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I'm Mark Sudall. Welcome back to Power and Politics. Joining me now is Sacred Heart University professor Doctor Bill Usman. Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. You know, we've been doing so many of these stories on kids and social media, and US teenagers spend an average of 3.5 to 4.8 hours per day on social media. How is it affecting their behavior? Well, you know, if you think about it. I can't imagine doing anything for 4 to 5 hours a day, and, and by the way, those are just averages, you know, there's, there's, there's some people who are on it much, much more than that. I can't imagine doing anything 4 to 5 hours a day that wouldn't have some type of profound impact on me. I mean, if you think about it, like if you went running 4 or 5 hours a day, you would be an amazing athlete, um, but if you engage in other activities like drinking alcohol 4 or 5 hours a day, you know, it would cause real problems for you. And so just just the sheer amount of time alone should clue us into that. There is something going on here that is having a profound impact on, on young people. And then the other thing to think about it in relationship to that time is, what are they not doing during that time, right? Not actually hanging out with friends, you know, in person, really communicating. Directly to them, not doing their homework, uh, reading, you know, this is something, it's a challenge for me as a college professor, not, you know, outside doing things, going places, so, you know, just, just, just even if we look just at the amount of time, we start to realize there is something really profound happening here that that we've got to start looking at and figuring out. Uh, well, certainly it has become an addictive behavior. How does this also affect mental health? Well, a lot of the research that's coming out is suggesting that there are, not for everybody, right, but for a significant number of young people, some really, you know, negative effects on, on their mental health, anxiety, uh, depression, uh, concern, overly concerned about their appearances or the, the type of popularity that they have on social media. And that this is something that we start to see happening. Now, some of the claims that are being made about this are overblown, right? And we have to, we have to be careful about that. And most of the data that we have is what we would call correlational, you know, in other words, that as the use of smartphones and social media has gone up, we've also at the same time seen a rise in anxiety and depression among young people. There could be many, many factors behind that, right? There's a lot going on in our world. We all know that. All we have to do is watch your news broadcast, right? To know that there's a lot going on in the world that can cause anxiety and, and, and depression. But we also can't turn away from these patterns that we, we now are seeing for a long time, you know, for more, for more than a decade. And that we should, we should take that seriously, even if not everybody is affected the same way, because, you know, not everybody is affected the same way by anything. There are people who smoke all their lives and never get cancer, but that doesn't mean that smoking doesn't contribute to cancer. And then of course, you know, we've, we've seen it on, on our phones, uh, some of these videos that you have to look at and look at it a couple of times, like is this real, you know, so then AI, you know, comes into the mix too. How is that also influencing these kids? Yeah, I'm, I'm very concerned about what AI is doing, uh, both to our physical environment, you know, with all the data use and and energy resources that it sucks up, but to our mental environment too, with, you know, fake videos that people take to be real, uh, imagery that people, um, Distribute to others that, you know, with young people, you know, one of the things that we've been seeing unfortunately is sexually explicit material, um, where it looks like it's a classmate of theirs, but it's really just an AI created image, um, all of that, you know, I think what I would say is that. All of these concerns that we've been having for a while about smartphone technology, about social media, are accelerated and amplified and supercharged when AI comes into the picture. Mhm. Now the governor wants to take phones out of kids' hands at school, and he and Attorney General Tong are proposing laws to combat some of the youth social media addiction. What, what are your thoughts, uh, on some of this? Um, I think that we have to be very careful, um, when we start having legal, um, solutions. We think that there's solutions to the, to, to these issues, you know, because there are some real concerns about freedom of expression. And, you know, we, we never want to, I don't, I don't think we never want to give the government too much power over our personal lives. So I, I think we have to be careful with things like that. On the other hand, you know, trying to have schools that are phone-free zones, I'm kind of in favor of that in whatever way we could make that happen within reasonable limits, right? Um, but you know, the phones are a problem. I see that, you know, with my own students who are college students, I'm constantly having to remind them to, to stay off their phones, to, to be engaged in what we're doing in class at that moment instead of whatever else it might be that they're looking at on. On their phones and look, this isn't a problem for just young people. I'm sure you know you've experienced it in your own life. I've experienced it in my own life. There's something about the technology itself that is alluring to us. It keeps us coming in anytime a phone is around, there's that sort of buzz in our heads of let me check it, let me see if I got a message. Let me see if I got a notification. And, and look, the people who create these products are fully aware of that, and they've engineered them. I'm sorry we ran out of time, but I thank you so much. That's OK. I talk a lot. Thanks so much, Bill. OK, thank you. Well, next, new legislation could better help victims of fertility fraud hold clinics responsible.

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At the state capitol, it was a showdown over Connecticut's shield law for abortion providers. News 12 Connecticut's John Craven shows us what is at stake. Abortion is now banned in more than a dozen states. Patients can obtain abortion pills through the mail from providers here in Connecticut, but those doctors face legal threats. I could render that service to that individual. But I would not have protections in the state of Connecticut if there was like if there was litigation. Louisiana has criminally indicted doctors in New York and California. We're not going to stop trying to extradite her and prosecute her for the crimes that she's committing in our state. Under a new proposal, Connecticut would expand its abortion shield law to cover legally. Protected procedures regardless of whether the patient is located in this state. On the flip side, abortion opponents are pushing for a parental notification law. Under that proposal, teens would have to notify their parents of an abortion within 48 hours. In my previous role as a school nurse, I could not administer Tylenol to a 14-year-old without parental consent. Yet we are here asking that parents of minors be notified before they can obtain an abortion. Minors could ask a judge for a waiver in limited circumstances. This process is itself a barrier. It requires minors to find transportation, potentially miss school, appear in court, and prove their maturity to a judge in order to. Access to medical care. Well, the parental notification law is unlikely to even get a vote, but as for Connecticut's abortion shield law, it and others are likely headed to the US Supreme Court. John Craven, News 12, Connecticut. Also in Hartford, victims of fertility fraud are asking for more accountability. Victoria Hill is one of them. She unknowingly dated her own half brother after a New Haven fertility doctor allegedly fathered 22 of his patients' children. Hill tried to sue the clinic but was told that the statute of limitations ran out decades ago. On Monday, she asked state lawmakers to let victims file a lawsuit within 3 years of discovering the fraud. That's all our time. I'm Mark Sudall. Thanks for watching.

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Rep. Jim Himes and Sacred Heart University Professor Dr. Bill Yousman join the show this week.

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