Benjamin Brown (0:10.156)
Hello everybody. Good evening from, well, 9 PM here in South Carolina. Adam, I think you're in South Carolina as well.
Andrew Saunders (0:15.582)
haha ⁓
Adam (0:18.569)
You got it, I'm in Charleston.
Benjamin Brown (0:20.686)
All right. Yeah. I'm about through two and a half, three hours, North East of you. So I'm also in South Carolina. ⁓ but today we are, yeah, we are on the dad verb podcast. think we're, ⁓ Saunders. What are we episode 93 92.
Adam (0:27.586)
wow.
Andrew Saunders (0:34.773)
This is 94 rolling up.
Benjamin Brown (0:36.334)
94, we are approaching our hundredth episode. ⁓ Today we are joined by Nate, Andrew Saunders, and you heard the name Adam, Adam Adler. And ⁓ we're going to talk a little bit. We've talked a little bit about this before. We've talked about screen time, but the reality is screens are a part of our everyday lives, right? They surround us. ⁓ And now even starting an early childhood, one of the biggest things I was surprised by is when my kids started kindergarten, that he got a Chromebook. He got a laptop.
Nate (0:36.731)
Maybe. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (0:40.181)
Yep.
Benjamin Brown (1:6.324)
at his school as a five-year-old. ⁓ So screens are pervasive. They're everywhere. They're in our homes. They're in our hands. And screen time exposure, especially in young kids, has been shown to have significant and measurable impacts on kids' cognitive and behavioral development, their social skills, and their ability to focus. As I said today, we are joined by a special guest, Adam Adler, who's the founder of an app called Wisely, which aims to help us change that.
I was recently featured at CES and it's the first learn to earn platform helping families replace screen time with curiosity and confidence. ⁓ And as we were chatting about that earlier, Adam is also a fellow South Carolinian. So I'm in the upstate of South Carolina. He's down in the low country. But today we're to talk a little bit about screen time, its impact on kids and what parents can do to help their kids learn in a more conscious way. But before we jump into our topic, we are going to do what we always do, our sick check. ⁓
Nate (1:49.191)
Thank
Benjamin Brown (2:2.956)
I'll go ahead and kick us off because I was not here for the last episode or two. As if you guys remember, I told you all that my daughter was sick ⁓ and all of the coughing in my face and eyes led to me getting sick and eating a bunch of drugs to get over it. But I'm here. I'm feeling better. And it seems fingers crossed that for now, everybody is healthy. We've got travel coming up next week.
Nate (2:16.647)
sharing.
Andrew Saunders (2:27.890)
Hahaha
Benjamin Brown (2:28.640)
So I'm hoping, I'm hoping that since we're all going to be out of town that we, we all stay healthy. Yeah. We're going to do what we can. We're, we're, we're deep in cold and flu season. So there's not really a whole lot we can do about it except, ⁓ pray and survive. Right. ⁓ Nate, ⁓ I am going to a wedding. We're, actually going ⁓ separate ways. My wife is going on a crew. Yeah. My wife's going on a cruise with a bunch of her other travel agent friends, which is fantastic. She gets to go on a big, beautiful Royal Caribbean ship.
Nate (2:30.225)
it in.
Andrew Saunders (2:31.413)
It's just jinxing himself right there. Yeah. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (2:42.473)
Where are you going?
Okay. Nice.
Benjamin Brown (2:57.598)
And I'm going to a wedding in Houston. So the kids are staying with some aunts and uncles this week. It's going to be good. ⁓ But Nate, how are the kids? How's everybody doing? Everybody's ⁓ healthy, I hope.
Nate (3:0.647)
Thanks, guys.
Nate (3:7.653)
that. ⁓ Quasi healthy. We've got one allergy season is starting up. It feels like even earlier this year. So we started allergy meds. I don't know if I'm going to fully count that, but we do have one. My daughter is limping around because she got taken out by the dog rope in the back of the legs. So I don't know if your kids ever have this. Whenever they get sick or injured. ⁓ it's basically like we had to saw off her legs. And so she's hobbling around and
Benjamin Brown (3:11.256)
Okay.
Already it is. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (3:25.269)
Yeah
Benjamin Brown (3:26.264)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Nate (3:36.071)
but I think she's gonna make it. Both legs are gonna survive, so it's good.
Benjamin Brown (3:39.158)
gonna survive she didn't bleed out or anything ⁓ awesome Saunders how about you how's everybody how's the new one
Nate (3:41.024)
She did not.
