From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset.

I'm a loser if also we know what I'm paying me either a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point.

In Cells will be added to the Terrorism Guide.

I see literally zero hope.

This is In Cells, a production of KT Studios and iHeart Podcasts, Season one, Episode eleven.

What's the solve?

I think that's the hardest part of it.

You probably could have stepped in earlier, but it's almost like you don't want to see what's really happening in front of your face.

We're asking, essentially these kids to be really, really safe and behaved in a live environment worth billions and billions of people just saying all the things, posting all the things.

Do we have to give them a fully accessible outlet to the world in the palm of their hands any earlier than necessary, I already know.

I'm Courtney Armstrong, a producer at Katie's Studios with Stephanie Leidecker, Gabriel Castillo, Connor Powell, and Carolyn Miller.

Throughout this series, we've heard from self described in Cells experts, journalists, victims, families, and advocates, but from a different perspective.

We wanted to talk with someone who's witnessed the shift up close, someone who's actually seen a young man fall into insuldom.

Our goal here is to share the early signs, to watch out for the moments that may show up in the lives of people you know, and how to step in if possible.

We also wanted to look toward prevention, simple actionable steps families can take before any issues arise.

Later in the episode, we'll hear from digital safety expert Katie Greer about what that can look like.

But first, here's Weezy.

She works closely with boys and young men, often in those critical years when confidence, identity, and below are being shaped.

I own a sports therapy practice and I'm basically it's my job to recover athletes from sports related injuries.

So that's what I do for a living.

So self actualization through fitness is kind of my bag.

So I have a lot of young men that will connect to me, that will be asking me questions.

My inbox is usually always open.

Right now, I have about six or seven kids that are asking me questions about fitness.

Well, they saw this on Instagram.

What do I think of it.

They'll come, they'll have questions, they'll want to hear something, and they want to hear something positive from a woman.

So I leave myself open online.

Probably not the best thing in the world, but I do it anyway.

We connected with Wheezy after reaching out on Twitter looking for someone who had witnessed these transformations firsthand.

We wanted to know what the early signs look like and what the rest of us might take from her experience.

Our first question to her was simple, why speak with us?

I want to talk about these experiences from a kind of neutral perspective because I actually saw one of these situations go down in real time through someone that I had connected with.

I see what happens to these young men, and it hurts my heart to see because I saw somebody with potential destroy that potential all on their own because they got in with the wrong people who were feeding them information or just lies basically, and getting them to think things that just weren't true.

A lot of times, these kids are lost, they're lost, they're broken, and they're looking for somebody to tell them that they're not.

And the people that create these insults are the people that are preying on them for their own gain, at least from what I can see.

We knew Weezy's experience centered around one man in particular, so he asked her to take us back to the beginning.

How she first met him.

It was online through discord and there's a Twitch channel for the NHL team that I'm contracted through.

I met him.

He had just turned towards he was in college.

He was talking about fitness because he had access to the sports complex that was part of the.

College, and so we went over diet, We went over all kinds of different things, and that was fine.

That was perfectly fine, you know, it was just kind of lose weight and look better.

Okay.

Well, over time, we're connecting and we were.

Talking and I noticed small things though it was here there that's bitter of he was trying to date and he wasn't having success.

And then he started.

Talking to me about how he didn't work out that day because he was feeling this and that over something that happened at a party, and that's when the discussions went into that way.

And sometimes that happens, Like you have your your clients that you're as much a therapy session.

As you are a training session.

It was one of those things where he got into college and I think he expected when he got to college that he was going to just be like dating and doing the whole frack boy thing.

And when that didn't have happened, one of the things that I did with him and when we talked, was I said, well, what's happening in your life?

What's going on with you right now?

Where do you feel like you're failing?

We could have those conversations, but soon it reached the point where the issue wasn't oh, well, maybe I came on too strong with this, so the thing is, oh, she's just a stuck up bitch.

Once or twice you hear that, But you started seeing it more and more that it wasn't me, it was them.

It's the no self accountability, and the self accountability that was there in the beginning gradually eroded to the point where every interaction was her fault and it was just because she doesn't want a nice guy, and it was always that nice guy or women don't want to be treated properly.

Okay, that's not what that interaction was.

Weezy started to notice a shift.

The self reflection he once had was gone and when real life didn't match that fantasy, his frustration grew.

Weezy tried to see him toward working on himself.

First.

