The Trusted Health Organizations That Are Selling Out Our Kids: How Science Is Seduced by Silicon Valley Money

Sep 2

About the author: Richard Freed, PhD, is a psychologist and author of Better Than Real Life: The Secret Science Addicting Kids to Screens—and How to Save Childhood and Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age. He is a leading expert on Silicon Valley’s use of persuasive design (psychological manipulation) in social media, video games, and online videos and how that affects children’s health.

Note: This post was previously published on Dr. Freed’s Substack. We are sharing it here because we believe parents deserve to know about the problematic financial ties our nation’s top health organizations have with the consumer tech industry and how these conflicts of interest can compromise “trusted” messengers.

Why, despite more than a decade’s worth of evidence that screens are harming youth, are screens continuing to be pushed on our kids at home and school? In this article, and also described in detail in my new book Better Than Real Life, I explore how four of the most trusted health organizations in the U.S. have largely abandoned their duty of protecting kids from harmful tech and instead now fulfill a PR role for the Silicon Valley corporations that they are tied to financially. This is the story of how these four trusted names in children’s health have aligned with the consumer tech industry—and how that betrayal is helping shift childhood from the real world to addictive, isolating digital platforms. In writing my book Better Than Real Life, I reached out to the four organizations to outline my concerns. Each either dismissed my concerns outright or did not respond to my repeated efforts to reach them.

It would be both absurd and dangerous if McDonald’s and Coca-Cola funded the health organizations that made the dietary guidelines for children, as such conflicts of interest would surely risk kids’ health. But when it comes to the health impacts of youth screen use, the same fundamental ethical principle is being ignored. The nation’s four leading organizations tasked with providing guidelines for kids’ digital use are quietly engaging in financial relationships with tech corporations whose products they are evaluating.

The combined power of these organizations’ industry-friendly messaging has helped create a destructive pop-culture mythology that suggests our kids should spend their lives on screens at home and in school. As this generation of kids leaves behind essential real-world experiences to instead sit sedentary, staring at often toxic content on screens, they predictably suffer from a host of physical, emotional, and academic problems.

For years, many parents and other caregivers have understandably relied upon these health organizations to make judgments about kids’ screen use. These orgs’ polished “we’ve-got-your-back” messaging is so convincing that it has duped even the most sophisticated of health professionals. It is for this reason that their hurtful double-dealing must be unmasked. Doing so is a crucial step in providing our kids with the healthy childhood they need.

The American Academy of Pediatrics

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was once a science-based stalwart in child media policy but now has an industry-funded social-media advocate making its youth social media and screen time guidelines.

The AAP’s 2011 statement—“Children, Adolescents, Obesity, and the Media”—encouraged a two-hour limit on all entertainment screens for children two years and older to protect them from obesity and its related problems, such as type 2 diabetes. Then came the 2012 to 2016 heyday for Silicon Valley, e.g., Facebook’s 2012 IPO, demonstrated by the widespread adoption of social media and other screen-based products. The AAP began to face pressure to drop its two-hour screen rule and adopt a more industry-friendly stance—especially from pundits financed by tech corporations. In 2016, the AAP complied and abandoned that guideline to instead partner with the consumer tech industry. This marked the beginning of the AAP’s descent from a science-based health organization to an industry PR body, which continues to this day.

No move embodies this transformation more than the AAP’s appointment of pediatrician Megan Moreno to lead its communications on kids and screens. Dr. Moreno is a youth social media advocate who received funding from Facebook/Instagram from 2018 to 2020 for her research. She is also the lead author of the AAP’s current screen guidelines for children ages five and up and is the co–medical director of the AAP’s Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. Dr. Moreno and her Center of Excellence consistently downplay the risks of screen time and instead promote the unsafe idea that “active” social media use, such as “liking” and posting, is beneficial. Moreno contends in an AAP video that young people “are less likely to experience depression symptoms” if they aren’t passively “scrolling and lurking” on social media, but instead use it actively by employing its “like and interact” features.

Moreno’s directive is similar to that coming from within Facebook itself, as it allows the social media giant to better track and profit from users. Tragically, Moreno’s advice appears to put kids at risk. A 2023 journal article looking at the impact of social media on young adults declared: “Symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress were more closely linked to active than to passive use of social media.”

The Center of Excellence also has recommended Zuckerberg-funded Common Sense Media (CSM) as a lead resource for parents, noting that CSM “emphasizes how quality of media use is more important than setting a screen time limit.” Notably, the AAP’s own current research reveals that the guidelines established by Moreno and the Center of Excellence are potentially hazardous to children’s health. In 2023, the AAP issued its official report on child obesity, “Clinical practice guideline for the evaluation and treatment of children and adolescents with obesity.” This report was issued by a truly science-based group within the AAP and provides guidance that directly contradicts that of Moreno and the AAP’s Center of Excellence, as it names “screen time” as a risk factor for youth obesity.

The American Psychological Association

The U.S. Surgeon General warned in 2023 of growing evidence linking social media to youth mental health issues. However, in that same year, the American Psychological Association (APA) took a markedly different tone. In its Health Advisory on Social Media Use in Adolescence, the APA claims that social media is “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.”

