March 16, 2024 • 29 mins
Ryan Gorman hosts an iHeartRadio nationwide special featuring Monica Anderson, Director of Internet & Technology Research at the Pew Research Center. Monica Anderson joins the show to discuss the Pew Research Center’s work and its latest survey of U.S. teenagers and parents on smartphones and social media. Plus, Bryan Stern, Founder & CEO of Project Dynamo, explains how his veteran-led, donor-funded international rescue non-profit organization rescues Americans worldwide, including its upcoming mission to Haiti.
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(00:00):
Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a publicaffairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting
you. This week, here's RyanGorman. Thanks so much for joining us
here on I Hear Radio Communities.I'm Ryan Gorman, and we have a
few very important conversations lined up foryou. In just a few minutes,
we'll check in with Project Dynamo,and nonprofit organization responsible for rescuing Americans around
(00:23):
the world. They're about to beginrescue missions in Haiti amid the violence and
unrest there. But first to getthings started, let me bring in Monica
Anderson, director of Internet and TechnologyResearch at the Pew Research Center, which
you can learn more about at pewresearchdot org. They have new data out
on how teams and parents approach screentime. Monica, thank you so much
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for joining us, and first ofall, tell us about the work the
Pew Research Center does, sure,and thank you so much for having me
so. Pew Research Center is anon person, non advocacy fat tank located
in Washington, DC. We primarilydo public opinion polling, but we also
have a fair amount of demographers anddata scientists as well, so on my
(01:08):
team we specifically study the intersection oftechnology and society, and that brings us
to study everything from online dating todrive a list cars to gig work.
And today I'll be talking to youabout the work that we're doing around teams
and technology. So let's talk aboutthis particular survey how teens and parents approach
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screen time. What were some ofthe key takeaways from it. There's a
couple of takeaways that I would pointto. One thing I will say is
that what we see is there aresome really interesting differences by gender when it
comes to expressing that they spend toomuch time in front of strains and if
(01:55):
they've ever cut that on their screentime. So we ask teens whether or
not they thought they spent too much, too little, or about the right
amount of time on their phone oron social media, and we see that
thirty eight percent of teens set thatthey spend too much time on their smartphones,
(02:15):
and about a quarter set the samewhen it comes to social media.
But we do see that girls aremore likely than boys to say that they
spend too much time on these devices. So, for example, forty four
percent of girls say that they spendtoo much time on their phone, and
that's ten percentage points higher than boys. At the same time, girls also
(02:38):
stand out more from boys when itcomes to whether or not they've taken steps
to mitigate through spring time, andagain girls are more likely to have done
this compared to boys as well.The other kind of key takeaway in this
report that I would highlight is teenesencounter a range of as when they don't
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have their phones, but we reallywant to hone in on five specific ones,
ranging from things that are more soon the positive side to things that
are more associated with negative emotions.And one of the things that was really
striking in the survey is that majorityof teens actually say that they feel oftentimes
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happy or peaceful when they don't havetheir smartphone. So about three quarters of
teams that feel smaller shares of teensequate not having their phone with more negative
emotions. So forty four percent saythat they at least sometimes feel anxious when
they don't have their smartphones, andagain we see those gender differences pop up,
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with girls being more likely than boysto say this. I'm Ryan Gorman,
joined by Monica Anderson, Director ofInternet and Technology Research at the Pew
Research Center. You can find outmore about this survey and other work.
The Pew Research Center is done atPewresearch dot org. We're talking about their
latest poll on how teens and parentsapproach screen time. One thing that stood
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out to me. We focus alot on teens being on their phones too
much, but they seem to,at least according to them, be developing
some of those behaviors, perhaps becauseof what they're seeing from their parents.
Yeah, that was something that stoodout at it as well. And so,
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you know, what we see inour studies and also focus is that
this is not just an issue that'simpacting teens and impacting everyone, and teens
aren't the only ones that might beglued to their phone. Parents also report
varying levels of being distracted by theirphone or being overreliant on their cell phones.
And so what we see is thatparents are even more likely than teens
(04:54):
to say they spend too much timeon their phone and their phones can make
it difficult or their teens to communicatewith them. And so, because we
have the ability to survey pairs ofteens and their parents, we developed a
set of parallel questions and we wantedto assess whether or not teens and parents
saw this issue in the same way. So we ask parents how often are
(05:18):
they distracted by their phone when theirteenager is trying to have a conversation with
them, and thirty one percent ofparents that this that this happens often or
sometimes. We then had teens assesstheir parents, and those numbers are higher,
So actually nearly have a teen saytheir parents is at least sometimes distracted
(05:41):
when they're trying to get their attentionto have a conversation with them. So
in this right, parents are payingsomewhat of a rosier picture than what teens
say that they believe it's going on. I also thought it was interesting how
parents go about dealing with the issueof teenagers being on phones, and some
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of what they've chosen to do includeslooking through their kids' phone. That is
exactly right, and what we seeis that half of parents say they have
looked through their teens smartphones, andso in this sense, it's pretty a
common thing for parents to do.One of the interesting demographic differences though here,
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is that whether parents report looking throughtheir child's smartphones depends on their kids
seeds. So in our sample teens, we are talking about those ages thirteen
to seventeen of a younger teen,So those in the thirteen to fourteen year
old range, their parents are farmore likely to say they look through their
teens phone than older teens. Sothere is definitely a sense that there's a
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little bit more autonomy of when itcomes to older teens compared to those that
are younger. I'm Ryan Gorman,joined by Monica Anderson, Director of Internet
and Technology Recent Search at the PewResearch Center. We're talking about Pew's new
poll showing some interesting trends between teenagersand smartphones, and one thing that the
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thing is important to note some ofyour teenage respondents, they did point out
some of the positives they believe theyget from using their smartphones. Definitely what
we saw as well. So seventypercent of teens say they believe that smartphones
have given people their aids more benefitsthan harms. And teens also see that
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smartphones are a way that has madecertain parts of growing up easier. So
majorities of teens say phones have madeit easier for use to pursue their hobbies
or interests or be creative. Butwe also see there's ways in which teens
don't necessarily think that phones have madecertain aspects easier. So, for example,
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only thirty percent of teens sayzones havemade it easier to learn the social
skills. So are we able totake any broader conclusions away from what teenagers
said about the use of smartphones andsocial media, both the positives and the
negatives, because it feels like thereis a more general sense that most of
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this stuff has a negative impact onour younger generations. Well, I would
say the value of this work isthat we're really relying on teams to share
their kind of gut reactions and theirown perceptions of spreme time and its impacts.
