Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode, Priten speaks with Brad Bushman, professor of communication at The Ohio State University and a leading researcher on human aggression, about what children learn from violent media and why the same questions now extend to AI and robots. Bushman has spent decades studying how violent television, video games, music, and even scripture shape behavior. The conversation works through the mechanics of how children absorb behavioral scripts from role models, what parents can realistically control, how to weigh the evidence, and what happens as chatbots and companion robots become part of children's lives.
Key Takeaways:
- Children learn behavioral scripts from rewarded role models, including media characters. Bushman explains that kids retrieve "scripts" for how to act in a given situation, and violent characters in media are almost always rewarded and rarely punished. Whether content is active (video games) or passive (TV) matters less than the content itself.
- The most effective parental mediation is the one parents do least. Restricting content and time helps, but watching alongside a child and actively discussing what they see is the most effective approach. Passive co-viewing is the worst option, because silence signals that the violent content is acceptable.
- Content matters more than the medium, but more senses amplify the effect. Reading violent text, hearing violent lyrics, and watching violent music videos all increase aggression, with effects growing as more senses are involved. In one study, scripture passages describing sanctioned killing increased aggression, especially among believers and especially when God was said to approve.
- Media violence is a modest risk factor, but the one we can actually change. Aggression is almost never caused by a single factor. Unlike low IQ, poverty, addiction, or being male, exposure to violent media is controllable, which Bushman frames like a media diet. In lab studies, just 20 minutes with a violent game produces measurable differences.
- Aggression toward robots and AI is a new and open question. Bushman cites HitchBot, a hitchhiking robot destroyed in the US after surviving trips abroad, and notes people are more aggressive toward robots framed as objects than as companions. Whether companion bots that never push back distort young people's expectations of real relationships is, in his words, something theory predicts but the data has not yet tested.
Creators and Guests
What is Margin of Thought with Priten?
Margin of Thought is a podcast about the questions we don’t always make time for but should.
Hosted by Priten Soundar-Shah, the show features wide-ranging conversations with educators, civic leaders, technologists, academics, and students.
Each season centers on a key tension in modern life that affects how we raise and educate our children.
Learn more about Priten and his upcoming book, Ethical Ed Tech: How Educators Can Lead on AI & K-12 at priten.org and ethicaledtech.org.
Priten: Welcome to Margin of Thought, where we make space for the questions that matter. I'm your host, Priten, and together we'll explore questions that help us preserve what matters while navigating what's coming. Today I'm joined by Brad Bushman, professor of communication at The Ohio State University and a leading researcher on human aggression. His work examines how violent media, video games, social learning, and emerging technologies shape behavior. This conversation asks how children learn aggression from the media around them, what parents can realistically do, and why the same questions now extend to AI, robots, and digital companions. Let's get started.
Brad: My name's Brad Bushman. I'm a professor of communication at The Ohio State University in the USA.
Priten: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Brad. I would love to start, at a high level, with what got you interested in thinking about aggression?
Brad: Actually, I was studying to be an engineer at a company named Bourns, B-O-U-R-N-S. They make potentiometers, which are variable resistors for, I don't know, the space shuttle and computers and washing machines. I was in the honors program at my university, and I just happened to take an honors course on human aggression. I was taking other honors courses, like on Western civilization and Greek mythology, and this honors course on human aggression literally changed my life. We just read stacks of journal articles describing empirical studies of aggression, and I thought, "Wow, this is what I wanna do. I wanna do studies like this." And I asked the professor, "Well, who does these studies? How do I do them?" And he said, "Well, mostly social psychologists do them." And I'd of course heard of a psychologist, but I didn't know anything about social psychology. And I said, "Well, how do I become a social psychologist?" And he said, "Well, you have to get a PhD." I said, "Okay. And what do I do?" And he said, "Well, you have to teach and do research." So I got a master's degree in education to help me be a better teacher, and a master's degree in statistics to help me be a better researcher, and a PhD in social psychology. And so that undergrad course literally set the stage for my career.
Priten: On a side note, that's a great example of why our liberal arts model in the US is amazing and is great for allowing young adults to really push beyond what they thought their life was meant to be as children. I went into college thinking I was gonna be a doctor, and I am absolutely not a doctor, and it was a Sanskrit class that first changed it. So it is remarkable to think about how effective our education system is at expanding our worldview so quickly. But okay, so, social psychology, but you're in a communications department. So tell me, why choose communications as your home?
