On with Kara Swisher - Put Your Phone Away: Yondr CEO on the Philosophy Behind Phone-Free Spaces

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

They’re incredible pieces of technology, they’re unbelievably useful, and we feel lost without them. Nonetheless, smartphones have become the bane of our existence. So Graham Dugoni started Yondr with a surprisingly simple and analog solution to their ubiquity: locking pouches that force cell phone users to put away their device while still keeping their phones on them. Now, they’re used everywhere from comedy shows, to concerts, courtrooms, and weddings. After the success of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, more and more states and school districts are instituting cell-phone bans — and, oftentimes, Yondr is the first company they turn to when they need help. Kara and Graham talk about the push to ban phones from schools, the company’s success, and his philosophical take on smartphones, social media and technology. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. Today I'm talking to Graham Dugoni, the founder and CEO of Yonder. It's a company that's mainly known for making pouches that lock cell phones. They can only be unlocked with a proprietary magnetic key, and if you've been to a comedy show in the past few years, there's a decent chance you've had to lock up your phone in a Yonder pouch. If you're an American student in middle or high school, there's a very decent chance

you've either had to lock up your phone in one of these pouches or you will in the coming years. The pouches are a you will in the coming years. The pouches are a simple but ingenious solution to a paradox caused by smartphones. We love them and we need them, but they also can ruin everything from weddings, concerts, and comedy shows to court proceedings. Graham started Yonder in 2014, before most people had caught on to how pernicious cell phones can be. He takes a philosophical approach to technology and I want to talk to you about that because we know our phones are killing us. Come on, they're addictive, they're problematic, they're necessary.

You have to have them for work and they also cause all kinds of problems and we need to get a hold of our issue. The other issue is technology leaders then have complete control of us and you know we don't want that, especially these days. We have two expert questions for Graham, one from Jonathan Haidt, whose book, The Anxious Generation, has kickstarted a conversation about the effects of cell phones on kids, and Dr. Shamice Taylor,

the principal of Phoenixville Area Middle School in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Stick around and Dr. Taylor, go phantoms. Support for the show comes from NerdWallet. When it comes to finding the best financial products, have you ever wished that someone would do the heavy lifting for you? Take all that research off your plate? Well, with NerdWallet's 2025 Best of Awards,

that wish has finally come true. The nerds at NerdWallet have reviewed more than 1,100 financial products like credit cards, saving accounts, and more to highlight and bring you only the best of the best. Check out the 2025 best of awards today at nerdwallet.com. I just can't stop watching it. I can't stop analyzing it. I can't stop talking about it to anyone that it will listen Which is why I started my podcast serve with Andy Roddick now a part of the Vox media podcast network on the show We talk about everything from new up-and-coming players to the champions dominating the narrative to whatever's on my mind This January is the Australian open and you know, I've got some thoughts

So tune in for our Australian open coverage find served wherever you get your podcast or on our YouTube channel. Graham, thanks for being on On. Oh, thank you for having me. I've actually wanted to have you here a lot, actually. I've used Yonder patches for many years, mostly at concerts, but this is a topic that I talk a lot about on pivot and have talked about a lot over the years

and I have a lot of kids. So it's a critically important issue and I think it's kind of an interesting approach to this problem of screen time and young people, which is a more physical approach. Um, but let's, let's get into it. You started yonder after seeing people film a drunk concert goers. Is this your, your origin story, presumably against his wishes and without his knowledge. Um,

talk about that moment. Um, lots of companies have their sort of origin stories, some of which are true, some of which aren't, but talk about what prompted you, this issue around privacy, because this happens every day. People tape other people all the time now. It seems constant. Yeah, that was a crystallizing moment,

I would say, for me. But it wasn't necessarily the origin. I mean, I was at a music festival in San Francisco about 2012, and I saw someone recording someone who was drunk and dancing, and they were posting it to the internet without their knowledge. And that was a crystallizing moment because if you follow that that line of thinking all the way through, I realized that it bumped up really strongly against this tech idea that everything was going to become more connected everywhere all the time, and that was going to lead us to this great place.

But the background knowledge that led me there was, I fell down a rabbit hole years before reading people like Kierkegaard and Heidegger and a lot of people had been examining the question of technology for hundreds of years. And so I took that. Yeah, the original rabbit hole, by the way, just for people who aren't as well read. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of the origin, but looking at that and then what the tech world was proposing, I just saw things going down, I thought, a very different route.

Okay. I saw the same route and I read all those same people, including Camus and Sartre and everybody else. But talk about why that was, because, you know, obviously people were thrilled with the idea that you could film anywhere and you could do, you know, your phone was an extension of yourself, essentially of your eyes, except that it recorded, um, why did you go down a more negative path? I have ideas why I did, but what I was worried about, I'm always worried about consequences and a lot of people in tech are not, I think that's one of the things. Well, I think it was more to me, anytime there's

radical, radically new technological development, there are going to be possibilities and unforeseen consequences. So for me, it was going, if this theme has been building for hundreds of years and everything is getting faster, easier, cheaper everywhere all the time, that's the theme. I thought that the, the advent of the smartphone

was a fundamental shift in the sense that it changed the way you existed in the world. And this younger generation in particular, digital natives, were going to be born without that frame of reference, of the difference between the online and the offline world. Sure. And so these issues related to privacy in the public sphere, related to the development of critical thinking faculties, these were going to have to be things that were examined in light of something that changed your experience so radically. Right. These are going to have to be things that were examined in light of something that changed your experience so radically.