And so it's meant to capture theirown feelings and emotions and habits.
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And so I think it's also unportanttechnology that wild technologies like smartphones and social
media are ubiquitous today. They area relatively new phenomenon where we're thinking about
the broader study of media effects.So if you think about radio, for
example, or television, feel verymuch in its infancy for us to understand
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its impact. But I will saythat even though we don't fully understand the
long term implications of those teams,of those trends when it comes to teen
behavior and how it might impact certainaspects of life. I do think it's
really important to kind of point outthat teens experiences and our work are just
(09:24):
not monolithic. They see both practicalbenefits and acknowledge that phones have made certain
aspects of growing up harder. Andas we've seen in our data, there
are certain groups of teams, particularlygirls, that have a more kind of
troubling side of this experience as well. And so while the report can't give
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kind of definitive notions of what itsimpact is, I think that there's a
lot of value and getting a teamlevel view of how young people are approaching
these issues. Focusing in on socialmedia for a second, because that was
a big part of this Pere researchstudy that you conducted. What social media
platforms are younger people on these days? Yes, So what we see in
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our survey is about six and tenteens say that they use TikTok or Snapchat
or Instagram, So that's majorities ofteams that are using these sites. But
the platform that is the most properlyused in our studies is actually YouTube,
So more than nine and ten teenssay they use YouTube. And we also
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ask some follow up questions to reallyunderstand not just whether or not teens are
using these sites, but how oftenthey're visiting them. And we see that
at nearly one in five teens saythat they are on YouTube or TikTok almost
constantly. So not only are thesesites something that overall are often top our
(10:56):
list of sites that teens gravitate to, teams also report that they're spending a
lot of their time on these platforms. Anica Anderson, director of Internet and
Technology Research at the Pew Research Center, with some great information on teens and
screen time, and you can findthis survey and a whole lot more at
(11:18):
Pewresearch dot org. Again, that'sPewresearch dot org. Monica, thank you
so much for taking a few minutesto come on and break all of that
down for us. We really appreciateit. Thanks so much for having me.
I really enjoyed our conversations. Allright, I'm Ryan Gorman here on
iHeartRadio Communities, and now let mebring in my next guest. I'm joined
by Brian Stern, founder and CEOof Project Dynamo, a veteran, led
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donor funded international rescue nonprofit organization whichyou can learn more about and offer your
support to at Project Dynamo dot Org. Brian, it's great to have you
back on and before we get tosome of the most recent rescues you've conducted
and missions you're currently plan, let'sstart with the backstory on how Project Dynamo
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first came about. We started atAugust twenty twenty one during the Feld evacuation
of Afghanistan, where literally hundreds ofAmericans were left behind. We rescued interpreters
and commandos and those folks too,but our focus are American citizens, no
kidding. In March twenty twenty four, as we're talking, we're still pulling
Americans that got left behind out ofAfghanistan almost three years ago. From there,
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we went into Ukraine. From there, we went into Russia. From
there, we did Hurricane Ian Fromthere, we did Maui. From there,
we did Sudan. From there,we did Israel. From there,
we did Gaza, and now we'redoing Haiti and what we call Operation Run
Runner. All in we've done sixhundred and nine rescue missions. Wow,
and that transented just about seven thousandpeople live safe. So how does this
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work? You're in some of themost dangerous places in the world rescuing Americans.
How do you learn who needs rescuing? And then without giving away all
your secret, it's how do yougo about executing those missions? The biggest
thing, really and truly is justshowing up. There is nothing that we
do is dynamo that that the governmentcouldn't do or what have you. They
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can't, you know, they can't, don't or won't whatever it is.
For whatever the reasons are, wedon't really care. You know, our
annual budget is like a rounding errorfor toilet paper on Mickil Air Force Base.
I mean, we're where you know, we're We're We're pretty lean.
Each one of these things are verydifferent. They're like having kids. There's
a there's a pregnancy, a birth, an infancy, a toddler, an
(13:39):
adolescens, and and and adulthood.They're just like that and very rarely already
too. The same the way wedo helicopters in Maui, if not the
way we do helicopters in Haiti asan example, or the way I break
somebody out of jail from Russian intelligencein Ukraine is different, then how I
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do those kinds of things in otherplaces. The way we do airplanes in
Afghanistan is different, thou do howwe do airplanes in Sudan. Let's think
so each each one of these thingsare kind of their own life cycle.
But the reality is is it's justit's just being persistent and being creative and
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being innovated and being a little flick. We're not very tactical when we do
these operations. It's much more likea like a like a magic trick or
or a or a bank robbery ora height where where at the end of
it people have scratched on their headsgoing how'd you do that? Exactly?
And the reality is there's a wayto do everything. It's just a matter
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of being creative and innovative and havingthe right resources. Our number one problem
is the resources, so we geta little stuck there because we're don't refunded.
