BHS - 7A – Student Cellphone Ban Proposal | ‘Tech Tuesday’ with Mike Dobuiski

LA Unified proposes student cellphone ban amid distracted kids. Climate change is making heatwaves more frequent and severe. Should FEMA recognize heat and wildfire smoke as ‘major disasters? ABC News technology reporter Mike Dobuski joins the show for ‘Tech Tuesday.’ Mike talks about warning labels for social media and the slowest electric vehicle currently on sale from a major automaker.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to KFI AM six fortythe Bill Handle Show on demand on the
iHeartRadio app. You are listening tothe Bill Handle Show. And this is
KFI AM six forty bill Handle.Here it is a Taco Tuesday, June

(00:24):
eighteenth. Okay, by the way, good for you, Kono. You
just heard that phone ring on thecell phone. And sometimes I unfortunately I
have my phone here is I don'tput it on silent. I put it
on rings, so I'll get that. And I love the fake calls,
you know, the scam calls,and sometimes I answer them and I have

(00:47):
great times with those people. Imean I can't understand a word. They
say, it's probably some some,but well it is somebody in India named
Fred or Bob and don't understand aword. Okay. Now today the LA
Unified school Board meets. And Ilove to talk about LA Unified because I

(01:08):
grew up in LA Unified. Andit's one of those school boards that is
ungovernable. It's that simple. Imean you just can't deal with it.
Too many students and there are toomany languages, and it's too spread out,
and there are too many cultures.It's just very, very difficult to
deal with them. So anyway,today they're meeting about a ban of cell

(01:29):
phones in schools, and that's alittle controversial because there's two sides of that.
First of all, those people thatsay, you know, kids using
cell phones in school, I meanthey are distracted and the bullying and they're
not paying attention in class, andthere really isn't that much interaction, social
interaction, social intercourse, social intercoursewhere people talk to each other and kids

(01:53):
have a way of just connecting.All that is gone when you have cell
phones. And that's true to oneextent, because cell phones are a huge
distraction, there's no question about it. And there are some school boards,
some schools that say that's it.You're done with cell phones, even to
the point where you come in inthe morning and you put them in these

(02:14):
pouches and the school administration keeps someonethen you get them at the end of
the day. Also, there's technologyout there that just shuts them down.
It can't use your cell phone duringschool hours. But the other side of
it, and this is where parentsand this is certainly where I was,
and that is it's all about safety. How many times have you seen students

(02:36):
in trouble. Unfortunately, during massshootings where you have kids go, I'm
frightened. I'm frightened. You canping the phones and know exactly where they
are. There's technology there. Youcan have administrators, you know, tell
the students, you know, gobehind, you know, shut down the
doors, which they do anyway,but it gives law enforcement idea, what's

(03:00):
what part of the school is introuble where the students are as they say,
we're next to the cafeteria, we'rein the cafeteria. Well, if
they don't have cell phones, andif they can't call nine to one one
or their parents, it just makesit that much more difficult. And it's
so dangerous even going to school today. You know, I'm not a big
fan of home learning, never havebeen, but I got to tell you,

(03:22):
I'm looking at it a whole differentway. There was just another mass
shooting. Wasn't there a school shootinga couple of days ago. Yeah,
it's just completely crazy. So thebig argument is safety, And I don't
know which way the school board isgoing to go. Even if they pass
it a resolution is not going toput it into effect. What it does

(03:44):
is direct staff to develop and presentto the public policies dealing with this,
and then what do you do?Now? Can you block off the entire
school? Technologically you can. Youcan put a block and then some administrator
or administrators can unlock the block allof a sudden, allowing students to have

(04:09):
access to at least communicating with theircell phones. There's no easy answer here,
There really isn't. It goes itcuts both ways. I liked the
idea that my kids had cell phones. Actually they were the last kids in
the class they have cell phones.I think they were twelve years old,
and I wouldn't give them cell phones. It was after that, well,

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that was a long time ago,when they were twelve years old, when
the school shootings issue were not thatbig a deal, but the number of
students who had them, mainly forsafety's sake. I told him no,
I said, absolutely not, andthey go but everybody has them, you
know how the kids say that everybodyhas them. So I called him on
it, and I called them theteacher and I said, do you mind

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if I come in there and justasked a question of the students, and
the teacher said sure, And Iwalked in, Boys and girls, this
is mister Handel Barb. We're inPamela's father and I said, I have
one question. Do you mind ifI ask you this, how many of
you have cell phones? Every singlehand went up. Okay, you get

(05:12):
cell phones? Now do my kiduse them during school? Yeah? They
did. They were part of thatcrowd. And I spend way too much
time on cell phones, which Ithink is inappropriate. What is it The
average kid spends five six hours aday on cell phone on social media,
and of course that's where they getit. I mean, they don't sit
in front of a computer for themost part. It's all on cell phones.