So for me, it wasn't necessarily the negatives. It was more how are we going to move constructively into the future and incorporate these tools? And I didn't think that the things I was hearing from the tech world sounded right to me. So they're always up and to the right. They're always, it's all going to be great. I mean, it's very common. And now, of course, we're seeing another iteration of where it leads to. But right now, about 2 million students use your pouches and more than a million concertgoers use them every month. Explain how you got the funding and how the

pouches work for people who haven't encountered them. You really have cornered the market on phone free solutions in this regard. And it's kind of a basic idea, right? It's not that complex. Well, I mean, in a way, but in 2014, I was going around, the initial funding came from me selling my car. I had $7,000 and all the initial prototypes of the pouch, which I can describe, I made myself at a hardware store in San Francisco sewing them together. But the idea really is phone free spaces and phone free schools.

And when I kind of created that concept, there was no vernacular for it. So the closest analog I had in my mind was kind of like creating a system of national parks inside a society, you know, recognizing that there are no more frontiers. You've read the postmodernists and you get that. So how do we get to carve out these spaces that allow people to experience a life temporarily kind of outside the pull and tug of our modern lifestyles. Um, but if you're a concert goer or you're a kid going to school where yonder's being used, you know, your experience is a little different, but

similar in the sense that at a show you walk in, you know, you know, it's going to be a phone free show beforehand. Your hand in a pouch, your phone and your wearable tech all goes inside the pouch. Once it closes, it's locked and it's handed back to you. So you have possession of your device at all times. Because sometimes they take them away. Some concerts take them away, which makes people really crazy.

In terms of finding them later, it's actually somewhat chaotic if you do it in that fashion. Definitely, and also it doesn't meet people where they're at because people say, hey, I have a babysitter home with the kids and we're able to say, hey, that's fine. Your phone's on you. If you need to use it, go to a phone use area. It's like a smoking section.

So that was always my approach is trying to meet people where they're at and not, you're trying to open a window for them to have a perspective on tech in their lives. So you have to do it in a certain way. Right. And so it locks and then it unlocks when you leave. People have the keys to unlock them when you leave. Correct. At the, at the exits for every venue, there are unlocking stations.

People just walk by, tap the pouch on there and then unlocks. It's the same in a, in a school setting. The lock is a, is a magnetized lock, correct? I've seen different version of it. A magnetized lock that it's I've seen different person, a magnetized lock that it's a soft pouch that protects the phone from being dropped and things like that. Now, you said when you're getting yonder off the ground, the people who weren't positive, the only people that weren't positive about it was people in Silicon Valley, which is how I knew it

was a good idea. Talk a little bit about that. And how do you feel about those people and how do they feel about what you're doing now? Well, the zeitgeist has changed so much. Honestly, it's hard for me sometimes to remember what it was like back then, because I was going to eight or nine schools every single day, going in person, driving up. And at that time I had an old 1978 Toyota Dolphin.

All my pouches were in the back, I was rolling up. And I would go to had an old like 1978 Toyota Dolphin. All my pouches were in the back, I was rolling up and I would go to two or three music venues at night. But I felt like tech people I talked to, everyone was following this playbook so religiously and innovating and kind of this narrow alleyway that the idea that tech would not be omnipresent or that things weren't going exactly where they thought they were going was not even computing. So when I was, I got laughed out of a lot of rooms when I was trying to find early investors. Ultimately, I'm glad that happened because it just made me actually go out in the world and talk to people about what I was trying to do. And that's where I found teachers and I found artists

who said, yeah, this is a problem for me. Can you help me? And that's how I learned. This is for artists interrupting their performances and comics or singers or whatever, theaters. And then with teachers, not having people pay attention, essentially having kids pay attention. What, who, who funded you? What was the funding situation and where, what was the breakthrough in terms of getting funding?

I mean, the breakthrough is probably scraping together kind of an early friends and family round in 2015, 16 of a hundred thousand dollars, which for me was a lot of money at the time. But probably the most meaningful investor over time was soon after that was probably Dave Chappelle coming on as an investor. And when I met him, he was the first artist who really understood what I was trying to do. And he understood, I think the value for, for his art form, not just from an IP perspective, but for freedom of expression and having an audience that was fully there. Right. And from an IP is people record these performances and take away their IP that

that is their, in fact, their IP for people that don't realize it. It's fine to take a quick snapshot and things like that, but a lot of people were doing more than that, correct? Oh yeah, of course. But also for the art form and for music as well, it's funny, even artists who tend to approach us first from an IP perspective, when I talk to them over time, what it usually morphs into is purely the experience. The idea of being and performing at a phone for show, you know, like when we do shows at Madison Square Garden, it's hard for people to imagine sometimes you're walking into a venue with 20,000 people,

and it's not just the fact that you're not seeing phones at the show, those blinking lights, it's the 30, 40 minutes beforehand, as people step in, they get into the mood, the whole atmosphere radically changes. If they're staring at their phones, it's a very different experience. Which of course, jars people, I think,

when they don't have them now, because that's where they go when they're bored for a second and a half or anything else. Kids, many of us used to just be bored. That's all. We just stared into the abyss constantly, speaking of existentialism. Was there a different experience when you went to teachers at schools? Because I want to get into this idea of what was that reaction. They knew that kids were losing attention, correct? It was not that hard to figure that one out. Oh yeah, I mean even in 2014 I was going around and you would, teachers at that time

fell into two camps I would say. Both knew that cell phones were a massive problem in education. One camp saw it as so far gone, they couldn't even imagine how we could put the genie back in the bottle. And the other also agreed it was a problem, but was searching for answers that some of them were trying to put phones into shoe boxes and things like that. But there was no structural or policy way to help them actually do that. But they were already seeing back then and it just got worse. A tremendous amount of violence in schools, day to day driven through social media and unwanted recording and distractions

and critical thinking. And so that was already happening in 2014. Right, distractions, cheating, all kinds of things people could do with them. What was interesting is around that time, I started when I was having meetings, I used a box, I put them in a box, phones in a pile or something like that, meetings.