It got to the point where we couldn't analyze the interactions anymore and say where one or both people might have went wrong or in a perfect world, how would you have liked that to go?

And okay, well why do you think it didn't go that way?

But he reached the point where that analysis couldn't take place.

And it also haided when he was trying to get out and dating, and he expected dating to go.

A certain way that it wasn't.

And that's where I think a lot of these kids go wrong.

They're given this idealized fantasy of what walking up to a woman or dming her through an app it's supposed to follow this script.

And I was trying to convince him that he had some stuff he needed to work through before he considered dating, and maybe that's why things weren't going so well.

But instead he.

Was listening to these podcasts and I noticed his demeanor, the way he talked, the phrases he was using.

It evolved or devolved, I would say, into something that was just mean spirited nasty and misogynistic.

The podcasts Wheezy as referring to are just one slice of the misogynistic media these young men often fall into.

And the shift she noticed in his demeanor is something experts and parents consistently describe when a young man suddenly adopts an new language, harsher attitudes, or an unfamiliar worldview.

Those are early red flags and they shouldn't be ignored.

It's almost like misogynistic alpha male, where it's about sleeping with as many women as you can and treating them all like garbage.

It's more of she needs to be submissive to you, and the bitch needs to know her place.

You can cheat on her as much as you want.

She better not even look at another man.

She better stay home, rely on you.

You need to hurt be her protector or provider, but she needs to toe the line and you're.

Gonna kick her to the curb.

Like just nasty stuff.

And I know to guide young men away from them, because they're not teaching them anything that is going to get them a good life partner.

They're teaching them how to be abusive to their life partner.

It's gross.

It starts really really small you see a little thing here and there, and you're like, oh, I'm just reading too much into it.

He's having a bad day, he said something pissy.

Okay, you overlook it, but it's something that kind of snowballs.

And where it's snowballs is really just all of a sudden, you look up and this person is just saying things.

You're like, it's like it's somebody you don't know.

It's weird how fast it happens.

It seems like it's become his personality.

He talks like them, it's alpha, it's this, it's that, And whenever he gets rejected, it's this long diatribe about how women just don't want to be treated right.

And it's a constant thing.

And it's like, oh, honey, no, you're creating the problem that you think that this is solving.

It's like there's a point of no return.

And some of the young men that I've dealt with, where they have these emotions and they don't know how to channel them.

I've noticed that when you discuss them, you validate their feelings and you teach them how to process them that they don't go down this path.

This particular kid that we're talking about that went down this in cell path wasn't given that, and he found people in his life outside that were willing to tell him what he wanted to hear for their own self gratification.

The young man Wheezy had been describing wasn't getting the guidance he needed at home, and he ended up finding it from people who told them exactly what he wanted to hear for all the wrong reasons.

Wheezy says that pattern isn't unique, and his story shows just how quickly these communities can exploit kids who are already hurting.

They basically prayed on him.

They take money from these kids and they tell them that they need to be hyper sexual, but then they shame them for it.

They create this problem, they shame them for it, and they tell them, well, I had the way to fix it as an outsider.

It's just like you get so mad at these people.

These are the kind of kids that these red pillars go after.

They're broken, they're lost, they're hurt.

It's heartbreaking, it really is, because what these kids really just need is someone to say, yes, you're worth being loved.

They're told that they can feel better and they'll heal if they just fuck.

Enough women in a nutshell.

They're pips, and they want these boys to go after the women like that because they sell cam girls.

They're just doing this to line their own pockets.

They don't give a shit about these kids.

They'll tell them whatever lies they want to hear so that they'll continue to pay into their cam service.

Our last conversation was probably about.

A year ago, and his ideology turns something very wholesome into something disgusting and toxic.

At first, it was subtle, repeating catch phrases from the podcast he'd been listening to, mimicking the swagger of the influencers he adalyzed little things she brushed off as a phase.

But over a few months it became his whole personality, and the young man she knew was harder and harder to recognize.

He had that kind of monkey see monkey doo attitude towards what he was listening to.

It was a lot of the phrases that they use on these podcasts, and then they became like his lexicon over time.

It probably took about six months for it to be like for the final transformation.

It's something that doesn't happen overnight.

It happens over time, and I think in the initial two months or so, it's so gradual that I don't feel like I noticed it as being a problem until it got to the point where I couldn't ignore it anymore.

And I think it's.

Because I knew what it was like before, and I was thinking that, Okay, this is just a phase.

