Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: As parents look to keep their kids safe online, identity
Speaker 2: protection firm Aura has released new AI tools to track
Speaker 2: youth mental health that comes on the heels of the
Speaker 2: startups one hundred and forty million dollar Series G funding round.
Speaker 2: Aura's CEO Hari Ravi Chandron, and the company's biggest investor,
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Katzenberg, managing partner at Winderco, are here with me,
Speaker 2: and I appreciate you guys joining me on this topic,
Speaker 2: which you know, I think finally is getting the attention
Speaker 2: that it deserves, the damage that social media and technology
Speaker 2: due to the mental health of our children. Jeff, let
Speaker 2: me start with you and ask what brought you to
Speaker 2: this investment and what sort of put you on this
Speaker 2: put you on this path?
Speaker 3: Love it?
Speaker 4: So. I spent forty years in the media and entertainment
Speaker 4: business at the Walt Disney Studios and a DreamWorks, and
Speaker 4: every day got up and was in the world of
Speaker 4: bringing to parents, moms, dads, and kids safe content and.
Speaker 3: The appreciation of you know what that means.
Speaker 4: And today keeping our kids safe has actually never been
Speaker 4: more challenging or more complicated because of these devices and
Speaker 4: the online lives that we have. When I parented my kids,
Speaker 4: there were three things I wanted to know.
Speaker 3: Where are they, what are they doing? And who are
Speaker 3: they with?
Speaker 4: And today they could be sitting in your kid can
Speaker 4: be sitting across you at a kitchen table with a
Speaker 4: phone in their hand.
Speaker 3: You cannot answer those three questions.
Speaker 4: As you said, there is actually just a growing epidemic
Speaker 4: of how damaged and damaging we are doing to our
Speaker 4: kids today, this generation. It's extraordinary. A few stats just
Speaker 4: to frame how big the problem is. So twenty percent
Speaker 4: of adolescents report.
Speaker 3: Low self esteem, fifty.
Speaker 4: Two percent have experienced or our experience and eating disorder.
Speaker 4: Seventy percent of teens say anxiety and depression is a
Speaker 4: major part among their peers, and a shocking twenty five
Speaker 4: percent have ideation around suicide. So this is just we're
Speaker 4: destroying our kids.
Speaker 3: And what Hari has done.
Speaker 4: As the founder of this is through his own personal experience,
Speaker 4: which he should tell you about dealing with his own family.
Speaker 4: Got on this mission two years ago to say he
Speaker 4: built a company in which he has brought security for
Speaker 4: families online.
Speaker 3: Now he's going to bring safety. So Harry, tell.
Speaker 2: Us about your experiences before starting this company, and then
Speaker 2: how are you solving the problem?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm happy to I have four kids, and
Speaker 1: so one of my kids about two years ago was
Speaker 1: going through a really tough patch, whether feeling depressed, feeling down,
Speaker 1: some negative coping strategies, which was very frightening to us
Speaker 1: as a family. And so leading up to that, you know,
Speaker 1: we were pretty tight knit family. You know, we spend
Speaker 1: time together. Ask her how she's doing. She says, Oh,
Speaker 1: everything's fine. And then as we're kind of going through
Speaker 1: the recovery cycle, we asked her how she's doing. She says,
Speaker 1: I'm doing fine, and so as a parent, you wonder,
Speaker 1: well she's saying the same thing, is she actually find
Speaker 1: or not right? And so then we started looking around
Speaker 1: for tools because the one thing I do I do
Speaker 1: know during that journey, when we were super privacy, Oorent
Speaker 1: never gave you know, never spend time on the kids
Speaker 1: device or anything like that. During the journey, we did
Speaker 1: spend some time on the device and there were things
Speaker 1: there that I wish we'd kind of found earlier because
Speaker 1: we might have been able to help her sooner. And
Speaker 1: there really weren't any tools. There just wasn't anything to
Speaker 1: actually go do this in a systematic way. And we
Speaker 1: already were helping a lot of families with content problems,
Speaker 1: etcetera that their kids had, So this is a natural
Speaker 1: entree for us, and frankly is a tool that I
Speaker 1: needed for my own kids. So I figured there's lots
Speaker 1: of lots of families that can also use the same
Speaker 1: technology as well.
Speaker 3: Jeff, how do you deal with this in your family?
Speaker 2: I mean, we've heard from recently Kate Winslet who said
Speaker 2: her method is just to ban all social media for
Speaker 2: her children.