Well, I always had my kids had a, my kid had a party maybe fourth or fifth grade or maybe later, probably later. And all the kids were talking to each other on cell phones at the party. They were texting each other. So I took them all and ran, which was, and then I said, enjoy, enjoy yourselves. But it was, it was a much more, you'd have to be very aggressive, but let's go to COVID. So this was something, the pandemic and school closures came with a change kids' relationships to tech.

What did you hear when teachers and principals started opening back up? In terms of growing the company, it was a hard reset for us because I mean, during when COVID first hit, we were on a company trip in camping in Joshua Tree, no one had their phone. And so when we came out, it was like a zombie movie. Everything was closed down and we were on a company trip in camping in Joshua Tree, no one had their phone. Right. And so when we came out, it was like a zombie movie. Everything was closed down. We were like,

what's going on? The concert business stopped, all schools shut down. So it was a reset company-wide. But I felt even in that moment that it ultimately would be a tailwind for us because I thought that there was going to be so much more exposure to online learning and all these things that parents were going to see what was actually happening. And that's what came to pass. As schools opened up and things came back, we had a huge inflow from, a lot of it was from parents and from teachers. Teachers are saying, we've noticed a dramatic change in our students in terms of two years

of loss of kind of in-person interaction and socialization. And parents, I think, just saw what kids, what it meant for them to be online that much, whether it was through learning or their interactions, and they were concerned. Did you think the addiction increased during the pandemic? Well, again, the trend has been developing for so long, and I try to stay away from the word addiction, honestly, not because it's not true, but because if I'm a young person and we're using that kind of language, I don't know what's the most empowering or inspiring language to use, you know? The problem is, as Vivek Murthy, who's the surgeon general said, is these are useful too.

It's not like it's a cigarette where there's very little use for it besides addiction and presumably pleasure for some people. I totally agree. And that's the thing. That's why I try not to paint it that way. But, but absolutely. I mean, look, it's what people are, you're going to take the, young people are no different.

They're going to take the path of least resistance when it comes to learning or social interaction. So to me, digital tools, most of it follows a path of least resistance. If it's easier or less stressful to text someone than to talk in person, get in a vacuum, people are going to do that than this. So how are we, you know, we have to create structures, I think, to help young people orient towards the online world, not negate it, but kind of give them a frame of reference because it's not fair to ask someone who is born into something. Right.

And immediately have perspective. Stop using your blank. I mean, they did that with television, with people. They did that with. Exactly. You know? Um, so right now schools, is that correct? You're your biggest source of revenue? Um, and more states, I think 19 states either

ban or restrict cell phone use in schools. Localities are doing this. Um, and a lot of education policy is done on a local level, uh, state and local level. Um, Virginia and South Carolina's policies went into effect this month. Talk about, is this the trend happening in education where cell phone bans are what happens everywhere?

It seems to me that's the case. Well, yeah, I mean, it's accelerated incredibly quickly. So again, 10 years ago when schools and teachers were reaching out, it was mostly at the classroom level. They were saying, hey, I need help. Teachers themselves, yeah. Yeah, my principal or superintendent's not ready, but I need help. And we tried that.

Again, what we learned over time is that you really have to do bell to bell and a holistic solution for a whole bunch of reasons. But in terms of legislation, we've kind of grown along with that curve, I would say. Whereas we were mostly working with districts a couple of years ago. But in terms of legislation, we've kind of grown along with that curve, I would say, whereas we're mostly working with districts a couple of years ago. Now we're engaging with entire states and helping them kind of inform going, hey, you want to create a phone policy. And it's probably important to distinguish between the idea of a phone ban, which some a state like Florida kind of moved on the concept, but nothing's really happened on

the ground versus what we term like a phone free school, which is actually the devil's in the details. How do you support teachers and principals to do it? Was there a resistance or just inertia that's very common among school districts? Resistance to the idea of becoming a phone free district for school? I think it's really interesting. It depends a little bit on what part of the country you're talking about and the demographics involved, but in general, the support now is, I would say, over 80% in most districts in understanding of and appreciation of what it is.

In the past, most resistance would come from parents. You said earlier that demographics affect the reaction to cells in school. Talk about that. I've noticed that, but talk a little about demographics. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. We work in schools of all sizes, urban, suburban, rural. And I would say there's a couple of things. One is when we roll out the audit program,

it's a program, it's not just a pouch. We help with the pre-planning, the communication, the policy creation, also the implementation and the rollout and also the ongoing support. But in terms of demographics, something I've noticed over time is in some of the, you know, the poor areas that are especially in very dense urban settings, the phone can become for students more than just a tool because there's not, let's say extracurriculars or athletics and things

like that going on, it can become this window to the world, you know, psychologically, well, in, in just a very deeply rooted way, I would say. And so that, that attachment is, is emotional and not just psychological. And so trying to unwind that and create a space where all students are in, you know, in a phone free school day from beginning to end is something you really have to work in communicating with

parents and them understanding the need for it. Go ahead. Oh, well, yeah, the other part I would just say about that is we learned very early on also you really can't, you can't try to create a policy in a punitive way. So picking out students who can't control themselves or things like that does not work. It's really important that all students are in the same boat together. That's what makes it work. Right. I would say Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, has arguably been the catalyst for the increase in interest around the school cell phone bans. Talk about

the book's effect. And obviously there's some controversy around the book, but the cell phone ban thing is pretty explicit. And has that heightened it? He said that by September, a great majority of schools in this country will be phone free. Does that sound realistic to you? I mean, it's moving incredibly fast. And I think that his work I think articulated in a way that people could understand and relate to, and that had a tremendous effect.

