October 2, 2025 • 27 mins
Aired August 31, 2025: In this podcast, Lisa Foxx talks to Ed Peisner, the Co-Founder of the Organization for Social Media Safety about all the ways his organization to speaks out to guide young people on how to better to protect themselves from the dangers of social media. The Organization for Social Media Safety is the first consumer protection organization exclusively focused on social media. They work to make social media safe for everyone. They protect against all social media-related dangers including: Cyberbullying, Sextortion, Sexual Harassment, Anxiety/Depression, Suicide/Self-Harm, Eating Disorders, Substance Abuse, and Trafficking.
The Organization for Social Media Safety uses an innovative, consumer protection-oriented approach that includes: Education: They teach social media safety skills to students, parents, and educators across the country. Advocacy: They advocate at all levels of government to improve and create public policies that enhance social media safety. Technology: They develop software and applications to provide real-time protection against any and all social media-related dangers. And so much more!
After a long career in business, Ed Peisner founded the Organization for Social Media Safety in 2017 after his teenage son Jordan was viciously assaulted in West Hills, CA. The attack was filmed and uploaded to social media by an associate of the attacker. Jordan was left with serious and life-long injuries from the assault. Ed decided to dedicate himself to the goal of ensuring that no other family had to endure such a terrible ordeal. Ed now proudly travels the country, teaching students, parents, and educators essential social media safety skills. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, 5 kids, two dogs, and bearded dragon.
JORDANS LAW: In 2016, then 14-year-old Jordan Peisner was standing with friends outside a local fast food restaurant when he was suddenly and viciously assaulted by another teen he did not know. During the attack and while Jordan lay helpless on the ground, witnesses and friends of the perpetrator stood and filmed the assault on their phones and then quickly uploaded their videos to social media. Now, this horrifying footage lives forever on social media already having been viewed by hundreds of thousands.
Determined to ensure that no other family had to endure such an ordeal, Jordan’s father, Ed Peisner, formed the Organization for Social Media Safety and began researching how to help. He was astonished to learn that since the early 2000s social media motived violence, or attacks initiated to be filmed and distributed on social media for the purpose of gaining internet fame, had risen exponentially each year. So, the Organization for Social Media Safety set to work on public policy advocacy to stop this disturbing trend.
Incredibly, within only a year, the California legislature, working closely with the Organization for Social Media Safety, passed the nation’s first law, AB 1542, to deter social media motivated violence. The law was called Jordan’s Law. It states that anyone who commits a violent felony and films it or who conspires with an attacker to film a violent crime will receive an enhanced prison sentence.
For more info...to reach out for help/social media
The Organization for Social Media Safety uses an innovative, consumer protection-oriented approach that includes: Education: They teach social media safety skills to students, parents, and educators across the country. Advocacy: They advocate at all levels of government to improve and create public policies that enhance social media safety. Technology: They develop software and applications to provide real-time protection against any and all social media-related dangers. And so much more!
After a long career in business, Ed Peisner founded the Organization for Social Media Safety in 2017 after his teenage son Jordan was viciously assaulted in West Hills, CA. The attack was filmed and uploaded to social media by an associate of the attacker. Jordan was left with serious and life-long injuries from the assault. Ed decided to dedicate himself to the goal of ensuring that no other family had to endure such a terrible ordeal. Ed now proudly travels the country, teaching students, parents, and educators essential social media safety skills. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, 5 kids, two dogs, and bearded dragon.
JORDANS LAW: In 2016, then 14-year-old Jordan Peisner was standing with friends outside a local fast food restaurant when he was suddenly and viciously assaulted by another teen he did not know. During the attack and while Jordan lay helpless on the ground, witnesses and friends of the perpetrator stood and filmed the assault on their phones and then quickly uploaded their videos to social media. Now, this horrifying footage lives forever on social media already having been viewed by hundreds of thousands.
Determined to ensure that no other family had to endure such an ordeal, Jordan’s father, Ed Peisner, formed the Organization for Social Media Safety and began researching how to help. He was astonished to learn that since the early 2000s social media motived violence, or attacks initiated to be filmed and distributed on social media for the purpose of gaining internet fame, had risen exponentially each year. So, the Organization for Social Media Safety set to work on public policy advocacy to stop this disturbing trend.
Incredibly, within only a year, the California legislature, working closely with the Organization for Social Media Safety, passed the nation’s first law, AB 1542, to deter social media motivated violence. The law was called Jordan’s Law. It states that anyone who commits a violent felony and films it or who conspires with an attacker to film a violent crime will receive an enhanced prison sentence.
For more info...to reach out for help/social media
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, I'm Lisa Fox and this is the iHeart So
Cal Show. I met Ed Peisner, who's the co founder
of the Organization.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For Social Media Safety. I met Ed Hi Ed.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
How are you, hi, Lisa? How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm doing great.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
You know, I'm so impressed by you. I met you
months ago at this big Boys and Girls Club event.
Shout out to our friends at the Boys and Girls
Club in West and Gabriel Valley in East Side. They
had a massive Kindness Is Free summit with about four
or five hundred kids out at the Panda Express headquarters.
And you were such an important part of our day,
empowering young people and teaching them about ways that they
(00:36):
can be stronger and kinder and tackle this crazy world
we all live in, especially when it comes to the
world of social media.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And boy, I.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Am not to age myself or you, but we didn't
grow up with this thank you back in the day.
I mean, it has its blessings, but boy, it has
its curses. And social media can be a very scary
place for so many young.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
People, really for all people.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But your company, your organization, which was started due to
a very personal thing that happened to you and your family.
You know, you're all about empowering people, on teaching people
the ways we can protect ourselves from the negatives of
social media in terms of cyber bullying, sexual harassment, maybe
the anxiety and depression that can come from negative comments
(01:25):
or people and your dms, like, a lot of negative
things can can happen because of the access we allow
on social media, and that's what you are here to
open people's eyes about and show how you can help
protect them or essentially how you can empower people to
protect themselves from the negatives that can come from being
(01:46):
on social media.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, yes, exactly, you said it all right there. Yes,
we are a nonprofit. We've and if I could just
I'll get into the story if you'd like. We're a nonprofit.
We were found it eight years ago doing an incident
that took place here in southern California where I live.
