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Hillary Wilkinson: (00:43)

Since 2020, global social media use has surged by 20% with kids ages eight to 18, spending an average of seven and a half hours daily on screens. These numbers come from the CDC, and at the same time, 2/3 of parents think parenting is harder today than it was 20 years ago, citing the overuse of technology as the reason, and this comes from the NIH. So we recognize there is an urgent need for improved tools to support parents as they help their children foster healthy screen habits. And Aura is a company that is answering this call. This past July, Aura hosted a Digital Parenthood summit and commanded a lot of attention in the digital wellness community. Today I get to speak with their Chief Medical Officer. Welcome to Healthy Screen Habits, Dr. Scott Kollins!

Dr. Scott Kollins: (01:49)

Thank you, Hillary. It is a pleasure to be here. Uh, I love the lead in such important context setting and it, and you, you made it easy for setting up some of the stuff that we're working on.

Hillary Wilkinson: (02:01)

Fantastic. So, Dr. Scott, I am always a fan of, you know, maybe it's because, you know, uh, Marvel has led me this path, but I'm always a fan of an origin story. So can you share yours? What led you to get involved with digital wellness and your current position at Aura?

Dr. Scott Kollins: (02:22)

Yeah, I'll try to , I'll try to keep my origin story fairly, fairly brief, but, um, so I'm a clinical psychologist by training. Uh, and I, I spent most of my grownup life as a, as an academic. So I was, uh, I, I spent a, a good bit of time on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Duke. Um, for about 20, 21 years I ran a program primarily for kids in adults with ADHD. Uh, but I actually started, I was very interested, you know, starting, I don't know, 12, 14 years ago and how we can use technology to improve, uh, mental health outcomes and, and measure mental health outcomes and things like that. So I, I was doing my academic thing and I was writing my grants and, you know, trying to write my papers and things like that. And, um, I think a couple things happened about four years ago.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (03:14)

One Covid hit and I think that that was just an upheaval for everybody in so many ways. Combined with that, and you alluded to this, um, my own kids and I, I currently have a, I have a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old, so they were 10 and 8 at the time. Um, I think they, they ended up, especially my older one, really impacted by what, what all the things that changed during Covid, including, um, going into a completely virtual world. And so that, that led to some, some challenges. And as a psychologist, I, I was looking at my situation and thinking, you know, I'm an expert in this area. I live in a really resource rich environment. I have resources myself, and I still don't, I, I can't get my kids the things that they need. There's gotta be, I've gotta do something else. And so it was really kind of, that led me to that, that led me to leave academia.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (04:12)

I didn't go straight to Aura, but, but the, you know, so many great things as a, as an academic and, and I learned a lot and was able to, um, contribute to, to science, but I felt like I wasn't getting stuff done fast enough, and I had this sense of urgency. Um, so I went out into the industry world. Initially, I worked for a, uh, a data company that was focused on using big data to answer questions about mental health. Then spent some time working for a digital therapeutic company that had developed an app to treat ADHD. And we had done a lot of that work while I was at Duke. Um, and then I got this very interesting email about a, from a, from a, um, a job recruiter saying, there's a cybersecurity company that is looking for a Chief Medical Officer. And I thought, that is really unusual, , I, I want to, I wanna know more about this. I started learning about Aura, uh, what they had already built, how they had established themselves as a company, um, in the identity protection and fraud protection space, and what the vision was for how we can now extend this to, um, to providing tools to help exactly what you said, to help parents navigate this tricky world. So I was sold pretty, pretty early on the vision and, and here I am. So I, I got started about three months ago, three and a half months ago.

Hillary Wilkinson: (05:30)

Mm. So it's interesting. Aura has this origin as a cybersecurity company and now has a Digital Parenthood initiative, and you have this really interesting amalgam of people on your board from like Hollywood sorts, like Jeffrey Katzenberg, like co-founder of Dreamworks. I mean, I, I'm, I'm looking at these names and I'm like, what, you know, to Robert Downey Jr. As well as tech experts and business leaders. But then I've also seen that Aura uses AI and I, I, I kinda can't wrap my brain around all of this , and can you, can you tease it apart? Like what, where is the parenting initiative situation headed?