If you follow the trend that we've seen, because we're not just in the US, we're in 35 different countries, so we've watched this trend develop. It was moving this way, I think very quickly, but what I think his work did is also help parents understand that the things they're worried about and they see in their young, their young, you know, their children, this is a, exactly, this is something that we can articulate and we can wrestle with. So I guess in terms of that general collective action problem, you know, 10 years ago where I always saw myself and Yonder is the action part. Yeah.

How do you facilitate that? You have to do something about it. And it starts with concrete, tangible things. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Bombas. I'll say it, it's officially too cold to do anything. So what are we supposed to do with ourselves until the spring thaw? Well why not hunker down and cocoon yourself in your coziest clothes,

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you know, you have it falls to the level of classroom management. So some teachers are going to be strict. Some are going to be lenient almost invariably though, over time, they'd be worn down and the policy would just kind of float away and disintegrate. So what we found is also the benefits of a phone free school day. Uh, it's not just in the classroom and distractions. It's in passing period. It's not having kids filming other kids and posting it to not just in the classroom and distractions, it's in passing period.

It's not having kids filming other kids and posting it to the internet in the locker room. It's things we hear even now from schools about kids eating more at lunch because they're not afraid of being filmed and recorded. So we realized that bell to bell, you had to take kind of a holistic approach and go for it in order to give the benefits, just to students but also to teachers who are leaving the profession in huge numbers largely because of the working environment. Right and it's actually harmful. It's not just in the classroom. There's research showing that how harmful they are in the entire learning environment.

Exactly. Yeah. So what's the cost? What do schools pay and how does it get paid for? Yeah, it's $30 per student for the program. So it's a purchase. It's not a recurring cost for them, but that comes with everything I talked about, which is all the hardware, all the setup that helps them. Every student is assigned a pouch, kind of like a textbook at the beginning of the year. We also have our unlocking mechanisms set up by all the exits and the office and mobile

unlocking mechanisms. But the program is more than half of what we provide. And that is, you know, every time we launch a large district, we help them go phone free. It's kind of like a, it's kind of like a mini campaign. And so if a district comes to us and they say,

Hey, we want, you know, a hundred thousand pouches in two weeks. Our answer is that's great. We're happy to help you, but have you done this? Have you talked to your community? Have you you done this? Have you talked to your community? Have you answered their questions? Have you talked to students? Have you kind of walked through all the checklists?

And we kind of force districts to do that so that we know they're ready to go. And they're kind of sitting around corners a bit. And do they buy new pouches for students each year? So if they, if they need them, but usually they'll buy a little bit of an overage, just like they'll do for Chromebooks or whatever else. Right. Right.

Whatever else they're doing. It's that thing. So you just released a white paper with research that shows an increase in academic performance for schools that started using pouches. I've heard anecdotally that from teachers. Um, talk us through your, obviously it's in your interest that to show this, but what talk about

your research and it's certainly something I've heard from teachers over and over again. No question. Yeah. I mean, and by the end of this school year, we're going to have a lot more because we've partnered with a lot of different universities for studies in districts and statewide rollouts, so we'll know a lot more. But we've been hearing for years, we get information from districts and schools that launch about wild reduction in behavioral issues and fights, like a reduction

of 50% within two or three weeks, improved academic performance, better teacher retention, all the stuff you kind of expect to see, but we've been seeing kind of the numbers from these districts for a while. And then we also, we try to get survey questions from, from parents and from students wherever we can. And one of the surprising things, and this goes back longer than you'd expect, this is five or six years. We've known for a while that even students who initially don't like the concept, they will admit to you privately, not around their friends, that after a

month or so they actually enjoy being in a phone free school and they actually, you know, they feel less anxious in general. Right. No, a lot of, I've talked to a lot of students about it. They do like it. They are annoyed by it initially and then they like it. It's sort of a freedom thing in a weird way. I want to get to tech companies being against this, but I mean, obviously they can, they

do a lot of attempting to whitewash what they're doing, but I'm sorry, I'll use the term addictive. They're selling addictive devices. But you said some of the resistance comes from parents and some of them want to stay in touch with their kids and don't want to give that up. This is an issue, I've heard teachers complain about this too, that parents text and call during class, even monitor the kids screens remotely. Um, talk about how parents are pushing back here. Cause it's a smaller group, but it certainly exists and they're quite loud, I would say in the schools I've been involved in.

Yeah. I mean, I only know that because I have to give speeches to the parents and I'm like, you need to fucking back down. Like you, you strange helicopter people. Anyway, go ahead. Oh, look, I get it. And that's changed a lot over the years as well.

Whereas, you know, when we would go to lunch, let's say in a wealthier area, this might have been three or four years ago, those areas particular, parents could get very prickly about the idea of access to their student throughout the school day. So that has changed where now we've run into that far, far, far less, because again, the zeitgeist has kind of turned. But one thing we always try to do is we try to take that concern that the average parent has about watching their kids scrolling TikTok endlessly and watching them become more socially disengaged and worried about what is their education going

to be like? What are they going to grow up to be? And we try to tie that to, all right, what can we practically do to affect that? This is a huge nebulous problem affecting people of all ages across society. And our kind of what we say is, well, we can affect the six to eight hours today they're in school and giving them a break from that. And here's what a phone free school does. And here's how it bumps up against your concerns. But also just trying to paint

a picture that when a parent is calling or texting their students through the day, what is that doing to the learning environment? What does that mean for the teacher? And trying to paint that in vivid terms because they don't always necessarily get that right off the bat. Sure, absolutely. But some parents are using the excuse of safety. New York city announced the cell phone ban and then backtracked in part

because they got complaints from parents who weren't able to reach kids during the lockdown, which is an unfortunate increasingly common event. Most security experts think this is nonsense. You want the kids to focus on staying safe, not texting, even if it makes for a dramatic story sometimes when they're reporting these terrible incidents. But how do you address that fear of parents? They've got to, if there's a lot, you know, if this happens.