He's just having a bad patch.

But it kept getting worse.

And I think that's what happens in these cases, is we see it getting there, but we know the sweet guy that he used to be, and we keep holding out hope that he's going to revert back to that, But then they don't.

I think that's the hardest part of it.

You probably could have stepped in earlier, but it's almost like you don't want to see what's really happening in front of your face, that you don't step in when you probably should.

And if you do, is it going to do anything?

Weezy said, that's what makes this pattern so difficult.

You hope they'll snap out of it, but the shift keeps deepening, and beneath it all, many of these boys and men are hurting far more than they let on.

I listen to them because if somebody's crying, they hurt.

Understanding the suicide rates in men, how high they are is because they feel like they have no one they can come to.

That's a problem.

There is no reason why someone should be so out of hope that they take their own lives.

We need to get to them and just be like, hey, reach your hand out and say, hey, you're hurt.

I give a shit, come here.

Most of the time.

Just sitting there listening to them, and I find keeps them from going down this road.

Really is just to listen to them and let them know that they're hurt and that's okay.

How do we help you heal?

Why do they feel this way?

And how do we fix it?

Is the conversation we should be having.

We're just talking about how it's toxic masculinity, and I don't think that helps when someone is lonely and isolated.

It has a lot to do with the social media age, because we are the most connected we've ever been, but also the loneliest because.

We connect online.

But those relationships are parasocial, They're not real, and I think that we have lost the ability to create relationships.

I've been doing this for twenty five years, and I've watched the difference in the way that the generations interact.

And I have kids that have panic attacks making phone calls, and that's the conversation we should be having, is how do we teach these kids to have healthy relationships and to form healthy relationships in the insul conversation, That's the conversation we're having, is that why are they so lonely and lost?

And how do we get to them and get to that hurt place and help them figure it out.

Let's stop here for a break.

We'll be back in a moment.

Here's a conversation I had with Katie Greer.

She's CEO, founder, and keynote speaker of k L.

Greer Consulting.

It's an educational consulting company that talks to students pre k through college, to parents, caregivers, law enforcement, and corporations about how we can use tech in thoughtful, safe, and productive ways to understand what prevention actually looks like.

We spoke with Katie about practical, actionable tech steps families can take.

This goes from protecting young children to helping adults who may already need intervention.

We started by asking her about kids preschool through second grade.

Here's Katie Greer.

I think one of our issues is that we don't start early enough.

No matter what you feel or what your.

Rules are around technology access, the reality of the situation is that technology is all around us.

So having these conversations early and often around our expectations and rules in our household and how this is going to work, or you know, Mommy is going to make sure I put my phone down when I'm driving, or that Mom's not going to use my phone at dinner because it's not polite when I'm trying to eat dinner and talk to you.

And we can start this stuff when our kids can talk.

Quite frankly, it's like, how do you cross the road?

Right?

I think it is vitally important given the technology a driven world that we live in right now.

And that makes a lot of sense just literally leading by example to start.

We have to be better about this too if we want our kids to be good at it.

And I think if we can admit.

That without feeling shamed by the way, like, look, we were given this stuff without any instructions, without knowing what it was going to do to us, without knowing that it was going to.

Sluck us in like it did.

Then we hit COVID, where we didn't know if we'd ever be able to talk to people again in person.

So like, be gentle with yourselves, but like ask yourself, can we be better going forward?

So moving on to more elementary school.

The amount of parents that don't know what these kids have access to even as early as third grade is something that is alarming and a bit.

Frightening from my perspective.

At least.

One of the things I think of immediately is like gaming right online gaming and the amount of parents that don't know that their kids can actually game with random strangers.

The amount of parents who just think that their kids are gaming like we used to with Nintendo, or that they're only playing with their friends, or like why would they even want to talk.

To a stranger?

I think that that is wildly overlooked by parents.

So I think in this period is where parents really need to start to like dig in a bit and learn learn along with your kids.

Right roadblocks.

Right has had a lot of issues lately, basically unknowingly exposing kids to a bunch of really adult related stuff and parents also not having any idea that these kids can join user generated worlds that are super inappropriate.

With kids encountering these platforms younger and younger, we wanted to know the practical side.

What steps can parents take right now to keep their children safe.

This is the time that parents need to do some homework and learn about things, and by the way, really great news technology can help us with that.

Go to chat GPT.

Hey, my fourth grader wants to hop on roadblocks with his friends or her friends.

