October 23, 2024 • 16 mins
This Week in Parenting:
Roblox is a ridiculously popular game—but not just with kids..and not always for gaming! We take a quick look at the dark side of this platform and how parents can keep children safe online.
While a recent report warns that parenting can harm mental health, Justin and Kylie suggest that parenting doesn't need to be stressful—we just need a little less pressure and a lot more fun.
Finally, Meta has shifted the responsibility of protecting kids online to parents, while failing to adequately safeguard children on their platforms.
In this episode:
- Roblox: a paedophile hellscape
- Roblox Inflated Data And Doesn’t Protect Underage Gamers | Forbes
- Parental stress & isolation
- Where is the village?
- Parenting Is Hazardous to Your Health, the Surgeon General Warns | WSJ
- Age-verification for social media
- Meta wants app stores and Aussie parents to act as social media age limit 'gateway' | The Daily Telegrap
- Parental Guidance Season 3 applications open
- Supporting Autistic Children Course (early bird pricing ends soon!)
Related Links:
- Keeping kids safe on Roblox
- It Takes A Village… But the Village is Sick
- #1072 – Does Parenting Have a PR Problem?
- Answers with Dr Justin Coulson | The Screen Smart Series
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Leave a voice memo here or email your questions/comments to podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just once answers now never before
on the Happy Families Podcast, have we tried to cram
so much news into one episode? And Kylie, I know
that you roll your eye every time we do this,
but maybe we should do it more often. I don't know.
This week in parenting, sorry, I need to do it
(00:24):
the proper way.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This week in perishing, that was terrible.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Really, I wasn't expecting you to do it nominally. It's
all me. Well, I was joining, join me, here we go.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This week we got to count it in one, two, three.
This week in parenting, Oh my goodness, JR.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I don't know what you can do with that.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
By the time this goes to it, we'll laugh and
say what will we thinking?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Six stories?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Six stories in twelve minutes, so two minutes each. There's
so much to talk about. You're going to guide me
through it and ask me any questions you have. But
there is so much going on in the world of
parenting and things related to parents and how we can
help our families to be happy. The news media has
been going absolutely gangbusters. Where do you want to start?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, the first story rodbox roadblocks.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yes, I love I love how every time we talk
about roadblocks on the podcast, you call it roadbox, folks.
In case you're wondering, we don't do roadblocks in our house.
Roadblocks roadblocks with it like R O.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
B L O X. Well, the first time I caught
it road block. Now I'm calling it roebox.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Let's give it the story.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
We're seeing examples of these cases shifting from the online
world into the offline world, where kids are being physically kidnapped, abducted,
and sexually assaulted by predators who have connected with them
on roadblocks.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
The article suggests that roadbox is a.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Pedophile healthscape for kids. Here's the deal.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So, Hindenberg Research is a company over in the US.
They look at stock that is overvalued. And I'm going
to get all stock marketing for a second, but stay
with me because this is important. Essentially, if you end
up on their list, if you short a company, what
that basically means is that you're making a prediction about it.
