#012: The Apps Your Kid Won't Show You: Titania Jordan on Sextortion, Roblox, and the Talk Every Parent Needs to Have

Titania Jordan (00:08)
every single day at Bark, we are sending between like eighty-five and a hundred, severe self-harm or suicidal ideation alerts to parents about their children. These children are in imminent danger. And the top five apps that we flagged were Tumblr, Reddit, TikTok, X, which used to be Twitter, and Instagram. there's a lot that parents don't know.

there are documented cases of chatbots forming relationships with very vulnerable young children and saying, if you want to join me, on the other side, you have to leave this world. This is not okay.

Siara Joy (00:29)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (00:39)
the screenshots that my 17-year-old son has shared with me from what he's encountered on Roblox make me want to throw up.

Siara Joy (00:46)
whatever happens to the predators? Do they get caught or are they just sort of this dark figure that we don't ever find their actual identity?

Titania Jordan (00:54)
the platforms where this is happening every single day, they could flag it, stop it, report it, and they don't because they are not legally required to. So the onus falls on victims and parents.

with AI, now your children can be fully clothed, but somebody grabs a picture of their face and creates CSAM with it.

Siara Joy (01:12)
Do you in your own household have any hard and fast rules simple ones that other people could adopt, maybe, even this week?

Titania Jordan (01:17)
Yes.

Siara (01:19)
Good morning or good evening, however I'm finding.

Where do I begin? Actually, I think the best place to start is with a few stats. Ground ourselves in some information. Here's what I found.

64% of US teens now use an AI chatbot, and roughly three in ten use one every day, according to Pew research. This isn't that surprising. a lot of us are using an AI chatbot every day. Like a lot of us have ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever on our phones. So I guess this is not so crazy. Now

72% of teens have used AI for companionship.

that one's a little more surprising to me. according to Common Sense Media, 33% of that 72% say they have relationships andor friendships with chatbots. and thirty-one percent of kids ages eleven through sixteen who've used a chatbot say it feels like one of their friends.

Those stats I don't like as much. I'm not feeling at peace with those for a flurry of reasons.

In season one, we talked about friendships with Danielle, the friendship expert, and she reminded us that AI chatbots can't be your friend because it's a transactional relationship. The chatbots are completely devoid of empathy because they've not experienced real life. Their incentive is to agree with you, to make you happy, to get you to continue using the chatbot. And I'm sure many other odd, unexpected and

sometimes perverse incentives that we don't always expect. And we know now, based on stories like the character AI ones, that this can lead to devastating outcomes. The worst outcome being the loss of a child's life. So yes, those stats scare me.

Here's my question.

we've already known that the internet is not a safe place for kids and major intervention needs to happen in order for them to use the internet safely. How did we end up in a version of the internet that is somehow worse than it was ten years ago?

Like how did we regress? Because surely the plan is not for us to come back in 10 years with a whole new, scarier, more dangerous internet. AI is advancing at a rate that you know, is surprising. It's exciting, it's also scary. When we add kids to the mix, where is the prevention?

Surely the plan is not for us to come back in 10 years with a whole new, scarier, more dangerous internet. Jonathan Haidt's gonna write another book. This time it's not the anxious generation, it's like the artificial generation or the simulated generation or the terrified generation. Like, can we not do that? Can we actually stop the harm in its tracks?

And I just

think that we should have gotten better at protecting our kids online by now. And the conversation that we'll have today,

felt different in that I was watching it back after it was edited and I noticed myself getting pretty emotional during this episode, with the primary emotion being anger, candidly.

But then I thought, you know what, it's okay because as long as we're based in data and stats, and we are, we're coming at you with a lot of stats today. And you know that I fact check every episode, so you can always check the description for the fact check doc.

But anyway, I thought it's okay that this topic triggers a bit of emotion. I don't believe in rage baiting or fear baiting. I do not like sensationalism. But I do think that when the information is credible and the level of alarm is proportionate to the seriousness of the issue, a little reactivity is justified. Especially if the information being shared can lead to actions that can prevent said harms or help prevent said harms.

I've wanted to bring on a child safety expert to log out for a long time.

there are some dark things happening online right now with dire implications for children. And a lot of it is avoidable.

So today we will talk with the chief marketing officer, and chief parent officer of a company called Bark

They use AI to analyze kids' texts, emails, social media, and browsing for real dangers like predators, bullying, and suicidal ideation.

They then alert parents so they know exactly what

their kid is experiencing. They sell smartphones and smart watches, but they're also just doing a lot of amazing work, like giving their monitoring software to every single school in the country for free, which has helped them flag credible schools shooting threats and predators contacting kids through school.

School issued devices. they also have a lot of education around how to actually talk to your kids about this stuff. They give you the warning signs look for the slang terms, all of it for free on their site. So I think they're doing incredible work. We will speak with Titania Jordan,

She's the author of two books, Parenting in a Tech World and Parental Control.

She's featured in the documentary Childhood 2.0, which is free on YouTube. She's been in the kid safety and tech space for about a decade, and she's a parent.

even though we touch on some very dark topics in this conversation, I loved talking with Titania about this. She made me feel very sane because if you couldn't tell, I feel pretty passionate about this, and you can tell that she does too. She's going to share some pretty shocking stats about the landscape for child safety.

Because of the position that Bark is in, they have some proprietary data that is extremely valuable for all of us to hear.

We'll also talk about sextortion, what it is, and why teenage boys are the most at-risk group right now. We'll talk about what's happening on platforms like Roblox and what Titania thinks about Apple products for kids.

If you're a parent, you need to listen to this episode because this information is unfortunately not mainstream knowledge yet, but it really should be.

the last thing I'll say is I'm not a parent yet, but we should all care about this. Some of us are teachers, aunts, older siblings, whatever.

I think it's important that we know what's out there. We don't know what legislation we might be voting on in the future. I don't know what roles people have in their industries, but you might play a small part in shaping a better internet for our kids in the future.

This is one of the most important conversations I've shared to date, so I hope you get out of it what I did. Let's meet Titania.

Siara Joy (07:37)
That's funny. Okay, well, Titania, welcome to Log Out. Thank you so much for being here with us.

Titania Jordan (07:38)
Thank you.

Thank you for having me. I'm was really excited to join this.

Siara Joy (07:48)
I would love to get a little bit into your background. So you're the chief marketing officer and chief parent officer at Bark, which I assume that's the only chief parent officer that exists. That's a really cool title. but before any of that I'm just super curious when getting into the kid tech space started for you and what's your origin story?

Titania Jordan (08:09)
Sure.

So a little bit before Bark, I would say three startups before Bark, I was in the kids safety space in terms of, you know, applications, location based technology, prioritizing privacy, keeping the bad out, prioritizing the good and the connection. And so all all the roads led me here. the

Two startups before Bark I was really focused on an application that would help to integrate children's medical records with all of the various forms that parents have to fill out for camp and school and activities, as well as more of a like private social network, because that was the the dawn of parents just over sharenting and mom fluencers and et cetera. So ever since I've been in media,

and tech, this has been top of mind for me and I think it was a God thing. I mean, just I got in the right places at the right time and that was almost ten years ago. So yeah.