Andrew Saunders (3:45.334)
⁓ The new one is good ⁓ Eating pooping and sleeping right? It's about all they do ⁓ we just crossed two weeks on Friday, so ⁓ Other than that everybody's happy everybody's healthy Our biggest concern is how much can we get them to run outdoors during the daytime at this point so that they sleep at 8 p.m. 7 p.m. You know we're not we're not early to bed people, but if
Benjamin Brown (4:9.742)
You
Andrew Saunders (4:13.119)
They do a few laps around a couple tennis courts. ⁓ They're out early. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (4:17.066)
It helps. ⁓ helps. And Adam, welcome to the show. We're glad you're here. ⁓ We'll have you participate in our sick check. How's everybody doing in your household? Healthy, I hope.
Adam (4:27.067)
Yeah, you know what? I got two little girls. One is ⁓ two and one is 10. ⁓ The two year old is actually healthy. ⁓ She started doing like more mommy and me classes and like play gyms and stuff. So she's actually been sick like on and off for the last couple of months nonstop.
Benjamin Brown (4:42.957)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (4:43.057)
Since like August she started she's old enough now and then my other daughter does competitive gymnastics so she has a slight injuries all the time, but nothing major luckily so far so ⁓ Today I practice actually she ripped like ⁓ her toe very badly was like bleeding all over the place Yeah, so this is her injury for the day, but she's just making it. She's doing all right
Andrew Saunders (4:59.287)
No! ⁓
Benjamin Brown (5:0.728)
now.
Benjamin Brown (5:4.760)
Good. All right. Good to hear. So I want to jump into just a couple of questions. So ⁓ first of all, we've done a lot of conversations about screen time. ⁓ As I said at the top of the episode, screens are pervasive. They are everywhere. They're in our pockets. They're on our walls. They're in schools. ⁓ Kids are learning from them, using them. ⁓ We as adults, we're all in front of one right now. Absolutely.
Andrew Saunders (5:26.953)
We're all in front of one right now. And everybody watching this is in front of one right now. ⁓
Nate (5:30.919)
Actually, we've got two hanging out right here.
Benjamin Brown (5:33.231)
Absolutely. I know it's like, many, how many can you count just in your immediate vicinity? It's insane. So I know you've got this app wisely. Um, so I was looking into it a little bit, but I think it's got a really interesting backstory, um, not only about kind of what it does, but, what inspired it and kind of why you built it the first place. So can you give us some background on that and kind of the story of how it got started and where the inspiration came from?
Adam (6:0.465)
Sure, yeah, mean, similar to your intro here, screens are just a daily part of everybody's life. Now, my two year old already knows how to thumb stop on YouTube, ⁓ find the videos that she likes. was unbelievable. She can't spell, but she knows where every single video would be located, how to find, how to scroll. So they start immensely early. It's really intuitive product that ⁓ whoever you use, whether it's an Android or an Apple based device, kids can figure out insanely fast, much better than adults can.
So this goes back three years ago and my daughter, Isla, who is 10 now and she was seven at the time, we would do essentially what every parent I believe does now and everybody we've ever spoke to does, which is we were doing what WISEy already does, we were doing it manually. So what would happen is my wife would use like Apple screen time, which a ton of people use now to control my kid's device. And we would say, at like 4 p.m. the device is done, you're finished. But my kid would be in the middle of watching Mr. Beast's video and it's not done yet. So she doesn't know what happened.
So obviously she's not going to just put the device down at exactly four and accept that and go and read a book and do some schoolwork. So she'd run over to me. I'd be doing something like I'm doing here with you guys. Having a chat on zoom, doing some work. She'll barge in. She doesn't care. Right. She'll bust open the doors. I need 20 more minutes right now. And I'd say, please, like, you know, just give me a little bit of time. I just can't take it. I'm talking to somebody. She doesn't care. She'll stand there until she gets her way. So then I'll just go to screen time and I'll give her 30 more minutes and that's it. Right. So this fight happens all the time.
Andrew Saunders (7:16.277)
You
Benjamin Brown (7:16.750)
you
Adam (7:27.015)
And then when I'm not doing work, I'll then take the device away physically and I'll say, look, if you just read your book or you do your math work or we get through this ⁓ topic or this subject, come back to me. I'll give it back to you. So we do that for years and months and days and hours and every single day. is our daily routine, either between myself and my wife. And one day I'll actually says, isn't there just like some app.
Benjamin Brown (7:30.936)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (7:49.887)
that you could just download that instead of me having to come to you, I could just do all of my work. Like it won't let me use my apps. And then when I've done all of my work, it says, wow, great job, Isla. And now Isla can go ahead and have access, right? Because she earned her time by doing what I was already telling her to do and not having to fight for it. So I said, yeah, of course. I mean, that obviously exists. I'll just download it and it's, ⁓ it's genius. Let me do it.
