AI-Powered Parenting & “A Crisis of Trust” in Higher Education 3/24/25
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Tax Act knows filing your taxes can be complicated, and that's why we have live experts to help you with any questions. They can hold your hand through the process beginning to end. Metaphorically, of course. I mean, they can't actually hold your hand in person. I suppose you could hold your computer mouse while you chat with the expert about capital gains or whatever, which is sort of like holding hands. Sorry, point is, our tax experts can make filing easier. Tax Act. Let's get them over with.

Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. Columbia University has agreed to certain conditions from the Trump administration after the government pulled $400 million of federal funding. What's going on on campuses? University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos says he's concerned. Right now, we're in a crisis of trust.

for higher education. And the way universities build trust or can rebuild trust is by showing over and over again that they're genuinely places of truth seeking.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Disney and DreamWorks vet, has a long career as a media mogul. Now he's turning his attention to safety when it comes to kids online. When you give a 16-year-old a car, you don't say, all right, how about it? Take it out into the world, do whatever you want. You actually start with a set of restrictions that are appropriate for their knowledge and abilities and all that.

Plus, the rest of today's news that got us squawking. Snow White at the box office, changes at the IRS, and maybe some flexibility when it comes to President Trump's tariff plans? The less tariffs, the less, it seems, worries of a slowdown in the economy. It's Monday, March 24th. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand back, you buy in 3, 2, 1, cue, please.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. It's a Monday morning, and right now, I guess traders are feeling pretty good despite the rain outside. Check it out.

though. A little bit of sun when it comes here. The tariffs aren't raining so hard. No, they are not. At least that's the interpretation. Although if you dig through some of these stories, it's hard to really figure it out. For the week last week, I think the Dow was up by 1.2 percent. The S&P was up by about half a percent. The Nasdaq was up fractionally. And you're still talking about markets that are off the all-time highs. For the Nasdaq, it's down by more than 11 percent from the all-time high. For the S&P, down by about 7.8 percent. For the

For the Dow, down by 6.8%. Last week was a little less tumultuous, though. And we'll see if this is an indicator of what you can anticipate just ahead of that tariff news that's coming on April 2nd. There is the Wall Street Journal. We're going to talk about that in just a moment, what they've been reporting, what Bloomberg's been reporting. Let's also take a look very quickly at Treasury yields. You'll see right now that it looks like the 10-year is sitting...

Around four and two quarters. Yeah, 4.28%. Two years back below 4%. It's at 397. I think oil is up. And I think at least it turned around a little. And Bitcoin was back to 87 or so. So these are all what you might think. Well, it's not up that much. But the less tariffs, the less, it seems, worries of a slowdown in the economy. Yeah.

Again and again, and this is after, you know, speaking to some people about how U.S. companies like the automakers would be affected by across the board tariffs that didn't maybe make that much sense with Canada because they're USMCA compliant. So, right. Which is the agreement with the Trump administration, the first Trump administration. And they were hopeful that that maybe cooler heads would prevail. Did you read through this, though? I mean, it's not that different. I don't know. It's it.

it's hard to say i was like there's a lot of loans the reciprocals somebody that dirty what what it does thirty fifteen and whatever top fifteen trading nations it looks like they're going to be significantly higher tariffs on just about everything that's imported into this country uh... and and i think that's the big question stop it get rid of their tariffs here we go new tariffs on the trump administration expected early next month could be more narrow

targeted than previously thought. This is a published report that came out over the weekend, hence the move we're seeing in the futures. They say despite significant tariffs set to be announced on April 2nd, sector specific tariff announcements likely won't be unveiled that day. Things could still change. You're kidding. But that would represent, what is it, how long is it? To April 2nd, we have a week. Yeah.

A million things could change. A week and two days. A softer approach than many countries had previously feared. The Wall Street Journal says a group of 15 nations with regularly large trade imbalances with the U.S. will be the hardest hit. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant referred to those nations last week as the dirty 15. The movie was The Dirty Dozen. So we're adding about 25%.