But it's all possible and I canprove it because we we've done six
hundred and nine operations in Africa,Asia, Europe, Latin America, the
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Caribbean and the Middle East. We'rejoined now by Brian Stern, founder and
CEO of Project Dynamo, And ifyou want to help them continue to do
these rescue missions, you can offeryour support a Project Dynamo dot org.
That's Project Dynamo dot org. Soyou learn of someone an American who is
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stuck and let's say Ukraine, whatdo you do from there in terms of
trying to find out where they areand then figure out how to get to
them, how to get them out, and how to do it all under
the radar, especially in places likeAfghanistan. Yeah, so usually what happens
is we get contacted by a familymember. Is usually what it is.
(15:50):
If somebody calls and they say,you know, my nephew Ryan is a
famous radio host. You wouldn't believeit. You went to vacation in eighty
or did a you know, habitatfor humanity or some other thing, and
you wouldn't believe it. This isthe hotel that he was saying at We
spoke to him yesterday. He's stillat the hotel, but he's scared to
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death because the gangs are shooting everyonein the street. Can you help?
That's the best majority of our requestsfound some variation like that of that.
Sometimes the family will call the statedepartment. In the state department, we'll
call the FBI. The FBI willgo to someone's house and they'll say we
wish we could help, but wereally can't. Why don't you call project
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anamoe. That's happened on a numberof cases. Two and then other times
the evacui themselves have communications and they'rejust stuck behind enemy lines or they're stuck
in trouble where they can communicate thatthey're in hiding, so one way or
the other at some variation of that. And what we do is is we
see where Ryan is and then weunderstand the threat environment very well, so
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we try and figure out how howdeep in the Kimchi is Ryan. And
there's varying levels of danger. Sometimesit's scary but not exactly dangerous. Sometimes
it's you know, yeah, Haitiis a good example of this, where
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there are parts of Haiti where thegangs are running around the community, you
know, murdering people in the streets, massacring people. But there's other parts
of Haiti you wouldn't even know thatthere was even a problem with them.
So it really depends where the personis and what their situation is, and
then from there we kind of backinto it. Going back to your early
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rescue missions in Afghanistan, you're doingthese behind enemy lines because all of Afghanistan
at that point was a run bythe enemy, by the Taliban, and
you're having to do this without drawingattention to yourself. This is not a
situation where you go into these placesguns blazing. No, quite the opposite,
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the opposite. Uh. Usually whathappens is when we do these operations,
if the bad guys are paying attention, they usually find out after the
fact and try and figure out howwe did it, and more more often
than not, they're they're more confusedthan the ways that they started. And
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that's that's been never more true thanour operations in Russian occupied Ukraine and Russia,
where we've broken people out of jailfrom Russian FSB, which is like
the Russian FBI, right, soyou know, imagine imagine a Russian spy
if you will, imagine the FBIin America arrests a Russians and they put
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them in a jail cell and acouple of days later they go to bring
him a cup of coffee and thejail cell is empty. It turns into
a well, how could that be? How how he was in custody?
We had him, We're watching relistthat. And in those cases we've done
many of these they date to thisday don't quite know how we did it,
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and more often than not the waythat if they that they know how
we did it, more often thannot that's not true. We do so.
In December, in December of thisbest December, right right before Christmas,
the FBI, UH the Attorney GeneralUnited States, and the Director of
the FBI announced the first indictment inAmerican history for war crimes perpetrated against Americans.
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A bunch of Russian bad guys arrestedand tortured an American citizen, tortured
him almost with an into his life. His name is Kerrilla Alexandrovs. His
operation name is Detroit Lions. Ifyou google Project Dynamo Detroit Lions, it
comes right up. He is thefirst American victim of war crimes the licensed
World War Two. We sold himback from the Russians. He was not
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negotiated, he wasn't traded. Idon't have six billion dollars to give.
I wish I did, but Idon't. We took him from the Russian
perspective. He's in his keep,fugitive from Russian justice, and you know
we stole him. Today they haveno idea how we did it. He
was falsely charge for elevencous of espionage, which is that true? His only
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crime is that he was an Americanand they tortured him almost to death because
he's an American and we got himout. It's incredible and the turnaround time
for you to begin these missions whentrouble bubbles up and again. We're joined
by Brian Stern, founder and CEOof Project Dynamo, a veteran led,
donor funded international rescue nonprofit organization.You can learn more and offer your support
(20:45):
at Project Dynamo dot org. We'vetalked in the past about what happened in
Israel following the Hamas terrorist attack onOctober seventh, and immediately your organization was
over there to help rescue Americans.Yeah. We're usually first to market,
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if you will, you know,we're you know, we're usually first.
You know, we tend to beeither the first on the ground or in
the worst place. That's true forall the different areas that we work in.
Sudan as an example of twenty ninecountries through airplanes for their people,
the United States was not one ofthem. The US embassy was evacuated by
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US Special Forces by US Special Forcesand they left behind sixteen thousand American citizens.
When we saw that, we goton planes and we flew over and
we evacuated hundreds of people. Whenyou get Americans out of these situations,
I mean Americans in Israel on Octoberseventh, they experienced sheer horror. What
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do they say to you? Whatis their reaction like when you come to
the rescue and then eventually they're outof harm's way. There's always thinks,
there's usually a lot of peers,there's always appreciation and all those things.