While the primary public face of the APA is that of a mental health organization, it is also a professional organization that promotes the careers of psychologists, including those working at social media corporations. As a professional organization, the APA has a great financial incentive to put a “child safe” stamp on social media. This is because psychologists can’t ethically design products that harm kids.

So, it’s not surprising that evidence from within the APA itself undermines its risk-minimizing claims about kids’ use of social media. The APA’s chief science officer and a cochair on the expert advisory panel responsible for the APA’s social media advisory, Dr. Mitch Prinstein, countered his own organization’s guidance when discussing parenting his own kids, ages 10 and 12. He reported soon after the advisory’s release: “Wearing my APA hat . . . I am very faithful to the science [about kids’ use of social media]. As a parent, it’s my job to consume that science and make a decision that’s best for my kids, and I’m not letting my kids go anywhere near it.”

The result of the APA downplaying social media’s dangers? Kids are put at risk.

Common Sense Media

Common Sense Media (CSM) built its reputation on rating kids’ movies and games. Today, CSM is a multimillion-dollar tech-industry-lobbying organization promoting kids’ screen use, even at the expense of the science on children’s health. Let’s consider how and why CSM has changed.

In its early years, CSM advocated for the truth about kids’ use of technology. The organization’s counsel was consistent with that of its founder and CEO, Jim Steyer, who described the unmistakable health risks of kids’ screen time in his 2002 book The Other Parent. Because of such perils, Steyer says that parents should, “Set clear limits on the total number of hours that each family member should spend using all forms of media each week… (about two hours per day) for all media…” Similarly, in his 2012 book Talking Back to Facebook, Steyer cites long-standing research on the risks that screen time poses to youth obesity, academic performance, and emotional well-being. He also warns in this book of the addictive nature of consumer technologies and says for parents that actions “limiting the amount of time your kid spends in front a screen—are just as essential for tots as they are for teens.”

Yet beginning about a decade ago, CSM made a dramatic shift away from science to embrace the Silicon Valley business model of expanding screens in kids’ lives. What changed? I believe Steyer realized which side his bread is buttered on, as his org’s revenues are increasingly dependent on putting kids in front of screens and tech at home and school. Let’s take a look at three ways this is true:

#1—Common Sense Media is financed by tech corporations that profit from child screen use: Facebook and Instagram owner Mark Zuckerberg has been one of CSM’s biggest financial backers, as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has given CSM between $2.5 million and $4.9 million over the years. CSM also profits by lobbying for billion-dollar EdTech companies that seek to expand the role of technology in schools and have taxpayers cover the costs. Marc Benioff and his wife have given more than $5 million to CSM over the years. Benioff funded CSM’s 2015 California lobbying agenda to “ensure all future school bond proposals include funding streams for modern technology in our K–12 classrooms.”
#2—Common Sense Media has its own for-profit entertainment affiliate: CSM entered new dubious territory in 2021 by creating its for-profit affiliate, Common Sense Networks, and its platform, Sensical. Sensical is an ad-supported streaming platform for children as young as two. More kids’ screen time means more money for CSM.
#3—Common Sense Media’s duplicity on AI: Despite its recent “Protect Kids from Unsafe AI” campaign, CSM is financially invested in putting kids in front of AI. CSM has a for-profit subsidiary, Common Sense Growth, which is a venture capital fund that has invested in Kyron Learning, an EdTech AI product that “interacts” with students in the classroom. In other words, if CSM can convince educators and parents to use AI products, including Kyron, it’s poised to generate venture-capital-type returns.

Because CSM’s revenues depend upon putting screens and tech in front of kids at home and school, it’s extraordinarily misleading when Steyer claims that his organization provides “independent data on children’s use of media and technology, and the impact it has on their physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development.” This claim may have been true once, but today CSM’s recommendations do not prioritize children’s well-being but that of industry. CSM not only argues with self-interest that screen-time limits are less important, but even suggests that parents may harm kids by setting such limits. Moreover, Zuckerberg clearly gets a return on his CSM investment, as the “health” org repeatedly praises kids’ use of social media and criticizes research showing that social media pose health risks to kids.

CSM heavily publicizes elements within the organization that advocate for a healthier media environment. However, I believe this obscures a principal goal of CSM: to use its goodwill as a means of increasing kids’ screen and tech use at home and school.

Disturbingly, CSM also takes its screen and social media marketing directly to kids by providing schools its “free” Digital Citizenship Curriculum, which is used in over 70 percent of U.S. schools. This curriculum works against the educational and health goals of parents and schools, as it normalizes kids spending their lives on consumer screen technologies. As an example, a Common Sense Digital Citizenship video for students promotes social media use for children as young as 12, even though they’re not legally allowed on most platforms.

Michael Rich’s Digital Wellness Lab

Founded by pediatrician Michael Rich, the Digital Wellness Lab (DWL) is affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. But despite its respected branding, DWL’s financial backers sound like a who’s who of attendees at a Las Vegas consumer electronics trade show—Snap Inc., TikTok, Discord, Roblox, and others. Yet Rich still claims his organization is “unbiased” in judging the impact of screens on children.