What do I need to know about roadblocks?

What is it?

What's dangerous about it?

What's great about it?

What are some settings I can use to keep my kids safe?

Ask chatchept really really great resource for us to have.

This is the time that it goes from me telling my kids what to do or not to do, to me being really involved in the stuff that they're starting to do, because I think the earlier we have these conversations and we set these rules and expectations, the easier it is when they get older.

Are you a big fan of parents putting into place settings?

I am with the caveat that all of these settings that are out there, there's some adorable twelve year old that talks about how to get around those settings.

So we can't just slap those on our kids' devices and think that our job is done, Like we are the first line of defense.

So while I think they're helpful, I think there could be a tool, They're not the only thing that's going to help the kids stay safe.

So knowing that that is an option and something that can help you out is great, But relying on it is where I get nervous.

What goes on in middle school?

What do people need to know?

Yeah?

God, where do we start?

Bigger kids, bigger problems?

Right?

This is when the settings and the rules really need to come in because this is developmentally, not because kids are horrible, and not because technology is horrible, but developmentally, these kids are going through a lot, and hormones are changing, and friend groups are changing, and kids are getting more access to devices earlier and earlier, and now they're getting access to social media, and now we have to really execute and our heads have to kind of be on a swivel to hope that we can get our kids to a place and practice what we preach.

These are when things that I start.

To worry about can happen, like group chats and access to videos that we didn't want them to have access to.

Here's where the big conversations start to come in about what.

It is that we're seeing, asking them every day about did you see things that made you feel good?

Did you see things that you had questions about?

Our kids are being pummeled at that age, that middle school age, with so much information, whether it's from classmates or the Internet or social media, that we got to roll up our sleeves at that point and start to really ask some of the tough questions.

Researchers have run tests creating accounts as twelve year olds, and consistently, in under half an hour, those accounts were hit with alarming content they never searched for.

It's almost like the Internet was coming for them.

I asked Katie what our thoughts on this were.

This has been replicated so many times, and you know what is a bit confusing that all of these companies now know this meta TikTok Snapchat, and what they've done is they've put in filters that says, if your child signs up as someone under the age of sixteen, we have these automatic filters in place that will filter out all this stuff.

And we know that filters are shoddy, They are inconsistent at best.

And even if they were great, something that filters out the word sex, I'm going to learn as a creator who wants more views, I don't care if they're five years old or fifty five years old.

If I want more views, I'm going to learn that sex is being blocked out.

So I'm going to do dollar sign ex instead.

So now even that wonderful filter that may pick up all sex is going to go around that.

It's the constant cat and mouse game.

So I'm happy that companies are starting to pay attention to this stuff.

I don't think it's nearly enough, quite frankly, and it is kind of this false sense of security that exists out there because filters, like I said, are inconsistent, and even when they are consistent, people figure out how to circumvent them.

So that means nothing to me at this moment that the way that filters are working and the way that these sets are does not make me feel any better about the content that my kids may or may not see looking for or not under the age of sixteen on these social media apps.

So with high schoolers again, that brain from elementary school to post graduation of college, we know that kids' brains aren't fully formed until they're twenty five years old.

And when we think about social media in particular, which we could talk about anything.

We could talk about group text messages or Google searches or YouTube or whatever, it doesn't really matter.

But if we think about social media or the Internet in general, it's a live environment where there are billions and billions of people active, and it's not entirely live moderated.

So we're asking essentially these kids to be really really proficient and good and safe and behaved in a live environment with billions of people just saying all the things, posting all the things, and expecting that they're going to be really good at it.

That can't be developmentally biologically speaking, they cannot.

They're not.

I like to think as a parent, I think she would make the right choices, but it's not even about that at this point.

It's about what other people are doing or saying.

This has been an existence long parenting dilemma, like how do we keep our kids safe?

We don't know.

We have to practice.

It's practice, and we got to show up as parents to help them practice.

In high school, specifically, I asked.

Katie how she handles tech with her own kids when she introduces certain devices, and the reasoning behind her approach.

I didn't get my daughter a phone, her own device until she was fourteen this past August and going into a freshman year in high school, because that's what I decided for my family and for my daughter, and I thought that it was really important to have rules, written, rules established, Like we've talked about rules, since she could talk around devices even though she didn't have access to them, but I wanted to establish written rules that I wrote, that she read.

And agreed and signed to.