Siara Joy (09:09)
that's amazing. and can you give just a brief description of Bark and and what Bark does?

Titania Jordan (09:14)
Sure.

Absolutely. So

Bark is technology, software and hardware that helps to protect over seven and a half million children across the nation. We do that in a variety of ways. First, with our flagship application, you know, our app, our software that uses proprietary AI, before everybody was using AI, to analyze the content and the context of children's digital signal. So, in in plain terms, we are analyzing children's text.

Siara Joy (09:36)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (09:47)
text, email, social media, browsing, etc., to look for the actual real and present dangers that might exist, whether it's dangerous people like predators or bullies, or dangerous content like

violent, graphic, sexual, disordered eating, you name it, powerful algorithmic rabbit holes. and then we send alerts to parents so they know what their child is encountering, know if their child's in danger, and then also best next steps for how to talk to them, because that's the most important thing is that relationship you have with your child, how to address. So that's that's how we started.

We kept finding more and more issues popping up across various social networks as they became popular, like TikTok and Discord, Roblox. And we also were experiencing some frustrations with Apple's ecosystem in particular. They don't they don't really work well if you are not Apple. And so we decided to launch our own hardware because kids were not as safe as they could be on Apple devices, even with Bark, because of Apple's limitations. So

Siara Joy (10:40)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (10:51)
We expanded beyond software to launch in-home hardware, the Bark Home, that could connect to smart TVs and gaming consoles and help with

screen time limits and filters, etcetera. We launched a safer smartphone for kids. it's a Samsung phone. Barks operating system is baked into the device so kids can't disconnect it, work around it, and parents can actually be in full control. And then we launched a safer smartwatch for kids. Again, because the Apple smartwatch just

Siara Joy (11:14)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (11:20)
It's not as safe as it could be for kids. and some of the other options out there weren't weren't great. and then finally we gave our software to any school in the nation for free. You know, we are a for profit company.

But w we have a give back component because we know that only about sixty percent of schools in the nation are even doing any sort of filtering or monitoring of the tech they're giving kids. Forty percent just wide open. And as a result, we've been able to flag some really hard, heavy things, including credible school shooting threats and predators contacting kids again through school issued devices and tech. So that's that's bark in a nutshell.

Siara Joy (11:46)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

It's crazy that you say through school issued devices because at least I was extremely fortunate in that the grade school that I went to, they did equip us each with a laptop. I was a bit older, like I was in high school when they did that. But I remember thinking of like the school laptop as like you can't do anything that would be outside of the realm of school and you gotta be really careful, but I'm sure the kids have gotten more comfortable and it's gotten riskier. Is that would you say that's true?

Titania Jordan (12:04)
I know.

Yes.

Siara Joy (12:28)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (12:29)
We we discovered so many things, including the fact that kids were using Google Docs like a social network, right? Real time chat, post things make them disappear, upload images, video. They were using that to write, suicide notes, burn books like the movie Mean Girls, like and that's that's just Google Docs. I mean, it's like they

Siara Joy (12:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Titania Jordan (12:52)
This most recent generation either wasn't worried about or wasn't seeing the ramifications of viewing pornography or non-educational content on YouTube or playing Roblox while they're supposed to be learning math. Again, on school-issue devices. and we shouldn't put the onus on children to responsibly manage their screen time.

Siara Joy (13:10)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (13:18)
We've

given them a very addictive tool and we have not given them the right boundaries with which to use it properly. So that's where Bart comes in.

Siara Joy (13:28)
and my understanding is that the software that you provide schools, is it all schools in the US for free? which is amazing. what are you finding these days? I imagine it changes rapidly from year to year. So I'm just curious like if a parent were listening

Titania Jordan (13:35)
Yes, all schools in the US for free.

Siara Joy (13:48)
What has Bark found that maybe at least a percentage of kids are experiencing?

Titania Jordan (13:52)
Absolutely.

Yeah, let me pull up. We just ran the school specific data over 2025

so with regards to just YouTube, only 3.9% of YouTube videos that children viewed on school issued devices or accounts related to science or education. The rest, all the other topics out there that, you know, are not meant for the school day, much less children. in addition to that.

Siara Joy (14:16)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (14:21)
and this is just YouTube. over over the course of one week in June, there were 15 million hits to YouTube on school devices for the schools that were still in session. almost 67% of students with any web browsing accessed YouTube. And YouTube accessing children had about on average 208 YouTube hits each.

just during the week. and only point three four percent of requests for YouTube on school issue devices and accounts were blocked by a policy. Not 34%, point three four percent. And this is just YouTube. you know we alert for bullying, predation, suicidal ideation, graphic sexual content, graphic violent content,

Siara Joy (14:41)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (15:06)
sextortion, you know, all these issues, and they are present and pervasive on school issued tech.

Siara Joy (15:13)
Mm-hmm. Wow. So I mean I don't know where to start because it's like I wanna know what should schools be doing and then what should parents be doing? Because both are it probably under resourced in a way. but together hopefully there's some way to help and and mitigate the harms.

Titania Jordan (15:19)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah, sure.

Of course.

Totally. Yeah, you

know

This is not a hit on schools or school administrators per se, because I know they are overwhelmed and underpaid, and their hands are tied in a lot of ways, as there's so much bureaucracy. That said, whoever decided that it was a good idea to give a kindergartner an iPad or a second grader unfettered access to the internet through a Chromebook.

Siara Joy (15:45)
Right. Yeah.

Titania Jordan (16:01)
made the wrong choice and we are now walking that back. And Los Angeles Unified School District just last week rolled out what some people were calling the most strict screen time updates in the nation, which was hilarious to me because they were not strict. They were actually really smart. They said no screens at all for kids in school under second grade, which that makes sense. Let's let them develop their handwriting and critical thinking and creativity and social emotional

Siara Joy (16:24)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (16:29)
Skills, right? And then no. Yeah. And you now are an amazing woman in tech and podcast host, and you're just you did you're doing just fine. Same. I didn't have tech until much later. And I'm alright, you know, I'm figuring out AI, I think earlier than a lot of people, and I'm I'm just fine. with an asterisk.

Siara Joy (16:29)
Right. Yeah, I didn't have screens before then.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, same.

Titania Jordan (16:54)
And then it's it you know, it's it's a limited amount of hours for a grade second through fifth, and then middle school and high school gets more and more and more. But I believe in high school they're saying ten hours a day on screens in high school. That's just at school. That's still too much.

Siara Joy (17:06)
no, that's that's tragic.

Titania Jordan (17:09)
Nobody's meant to sit still in front of a computer for eight hours a day. Kids need to move their bodies if they are physically able to. And they need to be doing more in real life. They don't need to be on a screen at school and then on a mobile device when they're not at school and then gaming at home. Like it's it's just too much. And so back to your question.

Siara Joy (17:13)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (17:28)
schools need to walk it back. We have given children too much access too soon. And there's a balance. There's a way to use tech as a tool for education without spiking their dopamine in the pleasure centers of their brains and turning them into sedentary addicts with mental health issues.

Siara Joy (17:45)
is there a way that you can frame and help parents understand just how dangerous this can be to introduce so young? Because I'm an adult. It was introduced to me later in life, and I struggle with it. So I can't imagine a child being introduced to these algorithms so early.