And at the time, my son was in the middle
(02:08):
of ninth grade. So what was that The fourteen and
a half year old son was walking home from school
typical Friday afternoon. You can you envision this. He's walking
from school, he stopped at a fast food joint with
his friends that were hanging outside and that particular afternoon,
somebody decided to enact a challenge that they heard on
social media or spread via social media, and they looked
(02:32):
for an innocent victim, not be my son. And this
person walked up behind my son and punched him as
hard as he could, try to knock him out, as
per one of these challenges online and one of these
you know, online challenges, you know, the knockout challenge, whatever
you want to call it. And unfortunately, my son when
he fell, his head cracked on the ground and he
crossed his skull and he suffered a TBI, a traumatic
(02:54):
brain injury. And when I got a phone call that
somebody punched my son, I'll just I drove down with
an ice pack, thinking he had a bloody nose. That's
what I was going to come upon, and you know,
I'd take them home and we'd be fine. When I
got there, a mile from my house, I came upon
a fire truck and ambulance, some police cars.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
So much more serious.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh yeah, oh kid, And you know, my knees got weak.
I ran to the ambulance and the paramedics were telling
me he's got a brain injury, he's got a hemorrhage inside.
We have to get him to the hospital quickly. They
have an airflight in route to take him to Children's Hospital,
which has a trauma center. Yeah, and now I'm out
of my mott. I couldn't even catch my breath. I
(03:37):
remember this moment kind of like Tunstead still. But I
jumped out of the ambulance and all the kids are around,
and I asked them what happened, and they all pulled
out their phones and they're showing me this video and
to this moment as I'm talking to you, now, I
can envision this. I just looked at it and I said,
what am I looking at? And it was this video
of this boy walking up to my son, bocking him out,
(04:01):
then Jordan on the ground.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And this is the boy that your your son did
not know around Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Random, random, different school altogether. And what got to me
was not only am I watching this event, but I
saw all the other kids are watching and sharing and
putting their phones up and then liking it and sharing
it and spreading it. And you know, I didn't even
know what to think of it at that At that
(04:28):
very moment, I just in shock. I remember recording it, Yes, yeah,
but I recorded it with my phone to you know,
grab it as evidence, and then I went to the hospital.
They flew him to the children's hospital, and God blessed
Children's Hospital. They he was there for seven days in
the ICU, and he did He had a large blood
clot between his skull and his brain and he survived.
(04:49):
He you know, went through a lot of treatment, and
you know, we're here, we were eight years later. But
what came to me in that moment sitting in the
hospital and when I was interviewed by a couple of
different news can I.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Just say anger right now? I mean so much anger, right?
I mean, you kids filmed it. You kids filmed it,
and you did nothing to help my son, or you
let this happen and you filmed it and you're sharing
it like it's some main event.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
But he almost died, Like it's.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Yeah, like it's entertainment. That's what came to me. Why
did the worst moment in my life, in my son's
life become entertainment? And it really to this moment as
I talked to it sticks in my head. Yep, this
has stopped. So you know I got on this mission
to do something about it, and quite Frankly, I didn't
(05:33):
know what to do, but I knew I wanted to
turn my mess into a message and get out there
and try to do something about it. I formed this
nonprofit and the Organization for Social Media Safety, and contacted
the assembly member where I live here in the San
ferm the Valley. His chief of staff, Mark Berkman, called
me back, and you know, we started discussing what happened.
(05:55):
And Mark actually had known about it already. He saw
the video within a few hours. That's you know, still
and viral happens. But fast forward. Mark is now the
CEO of our organization. He was the chief of staff
at the time, you know, in our area, but now
he's the CEO of our nonprofit and we are all
over the country teaching social media safety education to parents,
(06:17):
to students, to administrators at schools, to teachers, to counselors.
To date, we have exceeded over one hundred thousand students
that we have spoken with. As I touched you right now,
I am packing my suitcase because I'm getting on a
flight tomorrow morning at eight am to go to Florida
to talk for a week at school. So we are
all over trying to raise awareness around the dangers within
(06:39):
social media, the world of social media, and how to
best respond to them should something happen. You to adult,
it's a parent to child. Like you said early on,
you and I didn't grow up with this. This is
brand new. So how do you react to something that happened?
You know, it's like my son. How do we And
none of us had those tools, So now we do
after years of research and you know, studying with very
(07:03):
very smart people and UCLA, you know, we collaborate with
the School of Education and we dug deep into the
problems of social media and their risks and the harms
and have a most safely or avoid them or respond
to them should something happen.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, you know when you were speaking, and thank you
for sharing your story. And Jordan, how is Jordan doing
these days? Jordan's doing okay.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Physically, Jordan is better, you know, his the blood clot
and all that went away. Emotionally, I think Jordan's got
a long road personally because you know, it lives forever.
That video online is forever, so we'll let ever go away.
I doubt it. It could always pop up again. Even
though we teach certain tactics to do. If you have
(07:48):
it on your phone, you could upload that to YouTube
anytime you want. So it's the permanence, right, that online
brain injury is permanent, that will never go away. Either
his brain injury is always something to worry about in
the future, but also something happens to you online, it
happens to you online forever. So the more people watch it,
you know, as I tell the students I speak with
(08:10):
from fifth grade to high school, each like on that video,
where each time somebody vis.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Like encouraging, it's almost like giving it a badge of honor,
like yes, it's okay to do this, this.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Is cool, exactly. And what they don't understand is the
person in the video. They could see the views, they
could think, why is everybody watching this? That's affecting me.
So that's what I'm trying to get. I want kids
to think about how their reactions on social media and
things they do on social media impact themselves and others,
(08:39):
because it's not just the person in the video, but
now it's yourself watching something as parting to normalize that
behavior exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And please tell me Ed that the person who punched
her son and gave him that injury, Please tell me
he was there was repercussions.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
For that, Well, there was. And here's what it is.
The way I could put it this way, since they
were both minors, know, we were not really allowed to
talk about that. What I could tell you is this
was he arrested in charge of the felony because there
was great bodily injury. Yes, the case itself, all the
details because he's a minor, are really not allowed to
be discussed. But what came out of it is Assembly
(09:17):
built fifteen forty two in California, which is also called
Jordan's Law law, which we had passed. Jordan's Law. We
had a passed and I talked about it there. In
twenty eighteen, we had Jordan's Law passed in California, only
first law of its kind in the United States to
hold somebody accountable for the act of filming a violent
act and participating in that violent act. So if you
(09:40):
know a fight's going to happen, you know something like
this is going to happen, and you decid, Hey, I'm
going to film it just to upload it for likes
and shares so I could get some clout on social media.