Benjamin Brown (8:4.899)
Mm.
Adam (8:13.888)
So I looked for it and I didn't see it. ⁓ I told my wife about it. My wife started talking to some moms and like mom group text messages and they looked for it. Didn't exist either. And we come to find out that this actually doesn't exist. Apple has never allowed it before. There's tons of screen time apps out there. They're all like locking and blocking and let's limit and let's stop and let's ban the app at this time or let's control the device.
And if I had to control your device, you wouldn't like it, right? If I said your device is over, this time you will like the same thing for a kid. So we kind of saw.
Benjamin Brown (8:44.077)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Saunders (8:45.173)
I'm an IT professional, adults don't like that. Like, no, you can't go to gun shooting websites on your preschool laptop. What, what? Can't do it, bro, sorry. Like, yeah, but I'm an adult. Hmm, are you?
Benjamin Brown (8:48.076)
Yeah. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (8:52.750)
⁓ What do mean? Why can't I?
Adam (8:57.780)
Yeah. So those controls we thought just don't work. So we figured that we would build something based on my daughter's idea. And now my daughter actually is doing competitive gymnastics. As I mentioned, she's doing homeschool. So she's actually played a really big part, which has been great for me to spend time with my daughter. And we've built this product. spent the first year and a half working with Apple to make this as actually something that is possible to lock the device, but then actually unlock it based on doing something.
And then we built the product around doing something for kindergarten through sixth grade, which is wisely. And we ask educational content and questions. They pop up that are specific for age grade in school district. We built the hyper intelligent, our own large and small language model. So our own artificial intelligence that does a ton of stuff, which I'm sure we'll get into through our conversation. And then the parent feels much better about themselves by providing screen time because their child is earning it. And they're getting enrichment in education rather than just having to fight for it and teaching really bad habits.
So we're taking a very different approach than what's out there right now in the market, because the locking, blocking, and banning is kind of like if you want to go on a diet, and we said just don't eat or drink for the next six months, well, you lose a lot of weight, but that's not really a sustainable or fun lifestyle, you know? So we're just changing that method, and we think that it's the right way to do it, and it's possible in 2026 to do something like that. And we're also getting outstanding feedback from parents and kids alike.
Benjamin Brown (10:10.211)
Mm-hmm.
Benjamin Brown (10:22.465)
And it's, think it's really interesting too, because like you said, that's sort of the, you know, we have a kindergartner, right? Very precocious five-year-old. ⁓ and he's really the same way, right? So it comes from, from school. He's got, you know, a little bit of homework to do and, ⁓ you know, karate to practice or whatever he needs to do. And it's sort of the same conversation, right? I want to watch a movie. I want to watch a show. He wants some time on, on the TV or on his laptop after school to play a game.
And it's that same concept of like, OK, but you need to finish your homework first. You need to practice your karate first. You need to ⁓ clean up your room first before you're going to be able to do these things. So I think it's interesting because it is something that's already, ⁓ I think for the most part, at least in kind of our circle of parents, is a method that we're already using, but then applying it at the device level, rather than ⁓
⁓ the home level. I think it's the ⁓ way it's laid out is it seems like a good integration into a method that already exists in the home. ⁓ But gives you a little bit of backup, right? Like you said, you're not blocking, you're not ⁓ necessarily just taking it away ⁓ immediately, ⁓ which one of the things that...
If you guys ever listened to, ⁓ you know, Dr. Becky with the good inside and all of that, ⁓ she talks about this idea of like emotional inoculation, right? Like kids, ⁓ especially really intelligent kids, ⁓ do not deal well with ⁓ sudden change. ⁓ And sudden change might be, yeah, I'm concentrating on something. It's the same thing like we get interrupted. We're doing work. You're focused on something. And all of a sudden somebody walks in and says, okay, you got to stop doing this. It could be your kid saying, I need a snack.
Nate (11:58.130)
not one of those.
Benjamin Brown (12:10.495)
or in ⁓ our case with our potty training, two year old, I need, or three year old now, ⁓ I need my butt wiped. You gotta stop what you're doing and go take care of this. And so having ⁓ that emotional inoculation of if I do this thing, it's not telling me I can't do any more screen time. It's saying I need to do something positive in order to earn it, I think is really interesting. ⁓ And I did a...
Nate (12:17.928)
It's my favorite.