To put in writing, which I think is kind of significant and symbolic my expectation around this device, which I have paid.

For I continue to pay for.

It is a privilege which I wanted to be treated as such that can also be taken away should there be violations.

For me, creating this contract for her.

Which is three pages long, twelve point font, double sided, was not just about do this, don't do this, you can't look at this, no social media.

It was also about being polite with.

Devices, because devices have made us so impolite.

And imagine if I was like talking to you here right now, just being like yeah, and I'm focused on you and I'm talking, but everyone's in a while, I'm glancing at my phone and every once in a while I'm chit chatting like this, Like that just made it's not polite.

So a big part of.

This for me was about creating a polite consumer as well as like, yeah, don't do stupid stuff, So that was included a lot in my contract.

Courteous behavior when it comes to devices is something that I think our society has really freaking failed that, and I don't want my kids to fail, So that was a big part of this contract.

I was curious if there's an ideal age for kids to get their own devices or how parents should approach that decision.

I have a really bad answer to that, and that is it's not a one size fits all.

Kids should get devices at X years old and they're all going to be fine.

I think it is very very individual.

I'll tell you, within my own family, my daughter and my son, just because I gave my daughter a phone at fourteen years old does not mean that my son is going to get the same privilege, or that I wouldn't do it sooner, or that I wouldn't do it way later.

That's going to be different than it is with my daughter.

So I guess I really encourage parents to think about their family needs.

One, why did your family need kids to have access to devices?

And there's some really good answers stuff by the way, like maybe my kids come home alone in the afternoon because I'm working.

So look at your family's needs and answer that why do they need it?

Not?

And by the way, I am.

Really against the well they need it because everyone else has it thing they don't.

I promise, I promise there are ways around it.

I promise there are ways to socialize without it.

So what are our family needs?

Number one?

And number two?

The individuals who are being given these privileges, whether it's devices or social media, and their individual needs as well.

So I guess I really implore parents to think about why and why for each member of their household.

You know, their alternatives too, right, My daughter had a gizmo watch so I could still be in touch with her and she could be in touch with me.

And not saying your child has to be like an outcast not have any former communication, but like, do we have to give them a fully accessible outlet to the world in the palm of their hands any earlier than necessary.

I alreadue, you know, but I'll say this one final thing.

I've never met a parent that gave their child the device at any age and said I did that right.

That was the exact right, like all parents are, like I wish I had waited, I wish i'd and I still wish I could have waited.

So I yeah, really really taking that into consideration is important, and I think definitely having a backbone as a parent being like it.

Sucks, I get it, trust me.

My daughter cried to me all the time.

She made a really beautiful PowerPoint about why she should have her own device many Christmases in a row, and it sucks and I'm the worst mom and I don't get it and all these things.

I had to weigh out the pros and the cons for my family and for her.

And that's kind of where we landed, which may be different than where other people land and that's okay, think about it and think about it like long and hard.

For sure.

Let's stop here for another break.

We'll be back in a moment.

We then moved on to one of the most common danger zones online gaming.

I asked, Katie, what's your family do when kids are playing with strangers or frighteningly when someone contacts them who shouldn't.

Well, first, I like to be preventative about this.

It is amazing to me how many people just don't know that's how games work.

The fact that parents don't know that kids can play against other people, I think is important, and the fact that they can play against complete random strangers.

That's how these things are set up.

So I think first and foremost prevention is really important.

So for adults to in caregivers to say know this and be also use some settings in these games around these consoles so that kids aren't just randomly talking to complete random strangers.

Every single game that exists out there has these settings that you can utilize either within the game or in the consoles themselves, so that kids can still play these games, but they're not playing against people in who'z Bekistan half the Night on Minecraft or Fortnite or Call of Duty or whatever it may be.

So I think that is a really really big thing.

Is that something you would suggest people chat GBT to figure out how to prevent.

So the good news is that there's a whole bunch of ways, and there's a whole bunch of settings in every game, So I would just say.

My son is playing Call of Duty on his switch, he's eight years old or he's eighteen years old.

How do I make this safe?

What are some settings that I can use to make sure he's not talking to strangers?

To make sure those locations not being shared?

And can you walk me through how to do that?

The location sharing?

That location sharing is on freaking everything right now, and most of it is opt out, which I hate, meaning that most of it is automatically on and you have to go in and turn it off.

In social networking, it's just really disturbing.

