The Report Card with Nat Malkus
Oct 21, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min · 11 segments
On The Report Card, we talk a lot about schools, but in this episode we do something a little different and talk about one of the populations…
Daniel A. CoxGuest
Nat MalkusHost
So I want to get deeply into the the work that you've done on the technology effects and so forth.
But before we get into the technology, like just basic question, are the kids all right? I mean, if you're looking at this, would you say, yeah, this is real like the condition of.
I'm sort of bridging this zone that you do some stuff with 13 to 17 year olds and then with sort of young adults sort of in the 20s, I think.
know, Gen Z is like your older teenagers to, you know, late 20s, maybe early 30s.
And that's the group that we largely are considering young for the sake of our work.
So if somebody just asked you, and I'm about to, are they doing all right? How do you respond?
I think it's really difficult to say anything about an entire generation because I think so much of... their experience is divided by class, divided by race and gender.
One of the things that we found in this report when it comes to social media and video game use is there's a pronounced class divide.
That if you're raised by college educated parents, you're far more likely to have limitations and constraints on the amount of time you're spending on social media or playing video games.
And that is really, really important, right? We know if you allow teens to spend the time however they want, they're going to spend a lot of time on these devices.
And the impact is really pernicious, that there's all these negative correlations, whether it's lack of sleep, less time spent with friends, negative impacts on schoolwork.
The more time you are spending in front of a screen scrolling passively or playing video games is less time you're doing other types of activities.
So I want to get into that, but Dan, you're the director of the Survey Center on American Life.
Is most of the evidence that you're going to talk about today and just that you use generally survey results, or do you use other sorts of evidence as well?
This is basically like a large time diary where we're having people talk about their AI use.
So I want to get deeply into the the work that you've done on the technology effects and so forth.
But before we get into the technology, like just basic question, are the kids all right? I mean, if you're looking at this, would you say, yeah, this is real like the condition of.
I'm sort of bridging this zone that you do some stuff with 13 to 17 year olds and then with sort of young adults sort of in the 20s, I think.
know, Gen Z is like your older teenagers to, you know, late 20s, maybe early 30s.
And that's the group that we largely are considering young for the sake of our work.
So if somebody just asked you, and I'm about to, are they doing all right? How do you respond?
I think it's really difficult to say anything about an entire generation because I think so much of... their experience is divided by class, divided by race and gender.
One of the things that we found in this report when it comes to social media and video game use is there's a pronounced class divide.
That if you're raised by college educated parents, you're far more likely to have limitations and constraints on the amount of time you're spending on social media or playing video games.
And that is really, really important, right? We know if you allow teens to spend the time however they want, they're going to spend a lot of time on these devices.
And the impact is really pernicious, that there's all these negative correlations, whether it's lack of sleep, less time spent with friends, negative impacts on schoolwork.
The more time you are spending in front of a screen scrolling passively or playing video games is less time you're doing other types of activities.
So I want to get into that, but Dan, you're the director of the Survey Center on American Life.
Is most of the evidence that you're going to talk about today and just that you use generally survey results, or do you use other sorts of evidence as well?
This is basically like a large time diary where we're having people talk about their AI use.
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