Brandi Vesco of Sparks is the mom of an 8-year-old and a co-leader of Wait Until 8th Reno-Sparks, a group that encourages families to have kids wait until the end of eighth-grade to start using smartphones. The local chapter launched in December, and as of mid-March, 481 families in Washoe County had taken the pledge.
The group will host a free screening of the documentary film Childhood 2.0, which looks at harms linked to social-media use among children—including suicide, mental-health crises and sexual predators—from the points of view of dozens of kids, parents and experts. A discussion will follow, moderated by Sarah Johns from KTVN. The event will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 14, at Hug High School, at 3530 Sullivan Lane, in Sparks. The film is intended for viewers 13 and older, and organizers are offering free child care and dinner so that families with younger children can attend. This event is free, but registration by April 9 is required. To register, visit formurl.com/to/growingupdigital.
One thing that stood out to me in the film was parents talking about how completely different it is to raise a child in the social-media age. How has that played out for you as a parent?
A big thing is that kids don’t go outside and play all the time like they used to. There are pockets where it is still happening, but it’s rare now … where it used to be—the sky is blue; children are outside playing. It’s been hard. I’ve had to actually create that atmosphere here on our block, where I go around and say, “Hey, are you willing to let your kids come outside and play without us watching them?”
Are people amenable?
Yeah, they are. But a lot of times, the kids are busy on screens or at first want to go play video games. They’re kind of addicted to it. So, when they’re outside, it’s like, “What do we do?” When I was a kid, you didn’t tell me what to do. I put a backpack on, got on my bike, and I was gone all day. You almost have to teach them, this is how you play. And they start getting better at it. My daughter’s now able to spend, like, four or five hours outside with her friends.
Another thing discussed in the film is how easy it is for sexual predators to access children and teenagers online. What kinds of conversations do you have with parents about that?
I don’t think most parents realize. That’s why we want people to see this film. As a parent, you don’t know, because their world changes really rapidly, and it’s not like you’re looking over their shoulder that entire time. We can’t even grasp it. It’s completely different from our online world, and so most parents are in the dark. They think their kid’s safe because they’re in the bedroom, and they’re not out on the block. It’s the opposite.
The first thing I say (to parents) is that we’re a group of parents who are banding together to say “not yet” to the smartphone together, until at least the end of eighth-grade, to crush that social pressure on kids to have one. And usually they’re like, “Oh God, yeah.” They feel kind of helpless. Some of them are like, “That ship sailed,” and I’m like, “Well, here are some things you can do if you want to dial it back, if it doesn’t feel good. No. 1, keep it out of their bedroom at night.” … Most parents, I think, are vaguely aware of addiction issues—the things we experience as adults; we can feel our concentration spans diminishing. We can feel ourselves not able to put the phone down. So, I think we know that’s going on for our kids, too, but we don’t quite understand how much harder it is for them because of where they are developmentally.
How does the pledge work?
Typically, you’d go to www.waituntil8th.org and click “take the pledge,” and you enter your child’s school name, school zip code and grade level. Once 10 people from the same school and grade have signed, those parents get an email with a list of all the others in their child’s same grade in school. … They get connected. It creates a community. They can then have each other’s emails and say, “Let’s get together for a Sunday play date.”
What I’ve been doing is going to schools with a table and with my volunteers and having them sign up on paper—just making it as easy as possible for people to hear about this.
“We can feel ourselves not able to put the phone down. So, I think we know that’s going on for our kids, too, but we don’t quite understand how much harder it is for them because of where they are developmentally.”
Brandi Vesco
What else do you want people to consider?
We just saw Meta and YouTube both found guilty for creating products that harm children’s health. Snapchat and TikTok both settled before those cases went to trial. That tells you a lot. We’re now getting definitive proof of stuff we’ve always suspected and seen correlative evidence of.
The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study is a massive National Institutes of Health-funded study looking at more than 10,000 kids across the United States. Those results are starting to roll in, and they’re showing direct links between adolescent smartphone use and depression, obesity, sleep deprivation and attention deficits.
Australia banned social media use for children under 16. Is there something that you would like to see happen in the U.S. in terms of legislation of tech for kids?
There’s a long list of countries that are now starting to do this. I don’t see that happening here. These companies make a lot of money off of kids. So, getting them to change this—I would love to see that, but it’s really going to be up to us to take practical steps and give our kids the tools they need, teach them what misinformation is, and teach them, “this is social comparison, and it’s going to make you feel like crap. This is sextortion. If someone comes to you with this, come tell me”—because a lot of kids don’t.
Sextortion is ending in suicide a lot of the time, because we’re in this period of very vulnerable brain development, where the impulsivity is hitting the gas. The porn is extreme and easily accessible. But the biggest scare to me is this is consuming our children’s time and crowding out developmentally critical, real-world experiences. And that’s bad.