Jim Steyer on safely keeping children connected & engaged during school closures | Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone! Sal Khan here. Welcome to the Daily Homeroom. Uh, for those of y'all who don't know what this is, you're just showing up off of Facebook or YouTube. This is something that we started once we started seeing math school closures, and it's really a way for all of us to stay connected.

Obviously, Khan Academy, as a not-for-profit with a mission of providing free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere, over the last many years, we've been building resources that we've saw students use both outside of school and inside of school with teachers. We could have never foreseen this crisis but when it started happening, we realized, given our mission, it's our duty to step up in any way possible to support you, the student, the teacher, and the parent.

So we've been putting out webinars to help parents and teachers get set up. We've been issuing daily schedules, we just issued some learning plans last week, and we also thought it'd be fun to have something like this—just a way to stay connected in times of social distancing and talk about interesting subjects. It might be related to Khan Academy, it might be education generally, it might be just, how do we navigate this crisis that we're going through.

I will give my, uh, the plug that I give every day, remind everyone that we are supported through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself. So if you're in a position to, please think about donating. I want to give a special shout out to several corporations who've stepped up in the last few weeks. Bank of America stepped up that first weekend when it was clear that we were going to have the school closings. Google.org, AT&T, Novartis. If any of you represent corporations, please reach out to us.

We're running a deficit even before this crisis and our costs have gone up since then, and there's all sorts of things we want to do and accelerate forward. But we're only going to be able to do it if we're able to get more support. Thank you for the many thousands of people who've donated over the last few weeks. It all makes a difference and allows us to accelerate our work.

So the focus of today, I have a very fun guest who's a close friend of mine and also does very important work in the world. We have Jim Steyer from Common Sense Media.

Hi, Jim!

Hi, great to be here! And by the way, people should give money to Khan Academy. It is a fabulous organization, and the staff are donors. We're not a problem, but there's nobody better than Sal Khan at Khan Academy! He's right about that—I did not tell Jim to say that, but that's why we are good friends.

He knows, you know. So first, on this conversation, I'm going to ask Jim a few questions about Common Sense Media generally and maybe some of the things we're doing together and how we're navigating the crisis. But if anyone has questions, feel free to go on YouTube and Facebook, and our team members will surface questions if you have questions for Jim about his work at Common Sense Media or any questions for me as well.

But Jim, maybe a good place to start is to tell folks what Common Sense Media is and why you started it.

Okay, so we are a non-profit organization and really the leading kids' media and advocacy organization in the U.S. I started it because I'm a former school teacher and a Stanford prof who cares a ton about really educating families and kids in general but also about the impact of media and technology on their lives. I started it 15 years ago. We do three things: we rate, educate, and advocate.

So for folks out there in the audience who know us, we rate every movie, TV show, video game, website, book, music—you name it, Common Sense rates it and gives you information so parents can make better choices for their kids.

The educational part of our work is we created the field of digital citizenship, digital literacy, so we have a curriculum in most of the schools in the United States about the safe, ethical, responsible use of media and technology at home and in the classroom. And finally, we're a leading child advocacy group that advocates for everything, like everybody having Wi-Fi and broadband, every student in America having access to Khan Academy and these kinds of resources, and also on issues like education and health care and all these issues that matter to kids and families here in the U.S.

So a big non-profit, just like Khan Academy, and a huge fan of Khan Academy in South. You know, we're fans of you and all of the work you all do as well.

To make it tangible for a lot of folks, I use Common Sense Media with my own family when I'm just trying to find good stuff for them. We're doing movie nights once a week now, with all the social distancing, and we turn to Common Sense Media a lot for that.

What are some of the things—and I know we have some stuff going on together as well—but where were you all focused on before this crisis hit, and how has that evolved to some degree since then?

Okay, great question, Sal. So basically, before the crisis hit, we had this big consumer platform with 100 million people on it trying to figure out what movies to watch with their kids on movie night or what video games are appropriate for a 12-year-old, etc. We were in most of the schools in the U.S., basically working with teachers and educators saying, "Here's how to use the internet, here's how to use cell phones and social media in a really responsible way."

