Meet Rita and Royce

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi friends, welcome to this week's Once Upon the Feeling. I'm your host, Vita. This season we're exploring connection. What is connection? What does it mean to connect with another human being? What does it mean to connect deeply with ourselves, with our inner child? I truly believe all of this is very central to our human experience. I can't wait to dive in into this topic with our guests this week. And I am so excited that you're here. Take good care. Hello. Welcome everybody to this week's Once Upon the Feeling podcast. I am so delighted and honored to have Royce Banning on this episode. Royce is the CEO and founder of ClearSpace, based in San Francisco. And he's also the author of Raise Humans Not Users, a SUPSAC. Hi, Royce thank you so much for coming. Rita, of course. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Thank you so much. I mean, this was such a win thing. We met on this beautiful event that you and Katie over in Mouth magazine put together, talking about screen time, and I just decided to come. Hey, would you like to come? And you just said yes. So thank you for saying yes. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Absolutely. No, I

ClearSpace Origin Story

SPEAKER_01 1:30

love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Okay. So Clear Space. It is, we're gonna jump right into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, let's get to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

I am curious because you are you're, you know, I want to say you're of a different generation than I am, a much older. But like we'll be talking about this. And ClearSpace. I don't believe it. I'm not buying it, but okay. Tell us a little bit about ClearSpace.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah. Me and my me and my co-founder Oliver are both uh digital natives. We got iPhones and social media in the middle school years and five years ago. We were both living in San Francisco, working in software engineers, and we decided to do something about our personal phone addictions. And the first product we built together for ClearSpace was an iPhone app that just made you take a deep breath before you could open social media. We released that app. It's been downloaded more than a million times. Saves people on average over 50% of wasted scrolling sessions. It launched this business that has now turned into family screen time software that helps families responsibly introduce their kids to the challenges and the responsibilities of having their own iPad or their own iPhone. So it's been a really exciting journey and it's one that's very much out of kind of the personal experience that we have around how addictive phones can get if you don't have some healthy controls on them.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

I think what is really interesting for me is most of the people don't realize when they're addicted to something, it takes a lot for them to realize the fact that they are addicted to something. And certainly it takes even more for them to want to do something about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

What was that like for you and Oliver? Curious minds want to know.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, it's probably worth caveating the the word addiction can be a tricky one in this context. It's the word that I think a lot of people would use to describe their experience. But honestly, for for both him and I and a lot of our peers, I really feel like the digital native generation, it's kind of just consensus that we're all addicted to these things. Like we all spend way too much time on our phones. And I think there's something about growing up through all of the critical coming of age events, seeing the phones out, watching how social media slowly like stripped away pieces of like childhood and young adulthood in real time from us. I actually feel like everyone kind of knows, but but you you ask, I think there's another critical part that you're you're asking about here, which is like, okay, you can even be somewhat aware of this problem, but then actually doing something about it is like a big step. And it's actually like the biggest step in our journey as a company is we learned pretty early on that most of the people downloading our original app, which was for self-control, it was for controlling yourself, were parents. And that that kind of change that you're talking about, like, okay, I'm actually gonna do something about it, was fostered in by entering this big seasonal responsibility that is parenthood. So we saw it with our users. For me and Oliver, I think a lot of it for us was an interest in having lives and relationships that were really rich, watching ourselves kind of shrink out of moments that we wanted to lean into because of our phones. And so I think there was a little bit of self-awareness there. And there's probably some moments around COVID and people us being apart from everyone that kind of probably raised awareness for us as individuals. But that those seasons of responsibilities is what we see by and large for a lot of people is like a new job, starting a company, getting married, having kids. Like, wait, I I want to rise to the occasion here. And distancing from your phone is a really like great first step for a lot of people, and that's kind of the first thing they think of.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Interesting. Um

Upbringing in Silicon Valley

SPEAKER_00 5:32

so this I kind of want to get to know you more, like as a person. The the person who grew up in Menlo Park, which is like, yeah, you're like in the midst of all the tech, and this is like really old as a time when everything really just blew up. I remember what Facebook was early 2000s. I mean, Lord, right? What was it like for you growing up at home? Like, you know, what was your parents like? How what was your upbringing like?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I'm the youngest of four kids. Um, my family is a very sports household, sports-driven household. My dad was a professional athlete, my mom was a college volleyball player, two of my older siblings played Division I sports, lots of sports. And then we were a church-going family. So we were we were really involved with our church community. Um, and those were probably like the two defining traits of of my upbringing. Um, and I think that there were there were probably more contrasts than synergies with like the Silicon Valley culture that we were in. Sports and faith aren't particularly synergistic with a lot of the cultural patterns in the Silicon Valley or the peninsula. So there's definitely like a uniqueness there. But I always really loved the energy of people starting technology companies and the elements of tech itself, the possibilities that it unlocked for people, the excitement, the buzz around it. But I that was that was unique to me. No one in my family was really in tech. That wasn't my parents' work. That was those that was more so an interest that that I kind of had, and very much because that's what people did. In our high school, like people were starting companies. They weren't there was that was like the cool thing to do. And you know, people were hacking side projects and things like that. I I think it might have been the equivalent to like maybe starting a band or something like that somewhere else. But that was kind of the those are kind of the the backdrop context for for my kind of introduction to tech.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

So how was the tech use in your family?