You're buying shares with a short term expectation that that
company is going to tank and you're going to make
a whole lot of money. Or you're selling shares or
(02:19):
whatever it is. And Hindenburg Research, if they talk about
your company, it means that you're in trouble, so Hindenburg
and the reason I'm talking about this is because it
relates to a game that so many of our kids
are on, well not our kids, but everyone else's kids,
because we don't let our kids play it. And what
Hindenburg have basically said is Roadblocks is a twenty seven
billion dollar online gaming company and it has been losing
(02:45):
so much money in the last twelve months. Losses total
one point zero seven billion dollars. It's not profitable as
a company, it hasn't been since it went public. But
here's the critical thing, and this is why it's on
this weekend parenting. It's stock price and in turn people's
ability to make money with the stock is completely reliant
(03:06):
on the growth metrics that Roadblocks gives because it's required
to to Wall Street. Publicly listed company has to give
a whole lot of metrics to Wall Streets so that
they can make decisions. And what Hindenburg Research have said
is our research indicates that Roadblocks is lying to investors, regulators,
and advertisers about the number of people in inverted commas
(03:28):
people on its platform, inflating the key metric by between
twenty five and forty two percent.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That is insane.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
But there's more.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Since prior to going public, Roadblocks has reported the number
of people in inverted commas on its platform in dozens
of official investor communications. They say that there are over
fifty four point one million people coming into Roadblocks every
single day. But what they're basically saying is the daily
active users. They reckon that there's numerous counts run by
single people. There's also body accounts and alternative accounts and
(04:00):
that kind of thing. So they're essentially lying to keep
their stock price high. And the last thing that they highlight,
which is probably the most important thing I've buried the
lead I should have started with this is that for
the second quarter of twenty twenty four, as they push
towards profitability, Roadblocks reported at two percent year over year
decline in its trust and safety expenses. Coret of the
problem is that roadblocks of social media features allow pedophiles
(04:24):
to efficiently target hundreds of children with no upfront screening
to prevent them from joining the platform. As an example,
in twenty eighteen, prior to red Blocks going public. A
twenty nine year old was caught by police with one
hundred and seventy five hours of video footage of him
grooming and engaging in explicit behavior with one hundred and
fifty minors using online platforms, namely roadblocks and at Hindenberg
(04:49):
Research dot com slash roadblocks. They go through all the
other stuff that's there. Why am I sharing this? I'm
sharing it for two reasons. Number One, this is a
public listed company. There's making or doing its and certainly
there are shareholders who are making real money as they
buy and sell these shares, and these people are profiting
off the exploitation of our children. And I just want
(05:10):
to emphasize again there is so much evidence that these
guys are engaging in allowing a pedophile healthscape to exist.
That's all that's my this week in parenting about roadblocks next,
unless you've got questions to me.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It just seems so disgraceful that something that literally is
unlawful is allowed to happen in broad daylight. Yeah, without
any form of justice. So there's this protection for our kids.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
There's this thing in the United States. And I'm not
a lawyer, and I haven't read this carefully, but there's
a section in the United States law around technology called
Section two thirty, and essentially what it does is it
absolves the carriers, It absolves the matters and the roadblockses
and so on of any responsibility for what users do
on the platform.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Give it. That's disgraceful because they've created the platform for
users to.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Use, and they've not put any safety measures into space
measures in that which I do find kind of extraordinary
because if I owned a restaurant and the head of
the Martha was hanging out at my restaurant and doing
business deals, I think that I would also get in
trouble from law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
It's somewhere.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
If I had a hotel and people were engaging in
explicit and illicit illegal activities in my hotel, I would
be shut down, like that's that's what most laws in
most countries would do. But this section two thirty exempts
the tech companies. It completely absolves them of responsibility, and
they are writing this thing as far as they can
(06:41):
to prop up their share price and do awful things. Anyway,
the take home message on this week in parenting for
this one is Roadblocks is a pedophile healthscape for kids.
It's really if you're going to let your kids be
on there, if you're going to let your kids beyond there,
and I don't think the issue it, but if you're
going to you've got to be monitoring, you've got to
be aware, and you've got to be having conversations constantly
(07:03):
about the risks that are associated keep them on devices
in public places, they never go never to friend somebody
that they don't know, and then go to some other platform.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
You've just got to know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, this flows in beautifully into our second article.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
It is universally accepted that parenting is difficult, but now
the US Surgeon General says parenting maybe hazard as to
your health.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, Kylie. This one was published in the Wall Street
Journal a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Now, in fact, I'm going back about five weeks, six
weeks because I'm a little bit behind on this week
in parenting, But the US Surgeon General has issued a
warning literally and I quote, parenting can be harmful to
your mental health.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Doctor Vivig Murphy wrote, and aren't bad in The New
York Times issued and advisory calling attention to the stress
and mental health concerns facing parents and caregivers.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
The report sites the American Psychological Association saying nearly half
the parents report overwhelming stress most days. I mean, that's
just such a staggering number. Half of parents report overwhelming
stress most days, compared with twenty six percent of other adults.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
They're lonelier as well.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
According to cited data in a twenty twenty one survey,
sixty five percent of parents said they were only compared
to fifty five percent of those without kids.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
In some ways, parenting has changed so much over the
generations and what we do now. We are so much
more involved in our kids' lives than we've ever been before,
and that has definitely got some amazing benefits to our
children and to us, But there's also limitations around that.