Talk about that, the safety issue, because there are certain things that happen, even if they're rare, that parents worry about locating their kids. Yeah, no, you're right. And that's something in the pre-planning for a launch, that's something we always encourage districts to do. And a lot of them now, actually it's the director of safety and security in the district that's helping bring Yonder in.

And usually though, in this local law enforcement to talk to parents and answer questions around emergency response and explain, like you said, why students are not safer in an emergency. It's also important for parents to know that the students have possession of their devices at all time when Yonder's being used.

So if they have to evacuate or they're in lockdown, they can unlock them in that class and have access to them, which is really important. So those are all kinds of things that we encourage the district to be proactive in talking to parents going, hey, in an emergency, here's the communication plan. Here's how we will contact you and just be really explicit about that. Because as you know, in today's day and age, like people's immediate response to things like that, and for good reason, I mean, I have a kid, um, is, is visceral and kind of emotional and you have to walk people through the

trade-offs, which is true in all aspects of modern society. You can have, let's say, you know, to use another different example, you can have CCTV on every corner in London and that you can make an argument that makes people safer. There's also a profound trade-off in terms of privacy. So, you know.

Yeah. I would say it's really interesting to think about that, that argument. And I, you totally understand why it's a completely emotional. Um, uh, your kid's not in school yet though, right? Correct. You have a younger.

Oh yeah. He's, he's two and a half. Yeah. He's, he's got, he'll not in school yet though, right? Correct? You have a younger. Oh yeah, he's two and a half. Yeah, he'll be in school. So some kids also have started to resist them. There's a change.org petitions against yonder pouches. One said he understood the use of patches in class, but quote, completely confiscating them all day seems excessive and disregards their role in a crucial communications tools. They want to use their phones at lunch, talk to each other.

What is your best argument to kids? I think kids like it. Most of them, some of them don't, but what, uh, what, what's your argument to kids? You know, this is my freedom. This is my thing. This is my social life, et cetera. Well, part of it is, uh, we, we never try to win a cool contest with kids coming into school. We try to explain why it's important, the benefits, so that they can hopefully grasp

onto those as they get used to being in a phone-free school, but we're not going to try to win a cool contest. And it's part of kids' job to push back against things that other people are, you know, kind of their principal or their superintendent or their parents are dictating. I can appreciate that. But a big goal for me, honestly, is this, again, digital natives, they were born into a world that's almost part of a little bit of a thought experiment, you know, of what it's gonna be like

to navigate down that world. I'm not big into telling people what to do or what to think, but I felt like it's my generation's responsibilities as a crossover generation to give them a Lisa frame of reference and a perspective of the difference between those two worlds. So when they're in there, they can understand, and maybe it will give them a perspective on,

hey, how do I feel about spending this much time online? And that can drive cultural change over time. And that's also where the artist side of what we do plays because a lot of young people go to those shows. And it's, to me, stepping into a big concert experience where you're phone free is a sense of freedom and adventure for a young person. Even if you can't record it, right?

Exactly, in a way that you can't get through the mediated world of online interaction. Yeah, there is a poll to record it, right? Like if you're a Taylor Swift, at whatever concert you happen to be at, there is a poll to record it, right? Like if you're Taylor Swift, whoever concert you happen to be at, there's a poll to do it. She did not have them. She did not have yonder pouches, which was interesting. Um, I think she wanted those photos, uh, everywhere.

And it was a different experience. It was a stadium experience, which is different, I guess. Uh, we do stadiums too, but I, yeah, of course I agree with you. I mean, I would love to do a regular tour like that. Yeah, you'd like to do it. We'll see. Yeah, I don't think she wanted it. I'm just recalling, yeah.

But every week we ask an outside expert question, we got two questions for you just so you know. Here's the first, and we thought it was important to have two different types of questions. Let's hear the first one. I'm Dr. Shamees Taylor, and I have been a middle school principal for over two decades. There is an entire generation of children that has only known life with cell phones. At the middle school level, I've observed that students

are often not developmentally ready to consume and process the vast amount of information to which they are exposed daily. While I am a proponent of limiting cell phone use for middle schoolers, I also understand the value and importance of teaching children how to use these powerful devices responsibly. The big question I would ask Graham is how does Yonder balance the need for limiting distractions in schools with the importance of teaching students responsible and mindful technology use.

Alright, first that one. Yeah, that's a great question. I think, and we get that a lot, it comes down to the details a little bit. How do you think you're going to educate young people? How do you use these devices? Again, if you're asking the fish swimming in water about the water, that's not really a fair question. So to me, if you get down to how we're going to educate young people, mostly technology

to me interacts with your nervous system. And so when you actually, when a student steps into school, their phone goes inside a pouch and it's in their pocket, they're going to be several times, especially in the first hour where they have that phantom vibration, you know, they feel, they reach for it. And then their hand touches the pouch and it gives you a chance to interrupt the impulse, you know, that pathway that's been carved. And to me, if you do that repeatedly, what you're doing is you're breaking kind of the physiological tie and allowing a new habit and pattern to form.

So at that level, I think the physical separation and boundaries is one of the best ways to deal with the influence of the role of technology, because that's how it operates. It's very difficult to just attack it at the world of rational ideas, because that's not really how it works. The other is as you go in and educating kids

about a phone free space and giving them the experience, to me, that has a chance of making a much deeper imprint on them and giving them perspective about the way technology, not just To me, that has a chance of making a much deeper imprint on them and giving them perspective about the way technology, not just phones and the internet, but TV and other things, are part of their daily life. The details about how to educate kids I think are really important, but you can't, it's very hard to have that conversation in a meaningful way while they're fully inundated with it.