Titania Jordan (18:03)
hundred percent. I mean just just a few weeks ago, another study came out showing that excessive screen time in young children is linked to developmental delays, behavioral problems, and poor sleep.

The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to revise its recommendations based on the science that we're learning in real time. And that's what's hard about this, especially for a parent, is we don't have decades of learnings to back up the why behind these decisions that we are being faced with.

We're figuring

Siara Joy (18:35)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (18:36)
this out in real time. So I get it. It's hard. I'm not judging because as a parent I made these same mistakes. I let my son have too much too soon. I let him have Snapchat before he was thirteen, bad idea. I let him have TikTok at like eleven, bad idea. I gave him an unsafe smartphone because the bark phone didn't exist. All bad ideas, right?

But we now know better, and so we have to do better. And you cannot plead ignorance anymore. Whether you're a legislator, a tech executive, a parent, a school administrator, we now have conclusive information showcasing the harms affecting kids. And if you are not on the right side of history, you are complicit in the downfall of our children's mental and physical health.

Siara Joy (19:06)
Yeah.

How about the parents who feel cruel for keeping their kids from certain technology, especially when they're, you know, they're pleading, they're begging, they're saying, these are where my friends are, like all the things you can think of, you know, your cute kid that you love saying. Can you make the case for parents who should probably try fighting those urges?

Titania Jordan (19:27)
Sure.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

happily. So one, the science shows

it's not good for your kid, so that's enough. But if your kid was begging, crying for ice cream at every meal and said that their friends had it every meal, would you be like, I guess I'll let them? No. Cause you don't want them to have diabetes and heart disease and obesity and and etc. Right? Like we wouldn't do that just because they asked for it. Our kids are very good at advocating for what they want.

Siara Joy (20:06)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (20:13)
But if you give a child, a child, everything they want and everything they ask for, it is not going to be good for them. So A, you are their parent. It is your job to do what is in their optimal physical and mental health best interest. So do that. Also,

As a parent who did give in because she didn't want her only child at the time to be left out and now regrets it, I'm here to tell you you do want your child to be left out because you want them to be left out of the bullying, the predation, the graphic violent sexual content, the mental health rabbit holes that do not help them, the lies from the influencers they watch, just

finding less joy in real life because Legos and Crayons and building forts outside don't spike your dopamine as high as Fortnite, Roblox, and YouTube. That's why. And it's okay to explain that to your kid. You can say you can be as mad at me as you want. That is okay. But I am not gonna budge. I am here to do what's right for you.

Now you also need to prioritize in real life connection for your child, right? You can't just say no tech for you and figure it out, right? The more you can do to get them in real life with other kids, sports, art, dance, volunteering, church, synagogue, whatever, please lean into that.

Siara Joy (21:32)
And I also heard the argument I don't want them to be left behind in terms of actual education and you know, they're gonna they're gonna enter the landscape, they're not gonna know how to use things. I'm curious what you're saying.

Titania Jordan (21:38)
Yeah.

That's just

first starting from like a just personal anecdote, I'm in my forties and I'm figuring out Claude code in real time, right? I didn't learn it in middle school. And I would say I'm probably a lot better at it than the general public. So you can learn technology at any age.

Siara Joy (22:05)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (22:10)
Keeping our children from harmful chatbots that could lead them astray, convince them to die by suicide, among all the other dangers online, is not what we need to be doing. You know, there's a reason why we don't let twelve-year-olds drive vehicles. They will learn when it's time. We don't let them vote. They're not allowed to drink alcohol. Like there's a reason why there's sort of limits, especially as it relates to proper brain development. And with tech, it it's no different. They're not gonna be left behind. They're not gonna be left behind. They have their whole

whole lives, the whole lives, 18 plus, 21 plus, sometimes in some cases 16 plus, to sit in front of a computer or a mobile device and and type away, code away, speak away, go for it. But I don't think that's how any of us were meant to live.

Siara Joy (22:56)
Mm-hmm. I want to talk about some of the harms too. So if you were, talking to a room full of parents, what would you say that most of them underestimate about the dangers what's a bigger danger than we might think?

Titania Jordan (23:05)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So

I mentioned we help to protect over seven and a half million children across the nation. And so we run an anonymized report every year across billions of data points that we have analyzed and surfaced. So we are the only entity that I know of that is surfacing the rate at which children are being harmed online and the frequency, you know, with which that's happening, where it's taking place, et cetera. So overall, I would say most parents think not my kid, or I'll know if there's a problem. I'll be able to tell.

And I'm here to tell you, you might not, based on what we've seen. and and it's a in kids as young as six, seven, eight years old. It's not just teenagers, right? we found that that seventy percent of tweens, that's kids eight to twelve, and seventy-nine percent of teens experienced bullying, either as a bully victim or witness.

And it's so much different than the bullying that maybe we experienced growing up. It it it hits harder, it lasts longer, it never goes away, and it follows them everywhere they go. whether it's depression or anxiety, it's it's so much more frequent than than you might think.

online predators, they're they're everywhere and they're in places most parents probably have never even spent time, like Discord. How many parents have been on Snap or Roblox? I mean, they are where the children are and it's no longer on the physical playground. It's where they're spending time online.

Siara Joy (24:35)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (24:36)
Kids are on Group Me, they're on Reddit, they're being groomed on Instagram. They are able to get drugs delivered to their house as quickly and easily as a pizza through Snap. And these drugs aren't aren't the actual pharmaceutical drug. They're they're laced with fentanyl and children are dying. it's why there's the

social media victims remembrance day that just took place June twenty-third, because so many children have died because of social media. I could go on, but I think I'll I'll I'll stop with the fact that suicide is the second leading cause of death in children in this nation.

Siara Joy (25:05)
Right.

Wow.

Titania Jordan (25:11)
And every single day at Bark, we are sending between like eighty-five and a hundred, it varies, severe self-harm or suicidal ideation alerts to parents about their children. These children are in imminent danger. And the top five apps that we flagged for severe suicidal ideation were Tumblr, Reddit, TikTok, X, which used to be Twitter, and Instagram. So there's a lot that parents don't know.

Siara Joy (25:37)
So when you say those are the top platforms that you flagged for suicidal ideation, so what does that mean exactly? That is that where the idea of the act is becoming popularized, or can you explain that further for us?

Titania Jordan (25:51)
Sure, so

s some examples of severe suicidal ideation are let's say a child writing a suicide note.

With the intent to die by suicide and like their notes app, taking a screenshot of it, posting it to Instagram, posting it to TikTok, posting it to X or to Tumblr. children leaving comments in Reddit threads about mental health saying, I just don't want to be here anymore. I think today's gonna be my last day. Here's how I'm gonna do it. You know, it has to be, it has to be severe.

There's a ton of not sev there's even more not severe, right? Of just generalized depression and anxiety, but like this this pictures pictures of I would just say things that are used to die by suicide. Like they have they have the means, they have the intent, they have a plan. saying goodbye to people, like it's it's just it's heartbreaking. It's it's it's gut wrenching.

Siara Joy (26:29)
So long.

Yeah.