How quickly did I do that? That was good. Damn good. 25%. On a Monday, a raggy, rainy Monday. On Friday, the president told reporters in the Oval Office that, in his words, there will be flexibility. There'll be flexibility, but basically it's reciprocal so that if China's charging us 50% or 30% or 20%, and I don't mean China, I mean anybody, any country.

The president has for weeks teased April 2nd as Liberation Day, or the day when reciprocal tariffs are going to go into effect. Sources tell CNBC that South Korean auto giant Hyundai will announce a $20 billion investment in the United States when its chairman visits the White House today.

Sources say that that pledge includes $5 billion set for a steel plant in Louisiana with plans to hire 1,500 employees and produce next-generation steel for Hyundai and Kia cars. That move comes after similar investment commitments from SoftBank and chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor earlier this year. And Hyundai and Kia have kind of leapfrogged some of the Japanese automakers. And I mentioned about

If you're gonna buy an EV, normally you'd think Tesla, but some of those Hyundais and Kias, they're pretty neat looking cars. I don't know about-- - Although I still love my Toyota Hybrid. - You got a, I know, that's not an EV, it's a hybrid. - It's a hybrid, it's got great gas mileage. - You put gas in it. - I put gas in it, and you don't have to charge it. It does that itself. - Exactly.

And the IRS could see a sharp drop in revenue collected this tax filing season. That's according to a Washington Post report that says senior tax officials are bracing for a shortfall that would be tied to changing taxpayer behavior and attempted IRS cuts by President Trump.

The Post cites several sources in an article that says that the Treasury Department is expecting a more than 10% drop in tax receipts by April 15th compared to last year. That would amount to about $500 billion in lost revenue. The article says that the IRS has noticed more online chatter from people who say they won't pay their taxes

or will claim deductions for which they are ineligible. Separately, reports over the weekend said that the IRS was closing in on an agreement with other federal officials to help them locate immigrants for deportation.

all I can say, I read this report over the weekend. All I can say is if you are thinking about not filing your taxes, good luck with that because you got seven years, you got to look out that they can come after you. Uh, tax law could change a lot. Enforcement could change a lot over that period of time. Uh,

uh... and they're basing this on what they've seen so far with receipts that have been turned into this point uh... we'll see as we close for closer to april fifteenth worth watching those numbers uh... it wouldn't be because last year was a downturn in the economy or because there is a problem not selling it as a no i can't then waiting for seven years i'm tired of saying i don't know if i want texas um... for some reason

sleazebag firms keep calling, they call you and say, our files indicate you owe back taxes. Do you get a lot of that? I don't answer the landline. It's never anybody I want to talk to. This comes on, and I deliberately call them back. I do. And I say... You're like the old crank who has a lot of time on his hands. No, no, no, I'm not cranky. I call back and I say, wow, I didn't know...

I owe back taxes. So your files show, I mean, now I'm really concerned. And then they go, whoa, what? They're lying. They're liars. I know, but you actually quoted that. Well, then I say, you knew exactly what you were doing. Do your parents know what you do for a living? Because you are the sleaze, they are the worst...

It's a very hard job, and they don't keep people in those jobs for very long. I had a brother who worked very temporarily for one of those things. You shouldn't be telling people they owe back taxes. You shouldn't be calling and saying you have a file that says people owe back taxes. I don't think people stay in those jobs for very long. I think it's an incredibly high turnover. If you stay for a month, they're like, wow, you're employee of the year. Because they're due in hell next month.

Disney's live-action "Snow White" taking the top spot at the box office over the weekend, but the movie's estimated $43 million in ticket sales was a disappointment. The film cost more than $250 million to make.

And it's earned mediocre reviews. It's also been caught up in a series of controversies centering on the accusations that the film is too woke. It earned $44 million overseas for a total about $87 million. A few weeks ago, expectations for the film were significantly higher and...

23 year old star of the film has made some comments that didn't go over well. Can you imagine a multi-billion dollar company and all the shareholders being held hostage by the comments of a 23 year old actress? Which is what we've seen. Here's a five year chart, it's not too much today.