Brad: That's a big surprise, because I was a full professor in psychology at Iowa State University, and I went to visit my colleague, Raul Huesmann, at the University of Michigan on my sabbatical, and he said, "You know, we've got to get you to come to Michigan." I said, "Great." After my sabbatical was over, he sent me an email. He said, "There's an opening. You should apply for it." And I said, "Well, it's in communication." And he said, "Well, mass communication is a really important part of the field of communication, and you do research on exposure to violent media, and the person who's leaving actually did exactly the same kind of research. So you're a perfect fit." And I said, "Well, I've never even taught a course in communication." He said, "Don't worry. You'll do fine." So I think it's because of my focus on mass communication and violence in the media that they hired me. So that's how I got in this communication department.
Priten: That's amazing. The mass communication part is obviously so influenced by social psychology in general. A lot of our listeners and my own interests are with children as students and as children in households. And violent exposure to media is more and more top of mind for folks, I think, especially over the last few years with social media. We had the video games and TV shows, and then social media. Now folks, I think, are starting to think about what the role of AI will be in all of this. Do you wanna take us down the road of some of your early research in the space, and then maybe we can talk more about what you think that means for the current landscape?
Brad: I think there are differences in platforms between TV and movies and video games. Probably the main difference is whether it's active or passive. TV viewers and movie viewers just watch and are exposed to the content, whereas video game players are actually more actively involved. But the effects are very similar. So you can talk about different platforms, but the effects are very similar. And the theory is well established; it goes back decades, that children often learn by observing role models, and these role models can be real people in their lives, like their parents or siblings or peers at school, or they can be characters in the media. And when it comes to characters in the media, children think they're cool. They wanna be like them, and they wanna imitate their behavior, and children are especially likely to do that if the character is rewarded for behaving in a certain way. And content analyses have shown that violent characters in the media are rewarded. They get what they want almost all the time, and they're hardly ever punished for behaving in a violent way. And so what children learn from observing the media is these scripts for behavior that teach them how they should behave in certain situations. So when a child finds themself in a certain situation, they search their memory for scripts. "What should I do in this situation?" And they retrieve a script and they put themselves in that script and behave according to that script, and these scripts are learned often from the mass media as well as from real people. I don't know if that answers your question.
Priten: No, it does. When I think about this, my mind is starting with the video games. And so anybody who's ever been in a video game shop knows that a lot of it is around war and violence and fighting. There's also Grand Theft Auto, right? There are very obvious examples of where the rewards are based on what we would consider not good behavior. But you're obviously talking about beyond video games, it sounds like. And so what are examples that could help us think about this in terms of other media influences that students might encounter? Because I feel like for a parent who's being conscious about which video games they let their children play and what exposure they have there, it's a little bit harder to control other media consumption, and I'm curious what should we be looking out for in those spaces?
Brad: Yeah, it's super hard being a parent. I'm not an expert on this, but I have colleagues who are, and there are different forms of mediation that parents can use. One is called restrictive mediation, where parents restrict certain content, and you can do that by using, like, on your computer, blocking software to block certain kinds of content, or you can do that on your TV as well to block TV programs with certain ratings or movies with certain ratings, like age-inappropriate ratings. If your child is under age 13, for example, you might block any program rated TV-13 or above, or movies rated PG-13 or R. So that's one type of mediation. You can restrict content, but you can also restrict time. So, for example, I know the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours of entertainment media exposure a day. I know a parent who got these circus tickets, and each ticket was worth 30 minutes, and the kid could say, "Oh, I wanna watch a movie." "Oh, well, that's two hours, so give me four tickets," you know? And they can only use four tickets a day. So that's restrictive mediation. There are other types of mediation as well. One is the parent actually engages with the child, watches the movie with them, watches the TV program with them, plays the video game with them, and discusses the content. Like, if a piano fell on you in real life, what do you think would happen? Would you just get up afterwards and walk away? Or, in a cartoon, for example. Or, these people are solving their problems using violence. They're yelling and screaming at each other. Can you think of a better way that you might be able to solve a problem? So you really engage with the child, and that's actually the most effective form of parental mediation. Parents don't do it. And then there's also more passive, where you just watch with your child but don't say anything, and that's the worst, because then your child thinks, "Well, if we're watching this violent content and my dad's not even saying anything about it, it must be okay." But it's hard being a parent. As parents, when our kids were younger, at night, we would take away their iPads and iPhones and stuff because we didn't want them staying up all night engaging with media. It interrupts sleep, too. And I've done a little research on that as well. We would not allow TV sets, or computers, in their bedrooms. We had them in more public locations, where we could watch what was going on. Or if they had a handheld device in their bedroom, we asked them to keep their bedroom door open. But it's not easy. So I think the best approach is just to teach your children correct principles, what's appropriate behavior, what kind of behavior you would like them to exhibit as responsible members of society, and try to emulate that behavior yourself and teach them by example. But being a parent is... Being a professor's pretty easy. Being a parent's a lot... Well, it's not easy, but being a professor is a lot harder.