But you know, the the youknow, we've done a number of operations
in Israel and the number of operationsto rescue Americans of Gaza. What you
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find is that I you know,Dynamo is different because we do the operations
ourselves. So we've done six hundredand nine operations. I personally led over
five hundred and eighty of them personallymyself as CEO. So these people,
you know, we laugh with them, we cry with them, we pray
with them, we get shot atwith them, We've been bombed with them,
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We've piken missile fire together. We'vestarved to death. I've even been
arrested and detained with some people tryingto get them out, and things don't
get complicated. The moral of thestory is that because we're wisdom, we
know them real well. And inthe case of and what the the the
number one common denominator of all allof these thousands of people is that they
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ask everyone else for help. We'rethe last resort. So by the time
Dynamo gets there, and by thetime we're looking in their eyes, and
by the time we're sharing a cupof coffee together, they they often lament
about how they tried to talk tostate departments, or they tried to talk
to their congresswoman or congressmen, orthey called everyone that they knew, or
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or how could this happen there?I didn't do anything wrong that you know,
there's always this this common denominator ofI asked for help from everyone,
no help came. Thank you,Dynamo. That's that's overwhelmingly the majority,
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overwhelming We've done, no kidding,We did sixty eight American babies out of
Ukraine alone. Every one of thosebabies was under there was under the age
of a month old. Uh.Those parents are are deeply connected to my
team and I for the rest oftheir lives. Every single birthday party that
those kids have, they tell thestory about how they were, how they
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were rested. We get we getsome of the some of the kids returning
to and the family send us babypictures all the time. This is life
changing stuff. This is We're nota taxi service. We're not a bus
service. I'm not war zone uber. Everyone that we rescue is out of
options, out of hope, outof split and it's a choice. Dynamo
(24:32):
comes or they say where they areand maybe not. That's the reality of
And again, for Project Dynamo tocontinue to do the work they're doing,
they need your support at Project Dynamodot org. Let's talk about the natural
disasters that you've led rescues in HurricaneIan and the Maui wildfires. Uh yeah,
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so I come. I come outof Ukraine. I got to Ukraine
and January six week, seven weeksbefore the war started, and I stayed
all the way until Hurricane in andI came out of Ukraine. I lived
in Tampa, came after the hurricanewas coming, and I also had to
come out to do my tax HurricaneIan was supposed to hit Tampa, as
(25:17):
we all know it does, andit banged the right bang, the right
hit way farther south and my wholeteam and we hadn't even unpacked yet.
So, you know, we hadthis discussion about, well, we've been
rescuing Americans from the war zone tenthousand miles away, you know, surely
we can rescue Americans, you know, ten miles away, you know,
(25:40):
or a few hours away. Sowhat we did was is before the sun
came up on day one, wegot moving. I found some guys with
some boats. We packed our gear, We got some chainsaws and some hand
tools and some of our communications gear, and got some guys with boats,
and we headed south from Tampa withthe idea of the targeting the Barrier Islands,
(26:00):
knowing that all the bridges would bewashed out, they would have no
communication, no power, no food, no water, and that they're cut
off in the mainland, which issquarely in our portfolio, if you will.
We hadn't done a natural disaster before, but we've done war zones than
this kind of environment before it andI secretly I always wanted to do something
with so we did. We gotin the water and we had done our
(26:26):
third We had completed our third rescueoperations bringing people off before the Florida State
Police of Florida Fish and Wildlife fromthe Coast Guard even got in the water.
Like we were, we had alreadybeen working all morning before they had
even got started. So it goesto show that the private sector can just
move faster than than the than thegovernment can, and that's true always.
(26:48):
You know, Elon Musk will tellyou, you know, if space sex
is SpaceX for a reason, right, it's the same kind of concept.
We can do things best or meaner, leaner, quicker, more effective,
maybe then the government can because we'renot restricted in any way. I I
as Dynamo. As Dynamo is theCEO of Dynamo, I answer to one
(27:10):
person and one person only, andthat is the mother or the father of
the victim that I'm wrestling. There'sno colonel who wants to make general,
there's no ambassador who has to bepolitically sensitive. There's there's no policy concerns
that I have to really worry aboutas a as a you know, from
that perspective, we are united inpurpose and singularly focused on one thing with
(27:37):
one priority and one priority only,which is the safe rescue of American citizens.
Wherever they may be Trump and that'sit. Then that's it. The
techs who are donor funded and workon a fusetring budget, so that part
is kind of kind of difficult.And finally, the current mission situation in
Haiti tell us a little bit aboutthat what you're focused on, and also
(28:00):
the help that you need in orderto make that happen. Let's do health
first. We need funding, andwe need funding. Bad helicopters do not
fly themselves. Boasts do not sellthemselves. Sadly, we don't own any
helicopters. I wish we did,but we don't, so we have to
We have to charter, which isfine, but it does cost money.
The current mission is staging out ofthe Dominican Republic and flying into the the
(28:26):
Hatian Civil War, essentially being runby extremely brutal gangs who are truly scary.
There's a you know, there's aguy who's accounibal, who who videos
himselves eating people and puts them onInstagram. That was yesterday, So these
are really scary people. These arereally bad, bad guys, and sadly
(28:49):
there's a whole bunch of Americans stuckthere. And sadly, the embassy is
being evacuated. The US forces arenot deploying their there. It's a ploying
to protect the embassy, but they'renot going to be They're not able for
whatever reason, to go and getAmericans. And because of that, Dynamo
(29:10):
is the point. And again,if you want to help Brian Stern and
his team at Project Dynamo on thismission and all the others that they do,
you can help at Project Dynamo dotorg. Brian can't thank you enough
for the time and all the tremendouswork you're doing around the world. Thank
you so much, Thank you somuch. I appreciate you. All right,
And that's going to do it forthis edition of iHeartRadio Communities. As
(29:33):
we wrap things up, I wantto offer a big thanks to all of
our guests and of course to allof you for listening. I'm your host,
Ryan Gorman. We'll talk to youagain real soon.
Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a publicaffairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting
you. This week, here's RyanGorman. Thanks so much for joining us
here on I Hear Radio Communities.I'm Ryan Gorman, and we have a
few very important conversations lined up foryou. In just a few minutes,
we'll check in with Project Dynamo,and nonprofit organization responsible for rescuing Americans around
(00:23):
the world. They're about to beginrescue missions in Haiti amid the violence and
unrest there. But first to getthings started, let me bring in Monica
Anderson, director of Internet and TechnologyResearch at the Pew Research Center, which
you can learn more about at pewresearchdot org. They have new data out
on how teams and parents approach screentime. Monica, thank you so much
(00:44):
for joining us, and first ofall, tell us about the work the
Pew Research Center does, sure,and thank you so much for having me
so. Pew Research Center is anon person, non advocacy fat tank located
in Washington, DC. We primarilydo public opinion polling, but we also
have a fair amount of demographers anddata scientists as well, so on my
(01:08):
team we specifically study the intersection oftechnology and society, and that brings us
to study everything from online dating todrive a list cars to gig work.
And today I'll be talking to youabout the work that we're doing around teams
and technology. So let's talk aboutthis particular survey how teens and parents approach
(01:30):
screen time. What were some ofthe key takeaways from it. There's a
couple of takeaways that I would pointto. One thing I will say is
that what we see is there aresome really interesting differences by gender when it
comes to expressing that they spend toomuch time in front of strains and if
(01:55):
they've ever cut that on their screentime. So we ask teens whether or
not they thought they spent too much, too little, or about the right
amount of time on their phone oron social media, and we see that
thirty eight percent of teens set thatthey spend too much time on their smartphones,
(02:15):
and about a quarter set the samewhen it comes to social media.
But we do see that girls aremore likely than boys to say that they
spend too much time on these devices. So, for example, forty four
percent of girls say that they spendtoo much time on their phone, and
that's ten percentage points higher than boys. At the same time, girls also
(02:38):
stand out more from boys when itcomes to whether or not they've taken steps
to mitigate through spring time, andagain girls are more likely to have done
this compared to boys as well.The other kind of key takeaway in this
report that I would highlight is teenesencounter a range of as when they don't
(03:00):
have their phones, but we reallywant to hone in on five specific ones,
ranging from things that are more soon the positive side to things that
are more associated with negative emotions.And one of the things that was really
striking in the survey is that majorityof teens actually say that they feel oftentimes
(03:23):
happy or peaceful when they don't havetheir smartphone. So about three quarters of
teams that feel smaller shares of teensequate not having their phone with more negative
emotions. So forty four percent saythat they at least sometimes feel anxious when
they don't have their smartphones, andagain we see those gender differences pop up,
(03:46):
with girls being more likely than boysto say this. I'm Ryan Gorman,
joined by Monica Anderson, Director ofInternet and Technology Research at the Pew
Research Center. You can find outmore about this survey and other work.
The Pew Research Center is done atPewresearch dot org. We're talking about their
latest poll on how teens and parentsapproach screen time. One thing that stood
(04:08):
out to me. We focus alot on teens being on their phones too
much, but they seem to,at least according to them, be developing
some of those behaviors, perhaps becauseof what they're seeing from their parents.
Yeah, that was something that stoodout at it as well. And so,
(04:28):
you know, what we see inour studies and also focus is that
this is not just an issue that'simpacting teens and impacting everyone, and teens
aren't the only ones that might beglued to their phone. Parents also report
varying levels of being distracted by theirphone or being overreliant on their cell phones.
And so what we see is thatparents are even more likely than teens
(04:54):
to say they spend too much timeon their phone and their phones can make
it difficult or their teens to communicatewith them. And so, because we
have the ability to survey pairs ofteens and their parents, we developed a
set of parallel questions and we wantedto assess whether or not teens and parents
saw this issue in the same way. So we ask parents how often are
(05:18):
they distracted by their phone when theirteenager is trying to have a conversation with
them, and thirty one percent ofparents that this that this happens often or
sometimes. We then had teens assesstheir parents, and those numbers are higher,
So actually nearly have a teen saytheir parents is at least sometimes distracted
(05:41):
when they're trying to get their attentionto have a conversation with them. So
in this right, parents are payingsomewhat of a rosier picture than what teens
say that they believe it's going on. I also thought it was interesting how
parents go about dealing with the issueof teenagers being on phones, and some
(06:04):
of what they've chosen to do includeslooking through their kids' phone. That is
exactly right, and what we seeis that half of parents say they have
looked through their teens smartphones, andso in this sense, it's pretty a
common thing for parents to do.One of the interesting demographic differences though here,
(06:25):
is that whether parents report looking throughtheir child's smartphones depends on their kids
seeds. So in our sample teens, we are talking about those ages thirteen
to seventeen of a younger teen,So those in the thirteen to fourteen year
old range, their parents are farmore likely to say they look through their
teens phone than older teens. Sothere is definitely a sense that there's a
(06:48):
little bit more autonomy of when itcomes to older teens compared to those that
are younger. I'm Ryan Gorman,joined by Monica Anderson, Director of Internet
and Technology Recent Search at the PewResearch Center. We're talking about Pew's new
poll showing some interesting trends between teenagersand smartphones, and one thing that the
(07:09):
thing is important to note some ofyour teenage respondents, they did point out
some of the positives they believe theyget from using their smartphones. Definitely what
we saw as well. So seventypercent of teens say they believe that smartphones
have given people their aids more benefitsthan harms. And teens also see that
(07:32):
smartphones are a way that has madecertain parts of growing up easier. So
majorities of teens say phones have madeit easier for use to pursue their hobbies
or interests or be creative. Butwe also see there's ways in which teens
don't necessarily think that phones have madecertain aspects easier. So, for example,
(07:57):
only thirty percent of teens sayzones havemade it easier to learn the social
skills. So are we able totake any broader conclusions away from what teenagers
said about the use of smartphones andsocial media, both the positives and the
negatives, because it feels like thereis a more general sense that most of
(08:20):
this stuff has a negative impact onour younger generations. Well, I would
say the value of this work isthat we're really relying on teams to share
their kind of gut reactions and theirown perceptions of spreme time and its impacts.