Speaker 4: Can't you cannot. It's an impractical thing. And so what
Speaker 4: you need to do as a parent is you need tools.
Speaker 4: You need insights in order to be able to navigate
Speaker 4: and help your kids navigate through these.
Speaker 3: Challenges.
Speaker 4: And what you need for a twelve year old or
Speaker 4: thirteen year old is quite different from what you need
Speaker 4: for a sixteen year old or a seventeen year old.
Speaker 4: And what Aura has created and is delivering is not spying.
Speaker 4: It's about giving you the parent insights, giving you enough
Speaker 4: knowledge you can still give your kids a lot of
Speaker 4: leeway and a lot of privacy. We're not reading you
Speaker 4: as a parent, are not going to read their text,
Speaker 4: because if you do that, they're going to find.
Speaker 3: A way to get off this and get around it.
Speaker 4: In it they you know, they actually want some help,
Speaker 4: they want some guidance. We hear that from you know,
Speaker 4: our beta, from the kids that are on it today.
Speaker 3: And so the analogy I would give you is is
Speaker 3: that when.
Speaker 4: Your child turns sixteen years old and gets a driver's license,
Speaker 4: you don't send them out on a you know, on
Speaker 4: a highway doing sixty five miles an hour without practice,
Speaker 4: coaching and some experience in time.
Speaker 3: Why would this be any other different? Why? Why should
Speaker 3: this device?
Speaker 4: Why should you be out there in that world, in
Speaker 4: the wilderness with no guidance, no help, And parents right
Speaker 4: now are really really struggling with this. And it's why frankly,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm so proud to be on this mission
Speaker 4: with Hari, because I think he's created something that's gone
Speaker 4: from a nice to have to something that's actually essential.
Speaker 3: We hear all the time parents are just desperate for help.
Speaker 3: Is it an arms race? Hari?
Speaker 2: I mean, have you found a solution that will work
Speaker 2: forever or do you have to continually develop those tools?
Speaker 2: As you know social media continuating.
Speaker 1: It's always innovative innovation run. I mean you're continuously trying
Speaker 1: to stay out in front because people do catch up
Speaker 1: from behind, both in terms of you know, social media
Speaker 1: companies changing strategy, et cetera, but also because the competitive set,
Speaker 1: especially with the AI revolution, building things have been easier
Speaker 1: than ever before.
Speaker 3: So you have to build.
Speaker 1: Motes and go to market avenues in other areas beyond
Speaker 1: just technology. You have to keep evolving the tech as
Speaker 1: well and finding more and more use cases. But you
Speaker 1: have to do a lot more than that anymore, especially
Speaker 1: with AI making things so ubiquitous.
Speaker 2: Can you work with other social media companies? I mean,
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Katzenberg, you must know some of these executives who
Speaker 2: run you know, Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 3: Can't they be helping as well? It's a problem that
Speaker 3: they should be aware of.
Speaker 4: Maybe they can, but they have their missions they are
Speaker 4: on And I want to be clear, not all social
Speaker 4: media is bad.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: There's been incredible, incredible values that have been created in
Speaker 4: terms of community and communications and knowledge and just extraordinary
Speaker 4: access that we have in this new generation has with
Speaker 4: these tools in it, and.
Speaker 3: So this is a byproduct of it.
Speaker 4: The rabbit holes, the deep dark rabbit holes, that you know,
Speaker 4: one can go down or get sucked down into in it.
Speaker 4: And we're not here pointing fingers at anybody. What we
Speaker 4: are doing is is we're creating a solution. And frankly,
Speaker 4: I would think those companies would be thrilled with this solution.
Speaker 4: And you know, it comes out of these things you use.
Speaker 4: In my opinion and certainly my experience matters, they come
Speaker 4: out of a person with enough technical and experience knowledge
Speaker 4: in an area who suddenly comes upon a mission. And Hari,
Speaker 4: from his own personal experience with his own family, has
Speaker 4: been mission driven for the last two years, and I
Speaker 4: think that's what has created something that is so invaluable
Speaker 4: and practical and of the moment in time.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate you both coming by to talk about this.
Speaker 2: It's an issue that Bloomberg has focused on as well,
Speaker 2: so very important too, I think all of us, certainly
Speaker 2: as parents. Thanks very much, jeffre Katzenberg and Hari Rabi
Speaker 2: Chandron of Aura