Yeah, I have chills. so just because I think

Some of us have heard stories and we can read between the lines a little bit. I do think it's important to actually talk about how children get there. I think bullying seems like one of those things we kind of understand, but then when it comes to predators, there's things like sex tortion and other things where I think it is worth painting a picture of common pathways where a child gets to the point of depression or like you said, suicidal ideation.

Titania Jordan (27:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Yes.

Huh.

Hundred percent. South Carolina State Representative Brandon Guffey lost his son to sextortionists through Instagram, I believe. And this happened within a matter of hours.

And this child I believe his son was around seventeen. So you know, it's a misconception that once your children get older, like they they know better or they know to come to you. But it just escalates so quickly because, you know, let's say you have a seventeen year old son, he connects with what he thinks is an attractive love interest, maybe.

On social media, they exchange some texts, they exchange some pictures, all of a sudden it's these pictures involve nudity, and then it turns. It turns to if you don't send us five more photos in the next 30 minutes, we're gonna share your pictures everywhere and c bring shame on your family. send us money right away. Usually it's fifty to five hundred dollars they're asking for.

And these children are so embarrassed, they're so ashamed. And then these sextortionists, these terrible, terrible humans, say, you should just die. You should just go ahead and kill yourself. I mean, the transcripts from what these people have said to children, it's the worst thing I've ever seen on the internet outside of child sexual abuse material. And

Siara Joy (28:33)
Wow.

Titania Jordan (28:37)
It it just can happen and in in particular, fourteen to seventeen year old boys are at most risk right now. They're the most vulnerable. And you don't have to take my word for it. The FBI has released nationwide warnings about the rise in in sex dorcition. So if you take nothing else away from this this podcast

It's please go to your your teenage children right now and say, look, obviously we don't condone sending nudes. But if God forbid you end up sending one, I want you to know it's not your fault. You're not in trouble. You are a victim. And you can come to me and we will get through this together. Nothing is worth your life.

Siara Joy (29:16)
Mm-hmm.

So would you recommend for for parents to actually inform their kids and educate their kids on what sex tortion is?

Titania Jordan (29:25)
a hundred percent. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Just like when they're younger, you know, we let them know that the their there are parts of their body that their underwear or bathing suit covers that

They're that's their privacy, right? And anybody that's trying to to touch them or engage with them in that way, even if they seem really friendly, and even if it feels good, it's it's not good. And you're not in trouble, but we need to we need to know about this. Same thing. You've got to educate your children from a very young age that there are people online that might seem friendly at first, but that is a red flag. They are a tricky person, they're trying to trick you, they might try to hurt you.

Siara Joy (29:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Titania Jordan (30:02)
And that's why we are here for you and that's why we have guidelines.

Siara Joy (30:05)
Yeah.

And this is not a niche issue. For just context, I want to share this that I found. Between October 2021 and March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security received over 13,000 reports of online financial sex tortion of minors, at least 12,600 victims, primarily boys, like you said, linked to at least 20 suicides. And that's accelerating. In 2024, the FBI received nearly 55,000 sex tortion related reports, a 59%.

jump over the prior year. I suspect AI somehow is is tied to that jump. but yeah this is not a niche issue it really is happening and that's just what's reported so I'm horrified to know the true number.

Titania Jordan (30:47)
Exactly. Exactly. And do you know who does

know the actual rate is Snap, Meta,

Roblox, Discord,

you know, the platforms where this is happening every single day, they could flag it, stop it, report it, and they don't because they are not legally required to. So the onus falls on victims and parents.

you know, wherever children are communicating, this is happening. And they have the ability to flag it, stop it, report it to law enforcement, and they are not legally required to, so they will not unless there is a subpoena.

Siara Joy (31:26)
Are there warning signs that a kid is being led down a path like that, or like changes that a parent could actually catch in time?

Titania Jordan (31:35)
Yes. Now while this could happen from like one AM to three AM while you're fast asleep, and often does, sometimes it's a a slower

a more slowly developing process. And so please pay attention to any any sign that makes your spidey senses go off, right? If your child's appetite changes, decreased appetite in particular, their sleep habits change, they they seem not there like they're not well rested the next day. They they can't sleep, they're Having trouble sleeping or they're sleeping too much. their grades drop while they're in school or they don't find pleasure in things they

Used to, whether friend groups, activities, sports, etc., they just it just seems like something's off. Pay attention to that. Ask them. Say, hey, I know like you fall off a bike, you break your arm, you need to go see a doctor. Sometimes our hearts and our minds can also be hurt, be broken, and need a little bit of help. so I just want you to know if something's off.

Siara Joy (32:19)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (32:34)
I'm here for you, you can talk to me. And if you don't want to talk to me, I totally get it. And let's maybe let's go see your pediatrician or or somebody else who can just help you with this because you're not alone. You're not the first child to feel like this or experience this. And there is hope and there is help and it will get better.

Siara Joy (32:51)
And then I mean it's so infuriating that

These companies have the information because the next question I wanted to ask was,

whatever happens to the predators? Do they get caught or are they just sort of this like dark figure that we don't ever find their actual identity? Like what what happens? Cause I this isn't something I, you know, usually see in the news, like someone gets convicted for t conducting a sex tortion

Cause I this isn't something I, you know, usually see in the news, like someone gets convicted for t conducting a sex tortion what what happens there?

Titania Jordan (33:26)
You would probably see it in the news more if it didn't happen so often. But there are more predators out in the world right now in known possession of or distributing right now CSAM, child sexual abuse material, than we have trained law enforcement officials to go after and courtrooms and judges to process.

Siara Joy (33:31)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (33:48)
these cases and room in the jails to house them and laws that are stringent enough to keep them from the general public. in particular the ICAC unit, that's Internet Crimes Against Children unit, that's in every state, is the one that is that is directly responsible for helping children, fighting this evil. They are understaffed

They have they are underfunded, they are overworked, and unfortunately, they are the ones that have to process this. They have to watch the hours of footage of the most horrific things that c anybody could imagine to document the evidence. and so you can't really stay in this role for more than three to five years. It will break you.

Tim Tebow and his foundation recently passed the Renewed Hope Act, which I believe will allocate more funding to give these detectives and law enforcement more resources and advocate for more stringent laws. But it's it's unfortunately just a drop in the bucket right now. We need the tech platforms.

Siara Joy (34:52)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (34:54)
that facilitate and house this stuff and allow this to happen, whether it's Google, Apple, MetaSnap, you name it, they have got to do more. Right now they are prioritizing privacy over over child safety.

Siara Joy (35:07)
Okay, can you dig into that a bit more and how they compete in priorities?

Titania Jordan (35:10)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

So a few years ago, I think it was maybe 21, 20, 22, I could Google real quick. but Apple was going to start flagging child sexual abuse material in iCloud, which meant that anybody who uploaded it to iCloud

would be known. It would be known this this person is a predator, an offender, a pedophile. it could and it could have stopped the distribution of this material, stopping child abuse, and flagged a law enforcement. Hey, we now know where this stuff is. You should go get these people. And then they walked it back. Essentially, I believe

they are prioritizing predator privacy over child safety. And that's just one example. certain platforms like WhatsApp going end to end encryption, you know, the platforms are saying

They want to promote privacy, but what they really want is to avoid liability. If they claim that they can't even detect stuff, then they are not responsible for it. So it's just, it's just sad. It's sad and it's wrong. Like nobody, in their right mind can argue that this is okay. Yet our laws have not caught up with our technology.