You as a filmer, now you can be held accountable
for the act of filming.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It look at that and.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
You have to check certain boxes. But we had a
law passed in twelve months and it showed is that
the necessity of certain laws revolving around social media. We
need these laws. We need to do better for our children.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
And people need to know it's not okay and that
there are consequences to these types of actions. You know,
when you spoke to at the Boys and Girls Club event,
so many the kids were very interested in what you
had to say and ask so many questions about ways
to protect themselves. Let's go down some of the other
areas that your organization organization for Social Media Safety And
by the way, his website, social Media Safety dot org
(10:31):
is the website, and we encourage you to invite Edge
to speak at your kids' school or any organization. He
is such a powerful speaker and he us so much
information to offer, but talk about the concerns that kids
had about their experience on social media and feeling attacked
at times or violated at times, bullied at times.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
It used to be the term we've all heard, right,
cyber bullying somebody cyberbullying me and that is still unfortunately
happening today. It's just gotten worse. But the harms and
the risks have evolved from what we call social media
motivated violence, which is really what we started this whole
nonprofit about what happened in Jordan, but then you look
at cyber bullying. But now we're digging deeper about these dangers,
(11:17):
such as the mental health risks which we all know
are out there, and we're seeing all these studies come
out now that time spent on social media is affecting
a child child's mental health. But now we're seeing issues
of body dysporfia where kids are looking at them their
own they're analyzing their own features, their own bodies, and
not feeling good about what they see in the mirror
(11:38):
because they're comparing it to what they see online. And
you and I both know what we see online as
usually curated or filtered or edited.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
A lot of filters out there, especially my age group,
they do a lot of filtering.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Oh yeah, I mean listen, when I get on a
zoom call that asked me do you want touch up
your appearance?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I'm like, come on, no, yeah, You're like, this is me,
this is what I look like what you see is.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
What you get exactly. This is me and I'm proud
of it. We're also seeing dangers such as sex stortion,
where kids are being asked to supply inappropriate pictures of
themselves to other people, and if they don't, they're gonna
use images against something that they have against them, so
they're trying to get more out of them. We're seeing
deep sake videos being made of people and now with
(12:19):
AI AI.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, the nude right, the nudity stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I've heard terrible stories about this hopping to young people
where the use of AI can appear to make people
look completely naked it's not them and doing things, and
videos of them doing things quote unquote negative, it's not them.
And then the threat for money and the harassment that
comes along with all of these fake videos is just
I can't even imagine happy to.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Our kids exactly, and they're targeting anybody on planet Earth.
The problem is these devices, and I tell the kids,
I'm not against technology. It's a wonderful device that we
have and we're all holding in our hands. However, it
could be used for harm, it could be to hurt you.
So our goal at the organization of Social media safety
(13:04):
is to raise awareness around the risks and then teach
the kids what to do if and when they come
across one of the dangers and the big tactic, the
big tool we try to give the kids for empowerment
is blocking and reporting. So if they come across content
that's bad, or if somebody says something to them or
(13:24):
involves them in some dangerous challenger and they need to
block that person from their feed. They need to block
them from their whatever app they might be using so
they don't have access to them anymore, and then they
need to report it to the platform as well as
a trusted adult. We really want to encourage kids. If
they see something on their device and it makes them
(13:45):
feel uncomfortable or sad or any other emotion, they really
need to find a trusted adult to talk.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
To about it and take action. Take action.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
There are protections and you're not going to get No
one's going to know that you did report, block, report, block.
No one's going to know, oh my gosh, Katie, Katie
is a whistleblower, A Katie reported block. No, they're not
going to know it's you. It's not going to get
back to you personally, So right or how does it work, but.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
With a blocking because it's really important to know when
you block somebody on certain platforms, the other individual that
you blocked, they will know that you blocked them, and
that might create a little bit of conflict, right, a
little bit of you know, the kid comes to school
the next day and says, hey, did you block me?
So there is a way you could hide certain content
so your brain is not absorbing that content, but the
(14:30):
other person doesn't know they're hidden. So there's all these things.
We try to empower students' children from fifth grade to
the high school. We want to empower them. We also
want them to know that they're being manipulated by Big Social.
Big Social. You know, their profit is earned by time,
so the more time we are all on social media,
the more profit Big Social makes. So we really want
(14:52):
to empower kids to take their time back, their time,
your time, my time is as valuable as anything, so
we need to take it back from big Social. And
that's really what we're trying to empower them to do.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And that's a big part of what you teach when
you speak at schools and you go around to companies
and corporations and with a child or a young person
in their life or like this. You know, this conversation
is on seven iHeartRadio stations. So the more people we
can tell and talk to you about this, the more
people can hopefully be empowered. How do people know, aside
from you speaking at their school, how can people get
(15:26):
in touch with you and your organization and get direct
help or direct guidance?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
How do we get it now? Like, how do we
get it now? From you?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Sure? And thank you for asking. The best way would
obviously just be going to our website, which is Social
Media Safety dot org. We have the contact us page
right there. They are welcome to email me. My email
address is right there. It's ed at OSSMS dot org
or at social Media Safety dot org. Schools, you know,
(15:54):
usually mid August, which has already happened. Mid August, our
phones light up and people start emailing Heke, we have
you come to our school and speak, which is again
I'm leaving tomorrow, but we have another speaker now that
we're bringing on board, and we're growing that to scale,
so we could really get out and speak at the
school everywhere. Yeah, of course, because that is the goal
to get out there and speak at as many schools
(16:16):
as possible, and it's not a one and done, so
you know, you saw a kind of like an abbreviated
presentation for all those kids because it was different age
ranges in that group when you were at But we
do have it for elementary, middle and high school. We
have different modules, so we go out with the like
a part one and then a.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Part two elementary. Are we giving our kids' phones in
elementary school?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
No, no, but they do need to know what's coming.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I would.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
My goddaughter's not going to cell phone until she was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
She was the last one in her girl group at school,
but we wait until she was sixteen together her first iPhone.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So same because my kids are now in their twenties. However,
just so you know, we've been getting asked to speak
in fourth grade. Wow, so they're getting them younger and younger.
You know, when we first started, we sixth grades and
trowth grade, so then we added the fifth grade. Now
they're asking, well, we're seeing so many phones in fourth grade.