- It didn't get good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. - No, it's a crappy movie probably too. - I didn't see it. - I mean, media, the challenges faced by all media companies are well known, but that was almost $200 a share, 190 or so back when we thought Disney+ was gonna take over the world during the pandemic. So it's lost $100, it's now at about, of $100.

of stock price now below 100. And I don't know how much of that is. Woke you go broke. Some of it, no doubt.

Genetic testing firm 23andMe filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection CEO Ann Wojcicki has resigned from her position but staying on the board. She's been trying to buy back the company but has been unsuccessful so far. In a post on X late yesterday, she said she's still committed to buy the company's assets. 23andMe had a $3.5 billion market cap when it went public in 2021.

But it's now at about 50 million. Have you done this? I did years and years and years ago because I was actually interviewing and with jet scan I wanted to try it before I interviewed her my daughter did it Yeah, so I kind of know and I'm adopted so it's really there's a lot you can find out what the hell I am Does it matter?

Well, you know, it matters if you get to the point of trying to monitor your health down the road, if you're looking for any potential things that could show up. And sometimes based on your heritage and your genealogy, you can find some things that you're more likely to contract and maybe alter your behavior. I've found out about a lot about health lately. And as you get older, it gets worse. Newsflash. Yeah. Cheese will be next.

Coming up on Squawk Pod, some of the most well-known universities grappling with free speech on campus and the availability of millions in federal funding. University of Chicago President Paul Olivasatos on the battle for dollars and for perception. Where the government comes in and intervenes and starts saying who's going to teach what and who the professors are and so on. I don't think that's a future that we want. We'll be right back.

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Tax Act knows filing your taxes can be complicated, and that's why we have live experts to help you with any questions. They can hold your hand through the process beginning to end. Metaphorically, of course. I mean, they can't actually hold your hand in person. I suppose you could hold your computer mouse while you chat with the expert about capital gains or whatever, which is sort of like holding hands. Sorry, point is, our tax experts can make filing easier. Tax Act. Let's get them over with.

Welcome back to Squawk Pod, today with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. Here's Becky.

Columbia University will cede to a list of demands from President Trump's administration following a threat to halt the university's $400 million in federal funding. The university has agreed to ban masks to give campus police enhanced power to arrest students and to other demands as well. The Trump administration had moved aggressively to investigate anti-Semitism on campuses across the U.S. with a focus on Columbia in particular.

following last year's on-campus protests. Joining us right now to talk about school defunding, free speech, and more is Paul Olivasados. He is president of the University of Chicago. And, Paul, thank you for being here today. Good morning. Thank you. So let's talk about what's happening at this point. Colombia pretty quickly caved to the Trump administration's demands. I know that there have been a number of university professors who have asked you not to do the same at the University of Chicago. But where do you think we stand right now?

So, first of all, let me say right now we're in a crisis of trust for higher education. And the way universities build trust or can rebuild trust is by showing over and over again that they're genuinely places of truth seeking.

And for us at the University of Chicago, that means we start from free expression. It means we teach our students to look at problems from different sides, to engage on issues where they have a difference thoughtfully, with rigor, being quantitative, with curiosity, those kinds of things which are embedded in the Chicago principles and institutional neutrality. The situation at Columbia is very concerning for two reasons.

One is I'm very concerned about the many young scientists there who are working on important projects. They're working on important projects for them and for the country and its competitiveness. So I'm very concerned about what's happening to them. And what we see also is there are obviously threats to free expression that come from below: cancel culture, disruption of classes.