Siara Joy (36:22)
Yeah. and I suspect that they're weaponizing, you know, people who you know, they don't think too differently from myself who talk about privacy a lot and advocate for privacy, but maybe don't know the nuances of what other facets of technology that this impacts because

I too would be like, why is Apple, scanning my iCloud? Now, Apple scanning my iCloud for Apple intelligence, one of their AI features bothers me a little bit. I've never turned it on. However, if Apple sent me a notification like we scan it, you know, for crimes, for things that shouldn't be happening, I wouldn't care because obviously it wouldn't bother me, but also it sounds like a good thing to happen.

Titania Jordan (36:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

if you're if you're taking nude abusive imagery of children and or photos of your kilos of cocaine or AK fifty seven or whatever they are, right? That's that's a you problem. Like if you want privacy th that's what why? For what? Right? Like

Siara Joy (37:04)
my god.

Yeah.

Right. Right.

Right.

Titania Jordan (37:24)
Nobody

I I I agree that privacy is important. I don't want and I I have Apple devices as an adult, because I get it, right? And they're they're great in so many ways. But if if this microphone is listening to me right now, and it uses it for any other purpose than I've given it consent, you know, that's that's a problem.

Siara Joy (37:43)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (37:43)
And we just don't have full transparency into how our tech is surveilling us and if it is going to surveil us, and we know it already is, 'cause we're get ads targeted to us for things we haven't even searched for, at least protect kids. For Pete's sakes.

Siara Joy (37:54)
Yep.

At

the very least. I had this thought the other day. I was just kind of reading about the flock cameras and how popular those are getting. And I'm like, well, if we're gonna do the mass surveillance, aren't there some predators we can catch, at the end of the day? Like so it's extremely frustrating for some of these big companies. Yeah, like what?

Titania Jordan (38:03)
huh.

Right? Like don't go after me for running a red light. May maybe

start with people who are way worse.

Siara Joy (38:22)
Yeah. Please

find the creepy people of our society. so there's Apple. Do you trust I think I know your answer, but do you trust an iPhone for a kid even though they claim to be industry leading in parental controls and like I just wanna know your overall opinion on iPhones for kids.

Titania Jordan (38:25)
Yeah.

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And it's not just because I stand to benefit from people choosing a bark phone over an iPhone, which I do. We, you know, we are a for-profit company. And the more people that buy bark phones, the better we do as a company. I say this because of data. And I say this because people that I look up to and respect that don't have a financial

Siara Joy (38:53)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (39:05)
invested interest in Bark doing well feel this way, like Chris McKenna of ProtectYoungEyes dot com and Sarah Gardner and Nikki Petrosi of Scrolling to Death and the Heat Initiative, Jonathan Haidt of The Anxious Generation, leading scientists, researchers, advocates, technologists that have looked at the Apple ecosystem and have seen how they have continued to fail.

children and families lie to them, their parental controls are broken. They they are not prioritizing child safety. Every IOS release that comes out breaks the existing parental controls and gives ch gives children freedoms that they shouldn't have.

Siara Joy (39:40)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (39:45)
For example, you know, FaceTime used to be something that only Apple could do with other Apple devices. And then in one of their more recent iOS rollouts, now let's say you have an Android, I could send you a hyperlink to join a FaceTime and we can just chat live. We can just chat live. Now if you're eight and I'm twenty-eight and I have bad intentions, that's not good. you know, Apple most recently at their WWDC conference.

Siara Joy (40:05)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (40:11)
spent a lot of time applauding their own efforts to roll out better, easier to understand parental controls coming this fall, which I'm not gonna hold my breath. And it was it was also hilarious that they were leaning into the easier to use. What is Apple known for?

The fact that their stuff is easy to use. A three-year-old, before they can even read, can navigate an iPad. Yet they're self-describing their own software as, okay, you know, we get it. This wasn't easy to use. You know how to make things easy to use. Just do it. They're not going to.

Siara Joy (40:38)
Yeah.

Also, kids are smart. I mean, I remember parental controls when I was a kid being kind of a joke because I was like, Yeah, we'll just pretend like the parental controls are working, but we were all a little bit smarter than our parents when it came to just technical literacy. So like I remember I had a Nintendo DSI, which like is gonna age me so much, but it was the first like personal game console that I owned anyway that you could.

Titania Jordan (40:52)
Exactly.

Course.

Siara Joy (41:17)
access the browser. And so as I've been learning more about child safety, I think about that just little things like that where they are doing things on the device that the parent doesn't even know is possible is where

Titania Jordan (41:18)
Uh-huh.

Siara Joy (41:30)
the bad things happen is what I would guess.

Titania Jordan (41:33)
Totally.

And like, just to play devil's advocate or again, like be very transparent,

There's nothing wrong with age-appropriate sexual curiosity in particular, right? Like a an a curious child is going to explore their interests and curiosities. Like when I was a kid, my parents would drop me off at the library and they were like, my gosh, my child wants to read. Great, she can stay there for hours. Well, what they didn't know is I was in the like sex and sexuality section, like learning all kinds of things, right? Because I was like, whoa, what? so there's only so much you could protect your child from.

Siara Joy (42:01)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (42:07)
That said,

the books that I was reading were more about like anatomical and biological changes that were going to be happening to me in puberty. It wasn't graphic, violent, inaccurate depictions of consensual, healthy relationships.

It's just different now what children can access. It's depraved, it's violent, animal cruelty. There are groups out there like 764 whose whole job it is to convince children to harm each other, abuse each other, abuse animals. Like it is darker than any adult can possibly imagine. And there's it's just our children's hearts and minds aren't ready for it.

Siara Joy (42:47)
Where does a where does an organization like that, how does that pop up? What's their incentive?

Titania Jordan (42:53)
That's a great question. My only guess is evil. Like, there is no good. Like, why does somebody kill somebody? Why does somebody abuse a child? Sure, there are reasons like revenge, mental health, their own past abuse issues, but as I'm trying to make sense of it, because it doesn't make sense to me, the only thing I can point to is just like there's good in the world, there's bad in the world too. And that is the peak of bad.

Siara Joy (42:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right. there's another platform I know pretty much nothing about, Roblox. So it's has always seemed like an innocent thing until I got into this digital wellness space and I've learned some things So one what really is it? and what's going on there?

Titania Jordan (43:34)
Yeah.

Sure. Yeah.

So Roblox is like the most popular

Digital playground right now for children. If you're five to twelve years old, you wanna be on Roblox, you wanna be playing. You want to be able to go on there and play hundreds of thousands of different games that other people have created, developed, and uploaded. It's like a a infinite playground of digital games. You create an avatar and you can go and do things like there's this one popular game called Dress to Impress, where you can like choose outfits and do like a fashion show.

Like I get it, it's fun. If you're a kid, it's really fun. But then there's other darker places like Epstein Island or I'm trying no, it's not good. It's not good. or condo games, like condominium games, where there are different rooms you go in and characters are simulating sex. I mean, the screenshots that my 17-year-old son has shared with me from what he's encountered on Roblox make me want to throw up.

