Oct 9, 2026 · 48 min · 10 segments
A teenager spent 26 hours straight on TikTok during summer break. Natalie Boll said that isn’t an accident. It’s the design. In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with…
Natalie BollGuest
Steve IspasHost
Now, what is your understanding, what's going to happen with the money that Mera is paying, this $18 billion? And it looks like pretty much all of it goes to the states, right? I think California maybe is getting $2.1 billion.
And from what I was reading, a lot of it is actually going to advocacy and awareness of digital harms for young people.
And so when I read that, I think the frustrating thing that I felt was that there's so much money.
I mean, this money, the 18 billion, I mean, it's not all going to go out right away.
And there's a lot of things associated where the money goes and how, but what I was seeing is that a lot of money is now going into advocacy against social media harms.
And so when I started researching social media harms, but three and a half, four years ago, there wasn't a lot of people talking about it.
And there was a small group of survivor parents who had lost children to social media harms that were advocating for changes to platforms.
I myself had change.org to stop the anonymous apps that were really causing harms for teens.
And I started seeing a pattern of these NGOs, charities, getting flooded with money to talk about social media harms.
And I wasn't seeing a lot of real tangible solutions, like creating spaces that are safer for them.
And so it got really alarming to me seeing just the amount of money that's going into this problem.
So to me, it's not adding up on how they're actually going about discussing and talking about child being harm online.
Well, it's hard not to draw a parallel with the homeless situation that we do have here in California, where there's like over 20...
It's over $20 billion that's been spent on the homeless issue, and the situation is getting worse.
Now, what is your understanding, what's going to happen with the money that Mera is paying, this $18 billion? And it looks like pretty much all of it goes to the states, right? I think California maybe is getting $2.1 billion.
And from what I was reading, a lot of it is actually going to advocacy and awareness of digital harms for young people.
And so when I read that, I think the frustrating thing that I felt was that there's so much money.
I mean, this money, the 18 billion, I mean, it's not all going to go out right away.
And there's a lot of things associated where the money goes and how, but what I was seeing is that a lot of money is now going into advocacy against social media harms.
And so when I started researching social media harms, but three and a half, four years ago, there wasn't a lot of people talking about it.
And there was a small group of survivor parents who had lost children to social media harms that were advocating for changes to platforms.
I myself had change.org to stop the anonymous apps that were really causing harms for teens.
And I started seeing a pattern of these NGOs, charities, getting flooded with money to talk about social media harms.
And I wasn't seeing a lot of real tangible solutions, like creating spaces that are safer for them.
And so it got really alarming to me seeing just the amount of money that's going into this problem.
So to me, it's not adding up on how they're actually going about discussing and talking about child being harm online.
Well, it's hard not to draw a parallel with the homeless situation that we do have here in California, where there's like over 20...
It's over $20 billion that's been spent on the homeless issue, and the situation is getting worse.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
