Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting you. This week, here's Ryan Gorman. Thanks so much for joining us here on I Hear Radio Communities. I'm Ryan Gorman, and we have a few very important conversations lined up for you. In just a few minutes, we'll check in with Project Dynamo, and nonprofit organization responsible for rescuing Americans around the world. They're about to begin rescue missions in Haiti amid the violence and
unrest there. But first to get things started, let me bring in Monica Anderson, director of Internet and Technology Research at the Pew Research Center, which you can learn more about at pewresearch dot org. They have new data out on how teams and parents approach screen time. Monica, thank you so much for joining us, and first of all, tell us about the work the Pew Research Center does, sure, and thank you so much for having me
so. Pew Research Center is a non person, non advocacy fat tank located in Washington, DC. We primarily do public opinion polling, but we also have a fair amount of demographers and data scientists as well, so on my team we specifically study the intersection of technology and society, and that brings us to study everything from online dating to drive a list cars to gig work. And today I'll be talking to you about the work that we're doing around teams
and technology. So let's talk about this particular survey how teens and parents approach screen time. What were some of the key takeaways from it. There's a couple of takeaways that I would point to. One thing I will say is that what we see is there are some really interesting differences by gender when it comes to expressing that they spend too much time in front of strains and if
they've ever cut that on their screen time. So we ask teens whether or not they thought they spent too much, too little, or about the right amount of time on their phone or on social media, and we see that thirty eight percent of teens set that they spend too much time on their smartphones, and about a quarter set the same when it comes to social media. But we do see that girls are more likely than boys to say that they
spend too much time on these devices. So, for example, forty four percent of girls say that they spend too much time on their phone, and that's ten percentage points higher than boys. At the same time, girls also stand out more from boys when it comes to whether or not they've taken steps to mitigate through spring time, and again girls are more likely to have done
this compared to boys as well. The other kind of key takeaway in this report that I would highlight is teenes encounter a range of as when they don't have their phones, but we really want to hone in on five specific ones, ranging from things that are more so on the positive side to things that are more associated with negative emotions. And one of the things that was really striking in the survey is that majority of teens actually say that they feel oftentimes
happy or peaceful when they don't have their smartphone. So about three quarters of teams that feel smaller shares of teens equate not having their phone with more negative emotions. So forty four percent say that they at least sometimes feel anxious when they don't have their smartphones, and again we see those gender differences pop up, with girls being more likely than boys to say this. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Monica Anderson, Director of Internet and Technology Research at the Pew
Research Center. You can find out more about this survey and other work. The Pew Research Center is done at Pewresearch dot org. We're talking about their latest poll on how teens and parents approach screen time. One thing that stood out to me. We focus a lot on teens being on their phones too much, but they seem to, at least according to them, be developing some of those behaviors, perhaps because of what they're seeing from their parents.
Yeah, that was something that stood out at it as well. And so, you know, what we see in our studies and also focus is that this is not just an issue that's impacting teens and impacting everyone, and teens aren't the only ones that might be glued to their phone. Parents also report varying levels of being distracted by their phone or being overreliant on their cell phones.