Siara Joy (44:14)
Yeah.

doesn't sound like

Mm.

Titania Jordan (44:37)
he's now

comfortable sharing with me the things he encountered because he now realizes he's not in trouble. I'm not gonna yell at him, I'm not gonna take away his access, but I need to know what's happening because I'm not spending time there. And it just breaks my heart. It breaks my heart.

Siara Joy (44:47)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (44:51)
It it's seemingly innocent because they look like little Lego characters. It's cartoonish, right? But it's not. It's not and yes, I I'm not saying every single minute a child spends on Roblox is bad and dangerous. A child can have a safe experience there. It is possible.

Siara Joy (44:55)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (45:07)
But there's a high likelihood for danger. It's why there are so many lawsuits now. State attorneys generals are suing Roblox for the harms that have happened to kids. Law enforcement agencies will warn you against your child playing there. They continue, it feels like every week they're launching a new press release saying, We're updating our parental controls and safety features. It's cause there's a problem. And it starts at the top. Their CEO, David Bazooki, who is a dad?

Siara Joy (45:30)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (45:34)
is not owning it and not doing enough.

Siara Joy (45:36)
Huh, and I wonder if he would let his own children go on Roblox That's always the question I have for some of these tech owners, is would you let your own children consume the social media content, go on the platform, things like that. It's it's very frustrating.

Titania Jordan (45:49)
Yeah. We should we should find

there's a quote from him that essentially says like if you're worried about Roblox, don't let your kid play. Like, okay, thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah.

Siara Joy (45:55)
Yeah. Yeah. Why did you create it? Yeah. that's frustrating.

and then the next it's like we can't keep up because there's already everything that's not safe for kids, and then AI chatbots enter the room. And this has been like a really interesting

Not interesting. It's been honestly just a really disappointing entrance into the market because we have learned so much over the years about how children can be put at risk online and it is almost as if we've learned nothing. so I'd definitely love to hear your

Thoughts on this, your opinions, if they ever should be allowed, and if so, like what are warning signs of times that it just doesn't have a place in a child's life?

Titania Jordan (46:42)
Yeah, you know, whether it's Claude or Chat G P T or Gemini or even my AI that's built into Snapchat now.

Siara Joy (46:51)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (46:52)
AI is everywhere and children should not have unfettered access to it. If children use it, it should be alongside the supervision of an adult or trusted caregiver. And it should not be used to replace those critical deep thinking skills that they need to develop and not outsource. It's one thing if your sophomore in high school has written a paper and wants to upload it to ChatGPT and say, can you scan this for any typos or grammatical?

Siara Joy (47:09)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (47:21)
errors or help me polish this one sentence, right? How could I say this better or have it be a little stronger? I'd say that's a really great use of a tool, much like we use a calculator to check our math. But if they want it to just write the paper for them, right, that's the problem. And that's just that's just an academic problem. AI

Siara Joy (47:31)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (47:43)
I'm sure anybody who's used it has noticed. It's like trying to be your friend, trying to be your confidant, trying to be your therapist, trying to talk to you like a human. It is not a human. It is not a human. And there's something called sycophancy where they try to tell you what you want to hear versus what is true.

And so as adults, we've got one more thing on our plate. We have to learn how to use this to stay competitive in our own professions and personal lives. but then we have to learn how to teach children to use it responsibly. You know, we wouldn't hand a third grader a chainsaw and tell them to go play in the woods. So let's not hand them this very new technology that has been shown.

To lead children astray, give them bad advice that can harm their health, physical and mental. Form relationships with them that have encouraged them to die by suicide. Like that there are documented cases of chatbots forming relationships with very vulnerable young children and saying, if you want to join me, you know, on the other side, you have to leave this world. This is not okay.

Siara Joy (48:32)
Yeah.

I I had a previous guest say that he believes a lot of AI chatbots are basically in this race for intimacy. And then I had another guest talk about how empathy from an AI chatbot is impossible because empathy comes from learned experiences and, you know, actual feelings that a human has felt and experienced or witnessed. And so my take on it is that any chatbot replacing an emotional relationship

friendship or otherwise, I I don't see a place for it. I don't really see a place for it for adults either, but for kids, it certainly doesn't seem like something we should be allowing. And from a regulation perspective, I'm curious of your thoughts on why we haven't regulated AI chatbots much yet. Cause what

Titania Jordan (49:29)
Yeah, right? Well, so two thing yeah

two things. One is I don't know if you've seen the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix, and that was twenty thirteen. How wildly accurate. Like they that those directors knew some things. They knew some things. Okay, so that was wild. Now back to your question about why is it not regulated. We can't even get

Siara Joy (49:46)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (49:54)
KOSA updated the Kids Online Safety Act that was rolled out when I was in high school in nineteen ninety-eight, before a lot of this stuff even existed. our government moves so slow, so slow. They they don't even understand it, much less can they craft proper legislation to protect us.

Siara Joy (50:04)
Well.

Titania Jordan (50:15)
And on top of that, we've got tech lobbyists in their ear. You know, most recently they wanted to put a moratorium on any legislation for ten years. And ten years? We might not even be here anymore. I mean, you know, the robots may have taken over. So it it's it's ridiculous. We need to operate the government like a startup, but that's another episode for another day.

Siara Joy (50:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

because

there it only is so far that we get that we can claim

Naiveté from Congress. I've seen Congress have moments where they, you know, I could tell they weren't prepared. I remember back in the day when they were first putting Mark Zuckerberg on trial for some of the harms that Facebook has caused teenage girls. I was one of those teenage girls, by the way, that was on Facebook during that time, and I agree that it was a wild west. It was very, it was shady. So this was an interesting thing for me to watch, and I remember almost giggling because I was like, our Congress isn't.

you know prepared for this they don't like know technology and this is kind of funny now I'm like this is not funny anymore and I'm it feels almost intentional because it's like we know things we do know things and so yeah I yes yes it's frustrating

Titania Jordan (51:24)
It's scary and it's sad. But there are thankfully

legislators like John Osoff and Marsha Blackburn. there's so many people who are actually learning, listening to their constituents, advocating in a bipartisan way for for the best protections for us.

And the only people that that are holding out, if you look to see who has contributed to their campaign, it's telling as to why they're holding out.

Siara Joy (51:55)
I want to shift slightly to and I don't I wanna like make sure that we're always

based in empathy for parents, like I don't wanna shame parents. But something that I personally think about a lot is sharenting and just like parents sharing things online. My starting opinion is that it's not safe to post kids online at all right now, especially not on a public account. What I observe is almost a spectrum of how people post their kids. On one end it's it's innocent. They post even on just the private account a photo of their kid outside in the summer, it's whatever.

Titania Jordan (52:07)
Ugh.

Siara Joy (52:29)
And they're sort of trusting that whomever is following them isn't a predator, even though you never really know. And then on the other end are people who are clearly purposefully doing malicious stuff. And I don't know how you know a parent comes up and and gets into that position where they just don't care about the well-being of their kid, but they're they're basically creating content, I don't know how else to say it, that is perfect for a predator to consume. And then in the middle of that spectrum.