So we have a second question, that's absolutely true. I think there are ways to teach them without having it to be there. We didn't have television on all the time in school, is a very good answer. All right, let's, we did, sometimes we did. All right, let's move to our second expert question. Hi, this is Jonathan Haidt.

I'm a professor at New York University and author of The Anxious Generation. My question for Graham is this. Yonder pouches clearly work. The schools that use them are reporting great results. But my daughter and other young people tell me that you just go on YouTube, you find five different ways to crack open the pouches, and so some kids still do have access to their phones during the day.

What is Yonder doing? What will you be doing to improve security going forward? Thanks. I love that one. All right. Talk to Jonathan. Kids are always so clever. How do you fix that?

They are. They are. And it's part of their, honestly, it's part of their job. And we're not naive. We know that. We know certain students are going to bring a burner phone and put it in the pouch and they're gonna put it in their sock. So at one level, we know that and we talk to schools

about that and part of the policy in having everyone on board and parents is when a student is seen with a phone inside the school, everyone knows what happens next and there's no ambiguity about it. But in terms of product itself, look, we're moving as quickly as we can to try to keep up and be ahead of kids in terms of improving the product's strength and durability and being clever about how it's designed.

But honestly- Maybe you hire those kids like you white hat hackers or something. We've talked about it. Definitely. But it is the social pressure and the idea that is the most important. Because again, if you go to a large show, we've done, you know, Fenway Park with Bill Buran, if you're going back in the nosebleeds, it's not the pouch that's holding that phone free space together, it's the social

psychology and the shared belief that this is important. And that's something I'd never want to lose sight of by creating a, uh, you know, a Fort Knox type of pouch. Cause in a way that would send a really weird message to kids, right. Which is you're not going to crack this thing or you're not, this is, yeah, Fort Knox type of pouch, because in a way that would send a really weird message to kids. Right. Which is, you're not going to crack this thing or you're not, this is, yeah, they're going to want to try to do it rather than stop being an asshole, leave it alone kind of thing compared to everyone else.

Exactly. And my hope is down the road that kids will start to go, you know what, hey, get off your phone, let's have fun together. That would be ideal. So do you have the same problems with concerts? Do people try to like get into them in some ways, take pictures or things like that? They can also get removed from the theater in that regard

or whatever they happen to be at. Oh, of course. Yeah, of course. They can be, I mean, everything is very explicit. So if someone is seen with their phone out at a show, everyone knows that they shouldn't be doing that. And usually it's the people right around them in the crowd who are shaming them and pointing them out,

going, hey, don't be an asshole. This is a phone free show. We're all having fun. But honestly, it really depends on the show and the artist. If you're doing a Friday night show with the Joe Rogan crowd in some part of the world, that pouch is gonna have a little bit different life than a Bob Dylan show in Madrid on a Wednesday.

Right, right, right. Meaning, which one are you implying is more... Yeah, exactly. ...Lew's style, let me guess. But you don't, do you see people ripping them apart or cutting them or... Sure, you probably see everything. Of course, you see everything. I mean, you know, large shows, people are crazy. But it's been really cool to see over time, we track, you know, how many pouches we lose here and there, and it's gone steadily down, down, down. And I think that's partly the normalization of the concept and people's

understanding that this is a positive thing. And we go through great lengths to try to have those conversations with people as they enter and kind of put them at ease because that's important. We'll be back in a minute. Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Indeed. It's a couple weeks into the new year year, you might still be looking to hire that open position from 2024. It's time to get that spot filled

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Two influencers, both alike in dignity and some other stuff on the internet where we lay our scene. Let's talk about all of my favorite basics from Amazon that you need in your winter wardrobe. Some people think this is weird, but I get all my clothes on Amazon. This is what I would buy if I didn't already own them. I just got in a bunch of super cute packages from Amazon, so let's open them up.

Their aesthetic is beige, it's serene, it's a little basic on purpose. And now one is suing the other for stealing her vibes. There's a lot of things going on in the actual suit, but what it boils down to really is one of the women, Sydney Gifford, says that the other woman, Alyssa Sheal, just won't stop copying her. -♪

Coming up on Today Xplained. So I want to ask you very quickly about Kids Online Safety or COSA, the Children in Teams Online Privacy Protection Acts or COPPA 2, two bills that aim to protect kids online. Both are not without their controversies. You're not a policymaker, but Yonder has lobbied lawmakers, you've probably thought about these issues. What is your take on these legislative efforts to curb TEP companies' access to kids? I had an interview with Amy Klobuchar, who is one of the people working on these things.

Talk a little bit about that on the higher level of protection of kids. You know, we've been pulled into some of these conversations because there's a lot of, uh, legislative moves are being made in states and districts are going, Hey, we want to go phone free. They reach out to us to figure out how do we do it? What does that actually look like? But in terms of regulation, it's interesting to see how quickly it's developing and I think it's, it's obviously necessary. I think I've always pushed on the cultural aspect of things because I

think in a way that moves faster and might have in a way a deeper and broader impact on young people is how do you motivate them to want to kind of choose a life maybe that's a little less online and seek out these different experiences and change the way to balance about how much they put into the online world versus not. But I think it's positive and it's exciting to see how much ground soil there's been behind it. But I am a believer that it's in a way when you're on the internet, it's not so much if you're in the deep end or the shallow end. It's like once you're in the pool, you're getting wet. Right.

And so creating the juxtaposition between the two is the foundational lesson to try to teach young people. Well, in that regard though, phones are the only technology in schools. A vast majority of schools have laptops at schools, so many of them are mandated. That's a big phone, right? Now, there is software to restrict what sites and apps these kids can use, but they're resourceful. Is that, and some teachers do not like kids connected to the internet the entire school day. Talk first about that, and then also within these concert

settings more and more technology is on the body, right? There's more, there's going to be more and more within glasses and all things like that. Well, definitely. So at concerts and in schools, you know, when Yonder's being used, all of that stuff goes inside the pouch together. So that's earbuds, that's wearable tech, that's glasses.