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Ours was pretty um pretty minimal. Um I think video games were probably the big thing that like would have defined early like adolescence, but my older siblings teased me when I played video games. Because they were like, go play sports outside. So it was kind of just not like a not a big deal or a big thing. TV, we had like rules, like an hour on weekends. And from a phone and social media standpoint, around like middle school and high school, I don't think that there was a lot of language for parents at the time to understand even what that was, or and we we didn't have explicit rules about it. I think if my parents were parenting today, they would have, but it wasn't really a thing so much. It was more like, are you are you doing other things well? But we did have we did have rules around structure on TV and and video games, and yeah, that's kind of that's kind of what we did.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

It's kind of interesting because now I'm thinking you, your family went to church. That is a person-to-person type of an environment community, and sportsing sporting events, same thing. You're like physically there. There were just so much more person-to-person interaction and connection that a lot of the kids who are kind of stuck to their phones nowadays, they don't have that. They gotta fill their cup somehow, some you know, somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah, I think I think community's definitely taking a hit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, but I wonder, I'm like, I wonder if that was the reason why you were predisposed, if you will, to realizing, wait a minute, I'm spending way too much time on this little screen. What happened to all of my people? Because that's that was not how you were conditioned. That's not how Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Yeah. I mean, I think that one of our missions with ClearSpace, it's kind of in the name, is very much, and this is there's a different familial backstory for my co-founder Oliver, but we do have a common, his family was really close and very intentional around the the food they ate and their screen usage. But there was also he was he was also a college athlete, and he was somebody who valued those in-person experiences and clearing space, like one of our hopes is that for a generation that might never come to fall in love with like real person interaction, like you have to give them the space to even have a chance to fall in love with deep thought or deep work or kind of looking at the sky and wondering, or just kind of brainstorming, or all these different activities that actually require the devices not to interrupt. And our hope is that people, kids might have just enough space to be like, oh, I really like the slower processes of like being present with someone or trying their hand at a creative task. That stuff doesn't, there's friction that you have to overcome in order to enter those spaces. And the devices around us are constantly beckoning us, like this would be an easier way to get a little bit of hit of dopamine or something. So um I I certainly credit the the familial context and kind of community environments that I I grew up in with inspiring my imagination for what this company is built to protect.

Parenting Screens and AI

SPEAKER_00 11:08

So this reminds me, well, we were sitting together in Echo Park and this beautiful place, Granada. Shout out to Granada. If nobody has been, yeah, if people have in LA haven't been to Granada, go visit. It's beautiful. There was a mom in my group, and kind of like I feel like this is where a lot of the parents struggle is that, well, how do you get things done?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Right. It's like if you don't give the children screen, how do you get things done? And a lot of the things that that we talked about, whether it's even just bringing your children to sporting events to their practices or facilitating these in-person interactions and things like that, sometimes like it's I don't know, it's a function of time and space, and I get it, you know, like you know, you have to make a conscious effort of clearing it. But for someone who feels stuck right now in there, what what's your advice to them? I mean, what would you like, you know, in terms of who you have seen and who you've talked to and creating like what is what is the strategy there? Like, how do us parents, and I think this is why you were talking about parents are weaning themselves off because like if we can wean ourselves off, then no our kids are for sure not going to wean themselves off.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah. Um I mean, we we have a lot of we have a lot of different families that we that we work with and have been able to kind of participate in their their journeys as families towards healthier screen time usage. And I'd say off the bat, like, no two families are alike, no two kids are alike. And the need for screens to fill some extra time when a parent needs a break or needs a moment or kids having a hard time are so valid. And I don't think there's anyone better in the world to determine when that is appropriate than the parent. But I think that there is this temptation to throw our hands up in the air, rightfully so, and say, like, there's nothing I can do about that time extending past when I thought it was appropriate because I had to go be somewhere else, or there's a lot that parents are up against when they're trying to help facilitate responsible device usage for their kids. And I'd say that the first step is determining like, do I actually think this is the appropriate usage? It does it fit the moment, even if it's maybe not the healthiest thing in the world, that's okay. Sometimes on a road trip, fast food. Like, you know, we do things all the time. Like that doesn't mean fast food every single day for every single meal, but like, is the time and place appropriate for the child? Are you caring for them in this aspect of their lives consistently the way you care for them in other aspects of their lives? And the the thing that I I really try to encourage with parents and and we try to encourage as a company is like we want to equip you to make a determination about what is appropriate and then be able to follow through with it. And so I think probably the loudest message I've ever heard is like go with like trust your instincts in this area as much as you do in other areas, because I think you're probably right. And I think a lot of people have fought that battle and gotten mystified by Apple screen time controls and it's inaccurate, and now we're fighting, and it's like I don't want to fight, I don't want to question whether or not my kid's telling me the truth, and it's like I can't even get to the bottom of it. My invitation is like step back into that arena because it's one of the most important places for you to be parenting in modern life. And so to the parent that says, I need an hour to get this work done, or to myself for whatever reason, I say, absolutely great, take that hour. It doesn't need to be the five hours that you didn't intend just because now they have the iPad. Even that negotiation of getting the iPad back to have some teeth to it, some authority, like, no, the iPad is going to shut off in an hour. We all know that. That's that's set up. That's kind of what we're trying to usher in is like similar to the TV or to like the food that's in your kitchen, you design the environment that your kids are growing up in intentionally, and then you make those determinations on your best, on your best judgment.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