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So when you say security, what'sthe security they're getting? Say?
You want it for safety and securejust for safety, not for I'm talking
about at school. A couple ofthings they can do. They can block
the entire school from cell phones beingused. I mean, what does a
child need a phone at school for? You said safety? What does that

(05:56):
mean? Yeah, in case thekid is in danger in his classroom.
We're in the cafeteria. This iswhere it's happening, So they need a
phone in there. The kids,well, you know, no, they
don't need af phone. The kidsneed phones. What do you do?
It's like a fire extinguisher, youbreak the glass and someone breaks So every
kid's gonna call nine one one.Rather have every kid call nine one one

(06:18):
than no kid called nine one one. But you have a phone or some
set, and who holds that?Who holds a phone? Well, I
don't understand the purpose of having multiplephone. Kids having phones in school is
such a distraction. Yeah, itis. However, the other side of

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it is exactly what I told you. What if parents have to reach their
kids, What if there's an emergencyat home, they go to the office.
That's how they did it with us. I understand the today, but
it was fair, but it wassafe. In those days. We didn't
have mass shootings. We didn't havethat at all. Amy. How many
mass shootings do we report in schoolsover the last month. There haven't been

(07:03):
that many in school. That doesn'thelp my point, Amy, Come on,
Amy, you know why he wasasking. All right, I understand.
Hey, listen, I got akid who's in school. I get
it. But it's like, there'sgot to be a better way than everyone
don't know a better way. Imean, there's to I don't know.

(07:24):
There may be, because there mightbe, Sorry, but the vast majority
of kids go to school and therearen't school shootings, yeah, the vast
majority in America kids there are.But there are points where the kids know
they can call mom and dad.I think their security there. There are
a bunch of reasons, yes andno. But anyway, we are out

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of time. Amy. When Igo to you, please back me up.
I really would like I'll do better, Bill. I'd like to see
you here tomorrow, truly. Now, interesting thing about FEMA. Let me
tell you what FEMA describes as majordisasters in the official DEMITA definition, and

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that is we're talking about, oh, I don't know, floods certainly,
earthquakes certainly, tornadoes absolutely and soand what happens with FEMA and they move
in with critical infrastructure, the stateor the local municipality has to call ask

(08:30):
for FEMA's help. They can't ontheir own go in. And here is
where FEMA does not come in,and that is during heat waves. No,
and during wildfires. It's not FEMA. It is during floods, it
is during earthquakes. And so there'sa whole body of people I'm talking about,

(08:54):
legislatures and environmentalists that are saying,hey, come on, why because
heat you know, generally, heatkills more people in the United States than
any other natural disaster, if youwant to call it a natural disaster.
And while wildfire fires aren't a naturaldisaster, which I think they are simply

(09:15):
because we live in society where wildfires, you have electrical fires, you have
people that are negligent that are goout there, and you can control that
somewhat, but how do you controlthe heat. You can't. And it
turns out that wildfires and the toxinsthat come out of that and straight out

(09:37):
heat. I mean, we're gonnasee I guarantee you you're going to see
people out of this heat wave that'sgoing across the country. It's going to
break records across the country. It'sgoing to be in the mid nineties in
New York. You're going to seeeastern cities hitting above one hundred. Now
you go out to Phoenix, goto the Inland Valley, you go out

(10:00):
in various parts of southern California,you can hit one hundred. Right.
Las Vegas hits one hundred just asa matter of course during the summer,
but Atlanta hitting one hundred, Charlestonhitting one hundred, and it is humid
So what turns out, You know, they have the heat index where adding

(10:24):
the heat to humidity makes it thatmuch worse. So let's go to New
York, which can be very humid. So you hit ninety six in New
York, you add the humidity ofthe heat index, it feels like it's
two hundred and forty six degrees,which is not pleasant. And so FEMA

(10:45):
is well, the FEDS are beingasked to include wildfires and heat to the
natural disaster. One of the climateone of California's senators, in which one
it is, says, these twinclimate fueled catastrophes are now consistently year after

(11:07):
year. They vastly exceed the economicand technical capabilities of state and local governments
to manage them. They just can'tafford it. It's that simple. They
just can't afford them anymore, becauseyear after year, whatever resources we have
locally, county wise, statewide doesn'teven come close to what is necessary.
Only the FEDS can help. Andwhy is it only the Feds can help?