The pushes on like, we really need to make sure
(17:14):
these phones are not in the hands of children that young.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And we know sometimes too, Look, parents want their kids
have a phone to you know, for safety issues, and
you know, you can have only you can have only
a certain number of phone numbers in there, and they
can only call certain people, and you can you can
limit it in the early years. But boy, to arm
them with what's to come and the world of social media,
I think is important, right, I guess the information is
(17:37):
important to power empower them. The younger, right, the younger
the better.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah, you know, we we do recommend it if if
a family decides to give their child the phone at
a certain age, whatever that age, maybe we do recommend
safety software such as bright Canary or Bark, which will
help to bring some alerts to a parent should something
happen on the other on their child's divite. So there
is safety software out there that we do recommend. We
(18:03):
also recommend, you know, making sure the settings are locked
down for privacy, making sure that they have time limits
on their devices that can't use it for more than
a certain amount of time. So we make all those
recommendations as well. But if you're asking me, you know,
if I thought it was I would wait till.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Sixteen sixteen for a phone. See everybody listening.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Absolutely, I know it's hard.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I know it's hard.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Especially you got these kids at junior high in high
school to lose.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Lose, you know, yeah, to lose lose because you don't
want your chovy at all. O onely moment without a phone.
That also causes some problem. So we know there's a
true trade off there. But safety should always come first.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And sorry to say, we should know this by now,
just in life, but also when people online are really
begging you for those photos, those risk a photos, those
to be used against you. There are people online who
want to lure you into doing things that are not right,
and you know you're just kind of I just saw.
I came across the story onst just the other day,
(19:01):
and I thought of you as part of what you also,
you know, wake people up about. Is this this grooming
that happens online? I just I came across the story.
It happens all the time, sadly, but it was a story.
I think it was out of Dallas, Texas. But it
was a girl who was lured by an older man
posing as someone much younger through one of the gaming apps.
So he convinced her. He paid her actually to leave
(19:22):
her house. She was fourteen. He paid her to leave
her house and he kidnapped her and locked her in
a shed and did terrible things.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
But the mom.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Thank goodness for the mom, because she had a feeling
that was tied to that app.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
She had her password.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
They got into the app, they were able to track
down who she was conversing with, and they got the
guy and they were able to get her, but sadly
after some bad things happened. But this is how they
get into these gaming apps. They posed as someone your
age and can have some pretty crazy ulterior motives scary.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Stuff of course.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Hello, they're lying.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
They're lying to get what they want, and these are
things that kids need to know that we can't believe
people that we don't know or just because they say
what they want to say online. It's a world filled
with deceit and a lot of liars who are using
you to get what they want for themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And that's very very ugerous kids. Yeah, yeah, you know,
only accept a request from anybody, it doesn't matter on
any app, gain, new platform, whatever it might be. You
do not accept a request from anyone you haven't met
in real life. And that is a way to protect
yourself from what happened to that poor girl. You just
spoke about if you if you set that rule and
(20:34):
stick to that mantra, I will only accept a request
from somebody I have met I r L in real life,
then you could help to avoid what just happened. But
you just explained because if she's stuck to that, that
might not have happened.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
So many stories, but you're you're a big pusher on
report block, report block, and finding ways to to mute
or hide content you don't like.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Absolutely all, always always block and report anything you want
to again, report it to the platform so they could
remove it. You know, I always tell the kids, listen,
if you stumbled across my son's video, I would hope
that instead of liking it and sharing it, you would
report it so it got removed because you might not
ever meet my son. But I'll say thank you right
(21:20):
now for doing that for him. And if we all
took that attitude and removed some of the bad content
that comes across our feed, there'd be less out there. Yeah,
we have to do that for one another. We are
all the same race, We're all as human beings here
trying to survive, and if we all just got together
and did that, it would help to make social media
(21:41):
maybe a little more cleaned up. But to your point,
we'll ever be fully no.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But just to not be part of the problem. Let's
not be part of the problem.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Let's not be part of the negativity that can come
from this massive platform that's worldwide, so right, you could
be talking to people from other countries you don't even know.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
People can hide, all right.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
We call them the trolls, people who say and comment nasty, mean, dirty,
terrible things. Report and block, report and block, and try
to get these people out of your world, out of
your system, out of your eyesight, out of your mind,
because you know, these these comments can have such a
negative effect on people's psyche and feelings about our bodies
(22:21):
and feelings about ourselves. So there's a lot of terrible
things that people want to make us feel and do,
and so we want to get those people out. Any
other tips aside from just going to your website social
media safety dot org, social media safety dot org, any
other general tips for young people on phones today.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yeah, you know, I would always say obviously, watch the clock.
You know, if you want to do a time challenge,
something that's beneficial and healthy, you could monitor your time
on a daily basis. By writing it down and create
that habit of every day looking at how much time
you spent and then trying to lower the number. And
that's creating a very healthy habit. So the time challenge
(22:59):
is something that we recommend. And also nudging yourself, So
setting a nudge on your phone to send you like
a little beep or notification when you've exceeded thirty minutes
whatever that time is that you've set, but saying to
yourself a mantra like my time is valuable, not just
in your head. Say it out loud, something I try
to tell the students to do. Say it out loud everybody,
(23:19):
my time is valuable, and starting to repeat that mantra
so you could get the time back. I always tell
the students I speak to, even the parents, there's only
twenty four hours in a day. The smartest minds in
the world are sitting at these big social you know,
big big social companies, trying to take your time and
make it theirs. That's their job. How can we get
(23:41):
Lisa to click an ad?
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Hey want to scroll, scroll, keep on scrolling, scroll, scroll, scrolling, scroll,
and buy stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Give you more dopamine to make you just keep pulling
that slot machine handle. It's time we stand up and
take the time back. Amen. Amen, that's what we have
to do, and we have to help our kids.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Ooh, I just remembered something, ed.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Maybe you want to weave this into your talks that
you do at the schools. Maybe we need to quote
Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift just did that whole big thing
on the podcast, right and she said how she was
kind of commenting on how she doesn't get involved in
social media much at all, and she said kind of
a piece of advice. She said, your energy should be expensive.
(24:22):
Your energy is expensive. I'm not going to even give
it the time here and there. I want to announce something. Yeah,
I'm not getting involved in comments people saying mean things
about me.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I'm not going to give it my energy.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Oh yeah, here wait, I pulled it up her quote
from the podcast that she did the Kelsey Brothers podcast.
She said, you should think of your energy as if
it's expensive, as if it's a luxury item. Not everyone
can afford it. Not everyone has invested in you in
order to be able to have the capital for you
to care about this. And a lot of people found
(24:55):
that to be a kind of an aha moment like, hmm,
she's got something there.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's a healthy way to look at it.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
You know, I loved what she had to say. And
if she is listening to this, she's welcome to come
to our gallony, John Taylor, let me tell you call us.