Nate (12:37.084)
Yeah, there's a lot of schools doing that too, Ben. Like it's, it's very focused on PBIS. And so if I'm, I'm recently elected to the school board and I'm thinking about all these positive things that we're trying to do in the schools to have students earn whatever it might be, whether it's a, a big assembly or things like that too. And so ⁓ as I look more at this, you know, as a, on the dad verb, the dad, I'm thinking like, this is a really cool idea. And I think you might've mentioned this Adam, but how do you. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (12:40.280)
Yeah.
Nate (13:5.810)
how do you scale this? And maybe this is a longer conversation, but school districts, I'm thinking of snow days, which you all probably don't have in South Carolina, those days off where we're at home trying to figure out how do we lock that in while still working too, right?
Andrew Saunders (13:13.333)
You
Adam (13:20.840)
Yeah, mean, look, from a school district perspective to anywhere in America, anywhere in the whole world, any restaurant you go to, every kid's in front of the device. ⁓ Anytime you see any child, any parent, and I've actually noticed that parents even, it's kind of like taboo where they don't even want to talk about how much screen time their kid's getting. But when you're very good friends with them, they actually open up to you and talk about these screen time problems. So this issue is just so massive.
Benjamin Brown (13:42.233)
Mm-hmm.
Nate (13:44.904)
3
Benjamin Brown (13:47.726)
Yeah.
Adam (13:50.592)
And we've also built in certain ⁓ factors that we brought in a licensed mental health counselor, a real expert in children's behavioral and mental health to help us design the app. So the app actually takes pauses throughout the day and doesn't allow just consistent use. If you use what I would call is like our nanny managed option, right? And this managed option for us, it actually goes by real science and data and looks at all the behavioral, the mental health studies that have been published out there and decides
when to take breaks throughout the day for learning and enrichment to not just give you two, three, four hours in a row of iPad use. Now you're actually getting after maybe 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever the device decides, the AI decides to actually pause and say, Hey, you've done 45 minutes of consistent use. Let's do, let's break up that monotony. Let's stop these certain factors, which lead to like ADHD, a ton of different behavioral problems. So we're actually managing screen time, which is
five or 10 years probably ahead of what any other application is out there doing in the screen time space, we're actually managing the experience, not just providing the education. The education is one component, the management is a very serious component, the custom tailored questions and content is another component, it gets harder, easier as you ask questions. So it's a very, very intelligent system that actually allows parents to say, okay, my kid is getting a lot of value, I'm also getting a lot of value and we hope
that to your question of how do we scale something like this, obviously there's traditional avenues of marketing, there's influencer marketing, but the real hope is that we've actually solved such a problem that we're the only solution that's doing this now and hopefully it will go viral by word of mouth. And that's for us the biggest and ⁓ most important thing is to actually make a difference in the parents' lives. And we think that the mom or the dad will tell their friends and family about this and it will scale that.
Benjamin Brown (15:45.293)
Yeah, and ⁓ I think that's one of the really interesting things too is that ⁓ going back to the point that you made about sort of the confession about screen time, right? Like that's something that we've talked about here on the podcast is like, ⁓ don't necessarily, screens are so pervasive that if we just treated them all as evil tools, right? Like it's difficult and impossible to exist in the modern world ⁓ just treating screens as something that... ⁓
are fundamentally banned from your life or your household. You can't do it. It's nearly impossible to exist in a world like that. But with the more information we've understood about the impact of what I guess I would characterize as low quality screen time, shows like Cocoa Melon, those high contrast, high speed.
⁓ attention grabbing or, ⁓ guess attention hijacking type shows, ⁓ that, that parents are ⁓ made to feel a lot of shame, right? Like the, the more we know and the more gets ⁓ fed to us on social media, right? It's like, well, if your kids get too much screen time, you're a bad parent, like instantly, you know, it's, it's a, there's sort of this judgment from, ⁓
from the world at large of if your kids get too much screen time, you're not doing something right. You're going to ruin them. ⁓ And because it feels sort of impossible to avoid screens, we just don't talk about it. Right. It's like a lot of people don't talk about their finances because they don't talk about, know, they don't want to share how much they make or how much they spend or whatever, because it becomes a sort of taboo subject. And I think, you know, something like this that helps manage it in a more proactive way.
⁓ without the ⁓ shame ⁓ is going to be helpful to a lot of people. think it's a really interesting approach. And Saunders, I didn't mean to cut you off there. What were you going to say?
Andrew Saunders (17:51.903)
No, no, ⁓ You were I was focusing on you, but there was ⁓ a thought. ⁓ I'm not going to remember it. It'll come to me. It's fine. Yeah.