I like that. It is so interesting that our human brain tends to go black or white, right? And then we kind of ignore this whole gray, this spectrum. It is and and if we look at it spectrum with a without demonizing any of it, it is not about demonizing tech is bad or you know, in person is good, but it's the balance between the two and how do we move through that? And I yeah, I appreciate what you said. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

I actually think a lot of the tech companies who have historically stood to benefit from us thinking about it as black and white, they're like they want the conversation to be no tech isn't if tech is either good or bad, here are a bunch of reasons why it's good. So then does that mean it can't also be bad? Like that's that's a great point if you're TikTok or Instagram or Snapchat. But from for us as parents, like no, I I know that it's a great way for you to connect with your friends for 10 minutes a day. And it is not a great way for you to endlessly scroll for three hours a day. So it's a little bit of both, right? I like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Oh, I want to hear more about this, right? Yeah, because I mean, God, like I think that even speaks to my struggle, or probably a lot of the parents out there. Yeah. You remind this this conversation is reminding me of one of the things that I heard from Dr. Gabor Mate. I don't know if you're familiar with his work, but he has worked, you know, kind of going back to his talk about addiction. And addiction comes in many different forms. You know, there is the retail therapy, so to speak, that is addiction, you know, or it's the it's that it's the alcohol, or it's the tech. And one of the things that he encouraged people to do is that instead of feeling bad about, quote unquote, I'm using this term very generously, relapsing, like, you know, buying the thing that maybe you shouldn't have or whatever, instead of feeling bad about relapsing, just be really aware of what you're doing. Yeah. Like just bring that awareness up and just say, I want to have that drink, and I'm gonna have that drink. Right. And then it is it is such an interesting, interesting way of looking at it instead of demonizing it.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Yeah, I think aware, I think awareness is is one of these tools that we can use to inform the resources that we have for best decision making as individuals and communally. One of our breakout features for the Clear Space Self-Control app was a friends feature. We we learned once we put out the first kind of feature set that a lot of people would onboard with a close friend or a spouse, and they would kind of be on a screen time detox arc with that person. And as we began speaking with more users, we we came to understand that some of the closest people in your in your life your spouse might have your bank account credentials, they might know your deepest, darkest secrets, and they have no idea what your screen time is. And yet when you look at the impact that screen time has on mental health, physical health, productivity, like our lives, we're not inviting and we're not giving access to the people who are like there to help encourage us to our best, to the most important data point, maybe in our lives. Like they see our sleep score, but they don't see our screen time. And so that was that was something that we built in was like, hey, you can invite a a couple of your close people to to give you accountability or encouragement, or just be there if you're like, hey, I saw you're usually like two hours a day. It's a few days of 10 hours of screen time. Like, are you sick? Can I bring you some soup? Are you going through it? Did you break up? Like, it's actually a really helpful, and like maybe not for everyone, but for your closest people. I want them to know what's going on. And like, this is a scenario in my life that I I need other people to be watching my back on. And so I I think you're totally right. That awareness as an individual and communally, like, this is kind of how we work as humans. We we we can hold each other's stories together in some of those contexts, but you can't do it if it's siloed. Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yeah, are you doing that yourself in your own?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Oh yeah, yeah. Oh wow, absolutely. I love that. I love that. You're putting putting your money where about this.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, my wife and my co-founder have my screen time, and and they roast me if it's if it's creeping up. I love this. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

I love this so much. Oh my god. So I Googled you before we came on this thing. And it tells me now, I don't know if this is true. Well, I mean, I send it to you, so I'm assuming it's true. You started a company of 15 with your brother.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Yeah. My my older brother, Rich, he's a lifelong entrepreneur, and he's built several successful businesses. But the first, the first business that either of us started was he's six years older than me, so he was graduated, he had just graduated college, and we we we tried to build a kind of social shopping platform. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We it was this is kind of your typical you grow up in Silicon Valley, it was like 20. We were reading the lean startup and trying to solve wow um yeah, yeah, reading for a 15-year-old. Oh, oh, yeah, no, that's yeah, that was that was getting passed around. Um, we were trying to figure out like what it what it meant to build software that felt exciting. And one of his best friends and two of my best friends, we all worked together in a tent in one of our buddies' backyards for an entire summer and built a a platform where people could share outfits. The the quick story on it is we we kind of started with just talking to people in our lives about problems they had. And it was like a great exercise, honestly, and just starting with like what's something that we could use software to fix. And our sisters kind of talked about this process of sharing clothing and wish lists and how they were doing that. And so we kind of fiddled something into form, and it it ended up looking a little bit like Cher's virtual closet, which was like a funny, a funny thing for us is like young men to be building because we weren't particularly keen on like online shopping, but it was such an awesome experience building. Something, launching it, it definitely inspired like an early interest for myself in studying computer science, building software. I ended up applying for a scholarship as a part of my work there that was part of what paid for college for me. And so there was a lot of awesome experiences and learnings that came out of it. And not the least of which was getting to kind of work underneath my brother who had just graduated from Pepperdine as a college basketball player and has this like remarkable work ethic that I've I kind of got to study under and figure out what it looks like to be resilient in the context of startups, which has served me incredibly well. And not too much came of it other than we had some users at some point and you know this this great opportunity and this great learning experience, but it was formative for me. Yeah, it was it was a really special experience.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