And so it's meant to capture theirown feelings and emotions and habits.
(08:41):
And so I think it's also unportanttechnology that wild technologies like smartphones and social
media are ubiquitous today. They area relatively new phenomenon where we're thinking about
the broader study of media effects.So if you think about radio, for
example, or television, feel verymuch in its infancy for us to understand
(09:03):
its impact. But I will saythat even though we don't fully understand the
long term implications of those teams,of those trends when it comes to teen
behavior and how it might impact certainaspects of life. I do think it's
really important to kind of point outthat teens experiences and our work are just
(09:24):
not monolithic. They see both practicalbenefits and acknowledge that phones have made certain
aspects of growing up harder. Andas we've seen in our data, there
are certain groups of teams, particularlygirls, that have a more kind of
troubling side of this experience as well. And so while the report can't give
(09:45):
kind of definitive notions of what itsimpact is, I think that there's a
lot of value and getting a teamlevel view of how young people are approaching
these issues. Focusing in on socialmedia for a second, because that was
a big part of this Pere researchstudy that you conducted. What social media
platforms are younger people on these days? Yes, So what we see in
(10:09):
our survey is about six and tenteens say that they use TikTok or Snapchat
or Instagram, So that's majorities ofteams that are using these sites. But
the platform that is the most properlyused in our studies is actually YouTube,
So more than nine and ten teenssay they use YouTube. And we also
(10:33):
ask some follow up questions to reallyunderstand not just whether or not teens are
using these sites, but how oftenthey're visiting them. And we see that
at nearly one in five teens saythat they are on YouTube or TikTok almost
constantly. So not only are thesesites something that overall are often top our
(10:56):
list of sites that teens gravitate to, teams also report that they're spending a
lot of their time on these platforms. Anica Anderson, director of Internet and
Technology Research at the Pew Research Center, with some great information on teens and
screen time, and you can findthis survey and a whole lot more at
(11:18):
Pewresearch dot org. Again, that'sPewresearch dot org. Monica, thank you
so much for taking a few minutesto come on and break all of that
down for us. We really appreciateit. Thanks so much for having me.
I really enjoyed our conversations. Allright, I'm Ryan Gorman here on
iHeartRadio Communities, and now let mebring in my next guest. I'm joined
by Brian Stern, founder and CEOof Project Dynamo, a veteran, led
(11:41):
donor funded international rescue nonprofit organization whichyou can learn more about and offer your
support to at Project Dynamo dot Org. Brian, it's great to have you
back on and before we get tosome of the most recent rescues you've conducted
and missions you're currently plan, let'sstart with the backstory on how Project Dynamo
(12:03):
first came about. We started atAugust twenty twenty one during the Feld evacuation
of Afghanistan, where literally hundreds ofAmericans were left behind. We rescued interpreters
and commandos and those folks too,but our focus are American citizens, no
kidding. In March twenty twenty four, as we're talking, we're still pulling
Americans that got left behind out ofAfghanistan almost three years ago. From there,
(12:26):
we went into Ukraine. From there, we went into Russia. From
there, we did Hurricane Ian Fromthere, we did Maui. From there,
we did Sudan. From there,we did Israel. From there,
we did Gaza, and now we'redoing Haiti and what we call Operation Run
Runner. All in we've done sixhundred and nine rescue missions. Wow,
and that transented just about seven thousandpeople live safe. So how does this
(12:48):
work? You're in some of themost dangerous places in the world rescuing Americans.
How do you learn who needs rescuing? And then without giving away all
your secret, it's how do yougo about executing those missions? The biggest
thing, really and truly is justshowing up. There is nothing that we
do is dynamo that that the governmentcouldn't do or what have you. They
(13:13):
can't, you know, they can't, don't or won't whatever it is.
For whatever the reasons are, wedon't really care. You know, our
annual budget is like a rounding errorfor toilet paper on Mickil Air Force Base.
I mean, we're where you know, we're We're We're pretty lean.
Each one of these things are verydifferent. They're like having kids. There's
a there's a pregnancy, a birth, an infancy, a toddler, an
(13:39):
adolescens, and and and adulthood.They're just like that and very rarely already
too. The same the way wedo helicopters in Maui, if not the
way we do helicopters in Haiti asan example, or the way I break
somebody out of jail from Russian intelligencein Ukraine is different, then how I
(14:01):
do those kinds of things in otherplaces. The way we do airplanes in
Afghanistan is different, thou do howwe do airplanes in Sudan. Let's think
so each each one of these thingsare kind of their own life cycle.
But the reality is is it's justit's just being persistent and being creative and
(14:22):
being innovated and being a little flick. We're not very tactical when we do
these operations. It's much more likea like a like a magic trick or
or a or a bank robbery ora height where where at the end of
it people have scratched on their headsgoing how'd you do that? Exactly?
And the reality is there's a wayto do everything. It's just a matter
(14:43):
of being creative and innovative and havingthe right resources. Our number one problem
is the resources, so we geta little stuck there because we're don't refunded.
But it's all possible and I canprove it because we we've done six
hundred and nine operations in Africa,Asia, Europe, Latin America, the
(15:05):
Caribbean and the Middle East. We'rejoined now by Brian Stern, founder and
CEO of Project Dynamo, And ifyou want to help them continue to do
these rescue missions, you can offeryour support a Project Dynamo dot org.