(08:45):
And the idea that we feel lonely and isolated is
real because our entire lives revolve around our children instead
of what would have happened in my grandparents' time, where
the kids went off to school, they took care of themselves,
They came home and Mum and dad fed them.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Well, it's not that it wasn't that simple. It's not
that they took care of themselves. It's that the community,
it's that society did so.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, parenting being a little bit glipper.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, parenting was once a team sport. It really is
an individual sport now and I think that's the greatest challenge.
Too many parents feel like they're doing it alone. Mothers
groups aren't as cohesive or as common as they used
to be, and I don't know that's gendered, but that's
what they always were. The community and the structures in
community that we used to have as simply either not
(09:33):
there or not as strong as they once were. And
there's a whole lot less trust in the community. We
look at people around us and we don't trust them
like we once did.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Beyond that, we've.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Got vigil aged dangers. Once upon a time, kids really
did have play based childhoods, and now that has changed
to screen based childhoods. That's what Jonathan Hate talked all
about in the Angst Generation. But I also think that
there's a narrative now around parenting, and that narrative I
had Angela Mollart, a columnist and commentator, on the podcast
(10:04):
a couple of weeks ago, talking about how parenting needs
a new pr job because when you look at what
happens on TikTok and on Instagram, and the narrative around parenting.
The narrative isugh, this is hard, this is breaking me.
I don't know if I've got what it takes to
do this. And we're having fewer kids, but we're investing
so much more in them, which increases the pressure on
(10:27):
us and on them, increases the anxiety, makes everyone else
feel it. So does parenting need to stress you out?
Do we need a mental health warning on parenting like
we have a health warning on a packet of cigarettes.
I don't think so. What I think we've forgotten how
to do is have fun. I just think we don't
have nearly as much fun as we used to when
(10:49):
it comes to our families. And we've also decided that
we have to do it all, and it's not fair.
No one's supposed to be able to do it all.
So that's my second story for this week in Parenting.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Over the last handful of months, we've talked about the
fact that there has been cries from the community for
age limits to be put on social media, and Meta
has finally made an announcement.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah social media. This was in a Daily Telegraph about
four weeks ago. Three weeks ago, social media giant Meta
wants Australia to make parents responsible for approving white apps
children under the age of sixteen download denying this was
shirking its duty to protect kids online. That was the
big announcement. We want to help parents and we're going
to help parents by putting the responsibility under parents. I
(11:37):
love this this company. They are just doing absolutely everything
they can to bear no responsibility for the tremendous damage
that's being done to children young.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
People around the world because it's not about them.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
The laws allow them to do it, and therefore if
people want to make an outcry, then they need to
step up and shoulder the responsibility.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And it is just not fair.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I think if you go back to the previous story
that we just talked about, this idea that parents are
having to do it on their own, the village is
no longer there. There are no safeguards in place, and
people are happy to be remunerated for their creations and
inventions at the expense of our children and that sense
(12:21):
of village and community.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, I think that they're liable.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I think there's really big challenges here. Meta's goal seems
to be that they want to look like they're doing
something without actually doing anything. Their support for age verification,
that's great, they're saying, yeah, age verification is necessary, but
their proposal totally inadequate. Social media companies, make no mistake,
are causing immense harm to our kids. Let me say
(12:47):
this a different way, because this is one of those
arguments where people say, no, the problem isn't social media,
it's the people on social media. It's kind of like
in the United States with the whole gun debate, right,
guns don't kill people.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
People kill people.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So I was at a school recently and presentation about
respect for relationships. A young man came up to me afterwards,
in one of the senior years of high school. So
this isn't a little kid, this is a big kid.
And he described the things that have been happening to
him online from a bunch of other kids in the school,
where they've been catfishing him, where they've been bullying him,
(13:18):
where social media platforms have been used to absolutely destroy
this kid, just hurt him so much to the point
where he has considered taking his own life. And what's
going on here is Metais saying, well, no, no, we can't
do anything about this at all.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
We can't help. But what we do want to do
is we want.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
To encourage parents to be aware of the apps that
their children are downloading, and then everything will be okay.