Dr. Scott Kollins: (06:17)

Yeah. So the way I think about it, and, and you're right, I mean, it's a, we, we, we are aspiring to do a lot, but historically, and the way that Aura was founded was around digital safety primarily for adults. Um, Hari Ravichandran, who's our founder, and CEO, he had his identity stolen eight, 10 years ago. And as he was working through that, he realized I can build better tools that are out there to help protect others from having to go through this. Um, what we are doing with Digital Parenthood is really just a, it's just an extension of that. It is promoting safety online, but for kids and families. And there's, there's a couple of different cons, well, more than a couple, but there are, there are different considerations, but it falls under the broader umbrella of online safety and, and, um, and security.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (07:09)

The, the way that I think about it also, and trying to distill this down, and you mentioned something about this in the intro about parents feeling like it was harder to parent. Now, way back in the old days, , when you and I, uh, were growing up, um, parents, their, their job in terms of monitoring and keeping tabs on what their kids were doing and keeping them safe, usually revolved around three things. One, do, do I know where my kids are? Two, do I know who they're hanging out with, and three, do I know what they're doing? And those three aspects of parental monitoring, actually, there's a lot of research that supports those things are really good and promote healthy child development. The challenge that we're facing now is all that stuff happens while a kid is looking at their device. So it, in, in some ways, it's a lot more covert to know and understand, what is my kid doing online? Where are they? What sites are they visiting? What content are they consuming? Who are they spending time with? And so we're trying to bring those things, you know, to, we're trying to build tools to help make it easier for parents to do what we know is healthy for their kids' development.

Hillary Wilkinson: (08:19)

Hmm. Yeah. So I keep hearing this word safety coming through with you, which I, I'm appreciate very much and, um, I, I, as a, a deep believer in the power of education, I feel like yes, safety boundaries are important, but sort of equally important in this space is the educational aspect of teaching strategies for balancing that health and screen time. And I, in reading your stuff I’ve read about digital burnout. And can you, I I, I know I'm, I feel like I'm asking you layers of questions. I feel like I could talk to you all day, but , let's, first, let's first kind of go into digital burnout and like, what is this and why are we, and then let's get into some strategies.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (09:14)

Yeah. So first off, I just, I, I, I, I actually just had this conversation earlier this week with somebody about the notion of safety online, who this person who thought, yeah, you, let's be careful about how we talk about that. 'cause we don't wanna automatically assume that everything out there in the digital world is, is unsafe. Because as you mentioned there, there are so many benefits of many, many aspects of technology. And you, it is establishing the right balance for each individual kid who are all gonna be different, right? Um, so when I think about burnout, uh, I have, I have witnessed this firsthand in the last couple of weeks as my kids are finishing their, you know, their summer vacation camps are done, and what are they gonna do?  So they, they have, and and I recognize this, and this is, this is another big motivation for me is like, I have, I have kids right in the age range.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (10:16)

And, and as a parent, I'm even experiencing some of this stuff that we're trying to develop things to help address. But I see, I see my kids, which I think are is, is a very common story. Um, somewhat having lost the ability to kind of figure out and entertain themselves on what they need to be doing. I was, I was actually also having another conversation with another, uh, another mom earlier this week who said, um, kids were home, not in camps, told 'em, you know, go do something and, um, make sure it's not on screens. And they came back and they said, “we're gonna, we're gonna build a fort. We need this, this, this, and this.” And she said, her immediate thought was, “oh no, they're gonna make a huge mess.” I'm gonna tell 'em. And then she stopped herself and said, fine, go make the mess because you're, you're exercising that, that part of your brain to do something other than just, you know, do whatever you're gonna do online. So I, when I think about burnout, I think about this like, kind of restricting the experiences outside of the device, uh, which we know those things are really, really good for healthy development.

Hillary Wilkinson: (11:24)

Mm-Hmm. So having more of the offline experiences to kind of insulate from this digital overwhelm, if you'll

Dr. Scott Kollins: (11:35)

Yeah. To balance. To balance it. Exactly. Mm-Hmm.

Hillary Wilkinson: (11:37)

. Mm-Hmm. . Okay, great. Well, when we come back, we're gonna talk more about being mindful of our own device usage, which honestly is always the hardest thing to look at , but it's going to be well worth it. 

Ad Break:  Thank you to HSH donors!

Hillary Wilkinson: (13:10)

I'm speaking with Dr. Scott Collins, the Chief Medical Officer for Aura, an author of over 200 scientific papers. His role at Aura is going to be instrumental in shaping the company's approach and parent understanding of youth safety and mental wellness in this digital era. So, Dr. Scott, I'm gonna ask you a big question. What do you see is the biggest digital threat to childhood?