Priten: Gosh, there's so many interesting things you've brought up. I wanna start with the nature of the violent media. So how much of this is dependent on... I mean, I'm sure there's obviously some correlation with the intensity of the violence and how rewarded it is in the media. But I'm thinking about different categories, right? So there's the explicitly rewarded for egregiously violent behavior type things, and those are probably the things that are coming to people's mind as we're talking. And then I'm thinking about more, like, Mario Kart, right? Where you're throwing something at someone to get ahead in the race, where it's not necessarily bloodshed. They are not real humans depicted, versus watching the news and watching a commentary or reporting on a conflict, versus thinking about religious texts and mythology. They're all forms of, as someone who did a lot of theology work in college, most religious branches, there is a lot of violence depicted in those stories. And so, is there a different effect depending on both the domain in which it's happening and how it's depicted? Or does it turn out that, at that age, it all kind of starts to meld together?
Brad: Yeah, there's a lot there. First I should say that we've actually studied the effects of violence in scriptures on behavior, and found, like in one study we randomly assigned people to read a passage of scripture. It was an actual passage from the Old Testament, in which people are told, "Just kill everyone. Kill women, children, men, pets. Just wipe everything out." And half the people were told it was from an ancient scroll found in some cave, and the other half were told that it was from the scriptures, from the Old Testament. Half the people were told God told them to do that, and the other half we left God out of it. And what we found is that violence... And then they could aggress against another person by giving them loud blasts of noise through headphones, which is very unpleasant. And what we found is that violence in the scriptures does increase aggression against other people, especially among believers, and especially if God says it's okay. So the name of our paper was something like, When God Sanctions Killing. So authority figures, when they say it's okay to do something... These were college-age students. So violence in the scriptures can increase aggression. You talked about realistic violence like in the news. In general, the more realistic the violence, the stronger the effects. The exception being children under about age seven have a real difficult time understanding what's real and what's not. So parents may think, "Oh, it's just fantasy," but if you're a young child, it's real to you. So generally the more graphic it is, the stronger the effects. But even something with mild violence, like we've used video games rated E for everyone that contain violence, and you get effects there. But you get bigger effects if you use teen-rated video games, and even bigger ones if you use mature-rated video games. But in general, any violent content, even in E-rated video games, can increase aggression.
Priten: So when you talked about the scriptures and reading in particular, I'm thinking about the shift from video influences to text influences. In particular, I'm thinking about AI chatbots and students interacting with those. Because in some ways the... Again, when you're intentionally thinking about what you're exposing your children to, there's things that we all start to have a visceral reaction to and an intuitive response to. And I think there's some things that fall in that bucket, and then there's these things that we're still learning more about. And the text in particular I wanna talk about, and I know you've done some work on robot aggression too, which I'm really excited to get into. So I guess that's depicting the violence versus someone talking about it. That's the kind of distinction that I wanna sit with for a little bit. And when you were talking about role modeling, as a parent, I was thinking about the concerns right now around the manosphere and role modeling from social media influencers who are creating this idea of masculinity that's violent and aggressive. And a lot of that happens just through rhetoric, right? They're not actually showing videos of aggression. They're not actively depicting violent acts. But they are using particular language that is violent. And so can you talk to me a little bit about the effects of the exposure to that kind of media versus depictions?
Brad: We've actually done some studies on this topic, and usually the more senses you involve, the bigger the effect. So just reading it or hearing the words, that can increase aggression. But, like, listening to violent music, for example, listening to violent lyrics, if you include your ears as well as your eyes, the effects are bigger. And then, like, watching music videos, which is exactly the same song except instead of singing it, you can see it, the effects tend to be even bigger. But it's not like a step function. The content's the most important. The content's more important than whether you read it or hear it or see it. The content is what matters. But you can enhance the effect of the content by including more of your senses. I don't know if that makes sense or not.