Ah, okay. So that's earbuds, that's wearable tech, that's glasses. So all of it goes in. But yeah, in terms of other devices in the classroom, it's interesting to see, you know, not that long ago, Finland, I think, has moved back to books and pen and paper. And there, you know, so that these changes, people are talking about, and I hear this from parents all the time, they go, great, we're talking about the phone.

What about this other digital curriculum happening in the classroom? Like you said, a lot of these, these laptops are monitored with different software, but like you also said, students are resourceful. So it's going to be interesting to see where it goes. The thing that I'm interested in is, especially with the AI and things like that is going, you know, what's really important for young people in education, I think is mostly developing critical thinking faculty, faculty.

Absolutely. And so when you think about the type of assignments they're getting, the tools at their disposal, I think the risk is that young kids are becoming information retrieval machines and that's not critical thinking and no matter where we think we're going as a society. I love that idea. Information retrieval systems. Yeah.

Without that, we're not going, we're not going anywhere fast. And that's not necessarily a native faculty. It's a muscle that has to be flexed. So with a lot of tech, I view it that way is the foundation must be something like that. And, you know, that's maybe the concern. Plus we're uploading our stuff to them in order to spit it back at us for us to go retrieve it like stupid dogs.

But talk about AI. Obviously, it has a lot of teaching potential. Of course, I'm not as obsessed with cheating with AI. I think kids have cheated since the beginning of time. It's just a new way to cheat. But a lot of schools are bringing generative AI and the classmen will be. Talk about what happens in that situation when you just said that's a really smart idea, the information retrieval machines, this is even beyond that. I think that's the thing that makes me highly, to be honest, pretty skeptical.

You can't put AI in a yonder pouch, let's just say. No, this is a broad societal thing. And I think we should approach it very carefully because that's the, to me, that's the likely outcome is that it's going to be leaned on more and more and more heavily. Cause if you're, you're a kid sitting at home and you have your phone or you have AI at hand and you're given an assignment, what's more likely

that you're going to put that away and critically think and go, what do I think about this and draw, draw on your body of experiences, or are you going to lean on that? And I think that's already before AI knock on effect, it's happened with the internet and smartphones, societally is kind of this idea that as people spend more time online and they, they pull out all these ideas and associations and amalgam of images offline, they're living in these like kind of half-baked ideas

more than their own experience rooted in a community in the world. And it's kind of pulling at the social fabric and people's independent worldview. And I think that's more likely to continue to happen the more these disaggregated ideas are piled on top of each other. Right, right. That's a really good way to put it. Now, as you noted, we talked a lot about kids, but many adults are obviously addicted to their phones. It's something I point out when I talk to school groups. It's like, let's look at the parents here, because you can't tell kids not to be addicted when you yourself have the problem. And I will use the term addicted as I said, but people get home, they doom

scroll. I do it. It's a version of television for me, I guess. You have a tray that you sell that you put things on. Explain where you go. This is a signal blocking tray that you use at home. Talk a little bit about that, about that idea of what more products you could have. And rather than just, oh, turn off your phone because people can't seem to do that. Yeah, of course. And again, that idea of like, how do you, how do you create new habits around something that's so ubiquitous and also tied up so foundationally in the basic, more and more, almost in a disturbing way,

the foundational infrastructure of day-to-day life in society? That's a broader question I'm interested in that's not being looked at a lot, is the need to have a smartphone to navigate the basic necessities of daily life. But- Well, it's necessary for work too.

It is, absolutely. And it's a little bit of game theory in there. Everyone's kind of running faster to stay in the same place, but we're in a lot of other spaces in addition to schools and concerts. We're in warehousing facilities, work facilities, courtrooms, all different kinds of spaces. So part of the idea, I think, is normalizing that concept. And then people can hopefully adapt that to their own needs, especially in the home. So for us, the home tray is something like that. It's something that can become part of people's daily ritual. You come home from work, it's dinner time, all the kids, everyone throws their devices

inside the home tray, you shut it. It can be locked if you want, most people don't. It's more about what it symbolizes. You've moved from your work day where it's about efficiency and that kind of workaday mentality into something that is built around not efficiency. It's around family time. And the, you know, the signal blocking thing is important to me because of privacy. I think without, without a basic, you know, and that's something that you know, how important that

is without privacy. My son calls me and I stopped taking pictures. And he called me a Sharon that ended it. I stopped taking my stuff. That's what he did. And that's all it took, but go ahead. Yeah, just the idea that the ideas of, uh, of tech companies listening and mining people's

data and tracking people, I just fundamentally don't like, and it, as a company, we don't have social media, we don't do paid advertising. And that's part of the reason I think it's people are bombarded with enough stuff. It just becomes so derivative, you know? Yeah. So they just, and just turning off the phone during dinner doesn't work because signal blocking is exactly,

you know, I know people have these, a little bit of conspiracy theories that everybody's listening all the time, but they're listening a little bit. They certainly are. While you're usage, you're being tracked. I was, I'm like, you're being tracked like an animal all the time. but they're listening a little bit. They certainly are. By your usage, you're being tracked. I was, I'm like, you're being tracked like an animal all the time. You don't understand how quickly you've been

tracked as opposed to being on a, when you were on a laptop, they knew you went from website to website. Now they know what directions you asked for, where you stopped, where you had coffee, where you had, it has a, it's astonishing how much information they're collecting about us that people don't understand. Or maybe they do, I guess. Yeah, that's always, it seems to get people motivated to care about privacy in that way is

hard for some reason or the other. But I think looking at it through another lens, again, like a big show or a festival for a young person, experiencing the world where you're bumping into people, you have to find your friends, that's a sense of adventure and exploration where you're not being monitored or filtered that I think maybe fuels the adventure spirit. This younger generation is going to have to have, if they're going to find meaning in the world, you know? Yeah. So, you know, you started with some very important philosophers, you, Paul

Verilio, he's my favorite of these philosophers that you should read him. He's a French philosopher. He said the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside the popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is why one of the gravest threats to democracy, it's one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is then imperative to develop a democratic technological culture."

