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So the holidays are upon us and I know in my house right now I am co-parenting, factual, and if your house is meeting like mine there are a lot of screens. Everybody in the house, all the kids be either having a tablet, a phone, or video game. Sometimes they have multiple and they're going a lot of the time, especially during the holidays because they're not in school. So there's a lot of roadblocks in Topah Boca and Minecraft and Fortnite and everybody's playing something on something.
And with all those screens and all these online games I do kind of worry, what are the implications of this? What is the safety of this? In real life, IRL, my kids are never out of my sight. Even in the backyard, it's totally fenced in.
We can see what they're doing. It's not a lot of unsupervised time in the physical space but in the digital space, it's different. So you wonder is it bad that kids are online a lot or just like on screens doing games to help me understand the consequences of all this? I've recently sat down with Eli Stark Elster.
He's kind of an expert on this. He studies the evolution of human society at UC Davis. My conversation with Eli Stark Elster after the break will be right back. We're back with the Sunday story.
I'm here with researcher Eli Stark Elster. Eli, welcome to the show. How are you doing? All right, so for years kids played unsupervised outdoors and spent a lot of time together without adults.
What changed? Well, two point I think many people remember that prior to 1970s or so, there was much less provision of childhood in physical space than there is. Now, but I think the point I'm going to keep in mind is that that difference is not just between early part of the 20th century and now, but between now and as far as we can talk, pretty much the whole course of human history. When you look at the record of childhood across human societies, you find that kids are generally a really high degree of independence and autonomy.
When my colleagues are somewhere has a good term for this, they spend much the time and independent care cultures. So with other kids forming their own several groups away from adults, and in the 1970s or so, the ability for kids to develop these kinds independent care cultures drops really specifically and that has not changed the present day. So yeah, why did it change? Yeah, I think one big factor of language is the urbanization of the United States.
So, I think one more thing that's going to be to move in the cities, but it's going to be dependent on cars. And so you now have physical environments where one day it's arguably just a little less safer kids to run around due to draft concerns, apparently it's a lot more fear of other kids being on safer that reason. Any floporants that feel as concerns often kids are just not all that close to other kids physically. They want to hang out with their friends.
They're currently driving somewhere. The size of a virtual factor. Another underlying concern here is just the fear of not just traffic, but train your danger. So, it's changed in the physical space.
There's a lot more supervision. But that hasn't translated to a lot of supervision in the digital space. Yes, yeah. That's right.
I want to have a day where I'm just doing this. The other Jonathan Haid has a technology that in some sense print kids and social media platforms are a little bit like something that's Mars. It's a very recent innovation. It's a very little about how these kinds of environments actually work and how they're looking at our children.
But it's something that we emphasize that maybe it's counterpoint to that. I think we often emphasize what technology is doing to our children and this move in digital space. The fact that it's in all this time on the phones and the new games and so on is often framed as something that they're being attracted to doing by companies or what have you. But I think when you look at the trying to get evolution and this desire kids really have to build their in our secret worlds away from us, I think the picture kind of arises.
And so what we're using digital space as sort of the last front of your two get away from us. Is that the evolution of how children play? They seek out these spaces because they are less supervised adults. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. What we can tell are driven to find spaces away from adults within 10 time on supervised with their peers doing what they want to do in particular, playing in different ways. In physical space that is now just far too difficult for a variety of reasons.
In digital space though, but also have no idea what's going on. We have very little control and so they found us in the glass domain where they can do the same thing but in digital space and so physical space. Well, how important is it for kids to have those? Almost adult free zones.
I think immensely important. There's a lot of good data on trends and mental health health management. There's a study conducted by UNICEF every year. It's called the NSNTC where they track independent mobility in different countries.
It's the amount of freedom kids have to move and place by themselves against measures of well being easy. Very clear trends that greater mobility. It's a very well being an exercise. So your idea is to get a six-streaming of work for kids to have these independent spaces away from us.
Well, talk to me about some of the online games that kids are using to create their own spaces because the kids in my house, my kids are constantly online, playing, roadblocks with each other, playing minecraft and other games that they're playing together. I think one contrast that is in these tools between two games and both of which kids love. One of my craft and the other is Fortnite. My craft and things of the best only game in history.
Some of the three hundred people in the pre- which is that it's a very open-ended exploratory game. And they have pretty much control of what they choose to do. So when you do mountain, you can look like these are two instances of someone saying a kid's big big game games. When you zoom in and what you're actually doing, how those things are built, get a very different picture of what's actually happening in those worlds.
