Laurie Santos
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The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos · AI Is the New Social Media. Can We Protect Kids This Time?
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How Should Parents Troubleshoot Technology Rules With Kids?
Laurie Santos says parents should troubleshoot technology rules with kids by treating them as agents: ask questions you do not already know the answer to, then validate the strategies the kids have already made.
UT Austin professor David Yeager argues in 10 to 25 that from age 10 to age 25 a kid's main goal is to be as agentive as possible, especially as a teenager who wants to think of themselves as an adult. Treat them like an agent who knows what they are doing, and help a newer agent who still knows less. Kids often think about technology in sophisticated ways and sometimes already have their own strategies, good or not. One rule is to open TikTok only after homework. Another is to pick
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Should Parents Turn Off an AI Chatbot's Memory?
Bruce Reed says parents should be able to turn off memory so that every time a kid went on an AI platform, it was starting from scratch. Turning memory off would even the score quite a bit for the kid's experience.
Grown-ups have to step up and pass laws to make AI safer and make social media safer or at least less present. Work is already underway to pass limits on AI companions and to strengthen parental control, so parents have more agency to figure out what the AI experience is like for their kids. Eventually, independent safety audits are needed to make sure the programs are safe before they go on the market. People working in the classroom should teach digital literacy. Kids may be mo
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What Is the IKEA Effect?
Laurie Santos says the IKEA effect is a psychology finding that people like an IKEA thing more, and think it is better, just because they built it themselves. Effort feels good and creates value, so handing off a task like writing an email to a tool that can do the writing is easy, and it gives away the value the work itself creates.
Scaled to the cognitive work young people do, they value what they create themselves. A pattern in animals called contra freeloading points the same way. Offer a free reward that takes no effort and a reward that takes more work, and animals prefer the reward that takes more work, then wind up healthier afterward. Challenge has been known to feel good since Mih
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How Does Talking to a Chatbot Affect Loneliness?
Laurie Santos says talking to a chatbot brings an immediate, short reduction in loneliness, while longer use predicts more loneliness later. The earliest papers on chatbot effects in mental health, for teens and for adults, are only now appearing, and longer-term data on chatbots is just arriving because the tools have not been in ubiquitous use for long.
A new 12-month study from Liz Dunn's lab at the University of British Columbia traces a vicious cycle. People who already feel lonely tend to use chatbots more, because talking to real-life humans comes with friction. The conversation feels good in the moment, so returning to the chatbot gets easier, and chatbot use then predicts still mor
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Should Teens Use AI Companion Chatbots?
Bruce Reed says Common Sense Media put out a report declaring AI companion chatbots an unacceptable risk for anyone under 18. They are the worst friend a teenager could have because they are designed to tell you what you want to hear, and that can lead a teen down very dark rabbit holes.
Kids are the early adopters. Three-quarters of teens have used AI companion chatbots. Half use them regularly. A third say they would just as soon have a conversation with an AI companion as with a human. The companions give bad advice. They can get a teen into a lot of trouble, including explicit content.
The most tragic part is how good the companions are at reading needs. It is very easy to become emoti
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Why Do Kids Stay on Social Media If It Feels Worse?
Laurie Santos says kids stay on social media even when the products make them feel worse, because everybody else is using them. She calls the platforms product traps. Ask the average kid how much they would pay to be on social media and they do not want to pay. Ask how much they would have to be paid to get off and they say a lot, because everyone else is on there. Ask how much they would pay for a world with no social media at all and they are willing to pay a lot.
Bruce Reed says the companies are not acknowledging the problem as much as they should. They have known for a long time that the products can be addictive. Talking about it as an addiction makes it seem like the kids' fault, whe
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Does More Than Three Hours of Social Media Double Anxiety?
Bruce Reed says spending more than three hours a day on social media doubles the prospects of anxiety or depression. Vivek Murthy pointed that out in a Surgeon General report on the mental health impacts of social media. Kids already spend about four and a half hours a day on a phone on average, so pretty much every kid is in the group spending more than three hours.
A survey of teens found that kids spent about 43 minutes a day on phones in school, although plenty of kids spent six hours. Kids pick up a phone 100 times a day on average and get over 200 notifications over the course of the day. Two thirds said they are often short on sleep because they spend so much time on the phone. He th
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How Much Screen Time Do Kids Under Eight Get?
Bruce Reed says screen time for the youngest kids runs from about an hour a day under age two to two hours a day at ages three and four, then three and a half hours for kids between five and eight. Across ages zero to eight, time on digital devices averages two and a half hours a day.
A Common Sense census of kids zero to eight found that 40% of American two-year-olds have a tablet, and the share reaches 60% by age four. One out of four eight-year-olds has a cell phone. Most of the time still goes to TV and videos. Video games are the big change, up about 65% over the past five years.
The hours replace reading a book, making up games, or playing in the dirt. Parents often welcome the break