Priten: Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. And that's where it's interesting to think also about the role modeling effect that you were talking about, in a positive way, of modeling the right behavior, or a healthy behavior, for children. And that versus one of the concepts I've been thinking about, which is getting students to choose healthy role models, right? You can't just put someone in front of a child and that person becomes their role model because you are exposing them to it. And I think you mentioned very early on how rewarded the person is for their behavior is obviously one influence. What else is part of which behaviors children find themselves trying to model versus not?
Brad: Ones that they're uncertain about, especially dangerous behaviors. So children are often unsure about whether they should engage in a dangerous behavior, and they're especially likely to engage in dangerous behaviors if they've seen role models engage in those dangerous behaviors. So past research, for example, has shown that children who see movie characters smoke cigarettes are more likely to smoke themselves. And research has also shown that children who see movie characters consume alcohol are more likely to consume alcohol themselves. And our own research has shown that children who see media characters, either in movies or in video games, use guns are more likely to use guns themselves. We hid them in our lab in a drawer, so they're more likely, if they find the gun, to touch the gun, to hold the gun, to hold it longer, to pull the trigger, including while pointing the gun at themselves or their partner, if they were first exposed to movie characters who used guns or played a video game involving guns.
Priten: Before we move on to some of your other work, obviously with a lot of psych research in general, the effect size is important. And I know you've commented in the past about what the effect sizes are in some of these studies. Can you break down how bad is it when these exposures happen? What is the effect size? And obviously it's different for all of these different things, but in general, what gives you confidence that we ought to be this vigilant about it?
Brad: Well, the effect size often depends on how the researcher defines a variable. So, for example, violent media could be extremely violent versus not at all violent. So it's really hard to talk about effect sizes because they depend so much on how researchers define variables. And also, when it comes to behavior, it's on a continuum from mild aggression to extreme violence, such as mass shootings, right? And the more extreme the behavior, the more complex it is, the more difficult it is to predict. But aggressive and violent behavior is never easy to predict, and it's almost never caused by a single factor. It's often caused by multiple factors working together, and it's like an accumulation of these risk factors that can lead to aggressive behavior. But when it comes to all the risk factors for aggression and violence, some are a lot easier to change than others. So, for example, having a low IQ is a risk factor for aggression and violence. Well, it's not easy to raise somebody's IQ. Poverty is a risk factor for violence and aggression. Well, it's not easy to get somebody out of poverty. Alcohol and drug addiction are risk factors for aggression and violence. Well, it's not easy, if you're addicted to substances, to break those addictions. And being a male is a risk factor for violence and aggression. Well, that's hard to change too, right? So there are many of these risk factors that are like baked in. They're really hard to change. But exposure to violence in the media, you can change. And it's like a diet. You could think of it as a diet. When our kids were young, we said, "We want you to eat five fruits and vegetables every day. But you get to choose. You want carrots? Fine. Bananas? We don't care. Strawberries? Go for it. Peas? But we want you to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day." And we also had a media diet for our kids. These types of media are okay to watch, but not so much. You can't spend the whole day. Do it like two hours a day, okay? I think the reason it's important to talk about exposure to violence in the media is it's not the only risk factor, for sure, and it's not the most important one either. But it's a risk factor we can actually do something about.
Priten: I think that framing is really helpful for just thinking about what's within our domain of control, and what bar does that need to meet in order for us to act on it? And it seems like this is, of all the factors you've isolated, and I'm sure we can all come up with other ones, this is a very easy one to control. And so it probably doesn't require too much evidence for us to feel like, okay, that's enough for me to take action on this, versus if there's bigger actions that we need to take, we might want a very high threshold for it. And I think that kind of framing is helpful.
Brad: Another way to think about it is, in our laboratory experiments, we have people play video games for only 20 minutes, and we see noticeable, visible, statistically significant differences between those who play a violent video game and those who play a non-violent video game, and we randomly assign them to them. So if you randomly assign people to groups, those groups should be the same before they play any game, and you treat them exactly the same except for the game they play, and those who play the violent game are more aggressive, and we see that in 20 minutes. That's pretty remarkable. Especially because most people don't play violent video games, or any video games, for just 20 minutes, right? They play much longer than that. So yeah, that's another thing worth mentioning.