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Well, we're out of money.Are the Feds out of money?
Of course not? You know why, because the Feds can print money,
and we've reached points in terms ofnational debt that I never thought could be
sustainable. And now I look atthe national debt and it is unlimited thirty
billion, thirty trillion, fifty trillion, one hundred trillion, a gazillion.

(11:54):
It doesn't matter. For some reason, it all keeps working. But the
Feds are the only ones that canhelp, and they help throw FEMA.
So how does all that change?Well, the bill, the act that
actually allows FEMA to exist is somethingcalled the Stafford Act, and the Stafford
Act calls for FEMA only to becalled in and the natural disasters have to

(12:18):
meet their criteria. Heat doesn't,wildfires don't. I'm talking about the what
happens as a result of wildfires.Wildfires per se. FEMA doesn't come in
and put out wildfires, but FEMAdoes come in and help people deal with
the aftermath of wildfires. Well,it makes a lot of sense. So

(12:43):
here's what the Stafford Act does definemajor disasters any hurricane, tornado, storm,
high water, wind, driven water, tidle weight, tsunami. Because
we get so many of them,earthquake, volcanic eruptions. That's a very
big problem in the United States.Landslides are part of it. Mud slides

(13:03):
snowstorms, drought, drought, notheat, but drought, not wildfires,
and not what happens as a resultof wildfires. So that's going to change.
That's going to change. By theway, COVID wasn't part of it

(13:24):
until President Trump approved COVID a MajorDisaster Declaration for all States, tribes,
all territories under the Stafford Act,and it was an immediate it was an
emergency measure which has gone away.Okay, that's easy, that is a
yes. Just wanted to share withyou heat and wildfire, smoke not major

(13:46):
disasters. Can you imagine that?All right? Before we get to Mike.
Tonight, the Dodgers take on theRockies in Colorado, first Pitching five
forty. Listen to every play ofevery Dodgers game on A five seven the
LA Sports Live from the Gallpin MotorsBroadcast Booth, and you can stream all
the games NHD on the iHeartRadio appKeyword AM five seventy LA Sports. Now,

(14:13):
it is time for Tech Tuesday TodayMike Dubuski, ABC News Technology reporter
out of New York. Mike isalways thanks for taking the time to be
with us. Okay, yeah,great to be Yes, it is you're
absolutely right. Let me there's atopic here that I went to share.
When I saw it, I went, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm
going right to it. The slowestelectric vehicle currently on sale from a major

(14:37):
automaker. And before you answer thatquestion, I have an EV and it
is a rocket. Because these thingsare motors, there's no delay. I
mean, it just starts moving.The torque is insane. So, uh,
which one is not so fast?I've never seen a slow one.

(14:58):
Yeah, So fifteen miles an houris the top speed of the electric vehicle
that I got to have a goon yesterday. It is not a car.
It is an electric vehicle, butit only has two wheels. It's
a folding scooter from Honda, andit's called the Moto Compacto. So this
takes inspiration from a product that Hondasold in Japan in the nineteen eighties that

(15:20):
was called the Moto Compo. Itwas kind of an interesting little gas powered
folding scooter that was designed to fitinto the back of your hatchback. And
this has sort of garnered some attentionin the automotive space among car enthusiasts saying,
hey, that was kind of aninteresting little you know, mobility solution.
You know, you drive to theparking lot, and then you take

(15:41):
the scooter from the parking lot tothe train station or to your office or
something like that. I'm a littleconfused. Yeah, I'm starting a little
confused. Does it. Is itlike one of those fat people scooters that
you see in the supermarket, fourhundred pound people on the scooter and then
driving along into the market or intovarious places public places. Not quite.