And he predicted in a 1994 interview that virtuality will destroy reality, which was an astonishing thing. I'd love you to talk about your most realistic version of utopian vision for how to change our relationship with phones. You have a two-year-old son. I think about it a lot with my four kids to talk about these choices and affecting them. I was very happy my two older sons

don't took social media off their phones by themselves. I didn't do it. They use YouTube and Reddit, and which either of which I consider social media, mostly for consumption of TV essentially, which I feel okay with. I feel I watch television, they watch it on YouTube. Talk about your most utopian vision given, and do you get a lot of pushback from tech companies in doing this? Well, thanks for sharing that quote, by the way.

That's a beautiful one. It's great, I'll send it to you. Yeah, it's great. And some of the, when I'm, not to get off track, but when I moved to San great. I'll send it to you. Yeah, it's great. And some of the, when I'm, not to get off track, but when I moved to San Francisco, I got to know Hubert Dreyfus, who was one of the original critics of artificial intelligence. And then I actually got to know Albert Borgman, who is a philosopher of technology in Montana, like a Heidegger protege.

These people, like you said, people have been thinking about this for a while. A long time. So, you know, I think when it comes to phones or future society, what that looks like, I don't think there's ever going to be a utopia. I can't tell you, or I don't think anyone can, what exactly good looks like. I think the best we can do is try to, in civil society and as a culture, try to understand where we're at now and try to deflect ourselves on a slightly better path, you know? And I think that's what I'm trying to do. And I think a lot of people are trying to do, but I do think that I believe we are living

in the age of the technological understanding of man, like as an epic, you know? And there have been other epics in the past. And I think we're starting to realize and people feel deep down in an nihilistic kind of way that that's not necessarily working for us. And that if everything in your life is built around efficiency, it has a way of hollowing out the meaning in your life.

So I guess the thing that is important to me. They call it seamless. The tech people, you know that they call it friction, lack of friction, seamless. That's the word they love to use. Yeah. And it violates to me that idea that if we make everything so easy, we'll have all this time to do all the things we want to do. It kind of violates human nature. I don't see it mirrored anywhere in the natural world.

It's more like idle hands do the devil's work kind of thing. So to me, I think the thing that's important is in Albert Borbman's concept of this, is this idea of focal things, carving out space for things where the process of doing them is bound up with the meaning of it, like biking, gardening, hiking. And I always ask people, you know, if you think about the things you absolutely enjoy doing most in your life, if you then apply the idea of doing it faster, quicker, easier, cheaper, does that concept even make sense? And almost invariably, the answer is no, because those things are not enhanced by that process. And I think those things are what ground people

and root them in their life, you know? And those, if I think about a future society, my hope is that the weight of people, what people care about, what they value, shifts more towards that than just things. So how, let me, the final question, how does that happen? Right now, these billionaires who are richer than ever, richer than ever, a factor of double,

Elon Musk $400 billion, Mark Zuckerberg, $30, $40 billion richer in the past month, essentially. They have enormous unlimited power. They're cozying up to power in Washington now. They've invaded Washington. They followed me here, by the way, Graham, and I'm very upset by that. They've invaded Washington. They followed me here, by the way, Graham, and I'm very upset by that. But what do you say to them? Because they have unlimited, unprecedented power, and now Mark Zuckerberg is removing the guard rails

completely. It's all out there now. Yonder is a company with a pouch that has seams. They want seamlessness so that they can run everything. I think it's pretty safe to say at this point. What do you say to them? And do they resist what you're doing? Well, I don't know. I think maybe there's a fundamental disconnect

about the belief of where the future's going, you know? And this tech utopian idea, like I mentioned, that we're all gonna have smart homes. And to my mind, that some people think, oh, that's gonna be great. Well, of all this time to do everything, to me, it's more like, what's the point of that? That we can become passive jelly inside our active homes. But I would say it's not about those people to me necessarily.

It's about young people and about society at large. What do people want? We live in an economy that's becoming largely service-based and information movers. And convenience-oriented. And convenience-based, yeah. Does this younger becoming largely service-based and information movers and convenience or inconvenient based. Yeah. Does this younger generation want to have jobs where they sit in front of a computer all day and move information around, or are they going to want something else? And to me, a lot of that is driven not just by regulation, but by culture, cultural changes

of what people want and simplicity and hopefully some element of going back to nature. So the idea of the powerful people want to control stuff and make a ton of money is that's as old as time, you know that. So I think it's about trying to get people to realize maybe that when you step into a phone free space or what that represents, it's a choice. It's not just a choice of being in that space. It's opening a window for a different lifestyle, you know, for choosing, um, how you control your time and the way your mind thinks. Because once you enter the online world, the, you know, for choosing how you control your time and the way your mind thinks.

Because once you enter the online world, you know, all bets are off. Yep. 100%. Graham, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I think it's just a pouch, but I think it's a bigger idea than that. And it's critically important for people to be thinking that way. I appreciate it. Thank you, Kara. I really enjoyed it. that way. I appreciate it. Thank you Kara, I really enjoyed it. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Kristin Castro Rizel, Kateri Yokum, Jolie Meyers, Megan Burney and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Ferby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a special key to unlock your yonder pouch.

If not, be like the Swisher boys and take social media off your cell phones. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.