What she said was amazing. Be intentional with your time,
and Taylor Swift millions and millions of followers. You can
only imagine what is said about her and the way
her feed must blow up. Be intentional about what you follow.
(25:25):
Be intentional about your time. I loved what she said,
and that again, it's it's my goal for as long
as I'm on this planet is to help kids get
their time back to have the childhood that you and
I had. Yep, that's what I hope. Kids.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Can put the phone down and don't let it ruin
your life. Don't let other people on these phones and
out there and this worldwide, you know, social media platform.
Don't let them take you down. Don't let them get
to you. Don't let them affect you. Report and block,
Report and block, and reach out to Ed Peisner's organization.
It's Organization for Social Media Safety, a wealth of information.
If you can, you can reach out directly through the
(26:01):
website and have him speak at your school, have him
talk to you. Like you said, people can just email
and ask questions small groups, large groups, and is available
for you all the information at social Media safety dot org,
social Media safety dot org and EDWI.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Thank you so much. Such a sweet man, right, married
with a whole bunch of kids, and five of them.
You have a bearded dragon. I mean, geez, you're a
busy guy.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
You get to be on top of trying to save
the world and help young people online be safer.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
I am newly married. We have five beautiful adults as
I call them because they're twenty one to twenty five.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Oh yeah, okay, great, Yeah, we have.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
A beautiful, blended family. And it's a blessing. I am
blessed every day I get to go out to a
school and speak to kids and motivate them and challenge
them to get that time back and be better versions
of themselves. And you know, it's a beautiful thing. I
wish it never happened, by the way, I wish what
happened to my son never happened. Yeah, But I am
(26:59):
taking that mess and turning into a message and I
will not stop until we get out there and talk
to everyone.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yes, you are God bless you and thank you for
all that you're doing for young people and just thank
you phone users and all these young people. So thank
you for all that you're doing. Please tell Jordan we
say hello, and all your kids and what's the beard
of Dragon's name?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
What's the beard of dragons name?
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Sonny? Sonny? And we have Cooper and we have Honey,
which is our which are our two dogs?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Very nice?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Well, again, thank you so much, ED for all that
you're doing, and please reach out to ED you too,
Social Media Safety dot Org for all the info yea nay,
thank you
Okay, I'm Lisa Fox and this is the iHeart So
Cal Show. I met Ed Peisner, who's the co founder
of the Organization.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For Social Media Safety. I met Ed Hi Ed.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
How are you, hi, Lisa? How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm doing great.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
You know, I'm so impressed by you. I met you
months ago at this big Boys and Girls Club event.
Shout out to our friends at the Boys and Girls
Club in West and Gabriel Valley in East Side. They
had a massive Kindness Is Free summit with about four
or five hundred kids out at the Panda Express headquarters.
And you were such an important part of our day,
empowering young people and teaching them about ways that they
(00:36):
can be stronger and kinder and tackle this crazy world
we all live in, especially when it comes to the
world of social media.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And boy, I.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Am not to age myself or you, but we didn't
grow up with this thank you back in the day.
I mean, it has its blessings, but boy, it has
its curses. And social media can be a very scary
place for so many young.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
People, really for all people.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
But your company, your organization, which was started due to
a very personal thing that happened to you and your family.
You know, you're all about empowering people, on teaching people
the ways we can protect ourselves from the negatives of
social media in terms of cyber bullying, sexual harassment, maybe
the anxiety and depression that can come from negative comments
(01:25):
or people and your dms, like, a lot of negative
things can can happen because of the access we allow
on social media, and that's what you are here to
open people's eyes about and show how you can help
protect them or essentially how you can empower people to
protect themselves from the negatives that can come from being
(01:46):
on social media.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, yes, exactly, you said it all right there. Yes,
we are a nonprofit. We've and if I could just
I'll get into the story if you'd like. We're a nonprofit.
We were found it eight years ago doing an incident
that took place here in southern California where I live.
And at the time, my son was in the middle
(02:08):
of ninth grade. So what was that The fourteen and
a half year old son was walking home from school
typical Friday afternoon. You can you envision this. He's walking
from school, he stopped at a fast food joint with
his friends that were hanging outside and that particular afternoon,
somebody decided to enact a challenge that they heard on
social media or spread via social media, and they looked
(02:32):
for an innocent victim, not be my son. And this
person walked up behind my son and punched him as
hard as he could, try to knock him out, as
per one of these challenges online and one of these
you know, online challenges, you know, the knockout challenge, whatever
you want to call it. And unfortunately, my son when
he fell, his head cracked on the ground and he
crossed his skull and he suffered a TBI, a traumatic
(02:54):
brain injury. And when I got a phone call that
somebody punched my son, I'll just I drove down with
an ice pack, thinking he had a bloody nose. That's
what I was going to come upon, and you know,
I'd take them home and we'd be fine. When I
got there, a mile from my house, I came upon
a fire truck and ambulance, some police cars.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
So much more serious.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh yeah, oh kid, And you know, my knees got weak.
I ran to the ambulance and the paramedics were telling
me he's got a brain injury, he's got a hemorrhage inside.
We have to get him to the hospital quickly. They
have an airflight in route to take him to Children's Hospital,
which has a trauma center. Yeah, and now I'm out
of my mott. I couldn't even catch my breath. I
(03:37):
remember this moment kind of like Tunstead still. But I
jumped out of the ambulance and all the kids are around,
and I asked them what happened, and they all pulled
out their phones and they're showing me this video and
to this moment as I'm talking to you, now, I
can envision this. I just looked at it and I said,
what am I looking at? And it was this video
of this boy walking up to my son, bocking him out,
(04:01):
then Jordan on the ground.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And this is the boy that your your son did
not know around Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Random, random, different school altogether. And what got to me
was not only am I watching this event, but I
saw all the other kids are watching and sharing and
putting their phones up and then liking it and sharing
it and spreading it. And you know, I didn't even
know what to think of it at that At that
(04:28):
very moment, I just in shock. I remember recording it, Yes, yeah,
but I recorded it with my phone to you know,
grab it as evidence, and then I went to the hospital.
They flew him to the children's hospital, and God blessed
Children's Hospital. They he was there for seven days in
the ICU, and he did He had a large blood
clot between his skull and his brain and he survived.
(04:49):
He you know, went through a lot of treatment, and
you know, we're here, we were eight years later. But
what came to me in that moment sitting in the
hospital and when I was interviewed by a couple of
different news can I.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Just say anger right now? I mean so much anger, right?