And so what we see is that parents are even more likely than teens to say they spend too much time on their phone and their phones can make it difficult or their teens to communicate with them. And so, because we have the ability to survey pairs of teens and their parents, we developed a set of parallel questions and we wanted to assess whether or not teens and parents
saw this issue in the same way. So we ask parents how often are they distracted by their phone when their teenager is trying to have a conversation with them, and thirty one percent of parents that this that this happens often or sometimes. We then had teens assess their parents, and those numbers are higher, So actually nearly have a teen say their parents is at least sometimes distracted
when they're trying to get their attention to have a conversation with them. So in this right, parents are paying somewhat of a rosier picture than what teens say that they believe it's going on. I also thought it was interesting how parents go about dealing with the issue of teenagers being on phones, and some
of what they've chosen to do includes looking through their kids' phone. That is exactly right, and what we see is that half of parents say they have looked through their teens smartphones, and so in this sense, it's pretty a common thing for parents to do. One of the interesting demographic differences though here, is that whether parents report looking through their child's smartphones depends on their kids
seeds. So in our sample teens, we are talking about those ages thirteen to seventeen of a younger teen, So those in the thirteen to fourteen year old range, their parents are far more likely to say they look through their teens phone than older teens. So there is definitely a sense that there's a little bit more autonomy of when it comes to older teens compared to those that are younger. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Monica Anderson, Director of Internet
and Technology Recent Search at the Pew Research Center. We're talking about Pew's new poll showing some interesting trends between teenagers and smartphones, and one thing that the thing is important to note some of your teenage respondents, they did point out some of the positives they believe they get from using their smartphones. Definitely what we saw as well. So seventy percent of teens say they believe that smartphones
have given people their aids more benefits than harms. And teens also see that smartphones are a way that has made certain parts of growing up easier. So majorities of teens say phones have made it easier for use to pursue their hobbies or interests or be creative. But we also see there's ways in which teens don't necessarily think that phones have made certain aspects easier. So, for example, only thirty percent of teens sayzones have made it easier to learn the social
skills. So are we able to take any broader conclusions away from what teenagers said about the use of smartphones and social media, both the positives and the negatives, because it feels like there is a more general sense that most of this stuff has a negative impact on our younger generations. Well, I would say the value of this work is that we're really relying on teams to share their kind of gut reactions and their own perceptions of spreme time and its impacts.
And so it's meant to capture their own feelings and emotions and habits. And so I think it's also unportant technology that wild technologies like smartphones and social media are ubiquitous today. They are a relatively new phenomenon where we're thinking about the broader study of media effects. So if you think about radio, for example, or television, feel very much in its infancy for us to understand
its impact. But I will say that even though we don't fully understand the long term implications of those teams, of those trends when it comes to teen behavior and how it might impact certain aspects of life. I do think it's really important to kind of point out that teens experiences and our work are just not monolithic. They see both practical benefits and acknowledge that phones have made certain
aspects of growing up harder. And as we've seen in our data, there are certain groups of teams, particularly girls, that have a more kind of troubling side of this experience as well. And so while the report can't give kind of definitive notions of what its impact is, I think that there's a lot of value and getting a team level view of how young people are approaching these issues. Focusing in on social media for a second, because that was
a big part of this Pere research study that you conducted. What social media platforms are younger people on these days? Yes, So what we see in our survey is about six and ten teens say that they use TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram, So that's majorities of teams that are using these sites. But the platform that is the most properly used in our studies is actually YouTube,
So more than nine and ten teens say they use YouTube. And we also ask some follow up questions to really understand not just whether or not teens are using these sites, but how often they're visiting them. And we see that at nearly one in five teens say that they are on YouTube or TikTok almost constantly. So not only are these sites something that overall are often top our list of sites that teens gravitate to, teams also report that they're spending a
lot of their time on these platforms. Anica Anderson, director of Internet and Technology Research at the Pew Research Center, with some great information on teens and screen time, and you can find this survey and a whole lot more at Pewresearch dot org. Again, that's Pewresearch dot org. Monica, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to come on and break all of that down for us. We really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me.