Nate (18:1.512)
⁓ As you gather it is this. So I read this book recently, the anxious generation, Jonathan height in it. And it talks about like, how, how does this build up? Which I'm sure it's very pervasive and popular book, but it's like, how do we make sure that we don't coddle? ⁓ how do we make sure that we provide that structure? And I love this idea, Adam, of this, how do you build things up so that they can manage it? I've got a kid with ADHD and Ben, when you were talking earlier, when I walk in and I say, Hey, we got to pivot.
Benjamin Brown (18:2.211)
No worries.
Benjamin Brown (18:8.815)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Nate (18:30.504)
⁓ It's like Shelton Cooper from the Big Bang Theory. Like I need to finish the three knocks on Penny's door before I get to it. And if they can help manage it ⁓ beyond like what I need to grow as a dad to manage that differently, I think that's a really powerful tool.
Benjamin Brown (18:33.924)
Yeah.
Benjamin Brown (18:37.635)
Mm-hmm.
Benjamin Brown (18:43.087)
Mm-hmm.
And I think that's, you know, one of the things that, ⁓ that I was reading through the website, this, sort of idea between, ⁓ earning based versus restriction based. ⁓ so there's the, ⁓ I guess I kind of liken it to, you know, you think about kids that go out, like, I don't know this is your experience in college, but, ⁓ you had the kids that, ⁓ that their, their parents.
would ban them from doing anything bad, right? Like they had never been around alcohol. They had never been around anything that could possibly be bad for them. And it was severely restricted, right? They were kind of sheltered. ⁓ And as soon as they got to college, what's the first thing they did? They got, you know, drunk off their butts. ⁓ And, you know, some of them flunked out of school and it was... ⁓
Andrew Saunders (19:27.441)
hit college.
Party animals, yeah.
Adam (19:31.233)
wild.
Andrew Saunders (19:37.600)
Come on now, Ben. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (19:38.807)
Yeah, yeah, it put them in a position where they did not know how to manage themselves, right? They didn't have the sort of discipline to say, you know, when enough is enough because it was a completely new experience. So I do want to talk about that a little bit. you know, you talked about a lot of those restriction based apps. ⁓ And this is really an earning based app. ⁓ Why?
Why did you choose to take that approach and kind of what's the, what are the psychological factors behind it? Cause it seems like it would be aimed at building sort of autonomy ⁓ and self-awareness of, know, these things are here and they're okay. ⁓ in moderation. So can you, can you talk us through that a little bit?
Adam (20:26.808)
Yeah, of course. So we didn't remove the power from the parent. the app itself, when you go on there as a parent, you still can set the bedtime and the bedtime is like a mandatory by the parents. Let's just say the parents is at 8 PM, it's off. They can still set it as off, right? So that's first and foremost, the parent can control the device totally if they would like. They can also unpause and pause the app, which would basically render it useless if they wanted to. So parents still totally empowered if they want it to be.
Benjamin Brown (20:39.481)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (20:55.970)
But we also manage everything for them if they want us to do that. ⁓ most, I'd say 95 % of the people are actually choosing us to manage it for them because quite frankly, we're really doing that better than they could even do it. ⁓ Cause we're doing it based on real evidence and science based. So, you know, the points that you bring up are very valid. ⁓ The AI in general, devices in general, this is never going away. It's only accelerating, right? Every single day there's new advancements in the space. I felt as a parent ⁓ that
If I would restrict my children from that, I would probably be holding them back immensely. I don't think that kids need the device 24 hours a day either to sleep with it under their pillow. I think there should be somewhat of a healthy, fair balance. ⁓ In my house, we still have my 10-year-old is still writing in cursive. She still has pen and paper. She still reads books. She's just not strictly only electronics and every single thing in the most forward thinking possible manner.
Benjamin Brown (21:46.105)
Hmm. ⁓
Adam (21:53.685)
But I also feel that she should have a lot of exposure to the newest and greatest technology because I want her to have all of the opportunities that anybody else could have. Who knows where she goes with it in life. ⁓ And I try to be a parent and be involved in her own personal life on a daily basis, as well as even my younger daughter and teach good habits. ⁓ And what we've built with Wisely, it's very different than any other app out there. And quite frankly, I'm not an app developer.
I'm just a dad that saw a massive problem that I suffered from every parent I've ever talked to suffered from. ⁓ use those screen time apps. I subscribe to some of them and I don't want to talk bad about their companies, but I paid for years for their apps. I also use the free version of Apple screen time and it's enraging. ⁓ There is no, there's no other way to look at it other than when the device goes off, there's no kid that just says, okay, no problem. That's it. You know, so we found a way to.