I mean, you kids filmed it. You kids filmed it,
and you did nothing to help my son, or you
let this happen and you filmed it and you're sharing
it like it's some main event.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
But he almost died, Like it's.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Yeah, like it's entertainment. That's what came to me. Why
did the worst moment in my life, in my son's
life become entertainment? And it really to this moment as
I talked to it sticks in my head. Yep, this
has stopped. So you know I got on this mission
to do something about it, and quite Frankly, I didn't
(05:33):
know what to do, but I knew I wanted to
turn my mess into a message and get out there
and try to do something about it. I formed this
nonprofit and the Organization for Social Media Safety, and contacted
the assembly member where I live here in the San
ferm the Valley. His chief of staff, Mark Berkman, called
me back, and you know, we started discussing what happened.
(05:55):
And Mark actually had known about it already. He saw
the video within a few hours. That's you know, still
and viral happens. But fast forward. Mark is now the
CEO of our organization. He was the chief of staff
at the time, you know, in our area, but now
he's the CEO of our nonprofit and we are all
over the country teaching social media safety education to parents,
(06:17):
to students, to administrators at schools, to teachers, to counselors.
To date, we have exceeded over one hundred thousand students
that we have spoken with. As I touched you right now,
I am packing my suitcase because I'm getting on a
flight tomorrow morning at eight am to go to Florida
to talk for a week at school. So we are
all over trying to raise awareness around the dangers within
(06:39):
social media, the world of social media, and how to
best respond to them should something happen. You to adult,
it's a parent to child. Like you said early on,
you and I didn't grow up with this. This is
brand new. So how do you react to something that happened?
You know, it's like my son. How do we And
none of us had those tools, So now we do
after years of research and you know, studying with very
(07:03):
very smart people and UCLA, you know, we collaborate with
the School of Education and we dug deep into the
problems of social media and their risks and the harms
and have a most safely or avoid them or respond
to them should something happen.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, you know when you were speaking, and thank you
for sharing your story. And Jordan, how is Jordan doing
these days? Jordan's doing okay.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Physically, Jordan is better, you know, his the blood clot
and all that went away. Emotionally, I think Jordan's got
a long road personally because you know, it lives forever.
That video online is forever, so we'll let ever go away.
I doubt it. It could always pop up again. Even
though we teach certain tactics to do. If you have
(07:48):
it on your phone, you could upload that to YouTube
anytime you want. So it's the permanence, right, that online
brain injury is permanent, that will never go away. Either
his brain injury is always something to worry about in
the future, but also something happens to you online, it
happens to you online forever. So the more people watch it,
you know, as I tell the students I speak with
(08:10):
from fifth grade to high school, each like on that video,
where each time somebody vis.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Like encouraging, it's almost like giving it a badge of honor,
like yes, it's okay to do this, this.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Is cool, exactly. And what they don't understand is the
person in the video. They could see the views, they
could think, why is everybody watching this? That's affecting me.
So that's what I'm trying to get. I want kids
to think about how their reactions on social media and
things they do on social media impact themselves and others,
(08:39):
because it's not just the person in the video, but
now it's yourself watching something as parting to normalize that
behavior exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And please tell me Ed that the person who punched
her son and gave him that injury, Please tell me
he was there was repercussions.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
For that, Well, there was. And here's what it is.
The way I could put it this way, since they
were both minors, know, we were not really allowed to
talk about that. What I could tell you is this
was he arrested in charge of the felony because there
was great bodily injury. Yes, the case itself, all the
details because he's a minor, are really not allowed to
be discussed. But what came out of it is Assembly
(09:17):
built fifteen forty two in California, which is also called
Jordan's Law law, which we had passed. Jordan's Law. We
had a passed and I talked about it there. In
twenty eighteen, we had Jordan's Law passed in California, only
first law of its kind in the United States to
hold somebody accountable for the act of filming a violent
act and participating in that violent act. So if you
(09:40):
know a fight's going to happen, you know something like
this is going to happen, and you decid, Hey, I'm
going to film it just to upload it for likes
and shares so I could get some clout on social media.
You as a filmer, now you can be held accountable
for the act of filming.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It look at that and.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
You have to check certain boxes. But we had a
law passed in twelve months and it showed is that
the necessity of certain laws revolving around social media. We
need these laws. We need to do better for our children.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
And people need to know it's not okay and that
there are consequences to these types of actions. You know,
when you spoke to at the Boys and Girls Club event,
so many the kids were very interested in what you
had to say and ask so many questions about ways
to protect themselves. Let's go down some of the other
areas that your organization organization for Social Media Safety And
by the way, his website, social Media Safety dot org
(10:31):
is the website, and we encourage you to invite Edge
to speak at your kids' school or any organization. He
is such a powerful speaker and he us so much
information to offer, but talk about the concerns that kids
had about their experience on social media and feeling attacked
at times or violated at times, bullied at times.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
It used to be the term we've all heard, right,
cyber bullying somebody cyberbullying me and that is still unfortunately
happening today. It's just gotten worse. But the harms and
the risks have evolved from what we call social media
motivated violence, which is really what we started this whole
nonprofit about what happened in Jordan, but then you look
at cyber bullying. But now we're digging deeper about these dangers,
(11:17):
such as the mental health risks which we all know
are out there, and we're seeing all these studies come
out now that time spent on social media is affecting
a child child's mental health. But now we're seeing issues
of body dysporfia where kids are looking at them their
own they're analyzing their own features, their own bodies, and
not feeling good about what they see in the mirror
(11:38):
because they're comparing it to what they see online. And
you and I both know what we see online as
usually curated or filtered or edited.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
A lot of filters out there, especially my age group,
they do a lot of filtering.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Oh yeah, I mean listen, when I get on a
zoom call that asked me do you want touch up
your appearance?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I'm like, come on, no, yeah, You're like, this is me,
this is what I look like what you see is.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
What you get exactly. This is me and I'm proud
of it. We're also seeing dangers such as sex stortion,
where kids are being asked to supply inappropriate pictures of
themselves to other people, and if they don't, they're gonna
use images against something that they have against them, so
they're trying to get more out of them. We're seeing
deep sake videos being made of people and now with
(12:19):
AI AI.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, the nude right, the nudity stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I've heard terrible stories about this hopping to young people
where the use of AI can appear to make people
look completely naked it's not them and doing things, and
videos of them doing things quote unquote negative, it's not them.