This is kind of interesting, and I'm so glad I asked you this question because I think when it comes to tech, for a lot of people who is outside of the Silicon Valley who did not grow up in that environment, if you look at how the world views Silicon Valley right now, this this is really where the top 1% lives, right? And so a lot of the people see that as this shining beacon of success and wealth and abundance. So, as most parents do, they want their children to to be successful, to to be not have their resources and things like that. And then so you have got this heavy, heavy, heavy focus into tech. I mean, God, I think at one point, I mean, I can't play video games for the life of me. I can play piano that I could do. Video games, forget about it. I know people who are literally like sign up like tutoring sessions or something, they won't want their kids to be so good at video games. So like somehow. It's like it's like a yeah, it's like a thing. Like it's like they can either get scholarships or don't. Oh, sure. I don't it's like which for me it's wild, right? I don't know if it is good for their body on you know in the long run. I don't know if it is good for I mean, or is it bad? I'm not sure. But so now you have got this tug, you have the world using that as a beacon, as that's that's where we all want to be. This is the life that we all want to enjoy. And then we have, you know, and then you have this other tug towards the other way, right? Where, oh no, let's focus on human and human connection. And I feel like this is kind of what we're gonna go into. Like, artificial intelligence is really kind of the making this tension even harder.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

What is your perspective on that? Like, what do you what when you're looking at not just San Francisco and not just not nine California, when you're talking to people in Montana, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama. I mean, heck, even Bhutan. Do you know this is the wildest thing? I went to Bhutan this February with my my mom and my sister. And I went there, I was there once, I want to say like 15 years ago. Back then, I don't remember. They were just kind of like chatting, they were doing anything. This time I go back, the monks were on their phone. Like literally, there was TikTok. There were TikToks, there were TikTok videos on the monks' phone. In the temple. I know it is. I was just like, oh my god, like, you know, what has it what it is. So I'm gonna throw this like weird tension worldview back at you. What is your thought on that? Like, how do we navigate this?

SPEAKER_01 25:40

The monks on phones is a tricky one. One of my good friends from Notre Dame graduated and became a monk, and he said the hardest part of his commitment was giving up his phone. Um, he was a part of uh he was a part of uh an order that took a vow of poverty, and part of that was relinquishing relinquishing their device. And he was like, that was I mean, he doesn't have money anymore. He gave up, he, you know, he there's a lot of things that you give up when you give up all your worldly possessions, and he's like, the hardest one was the phone. I get it, I get why monks who probably are living, maybe that aren't taking that, and so they have the phone, that are living otherwise incredibly, I would imagine, disciplined lives, ordered lives, probably very reflective, still, contemplative. I I I get it, I get why the they might still check their phone and be like, let's just scroll TikTok for a little bit. I mean, that's it's hard. It's it's yeah, it's it's pulling at all the things that our our brains evolved to do to survive in the real world. We had a we had I had a mentor who who said like a really good sign that your brain is working the way it's supposed to, is that you would find it really hard not to engage with your phone because your phone is programmed to simulate the things that kept you alive as a as a human that has um the capacities that that we evolve to have. So I think I think there's a lot of challenges. You you touched on AI and and also, you know, even our most set apart classes of religious figures, monks who, at least in the traditions I'm familiar with, are are are are practicing a way of life almost as like a model of what an un an uninterrupted devotion could look like for the rest of us. Even they are getting coarse into it, which is like, you know, even even they are not perfect. I think that's really tricky. I think I think when I think about AI right now, I talk to a lot of parents about engaging in conversations with their kids about AI. I think that the right conversation as a parent is, I think it starts with awareness, like we talked about. I actually think it's like relatively important for parents to the extent that they can in their daily lives, like understand it a little bit. It's gonna be a really big part of your kids' life. I think that's pretty much already gonna be established. Like there's probably no um moving off of that. There's probably you're probably gonna have to learn how to dance with that rather than completely move away from it. And then I think that the the question is kind of in many ways, it's a very old question, which is what aspects of a good life do you want to protect? Understanding that there's gonna be new threats to certain ways of life that AI can present. Uh, one that I think about a lot and and have engaged with families and parents on is some of the elements around relational trust and who you go to with your big questions or your deep questions. I think specifically for teenagers, I think there's going to be this continued probably reflex to go to chat with a thought. But but no, I like to go to AI with questions that about who they are, I think puberty, relationships, questions you don't really want to ask your parents. You might be embarrassed to ask talk to with your friends, but like when we were growing up, you had to find somebody that you could talk to about that because you or you keep it bottled up, and I think that's a different thing.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

But my generation, we just don't talk about it, but at that conversation. Surely you try.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

I mean, we at some point somewhere we hopefully all came across a friend who saw something the way that we saw it, and you're like, isn't that kind of weird? And you you figured it out together. And I think there's gonna be there's gonna be this temptation to constantly just take those inquiries into an AI that you can talk to about it and and understand and learn how to understand the world. And I don't think that's gonna be always a bad thing or a bad reflex. I learn a ton of stuff with AI every day, but what does it mean to preserve some of the relational development that comes in the context of those explorations? I think is a question that is really worthwhile for parents and families to be asking themselves.