And when this crisis hit, one of the first things we thought was, "Wow! We need to work with Khan Academy," but we also thought, "Wouldn't it be great to create one central hub where schools could go and where families could go to find, at the click of a button, the best educational resources to deal with the COVID-19 crisis?" So, along with the support of folks like Khan Academy, we created wideopenschool.org, which is this new platform. Our colleagues at Amplify helped build the platform, and then honestly, we linked to the best content out there—Khan Academy, National Geographic, Sesame Street, etc.

The idea was to make it really easy for parents and students who were at home and doing distance learning, and also for schools around the United States, to have one central place where they could get the content they wanted and actually do homeschooling. As you mentioned, Sal, having a daily schedule is really, really important because everybody's at home right now and trying to do learning from home.

Whether they're on Khan Academy or wide open school, we're just trying to help everybody learn from home, and we think this is going to be changing the nature of education long term, just like Khan Academy changed the nature of education when you founded it.

What's your sense, you know, a lot of questions I'm having a lot of conversations these days, obviously about the whole virus generally, but how do you think this is going to play out over the next several weeks or months, especially in relation to school and kids maybe generally speaking?

I actually think that, ultimately, we're going to—listen, we're here in California, Sal, so you know we've had a governor really step forward and mayors and stuff. I think we're going to be—sad to say, I think we're going to be learning from home for the rest of the school year for sure, and I think that even for the rest of 2020, much of the learning is going to be online, much more than normal.

Therefore, everybody out there is going to need to be able to access the internet and be able to access resources like Khan Academy, and so I think this is going to last longer than normal. I think it's really important for all of us. I have four children, Sal. I know you're a doting dad too. I think we have to explain to our kids that we're going to be at home.

It's good family time, but we're going to need to figure out how to do school, also how to take breaks, and get exercise and not sit in front of a screen all day long. So I think this is going to last longer than we think.

For example, it's going to probably affect summers, and a lot of us are going to probably do some more at home than we were planning on. I know my kids, who are a little older than your kid, Sal—they're in college and grad school, and they're taking their classes at home, and their summer jobs have changed. So, sad to say, I think we're going to have to figure out how to work with this over the months. I don't think this is going to be weeks; I think it will be a few months, to be honest, because of the virus.

Yeah, and we're getting some comments off of you. Roro says, "I have been using this with my kids." I think they're referring to either Common Sense or wide open school, and I've been using this with my kids this week, and it helps me feel less guilty about screen time!

Actually, that's an interesting issue. How do you think about coping with screen time guilt? I'm happy to give my own views on that; I'm a little conflicted. What are your thoughts about that as a parent and an expert?

So, I actually—I'd love to hear what you think too, Sal, as a parent and an expert. So definitely, you're going to have more screen time right now; there's just no question, because literally, my kids are going to school online right now, so they're going to be in front of a screen more than they are.

And as Common Sense, we're the leading spokespeople on this issue about balance and moderation when it comes to screen time. By the way, it's a really important message, but I think that we have to understand that these are unique circumstances. So I do think that we should let up on some of the hard and fast rules. We want our kids going to school, doing online learning; we want them using Khan Academy resources.

But I think you also, as a parent, for example, really want to have balance in your kid's life, and you don't want to plunk them in front of a screen for eight hours in a row. That's my take, and that's what we're trying to do with our children.

How about yourself? What do you think?

I feel very similar. You know, my answer, even before this crisis, was it's not so much measuring what is happening on the screen but it's measuring what's happening in the student's whole life. And so if a student is getting time where they're socializing, spending time with their family, they're running outside, they have time for creativity, etc., then I'm less worried about that screen time, especially if that screen time is constructive screen time.