Those things should not be happening at universities. But on the other hand, now we're also seeing that there can be threats to free expression that come from government intervention inside the university. I mean, University of Chicago is in a very unique place, I think, because of your history, because of what you've laid out. I think back to 2016 and a letter that the dean wrote to the incoming freshmen that year that caught a lot of flack because you said that this was not going to be a school where there were safe places or worries about triggering students on campus.

you took a step out and said that's not what we're going to have here but then i look at what's happened with some of the protest you've seen on your campus too you had five students that didn't receive their degrees last year because they were involved in some of these protests they all eventually got their degrees and kinda came out and talked to talk some trash about how this shows that this was a complete win for them on those sides the ADL has said that

They have concerns. I think they gave you a D grade for protecting Jewish students on campus. So you're kind of in the middle, caught on both sides of this thing. Well, first of all, let me say that we do allow protests on the campus. It's part of free expression and it occurs. But we draw the line at disruption and we've been very careful.

consistent with that. I think we've done that so that students truly are learning. I will say the ADL also did say that Jewish life on the campus is actually excellent. What they did say is they would like for us to make statements whenever other people make statements that are offensive to them. And we have institutional neutrality.

We don't make statements every day. That's part of why I think our university has such a strong free expression culture. Columbia deserved what it got in this case. There are Jewish students that are afraid for their life at Columbia. You're saying that's different where you are. So suddenly the left is concerned with free expression for Hamas protesters.

didn't give a rat's ass about it for conservatives appearing on campus or for misgendering some i mean it's totally it's totally doled out depending on what their point of view is so the liberals can speak to our university i know you can but i saw larry summers saying that i'm not talking about you i'm talking about columbia and you you allowed conservatives to speak not everyone did well

So I told you we're in a crisis of trust for higher education. Self-inflicted. And the way back is for universities themselves, for universities themselves, frankly, to come our way more, to be truth-seeking and to allow all the different kinds of expression. You don't think that the Harvard president, Columbia president, Penn president, you don't think that they all had...

reasons to lose their positions given their response to the Hamas protest and what happened to Jewish students? I can't speak to what's happening to those universities. Why not? My position is to really say what I think is the way forward, to say what's the way forward for all of these institutions. Okay.

and the way is to commit themselves hardly say that they should have protected the the safety well i definitely look that's what we do i certainly believe that was easy enough to say i went to an international probably well-deserved that's how i was a little bit about the funding because that there are some big concerns about the funding getting cut you mentioned for scientists who are there and this could got the scientific study that we see it uh... american universities and i'm deeply concerned about it so let me give you an analogy

Let's say that the United States is in a geopolitical competition to have scientific, technological and therefore ultimately economic preeminence.

And if we think about the United States over many decades, we're a little bit like a city where we field many sports teams and every year we're at the top. We win championships in every area of science and technology every single year. We're at the top globally. That can be at risk if young people don't see a path for themselves where there's funding and support for them to follow their careers.

And I can just give you example after example, at least at my university, of some of the amazing things that the young people are doing. It's inspiring and we want to keep them in the game. Will the universities that have deep endowments, like the University of Chicago, step in to keep that funding until this gets settled and resolved? Or are there going to be cuts like we saw last year?

at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore? - Look, at the moment at the University of Chicago, we're able to continue our work, but of course we're deeply concerned about what we see that's going on elsewhere. I wanna give you two examples of things that we do with our endowment, which I think your viewers will care about.

We now have received some wonderful gifts that enable us to have 10% of our student body come from rural communities. 10%. That's an astonishing percentage and I think they bring viewpoints to the campus that enrich us. At the same time, here's another gift we just received in September.

It's a gift that enables us to create our Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. It's an incredible place. It's now sustained by that gift. So the endowments are enabling us to do important things. They're not just there to kind of pick up from other things. Did we move to Doge? Is that what we're on now? Or were you talking about what happened with Columbia? No, this is the $400 million. This is NIH funding, actually. No, I understand. But was it from the...

It was levied against Columbia because of... The halt of funding. The halt of funding had to do with the violent Hamas demonstrations. Very well. I'm just saying that there are scientists in many laboratories in Columbia that are now young people who are working on really important problems. But if Columbia gets its act together, the funding comes back, doesn't it? I hope so.