Healthy Screen Time Skills

SPEAKER_00 30:10

So, what do you say to those parents who don't want their kids to miss out on anything when it comes to tech? I remember one of the some of the parents that I know that I'm like, well, they need to learn how to code. I I was gonna tell them, like, nobody really learns how to code anymore. The AI is doing all the coding. But, you know. I don't know. I think it's still but yeah, but then like, you know, so they're like, you know, they need this and need that. And then so this little box that we're all on right now becomes a thing that their kids spend a lot of time on. Yeah. Like, how do like what do we? I mean, I've I guess, you know, I'm I can think about what you just said is that awareness and so and and and whatnot, but it's tricky.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, I think it's it's back to what we were saying earlier, which is that there are healthy and not healthy ways to engage with it. And there it does take a little bit of extra effort to be like an an engaged parent, to play an active role in your kid's life around screens. But like eating food, like if food is always an analogy to reach for, like eating cake all the time is not good, you can't eat spinach all the time, but we're not saying that you shouldn't eat, right? Like the the answer is like healthy minder, yeah, and also like not giving up on the fact that you can encourage a healthy, like screen time is a life skill, is what we say, and like you can cultivate that yourself and you can teach to your kids, and actually we have to, and no one taught us, and so it's fine, it's it's okay. There's no shame here, none of us have it figured out perfectly. I think right now, or at the moment in time that we're living in, it's like imperative that we do figure it out, and I think we have a good chance. I I see families every day putting the pieces together of what their family tech relationship looks like, and that's different for each kid, but it's an iterative game, it's conversational, it's informed and you know, awareness. It's like now I know what my kid's into around the devices, and I'm not afraid to tell them that like enough is enough, but I'm also willing to learn from them and understand why something might be different than I think it is, and then to inspect that. Like, if I know my kid really likes candy and we keep candy in the house and the candy disappears from the jar, a reasonable answer might be, oh, I'm sorry, you know, I'm sorry. But the the the conclusion can't be no one ate the candy. Like we have to have some like ground truth here, and like there has to be a little bit of order, I think, or or maybe it's more laissez-faire, but that's that's a style that like I think should be something that people are just like, yeah, that's we're just we're just gonna figure this out as we go. And yeah, that's that's kind of my encouragement. Is it it doesn't have to be back to what we were talking about earlier, so black and white. It's like, yeah, there's there's shades to this thing, and and in those shades is probably the right setup for your family.

Dadhood Changed ClearSpace

SPEAKER_00 33:03

How has your viewpoint have changed like changed between creating clear space 10 years ago versus now now you're a dad? You're a pretty young dad.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Has it shifted at all?

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, totally. Big time. Started ClearSpace five years ago.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Five years ago.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

No, no, all then 10 years ago would be super cool. We probably would have fixed everybody's phone addictions by now. Becoming a dad shifted things pretty dramatically for me. It was it marked a big, a big transition point for us. We were at at that point only building the product for individuals, adults themselves, who were trying to cut back on their screen time and building a a little bit of like a Strava-like experience around encouraging healthy habits and then deploying some behavioral interventions between people and their social media. Awareness around becoming a dad, I'd been an uncle for a few years. I had I had started to see what parents were up against. And then all of a sudden, when you become a parent, I don't know if this is everybody's experience, but like I'm at parks all the time now, and like you're talking with parents, and your world just like very much it's like, oh, I knew that a lot of our users were parents, and that was inspiring them to get their stuff right. I thought that was really cool. Then I was like, oh, this isn't just a thing, this is the thing. Like in the like tween and teen households, because a lot of them have like younger kids, you know, you kind of start to conversate, it's like, no, this is the thing. This is the the burden that parents carry. There's so many households and families that I I would meet, and they're like, We're actually like doing so good, except this thing. Like, they even the people that were in pockets of really good seasons, like that was always the thing. And then if the season was bad, that was the thing. And and we we honestly, a year and a half ago, I wasn't sure that that it was gonna be possible for us to build a row a good solution for parents to this problem because of how tricky Apple makes it in their environment. But my co-founder, myself, and our founding engineer did a real a real deep dive on what could be possible if we if we turned uh a big part of our attention towards establishing this new platform that could right a lot of the wrongs in Apple's screen time. And we found some really bold financial partners and hired out an excellent team. And it wasn't clear that we were going to be able to build a better version of screen time than Apple had, but we we did, and it's it's that's that's why we did the LA event and we're really excited to start sharing with people because I think up until we brought this to the families that we've worked with, a lot of them were in a position where they're like, I would like to do this, it would be a full-time job for me to be monitoring the way that I want to, my kids' screen time. Or I would need an and I would need an engineering degree to set up all the systems in my house to actually get reliable data on that. And I believe, and you've you've seen you've seen pieces of this, but I believe what what we've been able to do is deliver a solution to both those problems. So now all that's left is like, do you as a parent want to be speaking into informing your child in a way that helps them grow to be able to handle the temptations of devices or the distractions?

