Advisory

Lessons Learned While Working on Online Teen Bullying

Nov 2023 🇺🇸 arturobejar.org Ages 13–14

Published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this essay summarizes what Béjar says his team learned over roughly six years building tools to help teens dealing with online bullying and harassment at Facebook — work he refers to internally as 'Compassion' work. He writes that most content teens flagged as their most upsetting experiences did not technically violate platform policy, that immediate, validating support mattered more to teens than delayed content moderation, and that giving teens more relevant, specific reporting options sharply increased how many completed a request for help. He recommends that companies build emotional-support tooling in partnership with outside behavioral experts and treat safety features as a baseline requirement for operating any teen-facing product.

11% to 82% support-flow completion

Redesigning in-app support flows to better match teens' actual experience raised completion rates among 13–14-year-olds from about 11% to about 82%, Béjar writes, describing his earlier Facebook Protect & Care work.

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CITATION

Bejar, Arturo. 'Lessons Learned While Working on Online Teen Bullying.' Supporting document, arturobejar.org, published with Senate testimony, November 7, 2023.

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Talk

The Chaos Machine: How Social Media Rewired Our Brains and Our World — The Rich Roll Podcast #703

In this two-hour-plus episode of The Rich Roll Podcast, Max Fisher discusses the reporting behind The Chaos Machine: how he came to cover social media as an international-affairs story, the ways he argues algorithmic feeds are associated with shifts in users' moral judgments and tolerance for outrage, and research he cites linking recommendation systems to greater acceptance of misinformation and, in volatile settings, susceptibility to violence. Fisher describes engagement-driven design as functioning like a habit-forming product, and the conversation closes with practical strategies for reducing exposure — from disabling algorithmic feeds to muting engagement metrics. TechKids Foundation includes this episode because it pairs Fisher's investigative findings with the kind of concrete, family-usable mitigation steps the library's solutions tag exists to surface.

Sep 2022 🇺🇸 The Rich Roll Podcast

Talk

¿Cómo afectan las pantallas a tus hijos? (BBVA Aprendemos Juntos talk)

In this long-form filmed talk for Aprendemos Juntos 2030 — the Spanish-language education series produced by BBVA and distributed with El País — Michel Desmurget speaks for close to ninety minutes on how screens relate to children's development. The INSERM neuroscience research director argues that heavy recreational screen use is associated with weaker language, shorter attention, and disrupted sleep in children; contends that app and platform design is engineered to keep young users engaged; and dismisses the « digital natives » idea as a myth unsupported by the studies he reviews. He closes with his standing recommendations: little or no screen time in the early years, firm daily limits afterward, and reading as the leisure habit he says is most consistently associated with stronger cognitive and emotional development. TechKids includes it as his major Spanish-language talk, extending his French argument to a global audience.

Jun 2024 🇪🇸 BBVA Aprendemos Juntos 2030

Video

Le livre, seul « antidote » face aux écrans (France Inter grand entretien)

Two days after Faites-les lire! was published, Michel Desmurget returned to France Inter's weekend grand entretien, interviewed by Marion L'Hour and Ali Baddou. Where his 2019 appearance pressed the case that heavy recreational screen use is associated with weaker language, attention, and school outcomes, this interview argues the response: the INSERM neuroscience research director presents pleasure reading as the one everyday habit he says the literature most consistently associates with stronger language, concentration, general knowledge, and empathy in children — the « antidote », in his own deliberately pointed word, to the screen habits he criticizes. He urges parents to read aloud early, keep books visible at home, and defend reading time against recreational screen time. TechKids includes it as the broadcast companion to the Faites-les lire! entry: the same author moving from diagnosis to remedy.

Sep 2023 🇫🇷 France Inter (Radio France)

News Investigation

« C'est l'ensemble de notre humanité qui est impacté par les écrans » (Millénaire 3 interview)

Millénaire 3, the foresight publication of the Métropole de Lyon — the public authority of Desmurget's own home region, where his INSERM lab (Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod) is based — published this extended interview by Cédric Polère in April 2024. Desmurget restates his synthesis in civic terms: heavy recreational screen use in children is, in the research he reviews, associated with weaker language, concentration, and school achievement, and he argues the erosion runs beyond test scores to empathy, attention, and shared culture — « l'ensemble de notre humanité ». He connects declining reading skill among French school-leavers to civic vulnerability, contending that citizens who read poorly are easier targets for misinformation, and again offers reading as the counter-habit. TechKids includes it as a rare local-government-published interview, showing his argument entering French public-policy discussion, not just media debate.

Apr 2024 🇫🇷 Millénaire 3 — Métropole de Lyon

News Investigation

I Mentored Mark Zuckerberg. I Loved Facebook. But I Can't Stay Silent About What's Happening.

Published as a TIME cover story and adapted from his book Zucked, this essay traces Roger McNamee's path from early Facebook investor and Mark Zuckerberg mentor to public critic. McNamee argues that advertising-driven platforms compete for attention by amplifying fear and outrage, and he associates this design with polarization, privacy erosion, and habit-forming use he characterizes as 'behavioral addiction' — his description, not a clinical finding. Directly relevant to this library, he warns that a growing share of children may come to prefer hyperstimulating virtual experience to the real world, and that products like Instagram can empower bullies. He closes by calling for public-health research on heavy internet use and for regulation of platform design. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as McNamee's most widely read condensed statement of his platform-design critique.

Jan 2019 🇺🇸 TIME

Video

Zucked: Early Facebook Investor Roger McNamee on How the Company Became a Threat to Democracy

In this Democracy Now! interview, early Facebook investor Roger McNamee walks through what he describes as the habit-building playbook of consumer platforms — notifications, rewards, and personalization tuned to keep people scrolling longer than they intend. He raises concerns specific to children and teens: he says Instagram carries 'huge issues with bullying and body shaming,' argues that products aimed at very young children, such as Messenger for kids, accustom them early to a world of constant data collection, and points to rising teen-suicide figures during the smartphone era as an alarming pattern that, in his view, demands scrutiny of social media's possible role — an association he raises, not an established causal finding. Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as McNamee's fullest on-record discussion of children and teens.

Oct 2019 🇺🇸 Democracy Now!

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