Like other child media researchers who have aligned themselves with Silicon Valley’s profit-making aims, pediatrician Michael Rich has an impressive résumé regarding the health effects of children’s media use and is widely perceived as an expert on this topic. Yet Rich has made a career of taking industry money and pushing industry-friendly policy—all while declaring his recommendations represent objective science. For example, Rich presents his organization as impartial, claiming, “The Digital Wellness Lab is a hub for unbiased, scientific research and tools at your fingertips that parents and all users need now.”

In reality, Rich consistently provides guidance supportive of the Valley’s revenue model, calling screen time limits “obsolete” in an appearance on Good Morning America in 2024. This conflicts with Rich’s counsel prior to his taking so much industry money. In 2009, Rich explains in his “Ask the Mediatrician” feature: “After two hours of media per day, there is a consistent relationship between the number of hours of screentime (of all kinds, whether it teaches kids to read or teaches them to shoot their opponents) and a heavier weight. Keeping media below two hours a day can help avoid this effect.”

Rich, whose DWL is funded by Roblox, provides more industry-friendly publicity in a 2020 video, as he maintains that for kids playing Roblox “may be as valuable as interacting with your friends out in the park or something of that nature.” A month later, Rich says in a video presentation with a Roblox executive, “I love my friends and colleagues at Roblox.” The reality is that screen time poses a risk for child obesity while the time kids spend playing at a park prevents obesity.

The DWL’s widely touted affiliations with Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital give false legitimacy to Rich’s industry-aligned, science-contradicting child-screen promotions. Rich has effectively turned the two highly respected health organizations into marketers for kids’ use of consumer tech products. The result is that kids’ health is put at risk.

What We Must Do

This isn’t just about hypocrisy. It’s about a generation of children suffering the consequences of screen-centric lives: skyrocketing rates of depression, suicidality, screen addiction, obesity, and academic decline. Here are four actions we can take for our kids.

1. Seek guidance free from financial connections with Silicon Valley

All health research and advice should be absolutely free from conflicts of interest, particularly financial connections with industries that have a vested interest in promoting kids’ use of screens. I encourage parents and others invested in children’s well-being to reject the media guidance from the four health organizations named in this article. Likewise, these organizations should be called out for their betrayal of the public’s trust. To help this generation of children swimming in toxic screens, I encourage you to seek advice from truth-based organizations that are free of financial affiliations with industry.

2. Schools must protect their students from school programs promoting harmful screen use

School districts should discontinue Common Sense Media’s (CSM’s) Digital Citizenship Curriculum, which falsely claims that it speaks for “the health effects of screen time.” Schools should ask themselves why Zuckerberg-funded CSM offers this program to them for “free.” Consider the adage: If you’re not paying for a product, you (or the students) are the product. Parents, join together to contact your child’s school to say that you don’t want your kids being shown this consumer-tech-promoting CSM program. Schools, I encourage you to adhere to your conflict of interest policies that don’t allow student curriculum to be provided by industry-funded corporations that promote products posing health risks to kids.

Schools also have a responsibility to reject the EdTech corporate push to put screens and/or tech in front of kids during the school day, which is a key aim of CSM in its unabashed role as an EdTech lobbying group. Truly objective research shows that kids achieve better academically with less computer use at school and instead being provided reduced class size. It’s time to emphasize students’ connections with teachers, not machines. This also promotes kids’ school connectedness, which reduces the risk that kids will experience depression and suicidality.

3. Health care orgs have a responsibility to adhere to their ethics and speak for science

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) must immediately correct its harmful industry-promoting child-screen guidelines, including claims that kids benefit from “active” social media engagement and that screen time is less important. Likewise, respected health care institutions, such as Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, cannot allow their good names to be used by industry-funded “health” organizations to promote child-screen advice that runs counter to accepted medical science.

4. Reject the industry-funded lie that child screen time is less important

Industry wants you to believe it’s only “how” kids use screens—not how much. But that’s a hurtful myth, with the typical U.S. teen now spending 8 hours and 39 minutes each day using entertainment screen technologies (10 hours for Black and Latino/Hispanic teens). (Concurrent media use in this study, such as playing a video game while watching online videos, is counted separately. Time spent texting is not included in this total.) This profound overuse of screens displaces essential real-world activities and it’s a significant risk factor for child obesity, depression and suicidality (for social media), and academic decline. The amount of screen time matters—and every health organization covering this issue has a duty to speak for science.

As I make clear in my book Better Than Real Life, the responsibility for limiting kids’ use of screens made addictive through the secret science of persuasive design cannot be placed solely on parents. Organizations responsible for kids must take policy actions that provide all kids with the real-world-focused, screen-limited lives they need to be physically and emotionally healthy. When we collectively take action to limit the screens that rob kids of real-life engagement, we do more than reduce destructive screen time. We give our kids the healthy childhood they deserve—in the real world.

Sections of this article are adapted from Richard Freed’s new book Better Than Real Life: The Secret Science Addicting Kids to Screens—and How to Save Childhood.

Richard Freed