SPEAKER_00 36:18

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Good Tech for Kids

SPEAKER_00 37:29

I mentioned that when it comes to techs and apps and things like that for children, there is a very distinct line between neurotypical and neurodivergent, right? You know, you have got these educational communication apps built specifically for neurodivergent children, maybe non-speaking. And with creating connection and understanding as the as the center or the purpose of the app so we can communicate and connect with each other. The funny part is that as soon as you move away from that, you're starting you know, it's it is not that. It's like, how can I get this kid to stay on the screen for a little longer so they can actually avoid other human like face-to-face connections and and and things like that? And I think maybe because you are there and you're in this sphere, if you could talk to the rest of us, is there how do you discern that? What is a good, if if there is one, good tech for children? For for instance, for yourself, like what would you stay away from? And why, why that divide?

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Yeah, I think what is good tech, just like the example you gave, so depends on the kid. Like a child whose specific needs require maybe a different type of education that is on a device. That to me sounds I I'm not a, you know, I don't have a medical background. But that to me sounds like a pretty good usage. And again, like I think the parent is the best person to make that decision.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

And I and I think a really important perspective that I I hold here is like that shouldn't turn into like I think a parent can like also say, yeah, this app, but not every app. If there's specific learning mechanisms that are deployed through an iPad that are like particularly helpful for a kid with a certain dispositions, great. Let's do that app, but they don't also need to be on YouTube and Roblox and Minecraft whenever they they want. So I I think that element is like really clear to me.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

I think, yeah, I wanted to say this that for some reason this thought came to me. What we need in it is is almost like an ingredient list for like gummy bears for tech. Because, you know, I don't have a tech background. I also don't have a psychology background, nor neuroscience. I don't know. And for so many parents out there, you know, it's through the word of mouth, oh, my kid loved this. And then next thing you know, they're it's like giving your kids a piece of candy that is with high fructose, you know, corn syrup and ret 40, and then and then you got to teach them how not to be addicted to it. I mean, this is kind of like you're shooting on your left foot. So how do we do that for a tech? Like this is what it this like how do we get educated on that? If you if you look at the piece of app and things like that, like you look at all of the elements, like what are the bad ingredients? Like, you know, do we have the organic juices extract for coloring, or are we using the red 40s and the yellow fives? Um and so at least the parents can be aware of like, I'm choosing to give you this right now. I know what I'm giving you, and I also know that I can do you know what I mean? Totally. Most of us don't know.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Yeah, I think I think this is I I think this gap, this this this knowledge gap, this wisdom gap, I think there's a lack of, like, we have not had the time with these devices as like people, as society, to cultivate generational wisdom. This is this is actually like the main reason we do these events that you came to in LA is we want to get people talking and sharing notes. I think that I think the wisdom of parents who care about their kids and want to be better at this, like we need to be passing notes in real time. And like, did that work for you? Did that feel like even matching each other's intuition? And I there's a lot of great research going on, anxious generation, amazing generation. There's people working at different levels, but I think that like the way that we learn to cook well for our families, a lot of that comes down the line, too. Like, you're not really worried about grandma's recipe having good or bad stuff. You're like, I don't know, it worked for me, it worked for them, worked for them. That's a pretty good way to know that like that's gonna work for your kids. These new elements, the red 40, the high fructose corn syrup, like we need a little bit of research, we need a little bit of you know, some that our really healthy friend to be like, don't touch that, right? Like, you need kind of that communal conversation. So I think on the ground, conversation around this with parents, and we've worked a lot in these conversations that we host in in different cities around like what does it look like to break out of the idea that anyone's judging anyone, but to come together so that we can form better perspectives to inform how we're helping our kids navigate it. That's a really important step in this whole process for us. But then I also think that something that I always try to say to parents is like, you might not feel like you are the authority on like everything about tech and how it works and whether it's good or bad. And but you trust your gut how many times a day on making parenting calls for your kid. I think you can trust your gut with this too. Like when you see their eyes glaze over a little bit when they're looking at the screen, lean into that. Like, I think they might have switched from their education app over to YouTube. I think that that's like a great time for conversation and understanding the content. Like, I think this this is the type of thing that you can expect that with the device the kid might have a little bit more of a visceral reaction because they are experiencing extra engaging content. But that's something that like there's awareness around, and and I think that's an opportunity to lean in closer because of how consequential screen time is for kids' development. Like that's a that's a good sign to lean in, not like, oh, I just don't know about tech. I'm not, I don't know if it's good or bad, or if they're gonna get left by it. I think I think you know your kid and you can see, you can see that stuff. And I think a lot of parents have maybe felt because so much of this technology is new, that they're not sure yet. But I I think that it's it's really important to like kind of just like lean into your your instincts around that.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

There was there is something, well, I forgot what it was called. There is a site for kids media rating. Do you know what I'm talking about? Common Sense Media.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Yeah, Common Sense is great. Yeah. There's a lot of projects. There's a there's a lot of projects.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