Priten: So when we think about age and exposure, I think part of the common understanding is that, oh, when they're young, don't expose them, but as they get older, they're allowed to play some of these video games. And so maybe we don't let the middle schooler play the violent games. By the time they're in high school, the rating is saying it's okay for them, and they know what's real and fake at that age, maybe not under seven. Does that hold up in the evidence? Is it actually safe to expose, you know, developing brains, but not younger than seven or young brains, to this kind of media?
Brad: Well, nobody's immune, so I should say that. But some people are more vulnerable than others; especially young children are more vulnerable. But most of my research involves college students. They're legally adults, and we can see noticeable differences in their behavior after playing a violent E-rated game for everyone, right? But adults can make up their own decisions, right? We don't let children smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, and I think they should not be exposed to age-inappropriate media either. Adults, if adults want to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, they can, as long as it doesn't harm other people. You can't drink alcohol and drive a vehicle, for example, or you can't smoke cigarettes in a restaurant, for example. But if you're an adult, those are behaviors you can choose to engage in if you want. And you can play violent video games or watch violent shows, but nobody is immune, and the effects are larger for younger children.
Priten: Maybe we don't wanna paternalistically regulate it in adults, but if someone just wants to consider the risks for themselves, you would say there is risk to you as an adult.
Brad: For sure.
Priten: Yeah, that's super interesting. Okay, let's talk about the one I'm waiting for: robots. Tell me a little bit about what your research about interactions with robots tells us about human aggression, and how that work has looked for you.
Brad: Well, there's not much to say, unfortunately, yet, 'cause we haven't done any studies on it. But I'm doing research with a PhD student in Italy on this topic, and she's really interested in aggression against robots. And then I have a grad student at Ohio State here who's interested in people who use AI to aggress against real people. So these are new areas, and there's not much research on it. But when it comes to robots, we've done a few studies, and one thing that matters is you can think of a robot either as an object, like a tool, like a Roomba that vacuums your carpets, or as a companion, and that matters. People are more aggressive when the robot is just a tool or just an object, as opposed to when it's described as a social companion. So that's one thing. But yeah, we need to do more research on the topic. I don't know if you've heard of HitchBot. Do you know about HitchBot?
Priten: I don't know about HitchBot.
Brad: Oh, HitchBot is, like, Canadians made this hitchhiking robot and gave it a bucket list of things to do and put it in Canada, and it was supposed to do all these things in Canada. And then they sent HitchBot to the Netherlands, and HitchBot was supposed to go on a canal tour, and they got photos of HitchBot on a canal boat and HitchBot seeing the Rijksmuseum and so forth. And then HitchBot went to Germany, by the Brandenburg Gate or whatever, and they have all these pictures. And they sent HitchBot to the USA with this long bucket list, and HitchBot was doing great, coming back with all these photos of all these cool places. And when HitchBot came to the USA, HitchBot hardly did anything on the bucket list before somebody, like, tore HitchBot's arms off, tore HitchBot's head off, and this was in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, by the way. That's an example of aggression against a robot. And I don't know if you've seen these vehicles that deliver food, these little robots that deliver food, these automated vehicles. Sometimes people spray paint all over them and things like that. At Ohio State they try to make them look really cute with, like, eyes on them or hearts on the front. Hearts for eyes. They don't bump into you, but sometimes they get in the way. Anyway, I think it's really an interesting area of research, and I'm excited to be involved in it. I wish there was more I could say about it, but really it's just at beginning stages right now.
Priten: Yeah. How much of the work is figuring out what that behavior tells us about the person versus how much that behavior ends up influencing their behavior towards humans? Because I figure there's probably some component of both of those things, right?
Brad: We don't know yet. But that's one of the questions we definitely wanna answer.
Priten: It's super interesting. One of the other things, I think there's the direct aggression towards AI chatbots, which is one thing that I've been thinking about, where people's bars for writing in all caps and being mean, right? And saying like, "Ugh, this is stup-, you're stupid," there is a lower bar than if you were talking to an employee or a student.
Brad: Especially if it has a female voice.
Priten: Right.
Brad: Researchers, yeah.
Priten: And one thing I've been wondering is, for young boys who, you mentioned companion bots earlier, are interacting with these companion AI bots, and the friction isn't there that's there in a human relationship. And so it's not necessarily that they're acting violently in that interaction, maybe. But does it set up an expectation that you'll always hear yes, right? And then what does that do when you hear no? So that's a different angle. It's not necessarily exposure to violence, but does that change how violent you end up being outside, in a real relationship where you're not gonna always hear yes? So are your expectations set up in an unhealthy way?