(16:03):
So you want to envision something likea large pizza box or maybe a big
briefcase. That's kind of the sizeof this thing. It's very narrow,
it's a sort of the width ofa pizza box as well, and it
has a six point eight amp hourbattery, which means that it's good for
about fifteen miles an hours its topspeed, and it does get there pretty

(16:23):
briskly, I will say, justriding around here in New York City,
you know, I was able tomax this thing out pretty quickly. And
that gets to kind of what youwere referencing at the beginning here, which
is that electric vehicles you get allyour torque instantly, right, there's no
mechanical loss. All the power isavailable to you. But This is a
pretty small electric scooter, and itis designed to be portable. The handlebars

(16:48):
sort of fold up into the bodyof the machine. The wheels tuck up
underneath the frame, and there's alittle handle that you can kind of carry
it into work with you. Andit's kind of heavy. I will tell
you how heavy was this thing around. It's a little bit more than forty
pounds. I believe it's like fortytwo pounds or so. Yeah, that's
not terrible, terrible, And itis heavy, but that's not terrible.

(17:11):
No, but not like walking aroundwith like a briefcase for instance. You
know. It is, you know, a little hefty eer, but it's
not unmanageable. I would say.Honda sort of sees this as what they
call a last mile solution, wherea lot of people will take the train
into work, for instance, butthe train station is kind of far from
their office and they got to walkthat last little bit of you know,
distance. This is designed for bridgingthat gap, essentially on hot days here

(17:37):
in New York City. We're expectedto go through a heat wave later this
week. The idea is that insteadof spending all that time out in the
ninety degree weather, you can kindof unfurl this thing and scoot yourself to
work by a battery electric conveyance twelvemiles of range is what they are quoted
as doing, which will get meto work, but not home from work,
and that means I will need tocharge at the office in New York

(18:00):
City and that takes about three anda half hours from nothing to a full
chart. So which is not allit thinks the way as you kind of
weigh this thing out, Yeah,I'm assuming that the battery is very small
and you can just remove it andplug it in any place at work.
I mean, you don't have totake the whole thing in, do you.
So you actually can't remove the batteryfrom the frame of this thing.

(18:23):
Because it's foldable and because it's meantto be relatively compact, you're kind of,
you know, limited to bringing thisthing into work with you. It's
not like you can remove the batteryseparately like you would in like an electrically
assisted bicycle or in an e scooterin some cases. Interestingly enough, pricing
wise, this thing kind of splitsthe difference between those two market segments.

(18:45):
It's nine hundred and ninety five dollarsit's available as a Honda part technically,
so you can pick it up atyou know, a Honda service center or
an accurate service center. Really undercutsa lot of the pedal assisted e bikes
that we've seen hit the market recently, but it is a couple hundred dollars
more expensive than an e scooter,for instance, or a traditional pedal bike,
so Honda seemingly kind of splitting thedifference between those two segments of the

(19:07):
micro mobility market. I'm assuming it'salready selling in Japan right It has been
on sale here in the United Statessince the beginning of November, and interestingly
enough, we've seen a lot ofauto enthusiasts really take to this. They
have fond memories of the old MotoCompo from the eighties. People have you
know, kind of done this upwith more power. A type R version,

(19:30):
which is sort of Honda's Performance division, has been floating out there on
the internet that that some you know, third parties have kind of cobbled together
with like a fast version. Butyeah, for the most part, this
is this is meant for sort oflow speed travel against fifteen miles an hour
side, it's not very fast,but when you're out there riding around on
a briefcase is this is pretty brickAnd if you're walking, I mean,

(19:52):
if it's planning walking, fifteen milesper hour is pretty clever. What's it
called, the Compacto, the MotoPacto. Yeah, that's what they're calling
it. It's designed to kind ofreference the early Honda Moto Compo. That's
a play on that and kind ofreferencing sort of the compact nature the fold
ability of this thing. I shouldhave named it, you know, the

(20:14):
five thousand model Blasto Motocompacto. Imean, it was right. Okay.
The Surgeon General of the United Stateswants warning labels for social media, much
like the warning labels on cigarette packs. And that is a big deal.

