a couple
of times.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, Is that just because you're getting old?
Speaker 2 (17:59):
No?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
No, I mean I've been invested in every book that
I've written, but I don't know that I've ever had
this level of investment before. I look at what's happening
in the eyes of parents who come up to me
after my sessions and say, I've got a son and
I'm worried, and I'm writing this book for them. I'm
(18:20):
not writing this book to have another book on the shelves.
I don't need any more books on shelves. I'm writting
this book because they need it, and I'm writing it
because when I offer support to these parents, they come
back to me and they say, you saved my son,
or you save my family, or you change my relationships forever.
And therefore I know that while we don't raise suns ourselves,
(18:44):
we have six daughters. I know that this book is
going to change lives. And I know that if there's
a group of young people today who need help, it's
our teenage boys. So that took a turn that I
didn't expect, but yeah, that's my id. A better tomorrow
I've finished the second draft, and the drafts get easier
from this point, like they actually do get easier. I've
(19:05):
done the heavy lifting now, the fact checking and the
tiding up and chucking words out. That's only a that's
only a three to four week project. I can get
that done, honey, I promise. And then reading other people's comments,
that's only a couple of week project.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I can get that done, and then it goes to
the publisher. I have to think about it for a while.
So we're getting there.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
The book is coming out, so no, we're going to
throw in a link into the show notes. If you've
listened this long and you're still with us, we're going
to throw a link into the show notes if you'd
like to pre register your interests so that when the
book is ready, you can hear about it first and
get the goodies that I'm promising to chuck in as well.
When you buy the book, Jump onto our show notes,
Jump onto the website Happy Families dot com dot au
(19:43):
and register your interest in boys the new book by
me coming out sometime in the next I reckon nine
months and it'll be on the shelves.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I think, fingers crossed.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Thanks for listening the Happy Families podcast. We really hope
you have a great weekend and that this makes your
family have The Happy Family's podcast is produced by.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Mim Hammonds does research and admin and provides all the
support to make the podcast get to you. If you'd
like more information and resources about making your family happier,
you'll find it at happy families dot com dot you
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