Brad: I can only say theoretically it should. We don't have any data, and we need data. These are really important questions that we need to investigate, but theoretically it should.
Priten: So you've done some policy work, and when you think about the pervasiveness of some of these problems, I do think educators feel like a lot of these things are out of their control. Parents feel like a lot of these things are out of their control. Do you think the best... and I mean, when I say best, I'm trying to figure out how pragmatic we wanna be in this conversation. With some pragmatism, is it that we need to increase awareness amongst educators and parents so that they can be a line of defense towards this? Or do you think that there's other possible ways to move forward in a way that's safer for our children?
Brad: Yeah, I would advocate a multi-prong approach. I think parents are critical. They're at the front lines, and it's really important for parents. Sadly, parents are super busy, and they often use the media as a babysitter or whatever. But it's a poor choice for a babysitter. So I think it's really important to involve parents in the process. I think people who make these products, like video games or whatever, they're responsible for what they make. They need to be involved. I think policymakers need to base their policies on scientific evidence and research rather than gut feelings, hunches, intuition, common sense, whatever, right? We need to make these important decisions based on reliable data. So I think it's a multi-pronged approach. What I try to do is do theory-based important research, publish it in top journals, and hopefully do a press release on it. If it's of interest to the lay public, do a press release on it, then hopefully ordinary people will read about it and they'll base their beliefs on science instead of some less reliable form of evidence like common sense or whatever.
Priten: And when you think about this as educators, I feel like part of the narrative towards dealing with the violent nature of violent crimes in society and figuring out how do we make sure that we're helping our children form healthy relationships with themselves and others, there's a large focus on social-emotional learning over the last couple of decades now, as a way to build immunity. I'm wondering, do you think that's a plausible path forward? Is it possible for our children to be exposed to these things? Maybe we say, "Okay, this is so hard for us to control. Maybe we find other ways to deal with it." I know you talked about building immunity in terms of the parent mediating the actual exposure. But is there, like, not-in-the-moment stuff that we can be doing that builds general immunity?
Brad: Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I haven't done research on the topic myself, so I'm reluctant to say much about it. But for sure, that's something we can control and should do.
Priten: I guess I wanna end on the note of, when you think about where parents should start to look at the research. There is a lot of parenting research in general. There's a lot of research on childhood development. But if they're particularly interested in learning about some of your work, what is a good entry point for parents to get some more information that's evidence-based about these topics?
Brad: Yeah. I don't know if you've heard of the company. Let me put their information in the chat box. Can I do that?
Priten: Absolutely.
Brad: It's called Children and Screens. Man, they're good. I've been a guest on some of their programs, but they do a lot. Have you heard of them?
Priten: I have not. I might reach out to them today, actually.
Brad: They talk about everything that you've mentioned, not just violence, but AI, whatever. Here it is. Let me put it in the chat box here. Is AI safe for children? What is techno inference? What is sextortion? They have a lot of programs to help parents raise children in a socially responsible way, and I've been a guest on their programs involving violence in the media, but the social brain on screens. Just have a look at their webpage. Wow. Growing Up Online. There's just so many resources. So if you click on, like, Learn and Explore, they break it down by age. Parents can look at different ages. So I'm a big fan of this organization. And they're a nonprofit organization, and they've never given me any money for doing anything. But they do offer research grants, for example. They know parenting is difficult, and they really want to help parents. And I know the person who started this, and her goal was just, let's help America's kids. But it's not just America's kids. Kids all over the world can benefit from what Children and Screens, that's the name of the program, can offer. So I'd point parents there.
Priten: Awesome. Thank you. Brad leaves us with a practical reminder. Violent media exposure is one risk factor for aggression, and it is one families can actually do something about. The deeper lesson is about modeling: children learn from what they watch, what they play, and what adults allow to seem normal. As AI and robotic systems become part of children's lives, that question becomes even more urgent. For parents looking for evidence-based resources, Brad recommends Children and Screens, which offers research-informed guidance on children's media use. For more on how to think about the ethical role of technology in our children's lives, check out my new book, Ethical Edtech, at ethicaledtech.org. Thanks for listening to Margin of Thought. If this episode gave you something to think about, subscribe, rate, and review us. Also, share it with someone who might be asking similar questions. You can find the show notes, transcripts, and my newsletter at priten.org. Until next time, keep making space for the questions that matter.