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Hollywood Trouble, Big Tech & The Crisis With Kids — Jeffrey Katzenberg & Hari Ravichandran (Modern Wisdom #967)

Jul 2025 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 Modern Wisdom (host Chris Williamson) Ages 12–17

Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.

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Media executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and Aura CEO Hari Ravichandran discuss beta-test data from roughly 2,500 kids aged 12 to 17 showing substantial shares reporting depression, disordered-eating-related concerns, and self-harm or suicidal thoughts, which they present to host Chris Williamson as evidence of a youth mental-health crisis associated with smartphone and social-media use. Ravichandran describes learning of his own daughter's difficulties only after she needed inpatient psychiatric care, and both guests argue that feed algorithms optimized for engagement are associated with disproportionate pressure on still-developing adolescent judgment. Rather than proposing outright bans, they advocate parental-insight tools that surface a teen's digital activity patterns without covert surveillance, comparing it to a graduated, supervised approach like a learner's driving permit. TechKids Foundation includes this as a substantive discussion of both the scale of the concern and one proposed policy/product response.

22% of surveyed teens reported self-harm or suicidal thoughts, per the cited Aura data

From Aura's beta test of roughly 2,500 kids aged 12–17, cited by Ravichandran in the conversation as one measure of the youth mental-health concerns motivating the company's parental-insight product.

46% of surveyed teens reported experiencing depression, per the cited Aura data

From the same 2,500-teen Aura beta-test dataset, discussed alongside a 52% figure for disordered-eating-related concerns.

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Williamson, Chris, host. "Hollywood Trouble, Big Tech & The Crisis With Kids – Jeffrey Katzenberg & Hari Ravichandran." Modern Wisdom, episode 967, July 14, 2025.

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