I think most of us, if we saw our middle school students spend three hours composing a poem, we would view that as constructive screen time. Or if we saw them—I’m a big fan of reading a book for real—but I know a lot of people like reading on a Kindle; that's not the end of the world type of screen time. If someone wants to, you know, I remember when I was a kid, if I got really excited about some—I actually didn't have a computer at home growing up, but at the local university, I somehow convinced a professor to give me access to the computers.

There were times where I spent 12 hours straight, 20 hours straight, just creating something, coding something. It was probably a little unhealthy; I probably had more caffeine than I should have, but that was actually constructive screen time.

Obviously, if you're learning, and so, yeah, I'm trying to balance it myself. Especially in this time of social distancing, and everyone is together. You know, yesterday, me and the family, we were all on the couch together; we had the popcorn going. We watched two episodes of Will Smith's documentary that's on Disney Plus around One Strange Rock.

That was great! I thought that was great screen time and great family time. We learned a ton about aliens and astronauts and how life happened to exist on earth. So I think that kind of thing, when you're with your family, having a good conversation around it— it was two hours of screen time with TV watching, but I felt like it was a lot of bonding too.

So, yeah, there's a balance. I agree with you. I mean, I actually think that's what I would say; I think it's quantity and quality, and you're absolutely right.

And the other thing about this COVID-19 epidemic is it forces more family time, which is a really good thing. I mean, your kids are a little younger than ours, I know, Sal, and so for me, I have kids who are teenagers and college age and a little older, right? And it's great because you actually are spending more time as a family. You know, you're having family dinners.

But I do think that there's—when you talk about screen time, you should think about quality in terms of doing good stuff, just like you described, family screen time, but educational stuff. If you're going to read a book online, that's great—not too much just junk, if you will. It's sort of like food, and you think about your nutritional diet. You don't want to have your kid only have junk food.

But it's also taking breaks—you mentioned exercising, getting outside as much as possible, getting a break, sort of having about there. That's why the daily schedule that we were talking about is important. It's balanced moderation, but we're going to be in front of screens more often, so let's make it constructive quality screen time. Why not?

Yeah, and there's a couple questions we have for Amy Liang on YouTube who is asking, "What inspired you to make the website, Jim Steyer?"

Well, maybe I'll broaden the question a little bit. What did you see 15 years ago where you said, "Hey, there's something wrong with society; we need a not-for-profit like Common Sense Media?"

Okay, the honest answer. So my life work—I've been a Stanford professor, and now I'm dating myself, that for 30 years—and I was a civil rights lawyer first. So Amy is correct. What happened was I wanted to create the most important child advocacy group in the United States. I'm really an advocate. My life work is as an educator, teacher, and as an advocate for children; that's really what I do.

When I started Common Sense, we created the web platform, the platform, and all the ratings and reviews and all that stuff basically to get the public to care about children. Also, we realized at that time, this was 15 years ago, that movies and TV shows and music were having a huge impact on kids' lives and families' lives.

Remember, there was no iPhone, no Facebook, no Google, no Snapchat, nothing, and the day when we started Common Sense was basically movies and TV, and maybe some music and video games. The real thing for me was to build a platform that everybody could join if they wanted to care about children generally and to create this membership-based sort of advocacy group for children, particularly for disadvantaged children who don't have a voice.

Lo and behold, 15 years later, oh my gosh, who knew that we would have 100 million-plus users for our consumer reports guide? And the truth is I didn't realize that the media and technology piece would be so big, and who could have known that Steve Jobs would bring out the iPhone or that Mark Zuckerberg would invent Facebook or that you'd have YouTube and Snapchat, and all the other things that are so key or goodbye?

But the truth is, when it happened, Common Sense was there, and we give it it. I remember when you started Khan Academy, and I remember those conversations we had, and I was so happy that you decided to make Khan Academy a not-for-profit because you could have built a for-profit business, but your heart was so much—I never forget that—your heart was so much in the right place of doing this as a not-for-profit and making it the school for everybody in the world.

You should be very proud of that, my friend, seriously! But that's why we love working with you guys. I could have never predicted 15 years ago that Common Sense would have gotten this big, but the same mission is about kids, basically. It's how do you change the world for kids? How do you improve the world for kids, particularly the ones who need it the most?