(20:34):
So let's talk about number one,how necessary that is? And number two,
what are the chances of it happeningin light of the power of these
major tech firms. Right, Solet's address number one first. Bevec Murphy,
the US Surgeon General, and witha big op ed in the New

(20:55):
York Times yesterday, he also spoketo us here at ABC after that op
ed was published about what he callsthe defining public health issue of our time.
Which is Team Mental Health, specificallywith regard to social media's impact on
the mental health of young people inthis country. He lays out a pretty
frightening portrait. In this op ed, he says adolescents who spend more than

(21:18):
three hours a day on social mediaface double the risk of things like anxiety
or depression. The average amount oftime that this age group spends on social
media bill four point eight hours,just under five hours a day on social
media platforms. That's why he's nowrecommending the Surgeon General's warning label be applied
to social media platforms, and thiswould kind of work. We think similarly

(21:41):
to the warning labels that you seeon things like packets of cigarettes, right
where a warning label's big and grayand kind of scary looking obscures a big
portion of the packaging aimed at warningpeople about the dangers of the thing they're
about to buy or consume. Withregard to social media, we don't know
specifically how this is going to cropup. Whether it's going to be a

(22:03):
pop up that appears when you opena specific app or visit a specific website,
or whether this is something that's goingto appear next to certain content or
in a feed that will come laterdown the line. This is not something
that the Vic Murthy can just putforward by himself. This does require approval
from Congress. So there are someregulatory hurdles left to go over before we

(22:26):
see this show up in our ownsocial media feeds now, and we have
to assume that, much like theBig Tobacco, the major platforms are going
to fight this simply because it's regulatingthem to some extent. Well, I
think the difference is when you hadthe CEOs of major Tobacco in front of
Congress, every single one of themlied through It was a all of mo

(22:51):
he lied through their teeth, everyone of them. Nope, not addictive,
not a health risk. I don'tthink that's happening with Facebook, YouTube,
any of those Instagram, any ofthose platforms. Certainly not. In
fact, we've seen a number ofthe heads of these tech firms appear before
Congress multiple times. In fact,it wasn't that long ago that Mark Zuckerberg

(23:15):
turned around during congressional testimony and personallyapologized for his platforms effect on the young
children and the parents who were appearingat that hearing. So you know this
is certainly you know top of mindfor many in the tech space. Interestingly
enough, we haven't seen many techfirms respond to this warning label idea specifically.

(23:38):
However, you can expect if thisidea moves forward, for these companies
to mount a First Amendment a freespeech argument. That's what we've seen the
tax that we've seen them take withother pieces of legislation and litigation in the
past, that curtailing the influence ofsocial media actually goes some way to fringing

(24:00):
on people's speech rights and actually cutsoff people from finding community that they would
otherwise not have found. You canimagine the implications that this has for marginalized
communities. People who belong to theLGBTQ community have often cited social media as
a way to find community, youknow, when often they were not accepted
in their own real life communities.What's more, we also see that this

(24:25):
the VIVEC Murphy has sort of madethe comparison to the tobacco industry more clear
that you know, when these warninglabels started appearing on tobacco products fifty years
ago, more than forty percent ofAmerican adults smoked daily. In twenty twenty
one, that figure was just undertwelve percent. So we have seen a
pretty marked decline in American smoking habitsafter these labels were applied. Though that

(24:52):
was only one piece of a broaderpicture, right, The federal government had
other policies, yeah, programs incurtailing America's smoking habits. Similarly, the
VAC Murphy says, this is justone piece of a larger puzzle. It's
not going to be the be alland end all, but we got to
do something. Yeah. But thedifference also is huge in terms of smoking,
because that causes people to die ofcancer. And we're talking about adults

(25:15):
and older people who had the abilityto vote. This is teenagers, and
so the number of people who haveteenage kids is fairly limited, where the
number of adults who spoke was astronomical. I just wanted to point that out
that there were differences, certainly,But I mean, you look at the
the use factor among you know,how many kids are on social media.

(25:37):
It's huge, right, So youknow, obviously this is kind of top
of mind for many. But that'snot to say it is not a fraud
issue. Right, Whether you knowkids can kind of get around these warning
labels or just scroll past them isobviously going to be a big point of
concern, but again, you knowthis is we've got a little bit of
regulatory road left to drive down beforewe get it enough. I thank you

(26:00):
greatly oppression kf I am six fortylive everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday six
am to nine am, and anytimeon demand on the iHeartRadio app.