I'm not well versed in it. So is there something that you would recommend to the parents to check in? Do we need to start one? I probably maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

We I I probably should put together a list. I I think that there's a lot of people doing a lot of good writing and research around this. A specific list is really hard to maintain, I believe. This is kind of a a technology thesis we have around our platform is that uh one of the challenges that makes this so hard to parent is that the internet is infinite. It's constantly expanding every single day. New websites, new apps. It is constantly changing. The internet is effectively an infinite and constantly changing. Your kid is constantly changing. And those two dynamic systems, any list that was written today might be out of date tomorrow. But the way that your kid's experiencing the internet, keeping a pulse on it, I really do think is the best way. It doesn't matter if there's 5,000 apps that are bad for them. You don't need to know those 5,000. You just need to know the two that maybe they came across this week and discern if those are the types of ones that deserve a conversation or not. And that's kind of the that's the flow that we imagine is the way to be a present but not overwhelm a parent with the responsibilities associated with parenting. It's like, hey, a new app popped up this week. I've never seen that on your phone. ClearSpace, we automatically generate these reports. Like, hey, this app is a media app that has some social elements. You don't allow social media. Do you want us to add this to the blocked list? And like maybe this is worth a conversation. Like it was only on they were only on there for a few minutes. And usually those conversations from parents and families we worked with go a little something like, oh yeah, I got sent a link. I wasn't sure if it was okay or not. I'm sorry, or am I allowed to use this? And then parent and kid are making a decision. So the list as a as a reference point is I think there's cool research and work done around types of things that are happening, short form content, long form or long form content. Exactly. There's different ingredients for sure, but even those are getting iterated on every single day. You know, prediction markets get get legalized, and that's an overwhelming thing to track. Like I think a much more reasonable thing to keep an eye on is like what has entered your kids' world, and then like what does that conversation look like around

Auditing Apps Together

SPEAKER_01 46:34

it?

SPEAKER_00 46:34

It's interesting because I mean, as a parent, and I'm constantly arguing with my 10 and 12-year-old, my 12-year-old is entering the debate team. So God help me. I'm gonna have some uh some presentations coming my way. You better bring it. Yeah, I know. Is that you know, they will go to a friend's house and they're playing on a game and they will come back and then they will like, well, can I have this game too? It was so fun. And me and my husband, we will go into the app and then we'll look at it and then like, well, I don't like this, I don't like that. Like, you have to earn this, you have to buy that. Like it's feels it feels it's addicting, you're constantly, you know. I and we will analyze it for them. Yeah, why it's a no, it's a battle for us to fight because it's not a third party type of like, well, I didn't, you know, so I don't know if there is room, but as like we as there's a part of me, and I feel like I am saying this probably for a lot of the parents out there, is that if there is somebody who is well versed in children's psychology and neuroscience, how their brain develops, and how some each of these elements, like, you know, are they prompted to come back the next day? Right? The streaks and the things that it kind of keeps them in the thing. Not necessarily judging whether this app is good or bad, but just even listing out each of the elements and having that to be, I think I've I think that is pretty much what common sense media desk. Like this, you know, there are essential contents, there is swear words, there is this, like, you know, age recommended, maybe it's 15 instead of 13. Like just having some of those guidelines coming from not your parents, sure is going to is going it just makes everybody's life so much. And it actually empowers us parents too, right? As is that, oh, I actually don't need to have you know early childhood education degree to know that I am actually leading my, you know, I am raising my child the way that is true to my value. Because sometimes those things are not necessarily aligned, knowledge and value. Like sometimes we just do so many things that we don't know, and then it just we have to work three times as hard to reverse it. If you think about the the the family who are trying to reverse those screen time right now, totally it is a much, much harder job to do than just nipping it in the butt at the first place.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Yeah, and I think I mean I think it sounds like what you're what you and your husband are doing in terms of you know, sinking your teeth in and auditing it is like a really, really good way to go about it, understanding what it is and having conversation around why this may or may not fit inside of your guys's vision for how the family uses tech. I think that sounds really, really healthy to me. The the thing that I've seen work with families who who I think are doing it really, really well, uh, whether reversing bad habits or just introducing kids well, is like this is a journey, just like so many other aspects of their life are a journey, right? Like there's gonna be some back and forth, there's gonna be some two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back. There's gonna be a little ebb and flow. There's gonna be new things that come in that you didn't know as a parent, that they don't know as a kid. And I think that continuing to have, and this is my belief, is having a foundation where there is some type of ground truth and there's there's there's a shared context, there's a reference point for what is really happening, and there's some degree of authority that the parent has to shape the environment. Those two things with a context of conversation and this idea, this growth mindset, like we're gradually, we're gonna introduce different elements of the internet to you as you demonstrate the responsibility that is needed to take those things on because it's gonna be new for us, it's gonna be new for you. And that incremental, I really think that like an incremental playbook around this is the type of thing that can help people just like pace themselves into bigger and bigger challenges. And like, of course, our kids are gonna grow up and they're gonna be autonomous adults living outside of our house, hopefully. That like I don't know, I don't want them in my house. Do you you want them forever in your house? Why not?

