WndrCo founding partner Jeffrey Katzenberg warned that the impact of kids’ unsupervised access to technology is “destroying a generation” during Axios’ annual AI+ NY Summit Wednesday.
By 11, over half of children have a smartphone — but research has found screen time has played a key role in the youth mental health crisis.
Just over half of children in the United States — 53 percent — now own a smartphone by the age of 11. And 84 percent of teenagers now have their own phones, immersing themselves in a rich and complex world of experiences that adults sometimes need a lot of decoding to understand.
These stats come from a new, nationally representative survey of media use among children ages 8-18, by Common Sense Media, which has been tracking this since 2003.
Katzenberg, an entertainment executive turned technology investment firm co-founder, is a backer of Hari Ravichandran’s digital security firm Aura, which provides online safety tools for families and individuals
Aura recently launched an AI-powered tool that helps parents analyze their children’s behavior and engagement online.
“Today, you can have a teenager sitting across the table from you and you don’t actually know who they’re with, what they’re doing, or really where they’re at,” Katzenberg told Axios’ Ina Fried.
“The damage that we are doing to our kids, in terms of the online, unsupervised, un-parented is destroying a generation,” he added.