I really enjoyed our conversations. All right, I'm Ryan Gorman here on iHeartRadio Communities, and now let me bring in my next guest. I'm joined by Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo, a veteran, led donor funded international rescue nonprofit organization which you can learn more about and offer your
support to at Project Dynamo dot Org. Brian, it's great to have you back on and before we get to some of the most recent rescues you've conducted and missions you're currently plan, let's start with the backstory on how Project Dynamo first came about. We started at August twenty twenty one during the Feld evacuation of Afghanistan, where literally hundreds of Americans were left behind. We rescued interpreters and commandos and those folks too, but our focus are American citizens, no
kidding. In March twenty twenty four, as we're talking, we're still pulling Americans that got left behind out of Afghanistan almost three years ago. From there, we went into Ukraine. From there, we went into Russia. From there, we did Hurricane Ian From there, we did Maui. From there, we did Sudan. From there, we did Israel. From there, we did Gaza, and now we're doing Haiti and what we call Operation Run Runner. All in we've done six hundred and nine rescue missions. Wow,
and that transented just about seven thousand people live safe. So how does this work? You're in some of the most dangerous places in the world rescuing Americans. How do you learn who needs rescuing? And then without giving away all your secret, it's how do you go about executing those missions? The biggest thing, really and truly is just showing up. There is nothing that we
do is dynamo that that the government couldn't do or what have you. They can't, you know, they can't, don't or won't whatever it is. For whatever the reasons are, we don't really care. You know, our annual budget is like a rounding error for toilet paper on Mickil Air Force Base. I mean, we're where you know, we're We're We're pretty lean. Each one of these things are very different. They're like having kids. There's a there's a pregnancy, a birth, an infancy, a toddler, an
adolescens, and and and adulthood. They're just like that and very rarely already too. The same the way we do helicopters in Maui, if not the way we do helicopters in Haiti as an example, or the way I break somebody out of jail from Russian intelligence in Ukraine is different, then how I do those kinds of things in other places. The way we do airplanes in
Afghanistan is different, thou do how we do airplanes in Sudan. Let's think so each each one of these things are kind of their own life cycle. But the reality is is it's just it's just being persistent and being creative and being innovated and being a little flick. We're not very tactical when we do these operations. It's much more like a like a like a magic trick or or a or a bank robbery or a height where where at the end of
it people have scratched on their heads going how'd you do that? Exactly? And the reality is there's a way to do everything. It's just a matter of being creative and innovative and having the right resources. Our number one problem is the resources, so we get a little stuck there because we're don't refunded. But it's all possible and I can prove it because we we've done six hundred and nine operations in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the
Caribbean and the Middle East. We're joined now by Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo, And if you want to help them continue to do these rescue missions, you can offer your support a Project Dynamo dot org. That's Project Dynamo dot org. So you learn of someone an American who is stuck and let's say Ukraine, what do you do from there in terms of trying to find out where they are and then figure out how to get to them, how to get them out, and how to do it all under
the radar, especially in places like Afghanistan. Yeah, so usually what happens is we get contacted by a family member. Is usually what it is. If somebody calls and they say, you know, my nephew Ryan is a famous radio host. You wouldn't believe it. You went to vacation in eighty or did a you know, habitat for humanity or some other thing, and you wouldn't believe it. This is the hotel that he was saying at We spoke to him yesterday. He's still at the hotel, but he's scared to
death because the gangs are shooting everyone in the street. Can you help? That's the best majority of our requests found some variation like that of that. Sometimes the family will call the state department. In the state department, we'll call the FBI. The FBI will go to someone's house and they'll say we wish we could help, but we really can't. Why don't you call project
anamoe. That's happened on a number of cases. Two and then other times the evacui themselves have communications and they're just stuck behind enemy lines or they're stuck in trouble where they can communicate that they're in hiding, so one way or the other at some variation of that. And what we do is is we see where Ryan is and then we understand the threat environment very well, so we try and figure out how how deep in the Kimchi is Ryan. And
there's varying levels of danger. Sometimes it's scary but not exactly dangerous. Sometimes it's you know, yeah, Haiti is a good example of this, where there are parts of Haiti where the gangs are running around the community, you know, murdering people in the streets, massacring people. But there's other parts of Haiti you wouldn't even know that there was even a problem with them. So it really depends where the person is and what their situation is, and
then from there we kind of back into it. Going back to your early rescue missions in Afghanistan, you're doing these behind enemy lines because all of Afghanistan at that point was a run by the enemy, by the Taliban, and you're having to do this without drawing attention to yourself. This is not a situation where you go into these places guns blazing. No, quite the opposite,
the opposite. Uh. Usually what happens is when we do these operations, if the bad guys are paying attention, they usually find out after the fact and try and figure out how we did it, and more more often
than not, they're they're more confused than the ways that they started. And that's that's been never more true than our operations in Russian occupied Ukraine and Russia, where we've broken people out of jail from Russian FSB, which is like the Russian FBI, right, so you know, imagine imagine a Russian spy if you will, imagine the FBI in America arrests a Russians and they put them in a jail cell and a couple of days later they go to bring
him a cup of coffee and the jail cell is empty. It turns into a well, how could that be? How how he was in custody? We had him, We're watching relist that. And in those cases we've done many of these they date to this day don't quite know how we did it, and more often than not the way that if they that they know how we did it, more often than not that's not true. We do so.
