Richard Reeves

certainly when my kids are at home, when I talk to other parents about it, the way I think about it is for boys and young men, it's less that what they're doing online with some of the exceptions we've just mentioned is directly harmful, right?

It's not much evidence that gaming is harmful in and of itself.

It's more, what are they not doing when they're doing that?

What is it displacing, right?

And so if it's displacing in real life activity and particularly, and I think this picks up your point about relationships, developing relational skills,

In the physical world.

And the thing that I really worry about is the atrophying of those relational skills, which are not just very important, but more important.

We talked about AI a minute ago.

We also talked about how marriages and relationships now need a lot more negotiation.

I think actually relational skills are getting more important by the day.

And yet, if you're spending all your time online, you're not developing those skills.

And so it's really, for me, it's about how it displaces the in real life activities, the way you really learn how to be in the world.

And that's the bigger problem for boys.

I think it's more directly harmful to girls and young women in some ways because of the visual elements and the bullying elements you see online and the self-harm that will very often come.

From the body image problems.

And so they're just playing out differently for boys and girls.

But if I'm a parent, I'm thinking, look, it's not that your boy being online is bad.

And probably most of the content he's seeing, he's discerning and he's arguing about it.

And you should be curious about that.

Like I had one of my sons sit down.