That's my biggest concern, by the way, during the COVID-19 crisis, is how do we take care of the kids who are not living in a two-room home with five people and whose school isn't even doing learning yet because they don't even have a system set up? So I think for those of us who are so fortunate, I think it's really important to remember that there's tens of millions of kids out there who have very few resources, and we want to care about them and give them the same opportunities that Sal Khan's kids and Jim Steyer's kids have.

But that's what motivates me. That's why I started Common Sense, and like you, who knew? Khan Academy would turn it—you were just making videos for your nieces and nephews. Look what happened! Sort of the same thing with Common Sense.

No, you never know. And there's a question here from Facebook. Scott Yang, who's been consistently asking good questions. I'm going to broaden his question. His question is, "Are video games fine?" But I'm going to broaden it, which is obviously Common Sense. You guys are rating what is good, what's appropriate for different ages, and I think all of us have a sense, you know, you see a video game where you're shooting people up, like, "Hey, that might not be right."

I mean, frankly, even for me myself, if I watch a movie or video game that's really gruesome, I'm like, you know, this—when I was a teenager for some reason, I didn't mind it. But now when I look at it, I don't know. I'm like, "Oh, that's troubling. I'm not sure if I can sleep tonight."

What do we—and then there's things that are not gruesome but have other dynamics. What do we—there's the stuff we know intuitively, but what evidence do we have that it is maybe some of this stuff could cause harm?

We know it's a really good question. Video games have been a big issue for Common Sense right from day one, right? So we were the first people who started rating them and really calling out the violence in certain old video games and explaining to parents and educators that, you know, too much violence is really bad for kids—that there's copycat violence in there—and also, you can become a near devout.

So I would say it's really interesting because we realized how incredibly popular video games are, and they remain to be that day. I have a 16-year-old son who, if we allowed him to, would play video games for 18 hours a day, and not all of them would be the video games that I might recommend.

And so I think a couple of things: We worked very closely with the video game industry to tell them you have to limit the violence. Also, there used to be racially stereotypical stuff, and a lot of sexist stuff there was—a lot of content in video games that was certainly inappropriate for an eight-year-old or a ten-year-old.

Then there was the issue of too much time in front of a screen, so we have done a lot of advocacy around the issue of video games. We've done a lot to educate parents and teachers about how much time kids love video—how much time kids are spending playing video games and also how to find the good ones. Because as you know, Sal, there are a ton of great games out there, and they're different kinds of learning.

Some of the most creative educational products are actually game-based products that are really educational. So again, I think it's both quality of the game and amount. So I wouldn't let Jesse, our son, play 10 hours of video games, even though he probably would like to.

And you're right—teenagers, particularly boys, are the ones who would spend all day in front of a video game machine if we let them. But it's a great question, and I think it's one of the reasons why commonsense.org is such a good resource because you can go there and check out anything and say, "Hey, is this okay for my eight-year-old or my 15-year-old?"

And it's balance; it's moderation. But video games can also be awesome, you know? I like to play them too, but I'm not nearly as talented as my son is.

And what about social media? I hear, at least anecdotally, I've talked to university presidents. They're talking about how anxiety has gotten through the roof, and some people have pointed it to—that this is a generation that kind of grew up in social media. What do y'all know about that?

Well, that's a really big issue. So first of all, this is the first real generation of digital natives who are growing up on social media platforms. I think we try to take a fairly balanced approach. We have been critical of some of the big social media players for allowing inappropriate content on their platform, whether it's cyber bullying or—you know, the one thing about some of the platforms, if you think about, say, Instagram and Snapchat, which are where a lot of kids are today, there's a constant comparison of yourself.

I wrote a book back in 2012 called "Talking Back to Facebook," where I talked about the fact—and I'm the father of two daughters—that millions of girls out there and boys do Photoshop their images on Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, meaning they're wanting to show an ideal personality or an ideal image, which is just unrealistic.