In December, in December of this best December, right right before Christmas, the FBI, UH the Attorney General United States, and the Director of the FBI announced the first indictment in American history for war crimes perpetrated against Americans. A bunch of Russian bad guys arrested and tortured an American citizen, tortured him almost with an into his life. His name is Kerrilla Alexandrovs. His operation name is Detroit Lions. If you google Project Dynamo Detroit Lions, it
comes right up. He is the first American victim of war crimes the licensed World War Two. We sold him back from the Russians. He was not negotiated, he wasn't traded. I don't have six billion dollars to give. I wish I did, but I don't. We took him from the Russian perspective. He's in his keep, fugitive from Russian justice, and you know we stole him. Today they have no idea how we did it. He
was falsely charge for elevencous of espionage, which is that true? His only crime is that he was an American and they tortured him almost to death because he's an American and we got him out. It's incredible and the turnaround time for you to begin these missions when trouble bubbles up and again. We're joined by Brian Stern, founder and CEO of Project Dynamo, a veteran led, donor funded international rescue nonprofit organization. You can learn more and offer your support
at Project Dynamo dot org. We've talked in the past about what happened in Israel following the Hamas terrorist attack on October seventh, and immediately your organization was over there to help rescue Americans. Yeah. We're usually first to market, if you will, you know, we're you know, we're usually first. You know, we tend to be either the first on the ground or in the worst place. That's true for all the different areas that we work in.
Sudan as an example of twenty nine countries through airplanes for their people, the United States was not one of them. The US embassy was evacuated by US Special Forces by US Special Forces and they left behind sixteen thousand American citizens. When we saw that, we got on planes and we flew over and we evacuated hundreds of people. When you get Americans out of these situations, I mean Americans in Israel on October seventh, they experienced sheer horror. What
do they say to you? What is their reaction like when you come to the rescue and then eventually they're out of harm's way. There's always thinks, there's usually a lot of peers, there's always appreciation and all those things. But you know, the the you know, we've done a number of operations in Israel and the number of operations to rescue Americans of Gaza. What you find is that I you know, Dynamo is different because we do the operations
ourselves. So we've done six hundred and nine operations. I personally led over five hundred and eighty of them personally myself as CEO. So these people, you know, we laugh with them, we cry with them, we pray with them, we get shot at with them, We've been bombed with them, We've piken missile fire together. We've starved to death. I've even been arrested and detained with some people trying to get them out, and things don't
get complicated. The moral of the story is that because we're wisdom, we know them real well. And in the case of and what the the the number one common denominator of all all of these thousands of people is that they
ask everyone else for help. We're the last resort. So by the time Dynamo gets there, and by the time we're looking in their eyes, and by the time we're sharing a cup of coffee together, they they often lament about how they tried to talk to state departments, or they tried to talk to their congresswoman or congressmen, or they called everyone that they knew, or
or how could this happen there? I didn't do anything wrong that you know, there's always this this common denominator of I asked for help from everyone, no help came. Thank you, Dynamo. That's that's overwhelmingly the majority, overwhelming We've done, no kidding, We did sixty eight American babies out of Ukraine alone. Every one of those babies was under there was under the age of a month old. Uh. Those parents are are deeply connected to my
team and I for the rest of their lives. Every single birthday party that those kids have, they tell the story about how they were, how they were rested. We get we get some of the some of the kids returning to and the family send us baby pictures all the time. This is life changing stuff. This is We're not a taxi service. We're not a bus service. I'm not war zone uber. Everyone that we rescue is out of options, out of hope, out of split and it's a choice. Dynamo
comes or they say where they are and maybe not. That's the reality of And again, for Project Dynamo to continue to do the work they're doing, they need your support at Project Dynamo dot org. Let's talk about the natural disasters that you've led rescues in Hurricane Ian and the Maui wildfires. Uh yeah, so I come. I come out of Ukraine. I got to Ukraine and January six week, seven weeks before the war started, and I stayed
all the way until Hurricane in and I came out of Ukraine. I lived in Tampa, came after the hurricane was coming, and I also had to come out to do my tax Hurricane Ian was supposed to hit Tampa, as we all know it does, and it banged the right bang, the right hit way farther south and my whole team and we hadn't even unpacked yet.