Number One, I think most parents do have a pretty
decent idea of what apps their kids have downloaded and
what apps their kids are using. I really believe that
they know they might not know what's going on on
the apps, but they know what the kids are using.
But number two, just knowing that your kids have the
(13:53):
app doesn't protect them. In the US, there's what's known
as COSPA, the Kids Online Safety and Protection Act, And
the very day that that was to be debated in
the United States Congress or Senate or whatever it was,
Meta shows up on Breakfast TV and says we're introducing
this and this safety feature on Instagram to keep kids safe.
(14:15):
The day that the politicians are going to debate it.
I want how convenient haven't been able to come up
with anything to help the kids until now, and now
all of a sudden, well look at that, the technology
is there. Anyway, We've been talking way too long. There
are six stories. I don't think we're going to have
time for them all because we've done three and our
time is almost up.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I reckon, I reckon, we need.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
To call it quits there and maybe we do another
this week in Parenting next week.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You're such a cheat.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
We can't do the other three at the time we've got.
It's just not going to fit. Can you live with it?
I can live with that, okay.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
The Happy Family's Podcast.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Thank you, Thank you for your patience, thank you for
allowing you. I don't know what I was thinking when
I said we could do six.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, at least we didn't tell them what we were
talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, every now and again, I'm like, let's do four,
let's do five, and you're.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And we've only gotten through three. It's because there's so
much going Oh, by the way, did I mention that
Parental Guidance Season three is coming back next year?
Speaker 3 (15:09):
You have not I can't.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Believe, and I'm dropping it at the end of the
pod like that. More news on that coming up soon.
Parental Guidance Season three. It's on Channel nine with Yours
Truly out the Popcorn and Ali.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Langdon I'll tell you more about that. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Maybe in older bed it tomorrow Tomorrow, I reckon we.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Can do that.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from
Bridge Media.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Thank you Jr. For the great work that you do.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
If you'd like more information about making your family happier,
if you would like to join us in this incredible
course that we're running for autistic well I was gonna
say for autistic kids it is, but really it's for parents'
autistic kids. You get me, you get doctor Joey who
is a TikTok star. She's also a psychologist, runs Nerdle
Psychology in Brisbane and is autistic herself, and you get
like an eighty page workbook that gives you all the
(15:59):
information you need early birds about to finish. You can
find all the information at happyfamilies dot com dot you
or on our social media pages on those companies that
I have so much to say about Facebook and Instagram.
Just check us out there, Doctor Justin Courson's Happy Families
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just once answers now never before
on the Happy Families Podcast, have we tried to cram
so much news into one episode? And Kylie, I know
that you roll your eye every time we do this,
but maybe we should do it more often. I don't know.
This week in parenting, sorry, I need to do it
(00:24):
the proper way.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This week in perishing, that was terrible.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Really, I wasn't expecting you to do it nominally. It's
all me. Well, I was joining, join me, here we go.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This week we got to count it in one, two, three.
This week in parenting, Oh my goodness, JR.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I don't know what you can do with that.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
By the time this goes to it, we'll laugh and
say what will we thinking?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Six stories?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Six stories in twelve minutes, so two minutes each. There's
so much to talk about. You're going to guide me
through it and ask me any questions you have. But
there is so much going on in the world of
parenting and things related to parents and how we can
help our families to be happy. The news media has
been going absolutely gangbusters. Where do you want to start?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, the first story rodbox roadblocks.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yes, I love I love how every time we talk
about roadblocks on the podcast, you call it roadbox, folks.
In case you're wondering, we don't do roadblocks in our house.
Roadblocks roadblocks with it like R O.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
B L O X. Well, the first time I caught
it road block. Now I'm calling it roebox.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Let's give it the story.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
We're seeing examples of these cases shifting from the online
world into the offline world, where kids are being physically kidnapped, abducted,
and sexually assaulted by predators who have connected with them
on roadblocks.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
The article suggests that roadbox is a.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Pedophile healthscape for kids. Here's the deal.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So, Hindenberg Research is a company over in the US.