Is a frustrating part of the spectrum where People are just being sort of careless where it's maybe a public account, or they're like making their kids perform for the internet, and they're like rehearsing dances to trending sounds, putting tripods in front of their kids. Like this is the part of the spectrum that's really like frustrating because it's hard to tag someone as being not.

naive or not and I just I don't know I've seen parents capture even like a child's most intimate moments. They're learning a hard lesson, they're having an emotional reaction, they're pranking their kid. And I I it doesn't sit well with me. I'm

Titania Jordan (53:37)
Scrubs.

Siara Joy (53:38)
Yeah, so I would like to know like where you land on parents posting their kids online in general or if there's even a safe way to do it because I might be as someone who's not a parent myself, I might be kind of like black and white, just don't do it at all, but maybe there is a safe way to do it.

Titania Jordan (53:44)
Yeah.

If you have a private Instagram account with only like 50 friends, and you know those 50 friends, they're they're your parents, the kids' grandparents, best friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, and you're looking to share some highlights, right? Baseball game, graduation, Easter, whatever. and you choose to do it that method versus text.

or, you know, uploading to Dropbox or iCloud with like a link to an album to share or even sending photos in the mail, snail mail. you can do it that way. Now nothing's ever safe, right? Because even in those fifty people, to your point, you never know.

Siara Joy (54:38)
Never know.

Titania Jordan (54:39)
Who is a predator. Now, again, if you're just uploading fully clothed pictures of your kids, again, that's better, right? You don't share bath time. You don't share, topless moments in the sprinkler or on the beach. Like, people don't realize how depraved.

Predators can be and they crave younger and younger children and it's gross. I would say default to don't share your kids online. Think about why. Why are you sharing? Are you sharing to brag? And I think that's why we all, you know, when I want to share a picture of my son online, it's because I want people to see what I see. he's so handsome, he's so smart, I'm so proud of him. But like why am I why am I posting it there?

Why don't I just tell him that directly? I'm so proud of you. You look so good in that outfit for homecoming. Maybe share it with his grandmother and grandfather. I don't need f f 20 people to see that. Why? What's the point? so we we really need to walk back the oversharing of our children, especially when they haven't even consented to it yet. When they grow up, if they want to post stuff about themselves online, that's their prerogative.

Siara Joy (55:25)
Mm.

There is one.

Titania Jordan (55:49)
But it's not our job to be posting about them. It's just not. It's creepy.

Siara Joy (55:54)
When do you think kids can consent to being posted online? Because I do think about this too, we are creating

Digital footprints for kids who didn't say that they wanted that yet and then they have to enter adulthood with all that has already been uploaded. I think this is a new problem because I didn't have a digital footprint until I decided to create one for myself. My parents wasn't really part of the deal. So I'm just curious. Yeah, I'm lucky.

Titania Jordan (56:06)
Mm-hmm.

Thankfully. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, because like even well meaning friends can find that old picture of you as a kid and make a meme out of you and then now you're the laughing stock, right? I mean, there's just so many things that happen with our children's likeness online. Not to mention with AI, now your children can be fully clothed, but somebody grabs a picture of their face and creates CSAM with it. which is horrific. And now your child is a victim.

You know, I know that as humans, our brains aren't even fully formed until we're in our mid-20s. But I also don't think it's realistic to say people can't post anything about themselves online until they're 25, right? That ship is sailed. So I would say it's think about the use case, right? Do you have a budding athlete?

Siara Joy (56:58)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (57:04)
that that college recruiters want to see some stuff online about them, then you work with them to carefully curate that highlight reel of, you know, home runs or cool cheer competitions or their artwork. Like,

if if that's what they need to get into college, which is a whole nother thing that's stupid, work with them to create that, but make sure they aren't fielding the DMs. You are. make sure you're not sharing personally identifiable information like

Siara Joy (57:27)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (57:32)
Just anything that can can help somebody locate them in real life. You know, we've got to be very careful and diligent about all of that. And if you are posting your child online for the purposes of clout, likes, engagement, or monetary gain, please stop. Please stop. Your children will not appreciate it. And if you have any conscience whatsoever, you will regret it.

Siara Joy (57:58)
There are some laws being created to help protect kids and like kids of family influencers, correct? Do you know can you share some information about that?

Titania Jordan (58:02)
Yes. Yeah, yes. Yes.

Yeah. So, essentially, around 16 states have either passed or introduced legislation requiring trust funds to be set up for minor content creators. And

Siara Joy (58:07)
I love

Titania Jordan (58:18)
And how the law works is basically if if the content percentage, like the time the is visually appearing or as mentioned, is is thirty percent or greater, the minor meets the legal threshold as an employee and is entitled to a portion of the revenue. again, it's just kind of gross that this even exists, but

You know, to make it kind of relatable to our audience listening, there's you know, there's child stars, right? Child actors. And there's a reason why a lot of them end up with with some issues when they get older because of how they've been used or their parents or managers have just gone through all the money that they made.

Siara Joy (58:45)
Yeah.

Mhm. I guess when you put it that way, it's not as surprising that it happens because there's always been child stars, right? And there is that stigma of what what were the parents thinking? Were they like the good child star parent or were they the one that was a little shady? So now that the internet is a major form of entertainment, this is not such a surprising thing, I feel like.

Titania Jordan (59:20)
It's not, but as my friend Sarah Adams of Mom Uncharted says, kids are not content. Kids are not content. if your child if their heart's desire is to be an actress or performer and they want to work on that craft, I get it. But if you're leaning on your child to be the cash cow for your family, or for fame or notoriety or access, it's just gross. You need to stop that.

Siara Joy (59:27)
Mm-hmm.

What if someone posts and they blur their child's face or something like that? Is that better? Is it not?

Titania Jordan (59:54)
used to think that was better and I've done the same thing. I I would post and and blur any any minors' faces that might appear in some of my stuff. but then I learned that there's technology that can de-blur things, right? And so it's like, you know, it's just a game of whack-a-mole. and it's back to the what is the point? What is the point of me posting this? What am I trying to say and who am I trying to say it to? And it usually ends up with, you know what, I was just trying to brag.

Siara Joy (1:00:05)
Mm.

Yeah.

Titania Jordan (1:00:21)
I was just trying to be relevant. I was I was trying to let people know I'm I'm still here. I'm looking for connection. And there are better ways to do that.

Siara Joy (1:00:26)
Mm-hmm.

and you are you a parent yourself? Is that correct? Okay.

Titania Jordan (1:00:31)
Yes, yes, yeah,

I'm a mom and the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I've lived it. I have made so many mistakes and I if anybody w should be in the know, it's me. so if I'm struggling with this, how much more so is the typical parent that doesn't work at the intersection of media and technology?

Siara Joy (1:00:39)
It would.

Mm.

Do you in your own household have any hard and fast rules like simple ones that you think other people could adopt, maybe, you know, even this week?

Titania Jordan (1:01:00)
Yes.

Absolutely. Yeah. You do not have to give Bark a single dollar in order to to benefit from what we've been through. there's some pretty easy rules like no connected tech in the bedroom or behind closed doors. that can help to mitigate a lot of dangers. You know, if your child wants to play a game, make sure it's in the living room, right? if they want to browse something, again, please have parental controls turned on.