Benjamin Brown (22:29.785)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (22:51.318)
Like I get mad at Facebook when it shuts me off for my 30 minute limit. And most of the time I'm like, no, I'm going to go for 15 more minutes. Like, yeah, forget you meta. I had a, I have a, it's a little more technical question, but so my preschoolers do ABC mouse, right? Well-known iPad base online preschool stuff. Um, and
Nate (22:58.799)
Ignore 15.
Benjamin Brown (22:59.609)
Hmm?
Adam (23:1.410)
together. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (23:16.598)
I was actually amazed. I've never put a time limit on it and they all quit right about 40 minutes. I don't know what it is about ABC mouse, but that's like the edge of, okay, my brain's got enough in it now I'm done. But my question is, when ABC mouse doesn't have access to the internet, that app is absolutely useless. It's got three videos, you can't play any games. And I know enough about iPads to know their onboard AI tools aren't amazing, right? So.
I'm assuming your app has to be online and you have to have Wi-Fi and a data connection and it's got kind of that same limitation where if you are offline, you can't nanny mode it, you can't like get more education or have you built in kind of a, we've got about an hour buffer where you can drive from grandma's house to your house or something. Does that make sense?
Adam (24:3.467)
It does, yeah. So you definitely want to have it connected to Wi-Fi or cellular. ⁓ However, ⁓ if you have your iPad open and I can show you mine here and what will happen is, is I'll give you like a real time example. So here's my daughter's iPad and I put in my passcode here and just...
Andrew Saunders (24:22.039)
For of you listening, you want minute 24 on the YouTube video.
Adam (24:27.193)
⁓ you'll see that all the apps are kind of like gray and hazy, but you can still use texting and you can still use calling or FaceTime. So you actually don't lose functionality of the device, which is ⁓ what you really want as a parent. You still want to be able to text or call. And what will happen is, that if you kind of go to any of the apps that you would know, let's just say YouTube, for example, we'll say you have to go to Wisely. And we go to Wisely here. And what you'll notice is, that whether you're online or offline, we populate a hundred questions to start. So you still would have the questions here.
Benjamin Brown (24:55.055)
.
Adam (24:56.949)
even if I shut off my Wi-Fi, and you'll be able to go through it, right? So ⁓ you do have that, but it won't continue to be able to be used once you've answered that, relock and go through, because we actually base it on usage and not only on the time of day, which we found to be much more fair for the child. So let's just say that you as a ⁓ parent will allow your kid two hours to use the device. If the kid uses it for 12 minutes and puts it down,
It doesn't penalize them throughout the day because they didn't use the whole two hours and then the time of the day ended. We actually give them the full allotment of time to use it and then we'll manage the time and ask questions throughout the day and they can earn more time. And then there's multiple modes that they can pick from as well.
Benjamin Brown (25:30.361)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Saunders (25:42.456)
⁓ Okay, that's great. Great. ⁓ How many like what's the what's the reward? Do I get to pick it to this? Does the does the system pick it like is it five minutes, 10 minutes, ⁓ half an hour? How many like, ⁓ right? What's the don't give away the secret sauce, right? But how many questions do I have to get right to watch another YouTube video ⁓ or listen to another dad bird podcast?
Adam (25:57.891)
Yeah.
⁓ No, of course. That's Yeah, no, that's a great question. So there's the there's three different modes right now, or there's total customization, and each mode can be somewhat customized. But the first mode, if you picked it, it would ask you 20 questions up front, and then you can use your device until bedtime. So very easy to understand, right? Basically, they front load all the questions, you've earned your time, it's unlimited. ⁓ The second mode is where we manage everything for you. ⁓ And you'll get roughly
The device will start unlocked for the day, roughly after 30 to 45 minutes, depending on what you're watching, what you're doing. The device will pause and ask anywhere from roughly three to seven questions. And you'll get around 20 to 25 questions throughout the day and it'll pause anywhere from around the 30 to 45 minute mark each time, depending on the kid's age, their geographic region, what school they're in, how they've been answering the previous questions, if they've been doing well or ⁓ getting some incorrect answers, it might pause more often to help them catch up faster.
So ⁓ that's the middle mode. And then the next mode is actually more customized where you can actually decide on like how many questions that you wanna ask and how much time you wanna give the kid for usage and when you wanna end it. So we've seen that like the parents prefer these set it and forget it versus like the ultimate customization which we're gonna add the ultimate customization but I think that most people actually won't select it which is where you could say I want 88 math questions every hour.