Dr. Scott Kollins: (13:42)

Ooh, This is a good one…

Hillary Wilkinson: (13:46)

 I know. Sorry. I was being all nice, nice, fun, fun. And now I just came in like .

Dr. Scott Kollins: (13:51)

Yeah. I, I think this would be a healthy debate, I think among lots of academics and lots of parents.

Hillary Wilkinson: (13:59)

Uhhuh

Dr. Scott Kollins: (14:00)

For me, and, and I will caveat my answer by saying this is not necessarily based on like a deep dive in the scientific literature. Sure. I think it is this notion that we think about, um, uh, of, of displacement, and we were just talking about it before the break. What is device usage displacing in terms of other kid, other activities face-to-face interactions, physical activity, sleep, , really important. So I think figuring out that balance and, and again, recognizing that there are many, many really, really important positive aspects to technology use. If you, you, in your intro, you cited the statistics seven hours a day, Mm-Hmm. on a screen. Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (14:50)

What, what else could a child be doing in those seven hours that might be better for that particular individual kid's wellbeing and development. So that's my biggest, my biggest threat.

Hillary Wilkinson: (15:00)

Yeah. Biggest threat is displacement. I like, yeah, I could not agree with you more. And, and it's, uh, stealing time from building those coping skills that, that we need later on in life to be able to deal with the bigger and bigger challenges that we get handed as we travel our journey . So,

Dr. Scott Kollins: (15:22)

Yes, I agree.

Hillary Wilkinson: (15:24)

So, I, I don't mean to turn this all towards the hard stuff, but I think I, you know, I, you're here so I've got the opportunity. I'm gonna ask you the hard thing. 

Dr. Scott Kollins: (15:32)

Please. No, no, no. Lay it on me.

Hillary Wilkinson: (15:35)

Okay. Okay. So let's, uh, talk about parent use of devices and I, I, we are continually talking about the importance of modeling healthy screen habits and all of these things, but I think it ha it always helps people to have kind of an image of what device overuse looks like. So could you kind of draw a picture? What does parent device overuse look like? And, and also then can you take it further and talk about possible outcomes?

Dr. Scott Kollins: (16:12)

Yeah. So I think I can speculate a little bit on outcomes. I'm not sure that we know a lot about if this has been a, you know, a deeply researched question, but in my mind, what overuse looks like. Um, and I'm gonna be, um, I don't know, I'm gonna paint, uh, maybe a little bit of an overgeneralization, but when I think about parental overuse, I think about if I go to a, um, well, actually it doesn't have to be over generalized, you know, go to go to most public places, uh, and, and look around and especially look at people below the age of 25 and the number of people that are whe whether they're looking at it or engaging with it directly, or having it in their hand. Like, you won't find very many people that do not, or that are not holding their device.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (16:59)

And so when I think about parental overuse, I think about that. That's what that looks like at home. And in situations, same thing we talked about a minute ago with displacement, where before, before these devices existed, there would be, you know, an interaction or I'm, I'm doing something for myself that is not looking at this device. So I think that's what it looks like. I think one other, one other thing that comes to mind with this that, um, that's related to, you know, something we talked about earlier. You know, when we, when Aura hosted our Digital Parenthood panel that you alluded to, uh, one of the panels was of some young people, and they were talking about their experiences growing up as digital natives. One of the things that struck with me, stuck with me more than anything was this young woman who said, you know, she was, I think late teens, early twenties, said, “My generation, we've, we don't know how to be bored.” Mm-Hmm,

Hillary Wilkinson: (17:56)

. Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (17:57)

Which just really stuck with me. And parents have parents trend towards that. Also, I'm standing in line at the pharmacy, oh, I gotta check. I gotta, I gotta look at something, you know, if you've got 30 seconds of downtime, I need, I need information or something else. So I think that we're moving a little bit into solutions, but I think taking a step back from that, and I actually, I ask myself if I'm in those situations, um,”Hey, do I really need this? Uh, do I really need to look at my phone? Like, can I stand and just take it in and think?” So anyway, that, that, that's a little bit of a rambling answer of what that, what it looks like, and sort of maybe some steps to solutions. But I think that that's what comes to mind for me.