They look at stock that is overvalued. And I'm going
to get all stock marketing for a second, but stay
with me because this is important. Essentially, if you end
up on their list, if you short a company, what
that basically means is that you're making a prediction about it.
You're buying shares with a short term expectation that that
company is going to tank and you're going to make
a whole lot of money. Or you're selling shares or
(02:19):
whatever it is. And Hindenburg Research, if they talk about
your company, it means that you're in trouble, so Hindenburg
and the reason I'm talking about this is because it
relates to a game that so many of our kids
are on, well not our kids, but everyone else's kids,
because we don't let our kids play it. And what
Hindenburg have basically said is Roadblocks is a twenty seven
billion dollar online gaming company and it has been losing
(02:45):
so much money in the last twelve months. Losses total
one point zero seven billion dollars. It's not profitable as
a company, it hasn't been since it went public. But
here's the critical thing, and this is why it's on
this weekend parenting. It's stock price and in turn people's
ability to make money with the stock is completely reliant
(03:06):
on the growth metrics that Roadblocks gives because it's required
to to Wall Street. Publicly listed company has to give
a whole lot of metrics to Wall Streets so that
they can make decisions. And what Hindenburg Research have said
is our research indicates that Roadblocks is lying to investors, regulators,
and advertisers about the number of people in inverted commas
(03:28):
people on its platform, inflating the key metric by between
twenty five and forty two percent.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That is insane.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
But there's more.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Since prior to going public, Roadblocks has reported the number
of people in inverted commas on its platform in dozens
of official investor communications. They say that there are over
fifty four point one million people coming into Roadblocks every
single day. But what they're basically saying is the daily
active users. They reckon that there's numerous counts run by
single people. There's also body accounts and alternative accounts and
(04:00):
that kind of thing. So they're essentially lying to keep
their stock price high. And the last thing that they highlight,
which is probably the most important thing I've buried the
lead I should have started with this is that for
the second quarter of twenty twenty four, as they push
towards profitability, Roadblocks reported at two percent year over year
decline in its trust and safety expenses. Coret of the
problem is that roadblocks of social media features allow pedophiles
(04:24):
to efficiently target hundreds of children with no upfront screening
to prevent them from joining the platform. As an example,
in twenty eighteen, prior to red Blocks going public. A
twenty nine year old was caught by police with one
hundred and seventy five hours of video footage of him
grooming and engaging in explicit behavior with one hundred and
fifty minors using online platforms, namely roadblocks and at Hindenberg
(04:49):
Research dot com slash roadblocks. They go through all the
other stuff that's there. Why am I sharing this? I'm
sharing it for two reasons. Number One, this is a
public listed company. There's making or doing its and certainly
there are shareholders who are making real money as they
buy and sell these shares, and these people are profiting
off the exploitation of our children. And I just want
(05:10):
to emphasize again there is so much evidence that these
guys are engaging in allowing a pedophile healthscape to exist.
That's all that's my this week in parenting about roadblocks next,
unless you've got questions to me.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It just seems so disgraceful that something that literally is
unlawful is allowed to happen in broad daylight. Yeah, without
any form of justice. So there's this protection for our kids.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
There's this thing in the United States. And I'm not
a lawyer, and I haven't read this carefully, but there's
a section in the United States law around technology called
Section two thirty, and essentially what it does is it
absolves the carriers, It absolves the matters and the roadblockses
and so on of any responsibility for what users do
on the platform.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Give it. That's disgraceful because they've created the platform for
users to.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Use, and they've not put any safety measures into space
measures in that which I do find kind of extraordinary
because if I owned a restaurant and the head of
the Martha was hanging out at my restaurant and doing
business deals, I think that I would also get in
trouble from law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
It's somewhere.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
If I had a hotel and people were engaging in
explicit and illicit illegal activities in my hotel, I would
be shut down, like that's that's what most laws in
most countries would do. But this section two thirty exempts
the tech companies. It completely absolves them of responsibility, and
they are writing this thing as far as they can
(06:41):
to prop up their share price and do awful things. Anyway,
the take home message on this week in parenting for
this one is Roadblocks is a pedophile healthscape for kids.