So we've tried to work closely with the big platforms and tried to get them to clean up some of the stuff that's on there and be aware of how many hundreds of millions of kids are on those platforms. But the truth is this: You know, I know, as a father of teenagers, kids are on those platforms.

The question is, how do you both limit the amount of time and also use those platforms for the good stuff? And I think this is—as a parent, you really have to talk with your kids about social media, and teachers do too. Much of the curriculum that we have in schools around the United States and globally is about how do you deal with social media, how do you use it responsibly, and how do you not engage in bullying or all the other kinds of things that can be negative on a social media platform?

We're very frank with the guys who run the big platforms too about trying to clean up those platforms and make them kid-friendly and appropriate too. So I think that's a big Common Sense mission.

Have you found that folks have been receptive to that, to your feedback?

It depends. I will be honest; you know, I really will say this: It depends on the platform and the company. I think a lot of it has to do with who the people are who lead the organization because it's the same thing in a way. At the end of the day, there are a ton of great people who work at Khan Academy, but you set the tone in the culture—you do.

And there's a degree to which I do that at Common Sense. I think when it comes to that, it really depends platform by platform. I think that's really true in life that you have to show leadership. Just like as a parent, you and your spouse have to set the family role models, and you have to set good examples for your kids, including what media and technology is.

But I think that some of the platforms have been more responsive than others. You know, the other thing is—it's funny because as a Stanford professor, I've had so many thousands of students who went into the technology industry. I think that people who work in the tech industry have to realize the incredible impact of the platforms they've built on the lives of everybody out there, and they have to be responsible for the content of those platforms, and also some of the design of those platforms.

So that you don't have people sitting there watching, you know, nine hours in a row of their favorite show. I think it's really about—I think there's a big role for Common Sense and folks like you, Sal, and all of us, and parents and kids out there to ask the platforms to be responsible.

I think one of the things about this crisis is, a lot of them have really stepped up to the plate. If you look at the partners with Wide Open School, it hasn't just been you guys, but you know, Google and Zoom have been really good at apple, and that's been great because they have such huge reach.

They owe it—I really feel they have a responsibility to the public to do right by the public, and I think that in a number of cases, they're really stepping up and should. They're going to need to do that long-term as education becomes increasingly online and learn-at-home distance learning kind of stuff.

Yeah, and in fairness to them—and it is these are incredibly hard issues—and obviously, we are right now streaming on YouTube and Facebook, so we're able to leverage social media for hopefully, not evil.

And even, you know, some of the things that are not optimal about it, you know, they're all these really interesting edge cases around free speech or how do you control things or if you have some machine learning algorithm that's optimizing for views, how do you control that?

So I definitely understand where some of their difficulties lie. But it is—it's a real thing. I—you know, when we talk to university people running universities and high schools right now, the amount of anxiety and depression from kids, to your point, comparing themselves to others or getting bullied or bullying others, seems a little bit out of control.

Well, I don't want to end on that note. Jim, why don't you tell what are your hopes? What are your hopes for Common Sense Media? What are your hopes for what might happen in the coming months ahead or coming years ahead? I—you know, right before we got on, we were talking a little bit about whether we could get to a world of universal at-home internet access. What are your—you know, send on a high note if you're still there.

Well, maybe—maybe Jim has disappeared. So anyway, I'll thank Jim for joining. I thought that was really valuable and we were able to get 90% of what we were hoping to get from Jim. They do really great work at Common Sense, and I encourage any of you all with more questions. We have a little bit more time.

I'm always happy to answer these questions. I think there are—there's actually a lot of questions. You see someone asked—this is Nikhil Govinder asked for both myself and Jim, "How has social media had a positive and negative effect on your life?"

I would say social media for me personally has for the most part been a positive effect on my life. Obviously, the early days of Khan Academy, you know, people think Khan Academy started with videos. We actually started with this little software platform that I was running for my cousins, and I made videos to supplement that software. But obviously having, if you consider YouTube to be a social media platform, having a place where I could publish and people discover allowed people to discover Khan Academy, allowed some of the first funders to realize that this was an effort worth doing.