But I'll also make another point, especially with middle school and high school students, it's kind of like a status thing to share that in high school, in middle school, even in college sometimes it is a staddust thing, like we're besties.

I trust you, you trust me, like you know that I'm going to Sephora right now or that I'm just hanging out at my house.

But it also causes so much drama.

And it's also so when we talk about healthy relationships, that is not healthy.

That is not healthy.

Maybe it's healthy as a mom that I know where my kid goes, but it's not healthy that my friends know, unless it's a safety issue.

I guess just in general, that our friends know where we are, or our boyfriends or partners or girlfriends know we are every second of the day.

I don't know.

I think that that is weird personally, and I think it can be dangerous.

Also today, if I know that you're checking in at a concert or whatever, you're at your baseball game, have a blast.

I'm coming to rob your goddamn house also because I know that you're not home, so, like you know what I mean.

Hopefully normal people aren't programmed to think, oh, I'm just sharing them I'm having a really great lunch with my friend, that someone's going to go rob my house or someone's going to track my movements.

But your listeners no more than anyone else.

There's weird goddamn people out there that maybe don't think like we do.

So if we can be better about that stuff, by the way, spill that information to our kids too.

Why it might not be a good idea to do something like that.

Do you talk about Internet addiction and what to do with that, because that seems endemic.

Do you have like six hours?

I think the crux of this quite frankly, is something I kind of touched upon earlier, which is.

It was not our fault to begin with.

I should say maybe it's our fault going forward now that we know what we know, And what I mean by that is, like this stuff when it came out to us, we didn't think to ask any questions about what does this mean?

What does this do?

How do these things operate?

Now that we know better and we.

Have undisputable brain scans and research and every day I don't even know what stats to share anymore because they're all just so overwhelming.

I think we need to acknowledge that this is a thing.

It's a thing for adults, not just kids.

As we're like shaking our fingers at kids these days being so bad with technology, we statistically are worse than there.

So we got to fix the problem.

Can we just ask ourselves?

Can I be better about my screen time today than I was yesterday?

I don't need you to ditch the phone all together, but like, are there things that we can be better at every single day?

Because it's truly not just for our not just because, but for our mental health.

Right anxiety and depression is through the roof and for our physical health, for our relationships.

Can we be better and put the stuff down?

Can we be better parents?

Can we be better workers?

I know I sure as hell could be.

If I put.

My phone on, do not deserve a little bit?

I get a lot more shit done then I would, as it's sit near buzzin' and ding in twenty five times a minute, and then I get sidetracked and whatever I think?

Can we ask ourselves every day?

Can we be better at this tomorrow than we were today?

And maybe we can start to build better habits.

With adults, it can be even trickier.

I gave the hypothetical of someone in their twenties who barely logs off and is growing more isolated.

I asked if there were any tips on how to help when an adult is being consumed by life online.

I think one of the things that is a misconception across the board, but certainly for adults too.

We're not talking about no tech here.

We're not talking about throw that thing away you're addicted.

I encourage people to think about is it's not just about put your phone away, It's about look at the other things that we can do to get the same Dopamine hit but in a different way because again, like we could talk about this for hours, there's this whole dopamine cycle that we get and it's a physiological response to using these devices, into notifications, into all of the things.

But we can get that physiological response from other things, from going on for a walk, from playing games, from talking to people, from exercising, from reading a book, from all these other things.

So can we introduce that.

Can we say things not like you're addicted, can you get off your phone.

Get off your computer?

Or weirdo, why you want.

It as much?

But can we say something like, hey, tonight at four o'clock, we're gonna have a game night, or we're all gonna go for a family walk together.

So I'm not taking my device, we're putting devices away.

We're doing family game night, and then we're having family dinner.

We're doing a family movie night tomorrow night.

Which also we have research that having a family movie night without devices is different than us all sitting on our couches on devices.

We're engaging, we're snuggling, we're laughing at the movie together saying like oh did you hear what he just said or whatever.

That's a good form of engagement with screens.

So I think replacing or suggesting other things can be a really great way to prompt people that might be really far down this path into other alternatives that make your body and your mind feel just as good, but just doing something different.

For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at Kat Underscore Studios.

In Cells is produced by Stephanie Leideger, Gabriel Castillo, and me Courtney Armstrong.

Additional producing by Connor Powell and Caroline Miller, editing by Jeff Ti, music by Vanicorse.

Studios.

In Cells is a production of KAT Studios and iHeart Podcasts.

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