Candice Odgers

Everyone's talking about this period of time.

But, you know, we were sitting there on teenagers' phones and talking to them about digital technology as it rolled out.

And so that was a bit of a unique vantage point.

So at that time, we were really ending our panic over video games, right?

And so we had just lived through the Columbine school shootings.

School shootings were increasing.

All the panic in that moment was around violence and video games.

So they were commissioning panels to try and understand, you know, is it that

Time online or time with these first shooter games is leading to increases in violence.

And so the focus was really on video games at that time.

And then it shifted, right?

And then it was screens in general.

So what are screens and screen time doing to our children?

And there was this Atlantic article by a psychologist named Gene Twenge that asked this question, have smartphones destroyed a generation?

And everybody quickly said, yes.

right?

Yes, they have.

And that set off a whole debate about whether screen time was associated with poor outcomes.

And we had all of these debates in the literature, you know, data that essentially showed there's this tiny correlation we find is less than 1% of the variation.

And it's the same correlation you find if you look in these same data sets and look at whether you wear glasses or you eat potato chips or you are left-handed, right?