Andrew Saunders (27:22.646)
You
Adam (27:26.753)
And then the last hour of the day, 200 history questions. You can do that. That's a bit like helicopter parent and overkill, but we also don't want to tell people that a parent their child. So we will add that. But I think that most people just want to set it and forget it and know that their kid is getting enrichment versus any other app that's out there. It basically just shuts off and they're, they're done, know.
Benjamin Brown (27:36.879)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Saunders (27:43.958)
Right.
Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. Is there a, ⁓ sorry, ⁓ are there any analytics for what they're doing when they're not in wisely? Your child watched 35 minutes of Cocoa Melon and then you can go into their kid's YouTube account and be like, no more Cocoa Melon for you, I hate that show. Is that ⁓ a report that you're giving back or are you able to monitor? I mean, because.
Benjamin Brown (27:47.044)
Yeah.
Benjamin Brown (28:8.943)
Thank
Andrew Saunders (28:15.145)
Again, from an IT professional standpoint, right? Once I get profile management of your iPad, I basically know everything you do all day long. And I'm assuming you're using some of those same MDM style tools to do this. And so ⁓ how deep are you letting parents get on like the child's usage analytics? Does that make sense? ⁓
Benjamin Brown (28:23.215)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (28:33.497)
Yeah, so you know your stuff. These are very good questions. So we actually built something that is not using family sharing, which is very difficult to install. We did a focus group of 300 people and we saw that it takes on average eight extra minutes to install family sharing. Only about 20 % of all parents actually use family sharing. If you don't use family sharing, it doesn't act as though it's on this...
being done through an MDM and you can't get the full controls and full analytics and being able to block a specific YouTube show or a specific website. So we chose not to use that. And we actually built an entirely separate product that doesn't use any of those capabilities. We get a hundred percent of the data that allow that Apple allows us to. And of course there's no like shortcuts. can't like Greek Apple right there. And we also would never try that. So we're getting enough data that
we'd be able to provide this to the parent. But quite frankly, there's no reason for us to get any more data because the parent has that all on their fingertips if they want to use family sharing, but we don't want to force them to do so. So if they use family sharing, they can have it all. And if they don't use family sharing, fine, but it's not a prerequisite for wisely. Our install process is very easy. We wanted to make it super simple for parents to use it ⁓ versus forcing them to install family sharing and forcing them to go through all of this.
Andrew Saunders (29:42.731)
Okay.
Adam (29:58.851)
And honestly, I don't need those analytics. And we also want to really protect the kids and the parents data and have as much of a hands-off approach and away from certain things. ⁓ Learning every single thing about the child wasn't really our primary focus. We'd prefer to keep everybody super safe and provide the education and the content versus worrying about, you know, what they're doing on YouTube. We have no advertisers, we sell no data. And me as a parent, I actually find those things ⁓ a little bit scary when they know everything that my daughter did.
Benjamin Brown (30:13.359)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Saunders (30:27.381)
Right.
Benjamin Brown (30:27.843)
Mm. ⁓
Adam (30:28.666)
I'd prefer not, so that's why we didn't want to include it.
Andrew Saunders (30:31.723)
That makes sense. I appreciate that. Is it?
Benjamin Brown (30:32.207)
Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
Andrew Saunders (30:36.455)
I don't even want to, I won't ask any more technical questions. I'm sorry. ⁓ Well, no, ⁓ I want to dig in on like, how does the LLM separate my kids data from other kids data? And right? Like ⁓ there's, there's these highly technical, like, I just need the higher level questions answered, but maybe next time. ⁓ Okay.
Adam (30:39.052)
please do.
Nate (30:39.144)
⁓ You guys focus. You guys focus.
Adam (30:51.994)
Yeah. So we keep everything 100 % anonymized. They're gone. Like each kid is coded on the backend, which if it was, ⁓ we believe it's not possible to be hacked. mean, listen, we use ⁓ their private servers on AWS, right? So, which is like the most secure Amazon and everything. we built every single thing in house, every employee is ours. I opened up an office in Tel Aviv, actually. We have 11 full-time people there. They're all our own employees.
Benjamin Brown (31:3.055)
Mm. ⁓
Adam (31:18.042)
⁓ And they've been building every single thing from scratch. They're actually our real partners. ⁓ So the likelihood of anything ever happening seems to be pretty much impossible. We've gone through as much security checks as possible. And then we, every single child and parent is a hundred percent anonymized. So it would be like ⁓ L57962 ⁓ would be the kid. And we also don't use consistent numbers. So we don't go 5762, 5763.
Andrew Saunders (31:38.347)
Right. Right.