That's Project Dynamo dot org. Soyou learn of someone an American who is
(15:26):
stuck and let's say Ukraine, whatdo you do from there in terms of
trying to find out where they areand then figure out how to get to
them, how to get them out, and how to do it all under
the radar, especially in places likeAfghanistan. Yeah, so usually what happens
is we get contacted by a familymember. Is usually what it is.
(15:50):
If somebody calls and they say,you know, my nephew Ryan is a
famous radio host. You wouldn't believeit. You went to vacation in eighty
or did a you know, habitatfor humanity or some other thing, and
you wouldn't believe it. This isthe hotel that he was saying at We
spoke to him yesterday. He's stillat the hotel, but he's scared to
(16:11):
death because the gangs are shooting everyonein the street. Can you help?
That's the best majority of our requestsfound some variation like that of that.
Sometimes the family will call the statedepartment. In the state department, we'll
call the FBI. The FBI willgo to someone's house and they'll say we
wish we could help, but wereally can't. Why don't you call project
(16:33):
anamoe. That's happened on a numberof cases. Two and then other times
the evacui themselves have communications and they'rejust stuck behind enemy lines or they're stuck
in trouble where they can communicate thatthey're in hiding, so one way or
the other at some variation of that. And what we do is is we
see where Ryan is and then weunderstand the threat environment very well, so
(16:57):
we try and figure out how howdeep in the Kimchi is Ryan. And
there's varying levels of danger. Sometimesit's scary but not exactly dangerous. Sometimes
it's you know, yeah, Haitiis a good example of this, where
(17:17):
there are parts of Haiti where thegangs are running around the community, you
know, murdering people in the streets, massacring people. But there's other parts
of Haiti you wouldn't even know thatthere was even a problem with them.
So it really depends where the personis and what their situation is, and
then from there we kind of backinto it. Going back to your early
(17:37):
rescue missions in Afghanistan, you're doingthese behind enemy lines because all of Afghanistan
at that point was a run bythe enemy, by the Taliban, and
you're having to do this without drawingattention to yourself. This is not a
situation where you go into these placesguns blazing. No, quite the opposite,
(18:00):
the opposite. Uh. Usually whathappens is when we do these operations,
if the bad guys are paying attention, they usually find out after the
fact and try and figure out howwe did it, and more more often
than not, they're they're more confusedthan the ways that they started. And
(18:22):
that's that's been never more true thanour operations in Russian occupied Ukraine and Russia,
where we've broken people out of jailfrom Russian FSB, which is like
the Russian FBI, right, soyou know, imagine imagine a Russian spy
if you will, imagine the FBIin America arrests a Russians and they put
(18:45):
them in a jail cell and acouple of days later they go to bring
him a cup of coffee and thejail cell is empty. It turns into
a well, how could that be? How how he was in custody?
We had him, We're watching relistthat. And in those cases we've done
many of these they date to thisday don't quite know how we did it,
(19:07):
and more often than not the waythat if they that they know how
we did it, more often thannot that's not true. We do so.
In December, in December of thisbest December, right right before Christmas,
the FBI, UH the Attorney GeneralUnited States, and the Director of
the FBI announced the first indictment inAmerican history for war crimes perpetrated against Americans.
(19:33):
A bunch of Russian bad guys arrestedand tortured an American citizen, tortured
him almost with an into his life. His name is Kerrilla Alexandrovs. His
operation name is Detroit Lions. Ifyou google Project Dynamo Detroit Lions, it
comes right up. He is thefirst American victim of war crimes the licensed
World War Two. We sold himback from the Russians. He was not
(19:56):
negotiated, he wasn't traded. Idon't have six billion dollars to give.
I wish I did, but Idon't. We took him from the Russian
perspective. He's in his keep,fugitive from Russian justice, and you know
we stole him. Today they haveno idea how we did it. He
was falsely charge for elevencous of espionage, which is that true? His only
(20:19):
crime is that he was an Americanand they tortured him almost to death because
he's an American and we got himout. It's incredible and the turnaround time
for you to begin these missions whentrouble bubbles up and again. We're joined
by Brian Stern, founder and CEOof Project Dynamo, a veteran led,
donor funded international rescue nonprofit organization.You can learn more and offer your support
(20:45):
at Project Dynamo dot org. We'vetalked in the past about what happened in
Israel following the Hamas terrorist attack onOctober seventh, and immediately your organization was
over there to help rescue Americans.Yeah. We're usually first to market,
(21:07):
if you will, you know,we're you know, we're usually first.
You know, we tend to beeither the first on the ground or in
the worst place. That's true forall the different areas that we work in.
Sudan as an example of twenty ninecountries through airplanes for their people,
the United States was not one ofthem. The US embassy was evacuated by
(21:29):
US Special Forces by US Special Forcesand they left behind sixteen thousand American citizens.
When we saw that, we goton planes and we flew over and
we evacuated hundreds of people. Whenyou get Americans out of these situations,
I mean Americans in Israel on Octoberseventh, they experienced sheer horror. What
(21:51):
do they say to you? Whatis their reaction like when you come to
the rescue and then eventually they're outof harm's way. There's always thinks,
there's usually a lot of peers,there's always appreciation and all those things.