So I think Khan Academy has benefited from that. We obviously still leverage social media a lot; we're doing it right now. But I would also say that I'm fortunate, and I do consider myself fortunate that, you know, I didn't in the same way grow up with social media.

I could imagine the things that Jim is talking about when you're 12, you know, 13 years old, 14-year-old, or you're a 10-year-old with a fake account pretending you're 13 years old—that it can put a lot of pressure on you to try to be something you're not. Or when your frontal lobe isn't fully developed, you might be putting things out there into the world that later you might be not so proud of, and it's good that, you know, for a lot of us, we were lucky enough that it wasn't documented on social media.

I think that can also lead to some stresses, you know, generally. In my own personal life, I've gotten a lot of people saying, "Hey Sal, you have to get on Twitter more! You gotta post on Instagram more!" And I think, like, the 17 or 18-year-old Sal or the 20-year-old Sal actually would have loved doing that where he said, "Look at this really deep thing I have to say."

But I think these days, I feel a little bit maybe overexposed. I'm like, "Well, I know people really don't need that little weird thing that I'm thinking about right now." But you know, overall, I think social media can be a very positive thing, but you just have to be careful.

Jim, people were asking, "How has social media personally?" What about yourself? How has social media been a positive or negative, or—and how for you, Jim?

You know, it's interesting. I think what you just said is so intelligent. I think it's been overall a positive. You know, it's interesting because as a parent, I've had there been a lot of times when I was concerned about particularly my kids when they were younger about some of the bullying but also that comparison. You know, I mentioned the body image issue.

Me, I'm not a big user of social media myself. But I think it's all about how you use it. It's like life. If you use it wisely and in balance and moderation, use it for the good things, social media can be incredible. If you use it for negative things, to be hurtful to other people or to worry about—to play out your identity, it can be challenging.

It's an ongoing effort for me as a parent, but I’m—I’m—I think we have a huge role, and you have a huge role in educating our own kids about it first and foremost, setting a good role. I would say that to parents, the number one thing you do is try to be a good role model, right? You have to model that for your kids.

If you're bullying other people online or on a social media platform or texting nasty things to people, even as an adult, because adults do that, that's not good! But, you know, this is the world we live in. I'm glad I didn't grow up with it too, though.

So I thought that was a really good—I'm glad I grew up in an era where, you know, you just didn't have it. But now, I think it's all about using it and using Common Sense.

Yup, no, that's a good way to end. And I will add, I've had, you know, a lot of what has driven my life is my attempts to help my cousins, and there's been a couple of moments over the last few years where I literally would call up a cousin, and I was like, "Do you realize that I and the whole world can see that picture that someone took of you in that situation? Take it down! Future employers will see it! This is not going to be good for you!"

And so I think a lot of folks don't realize that someone takes out their phone, takes a picture of you, and some, you know, doing something silly, and it's out there, and it's actually really hard to get it out. And your employers will see it; you know, your future in-laws will see it. You have to be—yeah, you have to be very careful.

And I think a lot of young people don't realize that it's not just the here and now—there's long-term implications. So yeah, be very, very, very careful of all of these things.

So Jim, no better person than yourself to talk about social media and media generally. Thanks for joining, and thanks for your partnership on all of what we're trying to do to support families.

So honestly, my honor to be here. I am such a huge fan of Khan Academy and of yours personally. I'd say the same thing: good luck as a dad, just like good luck to me as a dad during these crazy times. But we are huge fans, and I'm going to end by saying what I said at the beginning: you guys should all support Khan Academy! It is like this incredible institution, not-for-profit, started by one of the best people I've ever known.

So bless you! Thank you; it was an honor to be here, Sal. I will look forward to working with you for many years to come.

Great! Thanks, Jim, and stay safe! Take care of the family.

All right, well thanks everyone for joining. It was a fun conversation, and please continue to join us for—I'll see you on Monday with our next daily live stream.