Siara Joy (1:01:15)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (1:01:26)
But make sure it's in the common areas of the home. also, one of my favorite, I'd say it's an ethos really, is delay is the way. And I can't take credit for that fun rhyming statement. That's my friend Chris McKenna of Protect Young Eyes. But delay is the way. no parent has ever regretted waiting just a little bit longer to give their kid access. And in fact, every parent I have talked to, myself included, wishes they would have waited a little bit longer. in terms of

Siara Joy (1:01:51)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (1:01:53)
When is the right time to let your child have an Apple device? I would say please wait until they're at least 16. until Apple gets their act together and I don't have confidence they will anytime soon. Please opt for safer tech. Doesn't have to be bark. You know, you can go with a flip phone, whatever, walkie-talkie. I'm kidding, kind of, but like just delay. you know, when your kid starts to drive a car, then I get why you might want to give them the most expensive

Siara Joy (1:02:13)
Yeah.

Titania Jordan (1:02:23)
tech possible. but again it's like why give a 13-year-old Ferrari when they could have a like a brand new Honda that works just fine and keeps them super safe. So yeah just delay is the way and and even though social media platforms say kids have to be 13 before they can join them, that's like the minimum minimum. That's a low bar.

Siara Joy (1:02:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Titania Jordan (1:02:44)
So many

children are not ready for social media, even at 13. Again, wait till they're at least 16 when they've been through a little bit more, their brains, their hearts are a little bit more developed. And yeah, and model, right? Like if I'm just constantly behind this thing, I have no credibility. If every time you walk in my bedroom, I'm scrolling and the TV's on, no credibility.

Siara Joy (1:03:10)
Right.

Titania Jordan (1:03:11)
be present. Put your own phones away. Quit being addicted to tech and like live in the real world.

Siara Joy (1:03:18)
Which I always catch myself stopping myself from judging parents every time that I see like you know, I'll I'll be literally camping out in the woods and I'll see kids on iPads and like because that wasn't me, I am like, Hey, why are you doing that? And then I'm like

relax. I've never had a kid. I have no idea what it's like. And I understand that it's harder than I can ever imagine. And so like in having this conversation with you that I appreciate so much, I'm wildly cognizant of the fact that I don't have kids. And you know, I but I do remember like I was on the internet myself. So I remember that it was a little shady when I was a kid and I have a little bit of knowledge of tech. And so I understand the nuances of technology. And I think that combination of things puts me in a position to be finger wagging like

Titania Jordan (1:03:48)
Ha ha ha.

Siara Joy (1:04:05)
like hey why are people doing this but I'd much rather talk to someone like you and say like for the parent who's feeling behind and maybe a little ashamed about things, what do you want them to know? Because there has to be an empathy piece to this because there's just so much. There's so much and I I can't imagine how hard it is.

Titania Jordan (1:04:16)
Yeah.

Yes.

Absolutely, yeah. yeah. I'm I'm here to tell you anything I I say is not from a place of judgment. It's from a place of I've been there, I've made the mistakes, and if anybody was well suited to do the right thing, it was me. And I still made the mistakes. so there's grace. and it's never too late. It's never too late to try to make healthier choices, whether that's diet, exercise, or technology. being vulnerable with your children. You know, I had to have a talk with my son when he was younger about TikTok.

Siara Joy (1:04:36)
And

Titania Jordan (1:04:49)
When I realized how dangerous the algorithm was, I said, It is it's my job to keep you safe. I made a mistake by letting you have this. I get that you love it. I would say you're addicted, and I have to take it away now, and you're not gonna like it. And I'm sorry that I made this mistake and I let you have it. But this is what we're doing. So being vulnerable. It's never too late to make healthier or wiser choices. I will say that again, the iPad

Or any sort of tech is like the best and worst babysitter. It's the best because it works. It keeps your kids still and quiet.

Siara Joy (1:05:24)
Mm-hmm.

Titania Jordan (1:05:24)
gets you can get a lot of

things done and I have been there. I've given my son my iPhone at a doctor's appointment, right? While we were waiting forever and he was losing it, or if I needed to get on a conference call and I needed to make sure he was chill. so I've been there. But it's also the worst babysitter because we now know what it does to their brain and to their hearts and to their minds. And so you just have to try to do better. it's okay for our kids to be bored. When they're bored, they become creative.

problem solvers. They become more resilient. quit treating the real world as more dangerous than the digital world. In fact it's the opposite. You know, my child would have been better suited playing in the woods, riding a bike, falling down, scraping his knees, figuring out how to get back home before dark than scrolling endlessly and freely on the World Wide Web.

Siara Joy (1:06:14)
Totally agree. I wish I could give my dog a tablet. That would be that would be great. He's been a menace this whole episode. but anyway, I you've also written two books, Parenting in a Tech World and Parental Control. And you're in a documentary called Childhood 2.0 is that correct?

Titania Jordan (1:06:20)
I'm sure somebody's working on that right now.

Yes, yes, I

Yeah,

yeah, there's parental control right behind me. You can get it wherever books are sold. I share my personal story of growing up, eighties, nineties, two thousands, all the mistakes I made that were not captured online, thank God. And just what I've learned, what what I wish I could have done differently with with my son and and what what we've seen at Bark and what parents can actually do, what are reasonable steps they can take. So feel free to pick that up or download it, listen to it. and childhood two dot super

powerful documentary. It's free on YouTube. Anybody can watch it for free right now. And again, you hear from real children who have been through some real things. And there's some mature content there. So I would say it's not necessarily appropriate for like a third grader. But for a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader, if you're trying to figure out how do I even begin to like help them understand why I'm worried about the internet, this is honestly a powerful piece to watch. including

Siara Joy (1:07:16)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (1:07:34)
the part closer to the end where at Bark we go undercover as an eleven year old on Instagram and within minutes surface predators and it's it's just it's gross.

Siara Joy (1:07:44)
Wow.

Wow. and then how can we learn more about bark?

Titania Jordan (1:07:47)
Yeah, pretty easy. Just go to bark.us, not dot com. That's a different website. So bark dot us, you can learn all about our

Software, our hardware, safer smartphone for kids. We have so much free content just to educate you. Talking tips, what you need to know, slang terms, all of that. Of course we're on social media, because it's a necessary evil when you're a consumer brand trying to educate. so yeah, just look for Bark Technologies anywhere you look for things online.

Siara Joy (1:08:18)
Amazing.

and then I ask every guest this, so it's totally up to you how you interpret it, but what are you logging out of this year and what are you logging into?

Titania Jordan (1:08:27)
I am, I would say reducing my Facebook consumption probably 90% year over year, my Instagram consumption about 80% year over year. So I'm logging out a lot of those and logging into more coffees, walks, dinners.

Siara Joy (1:08:36)
Mm.

Titania Jordan (1:08:50)
just meetups with the people that I care about that I don't know how long they're gonna be here, that I'll have the opportunity to.

Siara Joy (1:08:56)
Mm, love that. Okay. Well thank you so much for joining us. We learned a lot, I hope we have another conversation when we're dealing with the next version of the internet.

Titania Jordan (1:09:06)
Thank

you so much for having me. I really love your work.

Siara Joy (1:09:09)
Thank you.

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