I was talking more about the NIH funding. I thought you were talking about suddenly moving on to DOGE. There's been a freeze on it. Wasn't Hopkins DOGE? Well, it was DOGE, but it was also the freeze of NIH funding that was for funding. Due to? Because they're putting a freeze on everything until they go back through, and there's been an argument about how much the university can take for its general funding purposes out of all those NIH funds, too. But not due to the Hamas. Not due to the Hamas. All I'm saying is, as a country, we have an immense interest that young people come into science

and explore problems with great ambition. And, you know, whichever way funding gets cut in those areas, the loss will be potentially a generation of people who won't participate, which will weaken us as a country. So as long as they can get to class without worrying about their lives...

they'll be able to conduct their research. I'm not defending what happened to Columbia. Come on. That's not the NIH. Maybe there's two different things. Maybe there's two different things, but I don't see why you can't condemn the... Okay, but Columbia is losing some of the funding because they don't make it safe for everyone to be there. Well, they've agreed to these demands from the Trump administration, so they probably won't get the $400 million funded. People are getting criticized for agreeing to the demands. Every university should be a place that allows truth-seeking and that does not allow students

to be disrupted in learning or harassed or treated in bad ways. - Exactly, but it's not the way it is right now. - Universities that aren't that way should be fixing themselves as fast as they can. - There you go. - Because the alternative where the government comes in and intervenes and starts saying who's gonna teach what and who the professors are and so on, I don't think that's a future that we want. - Paul, thank you very much. - Thank you very much.

Next on SquawkPod, AI-powered parenting. How an app is keeping lines of communication open between parents and their kids online with the founder of Aura, Hari Ravachandran. It takes a baseline of what your kid's usual behaviors are, looks at it across multiple dimensions, looks at it across sleep. What kind of apps are they using? What's their mood and sentiment as they're using these apps?

And one of his backers, Jeffrey Katzenberg, you might know him as the co-founder and former CEO of Studio DreamWorks. Honestly, I'm prouder of this and Hari and what he's doing than anything I've been associated with.

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Stand by Joe. Here's Mike. Cue.

You're watching Squawk Box on CNBC. I'm Joe Kernan, along with Becky Quick. Andrew is off today. Our next guests are working to make kids' experiences on social media safer, something parents are looking for all the time. Joining us right now with more on this is Jeffrey Katzenberg. He's a longtime Hollywood executive and founding partner of WonderCo. Also, Hari Ravichandran, who is the founder and CEO of Aura. That's a suite of AI-powered tools that are aimed at protecting people online.

And Jeffrey, we were just talking about this. Nine months ago, you were here. You did say that this was going to be a big focus, something that you were working on. Here you are. Well, so Aura, you know, which Hari, we started together six years ago. First focus on security. How do you make all your financial information? So consumer cybersecurity. Hari, through a personal experience that he'll tell you about, also with a 13-year-old.

realize that safety of our children today is truly imperiled. It's kind of shocking. And I'll share with you some statistics about it. But, you know, I spent a lifetime at DreamWorks and Disney in the business of being a safe place for families. Moms, dads, and kids making content that was great for them.

Today and and then I think about you know for our kids when when you know We were when my kids were growing up. I cared about three things. Where are they? Who are they with and what are they doing? Today they're sitting on their device across from you at the kitchen table and you actually cannot answer those three questions and so to set out and to create something that gave parents a set of tools to

that could give them insights and observations without becoming, you know, intrusive and spying on them is what the mission was. And I really should pass to Hari because this is his baby. I mean, that's the thing that's so... I don't want to spy on my kids. My mom always gave me privacy, and that was great. But our kids are faced with so many more potential danger spots than we were.

when I was that age. Hari, what happened? You're a father. I am. And you've got kids too. You decided, I'm going to build it because it doesn't exist. Yeah, look at me. I have four kids. We have a couple that are going through the adolescent phase. And one of them was struggling with some mental health issues about two years ago. Some negative coping strategies, some generally sort of behavior that's unfortunately much more prevalent now than it used to be, say, 10 years ago. Are you talking cyberbullying?

No, I think it was more just coping with anxiety, depression, and how do you do that type of activities. And when she was starting to kind of recover and do better, I was looking around going, well, she always said she's doing really well. Is she actually doing really well or not? And so...

What we found is, you know, we never used to look at our phone, actually. It was very privacy-oriented. But as we were going through some of these struggles, we said, "Okay, we need to actually worry about safety as much as privacy." So as we looked through it, there's a lot more footprint available on these devices. And so...