And then the threat for money and the harassment that
comes along with all of these fake videos is just
I can't even imagine happy to.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Our kids exactly, and they're targeting anybody on planet Earth.
The problem is these devices, and I tell the kids,
I'm not against technology. It's a wonderful device that we
have and we're all holding in our hands. However, it
could be used for harm, it could be to hurt you.
So our goal at the organization of Social media safety
(13:04):
is to raise awareness around the risks and then teach
the kids what to do if and when they come
across one of the dangers and the big tactic, the
big tool we try to give the kids for empowerment
is blocking and reporting. So if they come across content
that's bad, or if somebody says something to them or
(13:24):
involves them in some dangerous challenger and they need to
block that person from their feed. They need to block
them from their whatever app they might be using so
they don't have access to them anymore, and then they
need to report it to the platform as well as
a trusted adult. We really want to encourage kids. If
they see something on their device and it makes them
(13:45):
feel uncomfortable or sad or any other emotion, they really
need to find a trusted adult to talk.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
To about it and take action. Take action.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
There are protections and you're not going to get No
one's going to know that you did report, block, report, block.
No one's going to know, oh my gosh, Katie, Katie
is a whistleblower, A Katie reported block. No, they're not
going to know it's you. It's not going to get
back to you personally, So right or how does it work, but.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
With a blocking because it's really important to know when
you block somebody on certain platforms, the other individual that
you blocked, they will know that you blocked them, and
that might create a little bit of conflict, right, a
little bit of you know, the kid comes to school
the next day and says, hey, did you block me?
So there is a way you could hide certain content
so your brain is not absorbing that content, but the
(14:30):
other person doesn't know they're hidden. So there's all these things.
We try to empower students' children from fifth grade to
the high school. We want to empower them. We also
want them to know that they're being manipulated by Big Social.
Big Social. You know, their profit is earned by time,
so the more time we are all on social media,
the more profit Big Social makes. So we really want
(14:52):
to empower kids to take their time back, their time,
your time, my time is as valuable as anything, so
we need to take it back from big Social. And
that's really what we're trying to empower them to do.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And that's a big part of what you teach when
you speak at schools and you go around to companies
and corporations and with a child or a young person
in their life or like this. You know, this conversation
is on seven iHeartRadio stations. So the more people we
can tell and talk to you about this, the more
people can hopefully be empowered. How do people know, aside
from you speaking at their school, how can people get
(15:26):
in touch with you and your organization and get direct
help or direct guidance?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
How do we get it now? Like, how do we
get it now? From you?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Sure? And thank you for asking. The best way would
obviously just be going to our website, which is Social
Media Safety dot org. We have the contact us page
right there. They are welcome to email me. My email
address is right there. It's ed at OSSMS dot org
or at social Media Safety dot org. Schools, you know,
(15:54):
usually mid August, which has already happened. Mid August, our
phones light up and people start emailing Heke, we have
you come to our school and speak, which is again
I'm leaving tomorrow, but we have another speaker now that
we're bringing on board, and we're growing that to scale,
so we could really get out and speak at the
school everywhere. Yeah, of course, because that is the goal
to get out there and speak at as many schools
(16:16):
as possible, and it's not a one and done, so
you know, you saw a kind of like an abbreviated
presentation for all those kids because it was different age
ranges in that group when you were at But we
do have it for elementary, middle and high school. We
have different modules, so we go out with the like
a part one and then a.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Part two elementary. Are we giving our kids' phones in
elementary school?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
No, no, but they do need to know what's coming.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I would.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
My goddaughter's not going to cell phone until she was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
She was the last one in her girl group at school,
but we wait until she was sixteen together her first iPhone.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So same because my kids are now in their twenties. However,
just so you know, we've been getting asked to speak
in fourth grade. Wow, so they're getting them younger and younger.
You know, when we first started, we sixth grades and
trowth grade, so then we added the fifth grade. Now
they're asking, well, we're seeing so many phones in fourth grade.
The pushes on like, we really need to make sure
(17:14):
these phones are not in the hands of children that young.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And we know sometimes too, Look, parents want their kids
have a phone to you know, for safety issues, and
you know, you can have only you can have only
a certain number of phone numbers in there, and they
can only call certain people, and you can you can
limit it in the early years. But boy, to arm
them with what's to come and the world of social media,
I think is important, right, I guess the information is
(17:37):
important to power empower them. The younger, right, the younger
the better.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah, you know, we we do recommend it if if
a family decides to give their child the phone at
a certain age, whatever that age, maybe we do recommend
safety software such as bright Canary or Bark, which will
help to bring some alerts to a parent should something
happen on the other on their child's divite. So there
is safety software out there that we do recommend. We
(18:03):
also recommend, you know, making sure the settings are locked
down for privacy, making sure that they have time limits
on their devices that can't use it for more than
a certain amount of time. So we make all those
recommendations as well. But if you're asking me, you know,
if I thought it was I would wait till.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Sixteen sixteen for a phone. See everybody listening.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Absolutely, I know it's hard.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I know it's hard.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Especially you got these kids at junior high in high
school to lose.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Lose, you know, yeah, to lose lose because you don't
want your chovy at all. O onely moment without a phone.
That also causes some problem. So we know there's a
true trade off there. But safety should always come first.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And sorry to say, we should know this by now,
just in life, but also when people online are really
begging you for those photos, those risk a photos, those
to be used against you. There are people online who
want to lure you into doing things that are not right,
and you know you're just kind of I just saw.
I came across the story onst just the other day,
(19:01):
and I thought of you as part of what you also,
you know, wake people up about. Is this this grooming
that happens online? I just I came across the story.
It happens all the time, sadly, but it was a story.
I think it was out of Dallas, Texas. But it
was a girl who was lured by an older man
posing as someone much younger through one of the gaming apps.