So, you know, we had this discussion about, well, we've been rescuing Americans from the war zone ten thousand miles away, you know, surely we can rescue Americans, you know, ten miles away, you know, or a few hours away. So what we did was is before the sun came up on day one, we got moving. I found some guys with
some boats. We packed our gear, We got some chainsaws and some hand tools and some of our communications gear, and got some guys with boats, and we headed south from Tampa with the idea of the targeting the Barrier Islands, knowing that all the bridges would be washed out, they would have no communication, no power, no food, no water, and that they're cut off in the mainland, which is squarely in our portfolio, if you will.
We hadn't done a natural disaster before, but we've done war zones than this kind of environment before it and I secretly I always wanted to do something with so we did. We got in the water and we had done our third We had completed our third rescue operations bringing people off before the Florida State Police of Florida Fish and Wildlife from the Coast Guard even got in the water. Like we were, we had already been working all morning before they had
even got started. So it goes to show that the private sector can just move faster than than the than the government can, and that's true always. You know, Elon Musk will tell you, you know, if space sex is SpaceX for a reason, right, it's the same kind of concept. We can do things best or meaner, leaner, quicker, more effective, maybe then the government can because we're not restricted in any way. I I
as Dynamo. As Dynamo is the CEO of Dynamo, I answer to one person and one person only, and that is the mother or the father of the victim that I'm wrestling. There's no colonel who wants to make general,
there's no ambassador who has to be politically sensitive. There's there's no policy concerns that I have to really worry about as a as a you know, from that perspective, we are united in purpose and singularly focused on one thing with one priority and one priority only, which is the safe rescue of American citizens. Wherever they may be Trump and that's it. Then that's it. The techs who are donor funded and work on a fusetring budget, so that part
is kind of kind of difficult. And finally, the current mission situation in Haiti tell us a little bit about that what you're focused on, and also the help that you need in order to make that happen. Let's do health first. We need funding, and we need funding. Bad helicopters do not fly themselves. Boasts do not sell themselves. Sadly, we don't own any helicopters. I wish we did, but we don't, so we have to We have to charter, which is fine, but it does cost money.
The current mission is staging out of the Dominican Republic and flying into the the Hatian Civil War, essentially being run by extremely brutal gangs who are truly scary. There's a you know, there's a guy who's accounibal, who who videos himselves eating people and puts them on Instagram. That was yesterday, So these are really scary people. These are really bad, bad guys, and sadly there's a whole bunch of Americans stuck there. And sadly, the embassy is
being evacuated. The US forces are not deploying their there. It's a ploying to protect the embassy, but they're not going to be They're not able for whatever reason, to go and get Americans. And because of that, Dynamo is the point. And again, if you want to help Brian Stern and his team at Project Dynamo on this mission and all the others that they do, you can help at Project Dynamo dot org. Brian can't thank you enough
for the time and all the tremendous work you're doing around the world. Thank you so much, Thank you so much. I appreciate you. All right, And that's going to do it for this edition of iHeartRadio Communities. As we wrap things up, I want to offer a big thanks to all of our guests and of course to all of you for listening. I'm your host, Ryan Gorman. We'll talk to you again real soon.