It's really if you're going to let your kids be
on there, if you're going to let your kids beyond there,
and I don't think the issue it, but if you're
going to you've got to be monitoring, you've got to
be aware, and you've got to be having conversations constantly
(07:03):
about the risks that are associated keep them on devices
in public places, they never go never to friend somebody
that they don't know, and then go to some other platform.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
You've just got to know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, this flows in beautifully into our second article.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
It is universally accepted that parenting is difficult, but now
the US Surgeon General says parenting maybe hazard as to
your health.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, Kylie. This one was published in the Wall Street
Journal a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Now, in fact, I'm going back about five weeks, six
weeks because I'm a little bit behind on this week
in parenting, But the US Surgeon General has issued a
warning literally and I quote, parenting can be harmful to
your mental health.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Doctor Vivig Murphy wrote, and aren't bad in The New
York Times issued and advisory calling attention to the stress
and mental health concerns facing parents and caregivers.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
The report sites the American Psychological Association saying nearly half
the parents report overwhelming stress most days. I mean, that's
just such a staggering number. Half of parents report overwhelming
stress most days, compared with twenty six percent of other adults.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
They're lonelier as well.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
According to cited data in a twenty twenty one survey,
sixty five percent of parents said they were only compared
to fifty five percent of those without kids.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
In some ways, parenting has changed so much over the
generations and what we do now. We are so much
more involved in our kids' lives than we've ever been before,
and that has definitely got some amazing benefits to our
children and to us, But there's also limitations around that.
(08:45):
And the idea that we feel lonely and isolated is
real because our entire lives revolve around our children instead
of what would have happened in my grandparents' time, where
the kids went off to school, they took care of themselves,
They came home and Mum and dad fed them.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Well, it's not that it wasn't that simple. It's not
that they took care of themselves. It's that the community,
it's that society did so.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, parenting being a little bit glipper.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, parenting was once a team sport. It really is
an individual sport now and I think that's the greatest challenge.
Too many parents feel like they're doing it alone. Mothers
groups aren't as cohesive or as common as they used
to be, and I don't know that's gendered, but that's
what they always were. The community and the structures in
community that we used to have as simply either not
(09:33):
there or not as strong as they once were. And
there's a whole lot less trust in the community. We
look at people around us and we don't trust them
like we once did.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Beyond that, we've.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Got vigil aged dangers. Once upon a time, kids really
did have play based childhoods, and now that has changed
to screen based childhoods. That's what Jonathan Hate talked all
about in the Angst Generation. But I also think that
there's a narrative now around parenting, and that narrative I
had Angela Mollart, a columnist and commentator, on the podcast
(10:04):
a couple of weeks ago, talking about how parenting needs
a new pr job because when you look at what
happens on TikTok and on Instagram, and the narrative around parenting.
The narrative isugh, this is hard, this is breaking me.
I don't know if I've got what it takes to
do this. And we're having fewer kids, but we're investing
so much more in them, which increases the pressure on
(10:27):
us and on them, increases the anxiety, makes everyone else
feel it. So does parenting need to stress you out?
Do we need a mental health warning on parenting like
we have a health warning on a packet of cigarettes.
I don't think so. What I think we've forgotten how
to do is have fun. I just think we don't
have nearly as much fun as we used to when
(10:49):
it comes to our families. And we've also decided that
we have to do it all, and it's not fair.
No one's supposed to be able to do it all.