And what about the socializing element of it? Because I mean, I could do play with each other on the screens and even like I don't know if you know about Tokaboka, but it's like this thing where you get houses and you get characters and you dress them up and stuff and they kind of play with them like you would. Dolls or action figures. It's just like in the game.
And then they do it with each other. You have this role on the mind of your other baby. Is that different from playing with an actual doll house? I don't know that the research on it is well developed.
My sense though, and it's something that people like you're great about quite eloquently, I think the key things are look for here when kids are playing in physical or virtual spaces. Do they have the freedom to make decisions in a space or are they exploring or are they sending time to other kids? If they answer all those questions, yes, my sense is that the place probably just as good regardless of the domain. What I'll emphasize though is often is it's for frame to say, I trade off that if kids simply get off of these virtual spaces they would go out and, you know, place to go on the streets or have you.
But many of these changes that have legislative affairs for physical autonomy is much lower. They're probably not going to change or they'll be a difficult to change. I think it's worth keeping in front of minds that gives me somewhere too good. So it's a necessarily a bad thing for kids to spend so much time online.
Not necessarily. And I think when rasping whether it's that, it really depends on what exactly they're doing. If a kid is spending a huge amount of time just to take off mind and say, not talking to anyone, that's probably that right there. Not doing anything really on their own, not some kind of their friends.
They're not getting time in these independent groups of peers. That kids really do need to be getting. If there's any last time on FaceTime, they're friends playing Minecraft, exploring the world, doing houses. That I think ticks all the checkbox are looking for in what kids are doing in this independent peer time.
And so both those activities may be look like screen times, but they're very, very different kinds. And again, the key question that apparently asks is, are my kids getting space to be independent from me? Does sometimes have their friends unsupervised into exploring ways that they're turning on their own? And you guys have a question about your own space.
In some case, naturally, no, in other cases, they answer, yes. And so when you think about it, imagine like screen times off and something that studies of effects, technology on the health, that's really a bit like trying to let you know that you have to have food on physical health. That's not a very useful way to break that down into different kinds of screen times. You can take it down to a different kinds of food.
What needs to happen in online spaces to allow kids to be kids, but also for them to remain safe? Right. You mentioned Roblox. I think that's an interesting example.
Because it combines elements that are probably really good for kids. Looking for technology elements are probably quite bad. Yes. And that's why I think that is very, very user-driven.
And people are playing game. How large freedom to design a little experience with the game to socialize the Cloud Reon to print projects. The company that Ohm Showbox has also built in many of these kind of sawishing features, various incentives that. Roblox, yeah, they take my money a lot.
But let's not talk about that a little bit about it. No, exactly. And that's an example of something that I think is certainly negative. But going back to the point of autonomy, I think you're good enough out here, it's like a different size of that.
It is good for the impacts of kids in this game. They can triple whatever they want. It is bad for the kids that the company making this game has had all these incentives that try to course them making centers that they probably don't want to make. And also there could be adults in there that aren't kids.
So that's the other issue, right? Yeah, 100%. It is worth saying that as with the standard independent control spaces often the way that people talk about the parameters in the space of the Roblox is perhaps a little bit overblown. The data still suggests that most of the times when kids are approaching a property in these platforms, it's very often from something else as the case in the space.
So in some ways that the danger is often the same and it's been screwed in the kind of same way. And so, but ultimately, I guess how do you keep your kids safe? Well, I think we've done quite a lot to keep our kids safe at this point, right? But one, I think for a few years, it's a trade-off between short-term safety and long-term abilities of four-gen adult.
So just an example of a colleague of mine mentioned this recently. And so, that's what we've done with the actual side-old son. His side-old son had a full-time truck. So he came and pulled it away.
And so the son is like, it's like, it's like, it's like, in the long-term, it'll actually probably be really good for his son. So, okay, just figure out the sounds like it's else. But you know, the parent goes down and ends all that. And doing that because in the short-term, they won't keep a kid safe, they won't make sure they won't get safe.
And so on. In the long-term note, that might not be a true thing for the safety. And so, when we think about the safety of our kids, the real question is, what is going to help them for us as adults? And in many cases, the measures that we think we're taking to make a safe in the short-term are probably comfortable in the long-term.
And that's really fascinating. That's Eli Stark-Elster. He studies the evolution of human society at UC Davis. Thank you so much for doing us.
Thank you. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Justin Yan. It was mastered by Jimmy Keel. The original interview was produced by Dave Blanchard and edited by Hideo al-Shauci.
The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo, Jimmy Schmidt, and Rihanna Simstrom. Time as Cold Train is our intern. Our executive producer is Irene Macauchi. I'm Mike Sharasco, up first we'll be back tomorrow with all the news we need to start your week.
Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.