So he convinced her. He paid her actually to leave
(19:22):
her house. She was fourteen. He paid her to leave
her house and he kidnapped her and locked her in
a shed and did terrible things.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
But the mom.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Thank goodness for the mom, because she had a feeling
that was tied to that app.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
She had her password.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
They got into the app, they were able to track
down who she was conversing with, and they got the
guy and they were able to get her, but sadly
after some bad things happened. But this is how they
get into these gaming apps. They posed as someone your
age and can have some pretty crazy ulterior motives scary.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Stuff of course.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Hello, they're lying.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
They're lying to get what they want, and these are
things that kids need to know that we can't believe
people that we don't know or just because they say
what they want to say online. It's a world filled
with deceit and a lot of liars who are using
you to get what they want for themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And that's very very ugerous kids. Yeah, yeah, you know,
only accept a request from anybody, it doesn't matter on
any app, gain, new platform, whatever it might be. You
do not accept a request from anyone you haven't met
in real life. And that is a way to protect
yourself from what happened to that poor girl. You just
spoke about if you if you set that rule and
(20:34):
stick to that mantra, I will only accept a request
from somebody I have met I r L in real life,
then you could help to avoid what just happened. But
you just explained because if she's stuck to that, that
might not have happened.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
So many stories, but you're you're a big pusher on
report block, report block, and finding ways to to mute
or hide content you don't like.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Absolutely all, always always block and report anything you want
to again, report it to the platform so they could
remove it. You know, I always tell the kids, listen,
if you stumbled across my son's video, I would hope
that instead of liking it and sharing it, you would
report it so it got removed because you might not
ever meet my son. But I'll say thank you right
(21:20):
now for doing that for him. And if we all
took that attitude and removed some of the bad content
that comes across our feed, there'd be less out there. Yeah,
we have to do that for one another. We are
all the same race, We're all as human beings here
trying to survive, and if we all just got together
and did that, it would help to make social media
(21:41):
maybe a little more cleaned up. But to your point,
we'll ever be fully no.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But just to not be part of the problem. Let's
not be part of the problem.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Let's not be part of the negativity that can come
from this massive platform that's worldwide, so right, you could
be talking to people from other countries you don't even know.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
People can hide, all right.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
We call them the trolls, people who say and comment nasty, mean, dirty,
terrible things. Report and block, report and block, and try
to get these people out of your world, out of
your system, out of your eyesight, out of your mind,
because you know, these these comments can have such a
negative effect on people's psyche and feelings about our bodies
(22:21):
and feelings about ourselves. So there's a lot of terrible
things that people want to make us feel and do,
and so we want to get those people out. Any
other tips aside from just going to your website social
media safety dot org, social media safety dot org, any
other general tips for young people on phones today.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yeah, you know, I would always say obviously, watch the clock.
You know, if you want to do a time challenge,
something that's beneficial and healthy, you could monitor your time
on a daily basis. By writing it down and create
that habit of every day looking at how much time
you spent and then trying to lower the number. And
that's creating a very healthy habit. So the time challenge
(22:59):
is something that we recommend. And also nudging yourself, So
setting a nudge on your phone to send you like
a little beep or notification when you've exceeded thirty minutes
whatever that time is that you've set, but saying to
yourself a mantra like my time is valuable, not just
in your head. Say it out loud, something I try
to tell the students to do. Say it out loud everybody,
(23:19):
my time is valuable, and starting to repeat that mantra
so you could get the time back. I always tell
the students I speak to, even the parents, there's only
twenty four hours in a day. The smartest minds in
the world are sitting at these big social you know,
big big social companies, trying to take your time and
make it theirs. That's their job. How can we get
(23:41):
Lisa to click an ad?
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Hey want to scroll, scroll, keep on scrolling, scroll, scroll, scrolling, scroll,
and buy stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Give you more dopamine to make you just keep pulling
that slot machine handle. It's time we stand up and
take the time back. Amen. Amen, that's what we have
to do, and we have to help our kids.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Ooh, I just remembered something, ed.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Maybe you want to weave this into your talks that
you do at the schools. Maybe we need to quote
Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift just did that whole big thing
on the podcast, right and she said how she was
kind of commenting on how she doesn't get involved in
social media much at all, and she said kind of
a piece of advice. She said, your energy should be expensive.
(24:22):
Your energy is expensive. I'm not going to even give
it the time here and there. I want to announce something. Yeah,
I'm not getting involved in comments people saying mean things
about me.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I'm not going to give it my energy.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Oh yeah, here wait, I pulled it up her quote
from the podcast that she did the Kelsey Brothers podcast.
She said, you should think of your energy as if
it's expensive, as if it's a luxury item. Not everyone
can afford it. Not everyone has invested in you in
order to be able to have the capital for you
to care about this. And a lot of people found
(24:55):
that to be a kind of an aha moment like, hmm,
she's got something there.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's a healthy way to look at it.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
You know, I loved what she had to say. And
if she is listening to this, she's welcome to come
to our gallony, John Taylor, let me tell you call us.
What she said was amazing. Be intentional with your time,
and Taylor Swift millions and millions of followers. You can
only imagine what is said about her and the way
her feed must blow up. Be intentional about what you follow.
(25:25):
Be intentional about your time. I loved what she said,
and that again, it's it's my goal for as long
as I'm on this planet is to help kids get
their time back to have the childhood that you and
I had. Yep, that's what I hope. Kids.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Can put the phone down and don't let it ruin
your life. Don't let other people on these phones and
out there and this worldwide, you know, social media platform.
Don't let them take you down. Don't let them get
to you. Don't let them affect you. Report and block,
Report and block, and reach out to Ed Peisner's organization.
It's Organization for Social Media Safety, a wealth of information.
If you can, you can reach out directly through the
(26:01):
website and have him speak at your school, have him
talk to you. Like you said, people can just email
and ask questions small groups, large groups, and is available
for you all the information at social Media safety dot org,
social Media safety dot org and EDWI.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Thank you so much. Such a sweet man, right, married
with a whole bunch of kids, and five of them.
You have a bearded dragon. I mean, geez, you're a
busy guy.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
You get to be on top of trying to save
the world and help young people online be safer.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
I am newly married. We have five beautiful adults as
I call them because they're twenty one to twenty five.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Oh yeah, okay, great, Yeah, we have.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
A beautiful, blended family. And it's a blessing. I am
blessed every day I get to go out to a
school and speak to kids and motivate them and challenge
them to get that time back and be better versions
of themselves. And you know, it's a beautiful thing. I
wish it never happened, by the way, I wish what
happened to my son never happened. Yeah, But I am
(26:59):
taking that mess and turning into a message and I
will not stop until we get out there and talk
to everyone.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yes, you are God bless you and thank you for
all that you're doing for young people and just thank
you phone users and all these young people. So thank
you for all that you're doing. Please tell Jordan we
say hello, and all your kids and what's the beard
of Dragon's name?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
What's the beard of dragons name?
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Sonny? Sonny? And we have Cooper and we have Honey,
which is our which are our two dogs?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Very nice?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Well, again, thank you so much, ED for all that
you're doing, and please reach out to ED you too,
Social Media Safety dot Org for all the info yea nay,
thank you
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