So that's my second story for this week in Parenting.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Over the last handful of months, we've talked about the
fact that there has been cries from the community for
age limits to be put on social media, and Meta
has finally made an announcement.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah social media. This was in a Daily Telegraph about
four weeks ago. Three weeks ago, social media giant Meta
wants Australia to make parents responsible for approving white apps
children under the age of sixteen download denying this was
shirking its duty to protect kids online. That was the
big announcement. We want to help parents and we're going
to help parents by putting the responsibility under parents. I
(11:37):
love this this company. They are just doing absolutely everything
they can to bear no responsibility for the tremendous damage
that's being done to children young.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
People around the world because it's not about them.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
The laws allow them to do it, and therefore if
people want to make an outcry, then they need to
step up and shoulder the responsibility.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And it is just not fair.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I think if you go back to the previous story
that we just talked about, this idea that parents are
having to do it on their own, the village is
no longer there. There are no safeguards in place, and
people are happy to be remunerated for their creations and
inventions at the expense of our children and that sense
(12:21):
of village and community.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, I think that they're liable.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I think there's really big challenges here. Meta's goal seems
to be that they want to look like they're doing
something without actually doing anything. Their support for age verification,
that's great, they're saying, yeah, age verification is necessary, but
their proposal totally inadequate. Social media companies, make no mistake,
are causing immense harm to our kids. Let me say
(12:47):
this a different way, because this is one of those
arguments where people say, no, the problem isn't social media,
it's the people on social media. It's kind of like
in the United States with the whole gun debate, right,
guns don't kill people.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
People kill people.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So I was at a school recently and presentation about
respect for relationships. A young man came up to me afterwards,
in one of the senior years of high school. So
this isn't a little kid, this is a big kid.
And he described the things that have been happening to
him online from a bunch of other kids in the school,
where they've been catfishing him, where they've been bullying him,
(13:18):
where social media platforms have been used to absolutely destroy
this kid, just hurt him so much to the point
where he has considered taking his own life. And what's
going on here is Metais saying, well, no, no, we can't
do anything about this at all.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
We can't help. But what we do want to do
is we want.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
To encourage parents to be aware of the apps that
their children are downloading, and then everything will be okay.
Number One, I think most parents do have a pretty
decent idea of what apps their kids have downloaded and
what apps their kids are using. I really believe that
they know they might not know what's going on on
the apps, but they know what the kids are using.
But number two, just knowing that your kids have the
(13:53):
app doesn't protect them. In the US, there's what's known
as COSPA, the Kids Online Safety and Protection Act, And
the very day that that was to be debated in
the United States Congress or Senate or whatever it was,
Meta shows up on Breakfast TV and says we're introducing
this and this safety feature on Instagram to keep kids safe.
(14:15):
The day that the politicians are going to debate it.
I want how convenient haven't been able to come up
with anything to help the kids until now, and now
all of a sudden, well look at that, the technology
is there. Anyway, We've been talking way too long. There
are six stories. I don't think we're going to have
time for them all because we've done three and our
time is almost up.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I reckon, I reckon, we need.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
To call it quits there and maybe we do another
this week in Parenting next week.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You're such a cheat.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
We can't do the other three at the time we've got.
It's just not going to fit. Can you live with it?
I can live with that, okay.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
The Happy Family's Podcast.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Thank you, Thank you for your patience, thank you for
allowing you. I don't know what I was thinking when
I said we could do six.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, at least we didn't tell them what we were
talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, every now and again, I'm like, let's do four,
let's do five, and you're.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And we've only gotten through three. It's because there's so
much going Oh, by the way, did I mention that
Parental Guidance Season three is coming back next year?
Speaker 3 (15:09):
You have not I can't.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Believe, and I'm dropping it at the end of the
pod like that. More news on that coming up soon.
Parental Guidance Season three. It's on Channel nine with Yours
Truly out the Popcorn and Ali.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Langdon I'll tell you more about that. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Maybe in older bed it tomorrow Tomorrow, I reckon we.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Can do that.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from
Bridge Media.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Thank you Jr. For the great work that you do.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
If you'd like more information about making your family happier,
if you would like to join us in this incredible
course that we're running for autistic well I was gonna
say for autistic kids it is, but really it's for parents'
autistic kids. You get me, you get doctor Joey who
is a TikTok star. She's also a psychologist, runs Nerdle
Psychology in Brisbane and is autistic herself, and you get
like an eighty page workbook that gives you all the
(15:59):
information you need early birds about to finish. You can
find all the information at happyfamilies dot com dot you
or on our social media pages on those companies that
I have so much to say about Facebook and Instagram.
Just check us out there, Doctor Justin Courson's Happy Families
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