But you know, the the youknow, we've done a number of operations
in Israel and the number of operationsto rescue Americans of Gaza. What you
(22:14):
find is that I you know,Dynamo is different because we do the operations
ourselves. So we've done six hundredand nine operations. I personally led over
five hundred and eighty of them personallymyself as CEO. So these people,
you know, we laugh with them, we cry with them, we pray
with them, we get shot atwith them, We've been bombed with them,
(22:37):
We've piken missile fire together. We'vestarved to death. I've even been
arrested and detained with some people tryingto get them out, and things don't
get complicated. The moral of thestory is that because we're wisdom, we
know them real well. And inthe case of and what the the the
number one common denominator of all allof these thousands of people is that they
(23:03):
ask everyone else for help. We'rethe last resort. So by the time
Dynamo gets there, and by thetime we're looking in their eyes, and
by the time we're sharing a cupof coffee together, they they often lament
about how they tried to talk tostate departments, or they tried to talk
to their congresswoman or congressmen, orthey called everyone that they knew, or
(23:27):
or how could this happen there?I didn't do anything wrong that you know,
there's always this this common denominator ofI asked for help from everyone,
no help came. Thank you,Dynamo. That's that's overwhelmingly the majority,
(23:47):
overwhelming We've done, no kidding,We did sixty eight American babies out of
Ukraine alone. Every one of thosebabies was under there was under the age
of a month old. Uh.Those parents are are deeply connected to my
team and I for the rest oftheir lives. Every single birthday party that
those kids have, they tell thestory about how they were, how they
(24:10):
were rested. We get we getsome of the some of the kids returning
to and the family send us babypictures all the time. This is life
changing stuff. This is We're nota taxi service. We're not a bus
service. I'm not war zone uber. Everyone that we rescue is out of
options, out of hope, outof split and it's a choice. Dynamo
(24:32):
comes or they say where they areand maybe not. That's the reality of
And again, for Project Dynamo tocontinue to do the work they're doing,
they need your support at Project Dynamodot org. Let's talk about the natural
disasters that you've led rescues in HurricaneIan and the Maui wildfires. Uh yeah,
(24:53):
so I come. I come outof Ukraine. I got to Ukraine
and January six week, seven weeksbefore the war started, and I stayed
all the way until Hurricane in andI came out of Ukraine. I lived
in Tampa, came after the hurricanewas coming, and I also had to
come out to do my tax HurricaneIan was supposed to hit Tampa, as
(25:17):
we all know it does, andit banged the right bang, the right
hit way farther south and my wholeteam and we hadn't even unpacked yet.
So, you know, we hadthis discussion about, well, we've been
rescuing Americans from the war zone tenthousand miles away, you know, surely
we can rescue Americans, you know, ten miles away, you know,
(25:40):
or a few hours away. Sowhat we did was is before the sun
came up on day one, wegot moving. I found some guys with
some boats. We packed our gear, We got some chainsaws and some hand
tools and some of our communications gear, and got some guys with boats,
and we headed south from Tampa withthe idea of the targeting the Barrier Islands,
(26:00):
knowing that all the bridges would bewashed out, they would have no
communication, no power, no food, no water, and that they're cut
off in the mainland, which issquarely in our portfolio, if you will.
We hadn't done a natural disaster before, but we've done war zones than
this kind of environment before it andI secretly I always wanted to do something
with so we did. We gotin the water and we had done our
(26:26):
third We had completed our third rescueoperations bringing people off before the Florida State
Police of Florida Fish and Wildlife fromthe Coast Guard even got in the water.
Like we were, we had alreadybeen working all morning before they had
even got started. So it goesto show that the private sector can just
move faster than than the than thegovernment can, and that's true always.
(26:48):
You know, Elon Musk will tellyou, you know, if space sex
is SpaceX for a reason, right, it's the same kind of concept.
We can do things best or meaner, leaner, quicker, more effective,
maybe then the government can because we'renot restricted in any way. I I
as Dynamo. As Dynamo is theCEO of Dynamo, I answer to one
(27:10):
person and one person only, andthat is the mother or the father of
the victim that I'm wrestling. There'sno colonel who wants to make general,
there's no ambassador who has to bepolitically sensitive. There's there's no policy concerns
that I have to really worry aboutas a as a you know, from
that perspective, we are united inpurpose and singularly focused on one thing with
(27:37):
one priority and one priority only,which is the safe rescue of American citizens.
Wherever they may be Trump and that'sit. Then that's it. The
techs who are donor funded and workon a fusetring budget, so that part
is kind of kind of difficult.And finally, the current mission situation in
Haiti tell us a little bit aboutthat what you're focused on, and also
(28:00):
the help that you need in orderto make that happen. Let's do health
first. We need funding, andwe need funding. Bad helicopters do not
fly themselves. Boasts do not sellthemselves. Sadly, we don't own any
helicopters. I wish we did,but we don't, so we have to
We have to charter, which isfine, but it does cost money.
The current mission is staging out ofthe Dominican Republic and flying into the the
(28:26):
Hatian Civil War, essentially being runby extremely brutal gangs who are truly scary.
There's a you know, there's aguy who's accounibal, who who videos
himselves eating people and puts them onInstagram. That was yesterday, So these
are really scary people. These arereally bad, bad guys, and sadly
(28:49):
there's a whole bunch of Americans stuckthere. And sadly, the embassy is
being evacuated. The US forces arenot deploying their there. It's a ploying
to protect the embassy, but they'renot going to be They're not able for
whatever reason, to go and getAmericans. And because of that, Dynamo
(29:10):
is the point. And again,if you want to help Brian Stern and
his team at Project Dynamo on thismission and all the others that they do,
you can help at Project Dynamo dotorg. Brian can't thank you enough
for the time and all the tremendouswork you're doing around the world. Thank
you so much, Thank you somuch. I appreciate you. All right,
And that's going to do it forthis edition of iHeartRadio Communities. As
(29:33):
we wrap things up, I wantto offer a big thanks to all of
our guests and of course to allof you for listening. I'm your host,
Ryan Gorman. We'll talk to youagain real soon.
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