Adam (31:44.357)
So it's totally different in the system. So even if you would look in the backend in MyData, you would literally have no idea who you're looking at, where they live. ⁓ We also don't ask a lot of personal questions. We don't ask security exact ⁓ address or anything like that. ⁓ So the credit card is processed through Apple, which is obviously very secure and people buy apps and stuff all the time. So we tried our best ⁓ to really keep everything safe and secure. We even brought in a specialty company called the Privacy Team.
Andrew Saunders (31:54.624)
Right. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (31:59.161)
Mm. Mm. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (32:7.863)
Yeah.
Adam (32:12.462)
to come through and go through everything and all they do is data security and privacy, which was not required by Apple, but as a parent, I wanted to go above and beyond and make sure that everything was really safe. So we did that as well.
Andrew Saunders (32:24.311)
It's amazing. They did what Miku should have done three years ago, right?
Benjamin Brown (32:24.911)
Thank
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they should have done a lot of that stuff, but they are, I think they're still kind of hurting right now. They are not doing so hot. ⁓ But I did, I.
Andrew Saunders (32:31.391)
Yeah. ⁓
Adam (32:31.513)
Yeah.
Andrew Saunders (32:36.151)
Well, they're getting my five bucks a month. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (32:37.967)
Yeah, I wanted to give just an opportunity kind of, you know, as we kind of close out the episode and wind down here. If you had one message or thought or point of encouragement that you wanted to give out to parents, you know, you're, you're a dad, you're an entrepreneur, right? You're a founder of this app. You, dealt with some of these screen time issues in your own home and, are, you know, trying to find a, a good solution for those things. But if you have one thing to say to parents out there,
⁓ you know, ⁓ as, as a dad, ⁓ what, would your message be? What do you think that would be?
Adam (33:15.130)
⁓ So I would tell you that ⁓ the app in general, putting that totally aside and just being as a parent, I'd say really just being involved and spending the time with my child and really getting to know who they are inside. Each child is very different. Both of my kids are like very different in many areas, but really getting to know them and coming up with fair solutions for them by talking to them, I have found has been ⁓ immensely
valuable to me to understanding what works for my child and coming up with an individualized approach with that child for whatever it may be, whether it's eating, sports, in this case screen time, and working with them so that it's fair. I think that when children ⁓ feel that they're being treated unfairly, it makes for a very hostile environment and it's very difficult to work with intelligent children. And these kids are very smart nowadays, much smarter than I was when I was a kid.
Benjamin Brown (34:13.090)
Yeah. ⁓
Andrew Saunders (34:14.754)
You
Adam (34:14.903)
So I think just trying to meet them where they're at and creating an individualized plan and getting to know who they really are inside is the most important thing to manage screen time in this case, or any other ⁓ facet of life.
Benjamin Brown (34:28.794)
That's awesome. think that's.
Andrew Saunders (34:29.100)
can't believe how succinctly he just described like the concept of dad verb ⁓ without like, ⁓ you know, anyway, like good work. Thanks Adam. Appreciate that. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (34:34.957)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Be, be present, pay attention and be involved as much as you can. ⁓ well, awesome, Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. We sincerely appreciate it. I think we've gotten a lot of good information, not only about wisely, but just ⁓ a good conversation about screen time and its impact in our homes and knowing, ⁓ you know, a big part of what we do here at dad verb is try to build a community of fathers and parents who ⁓
don't want to feel alone, don't want to feel like they're being shamed for the mistakes they've made or the information they don't have. And we're all learning and growing and trying to get better together. And I think that's exactly what this is all about. So Adam, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We sincerely appreciate it. This has been Nate and Saunders and Ben and Adam Adler of wisely on episode 94 of the DadVerb podcast. As we always like to remind all of you.
wherever you're listening to this, wherever you're listening to this podcast, whether that's Apple or Spotify or wherever you happen to get it, ⁓ please go give us a rating. Leave us a comment. Yeah. We're number 13 in the UK. Apparently ⁓ we got a big international audience, I guess, ⁓ but, ⁓ you know, ⁓ leave us a comment, leave us a message. Let us know what you think of the dad verb podcast, any topics that you want to see us cover and to help us reach more dads out there. We would love a rating.
Andrew Saunders (35:40.376)
13 in the UK. ⁓
Benjamin Brown (35:59.905)
five stars if you can manage it and you think our information is good. We're glad you're here. We're glad you're part of the community and we'll see you all in the next episode. Peace.
Andrew Saunders (36:8.889)
Peace. ⁓
Nate (36:9.084)
Thanks Adam.