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. I mean, the thing is is that you know, like I grew up, I grew up in Taiwan. There are so many families that are just multi-generational. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

Yeah, sure. Maybe you're but you would want to be in their house at that point, then maybe, right? Maybe not their house. Ah, their house, my house. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

These days, these days, it's gonna be me buying the house. In this economy, yeah. In this economy, it's gonna be me buying the house. At the end of the day, it's still my house. It's still my house until like I'm gone to the other room.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

So that's oh my god. This is so

AI Values and Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 51:31

fun. Now, can you talk a little bit about AI? What is your outlook with AI? What is what how do you feel about artificial intelligence, the way it's going, the the doomsday thing that's been going on media as uh as a new dad or almost new dad for it the second time?

SPEAKER_01 51:52

I think that as a dad, I think that I'm as motivated as ever to raise my daughter to be an coming son to be resilient and to care about the important things and not let the other things distract. And I think that those things are as applicable as ever, and that there's unique challenges, there's new challenges, there's very big challenges associated with AI. But as a dad, I think I think they can I think they can hand I think I think I want I want them to be able to handle it. I think we're gonna I think we're gonna figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

Um you mentioned important things. What are the important things for you?

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Family, faith, working hard, in character, um a direction that you want to see it go.

unknown 52:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

So it's mostly positive.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

It's a positive outlook. Oh, yeah, I I I don't know. Like I Yeah, as a dad, like I don't think that my job and responsibility to my kids has changed too much in the context of AI. I think that like there's like constantly a ton of things that I think the world's changing a bunch, but I'm also I don't know if I'm the right person to speak on the the consequence associated with all of the moving pieces of AI, but I think that you know we're getting up, we're getting up every day and and trying to make sure that like the ways that we can can put the world in a better direction are are acted on, and that's what I want to see out of them as they get older. And so yeah, that's that's calm. I'm taking it on.

SPEAKER_00 53:41

Okay. You sound really hopeful. I love this. That's why that's my default disposition. Yeah, I love that because sometimes it feels like it's an uphill battle, yeah, and it discourages it's it's discouraging for a lot, for lots of people.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

And yeah, I think that's real. I think that's real. I don't think that there's not challenges and new ones and big ones, and like that there's some like really, you know, scary scenarios that that could occur. Like, I think all that's real. That's not like, but I also think that humans, I'm long humans. Like, I I think I think that you know, we've been up against a lot, and I think we'll continue to to persevere. And so, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the future, I don't know what the future holds for all of it, but no, none of us, none of us do. That's why it's the future. Do you have do you do you do you how are you feeling about about AI and where it's going?

SPEAKER_00 54:34

AI is gonna be AI, you know. My goal now is really instead of focusing on, for lack of a better word, if AI was the villain, like defeating AI or whatever it is, is really more focused on creating connection, right? Creating the space and the ways that human can connect with human. Like I feel like instead of trying to minus minimize the other thing, let's try to amplify this thing that we still hold true and you know, dear to our heart, uh, and allow that to take up space. Because it once that takes up space, then the other one is just gonna be naturally it's it will naturally fall, not maybe not away, but it will have a lesser significance in our lives.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

Yeah. So or maybe it will equip us with the the tools we need for whatever whatever kind of challenges.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Yeah, I love this. I I mean it's not black or white. There is definitely time and place for it. God, it has helped me a bunch. Um, but being aware and not getting completely pulled into it, consumed by it is is is the way to go.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Yeah, I think if I think if the social media era of the internet taught us anything, it's that we need to enter into the spaces that AI is cultivating and drawing us into with our guards up for the reality that it's probably not setting us up for our specific version of success. And that we need to be very aware of what we're trying to make of our lives, not kind of offload that to AI.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

You know what is interesting with this, what is coming up now is that this is probably a good time for all of us human beings to go back and really think about what our values are, what boundaries are. The world sovereignty comes in, is that as you're engaging with whether it's another human or a bot or a platform or a social media account, whatever it is, is where are your boundaries? And what what you know what what are you allowing to go out and what are you allowing to come in?

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

Yeah, and then take a stand for it, right? Because at the end of the day, we have a say in that. If we don't want that thing to be here, it can't be here, it physically can't be here. Yeah, this is a re time for some reflection.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Yeah, I think that's a good I think that's a good place to to start.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

Yeah. Well, thank you, Royce. I want to keep talking to you out of the podcast episode. I have some ideas to kind of pull clear space into the community, into the real world, creating some containers, actually allow families and children and parents alike to connect. We'll talk. But thank you so much. So that's it for today. I love that conversation. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, thank you. And we'll drop, yeah, and we'll drop all of the information. I will email you, and we'll drop all of the information about ClearSpace and the Substack. Thank you again for listening to this week's Once Upon a Feeling. I hope you walked away with something new, something different, something that you didn't know you had. I truly enjoyed every moment of making this episode. And I cannot wait to share what we have in store with the next guest, exploring the same topic connection, because it means so many different things. I appreciate you. If you love this episode, love this podcast, and the thoughts and the information that sparks in you, please give us a five-star review and share it with your friends and family. Take good care, I love you, and I will see you next time.