Hillary Wilkinson: (18:43)

Yeah. And I think it's also interesting to kind of explore, you know, the use, we talk so much about like, oh, the Gen Zers or everybody, you, you know, the, the younger crew having, you know, uh, being deficient in coping mechanisms because they're relying so heavily on digital distraction. I would argue that myself, for sure. And other parents, I know when I start feeling bigger emotions, when I start getting very frustrated, which I mean, I have teenagers, it's, it's part of the human experience. So this is not supposed to go entirely smoothly, you know, and it's, it helps me to remember that. But, um, I find myself being pulled, like my, I just wanna, I just wanna be distracted. I don't wanna be thinking about this, so I do something else. And one thing that I have found that has helped me, which this is very funny, but is vacuuming.

Hillary Wilkinson: (19:50)

Because when you're vacuuming, you cannot be looking at your phone. And I have a very loud, like, um, stick vacuum? Yeah. Like Dyson vacuum, and I have a Labrador, so I, I, I always need to vacuum, right? So I can't be listening to a podcast. Like I, I'm worrying about like, you know, as I age, I worry about damaging everything. I'm like, oh, I can't crank the volume up too loud in my ears. So yeah. So I have found that vacuuming kind of gets me into a little bit more of a zen spot of like, okay, okay. No, I'm sure my kids are probably like, “Oh, no, she's vacuuming…It's gotten really bad. She's vacuuming!”

Dr. Scott Kollins: (20:26)

. But, but you know what I mean? I think that that is, that's a great story. I think that you could, you could probably leverage that in lots of positive, you, you're doing something that's good. You're getting the, you're getting the dog hair up, . Um, but the, what that makes me think of is you are finding your own little moment of mindfulness. You are, you're, you, you don't need to look at other things and whether or not you are sort of processing whatever emotions might be there, you're in your moment. 'cause you're looking and, oh, I gotta get that spot over there. And that's really important. And just carving out even those little moments is just, it's healthy for us. It's healthy for our kids.

Hillary Wilkinson: (21:03)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for, for making that that sound healthy, not neurotic. So thank you, . 

Dr. Scott Kollins: (21:11)

Yeah.  There's, there's always a fine line Hillary!

Hillary Wilkinson: (21:13)

Right?! Okay. Do you have advice, um, like how do you recommend parents go about setting clear limits? How do you, or setting these boundaries, like we, we, I know what we offer at Healthy Screen Habits, but I'm just, I'm always looking to add to what, like, what, what do you recommend? I feel like we can learn so much from each other.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (21:34)

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I mean, a couple things for, I mean, you know, this is one of the things that, that we build, and this is our product. And this is, I think there are, um, there are a number of possibilities. But, you know, being able to digitally and sort of automatically through a product, whether it's ours or others, where you can set limits, you can, you know, monitor time and things like that. I think that is important. Um, that forms the basis of discussion and conversation. But, but I think even backing up a step, one of the things that is really, really important is to talk to your kids about what these limits are gonna look like. Mm-Hmm. . Um, I, I don't know what you guys, I don't know if this is something similar to what you guys have, but the, the American Academy of Pediatrics has a great sort of template to set up a family media plan.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (22:25)

Mm-Hmm. , uh, and it's, you, you can, you can structure it a little bit differently depending on how old your kid is, because obviously the, you know, when kids are younger, um, it's hard to put specific time points on ages, by the way, just because kids are so different. People say, well, how old should my kid be when they get a phone? It, it really depends. My 12-year-old has one, she got hers when she was 11. My 14-year-old still doesn't . Mm-Hmm. . So it's, you know, it there, there's no one answer for that. But this, the same holds true for how you're gonna set up the family approach to screen time and media use. And, and the, one of the reasons I like that, and we actually, my family sat down and, you know, I have tweens and a teenager too, and so I got lots of eye rolls when we, when I suggested this, I probably got a half eye roll from my wife too, but said, we're gonna do this.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (23:19)

Um, but it, it was very productive and, and we established, okay, here's some screen free zones. When we, when we're home together, which isn't like all the time by any means, we're gonna put away our devices. And let me tell you, my kids now will be the first ones to call out my wife or me if we're at the table and the phone comes out.  So, so those kinds of things. But, but I think that the foundation of that is that communication and discussion and whether it's the AAPs approach or other tools that might be out there to help have that conversation. And then layering on top of that ways to help monitor and, and actually enforce some of those, the limits. And, and, you know, the rules, I think is, is, you know, sort of best practice,

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:05)

Right? It's kind of that Venn diagram approach. It's like, no one thing is gonna get you all the way there, so you have to layer in all of these areas.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (24:15)

Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think the thing that is just again, to kind of underscore, um, probably the hardest part about, you know, setting up and, and monitoring and having boundaries is that conversation you get, you got you, you can't, you can't just can't just get, you know, you can't, it's not gonna work nearly as well. If you get the Aura product, turn on these controls, don't have a conversation with your kid that's gonna go sideways in five different ways. Right? Sitting down, taking the time, hearing from kids, their development is super important. We don't wanna build tools that are just like top down surveillance. We want, we wanna meet kids where they're at. We wanna understand, recognize that, you know, just in the same way that I was talking about before, the things that we used to kind of pay attention to before devices, I, I, I didn't, I didn't know every single conversation or, or, or my parents didn't know every single conversation I was having with people. Or if I went to a party, you know, I would tell them I'm going somewhere. As long as I was truthful and they knew where I was at, you know, they trusted me. I trusted them to give me some autonomy. We've gotta, we've gotta tackle it the same way when we're talking about, you know, development online. Mm-Hmm.

Hillary Wilkinson: (25:29)

. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And in the event you recommended the AAPs, um, device plan, healthy media plan. Yep. Right, right. Media plan. Correct. Yeah. Uh, healthy Screen Habits does have a free downloadable tool called a family tech plan that is designed perfect, very similarly, and it's, um, not as, uh, it's meant to be a living document, but it's a five step plan, something you can do in an evening, and it, um, it's meant to be just like you're saying, that conversational springboard to take us. Yeah. Take us into that area of this is, so this is something really important and this is what we need to spend time on talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So we have to take a short break, but when we come back, I'm going to ask Dr. Scott Kollins for his healthy screen habit.

Ad Break - HSH Tweens and Teens Workbook

Hillary Wilkinson: (27:58)

I'm speaking with Dr. Scott Collins from Aura, a company whose mission is to create a safer internet for everyone. So, Dr. Scott, on every episode of the Healthy Screen Habits podcast, I ask each guest for a healthy screen habit. And this is going to be a tip or takeaway that listeners can put into practice right in their own home, preferably quickly. Uh, what's yours?

Dr. Scott Kollins: (28:29)

I think I've mentioned this kind of a couple times throughout our conversation, but I think communication early and often with between parents and kids, um, and recognizing that those conversations and those discussions are going to, they, there's no one size fits all the way you, like I said, you know, the way I talk to my 12-year-old daughter who is pretty responsible with her tech use is very different than my 14-year-old son who is frankly battled technology addiction. So you gotta, you gotta meet 'em where they're at, but, but communicating early and often and, you know, from the time that even, even before they have their own devices, just, you know, how, how they're, how they're gonna be using the family tablet, and then when they get to the point where they might have their own devices.

Hillary Wilkinson: (29:22)

Yeah. Yeah. And I like your often component because I feel like with so many hard conversations that we have as parents, whether it's about sex or porn or, you know, device use or whatever, we, we kind of operate off of a checklist. We operate like, oh, phew, got that one done, okay. Onto the next. And it's, if you've listened at all to, to previous podcasts, you will recognize the analogy I'm about to make with our conversations about tech needing to be like hydration, where we, little sips of water, little talk conversations all along the path. We can't drink a gallon of water on Sunday and think we're gonna be fine on Wednesday. So little sips of water.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (30:10)

I really love that analogy. I, I, I told you before we get started, I'm going to, I'm gonna be using that, um, one, one of the, um, I, you guys may have similar resources with your website, but another, um, another really good resource is also the American Academy of Pediatrics. In their, in that same, the same, they, they have a whole center on, um, social media use and youth mental health. That's where their family media plan is. But they also have conversation starters, which I think are wonderful. They're developmentally, also developmentally, um, sort of different. So this conversation starters for teenagers are gonna be different from your eight year olds all around media use. And it's just, it, it, it's tricks and tips to kinda get that conversation going. And, um, you know, like, like you said, with the hydration, it's a constant discussion even, you know, daily check-ins on various things. So couldn't agree with you more.

Hillary Wilkinson: (31:09)

As always, you can find a complete transcript of this show as well as a link to Aura by visiting the show notes for this episode. You do this by going to healthyscreenhabits.org. Click the podcast button and find this episode. Dr. Scott, thank you so much for being here today and for sharing all of the ways that yourself and Aura is leading new ways into digital safety and wellness.

Dr. Scott Kollins: (31:37)

Thank you so much, Hillary. I appreciate what you guys are doing. This was a lot of fun.