We were looking around saying, "Okay, can we find a product that can actually take a lot of this information and as a parent give me something that reassures me that my kid is fine?" So how does it work if you're not actually reading the texts that are coming in, if you're not reading like the Snapchat messages or any of those other things? So you don't read it as a parent, but the machinery does. So what we do in the back end is we collect a lot of that data, a lot of the information, run it through a bunch of machine learning models on the back end. We've now got a full clinical office, so the psychiatrists and the clinicians actually train the models.

So it takes a lot of the real world stuff, comes up with the insights, but as a parent, you only see the insights. So you don't see any of the raw text. So the kid's privacy is protected. But if they are talking in code, like you now see on X and other places where they just don't spell the curse words out the right way. Yeah. So models are good at that now. So you can actually train them with, uh,

age by age, like 11 years, 12 years, 13 years, what kind of images do they use? You know, like what are things that are acronyms? And they're continuously getting trained. So as kids are sort of, you know, coming up with new stuff to talk about and new ways to talk about it. I need that list. I do that. I do that. I spell, they know what I'm saying, but I don't. So, but here's another way, which is when you give a 16 year old a car. Yeah.

You don't say, all right, have at it, take it out into the world, do whatever you want. You actually start with a set of restrictions that are appropriate for their knowledge and abilities and all that. And as they grow, you actually give them more and more latitude. And this does that. So what you want for your 13-year-old is quite different from what you would want for a 16 or 17-year-old. Sure, yeah. So...

Your ability to have to choose I want to restrict the amount of time and hours that somebody is on various different sites

I want to know suddenly if my kids are on Discord and they're talking to somebody who I've never heard of before. Look, my solution to this point with a 13-year-old has just been you're not going to be doing any multiplayer games where they can get in. You're not going to be on any of the social media sites. You can have a phone so you can text chat with your friends and who I know. As they get older, they find ways around it is the problem. So it's always a cat and mouse game. And I'm not.

the tech savvy one you don't need to be and that is the beauty of this new product is it talks to you in kitchen table english and as i said it's about giving you insights to what they're doing so what what does it tell me like what if what's a report that comes yeah so i think the core of the product is a behavioral change identification system so it takes a baseline of what your kid's usual behaviors are looks at it across multiple dimensions looks at it across sleep what kind of apps are they using what's their mood and sentiment as they're using these apps

So it takes these things and figures out a composite. And if it figures out there are changes that are happening to this particular child's behavior, it can identify those. Like spending a lot more time on something? Could be anything from that to, like, say they're more stressed out about a test. How do they know? Because we get a lot of their keystroke information, even though we purge it, as soon as we get it, we train the models with the things that the kids are typing.

using apps, how long is it open for? Even speed of keystrokes, by the way, is another good indicator for what they're feeling or what their mood is. So it takes all these things and it figures out, okay, well this is what the kid usually-- - So it's basically an alert system. - It's an insight system is the way we think about it versus, we don't wanna spy.

but what we want to do is you know learn from the things that the child is doing and give parents some insights that can help them understand you know what's what's actually going on like in my case you know that was very helpful i use the product every day now and my kids have been beta testing it so it's been uh it's been it's been a good good addition so becky let me share with you some stats that really are they're shocking when you hear this the the magnitude of this problem is really takes your breath away when you understand we have an entire generation of children

who are literally lost. So today, 20% of adolescents report low self-esteem. 52% have experienced or are experiencing an eating disorder. 70% of teens say anxiety and depression is a major problem among their peers. And one in three contemplate suicide. Wow. One in three?

And this is, you know, there are many great, wonderful things that we can say about Internet and social media and connectivity and knowledge and friendships and all of that. That's great. This is the dark side of it. And up until now, there was nothing that a parent could do to actually manage and help their children. It does not seem like social media companies have any interest in taking this on. They're there. They seem to be, you know,

saying the things that might keep the least restrictive legislation off, but that's about it. I think this happens when somebody, in this case, Ari, becomes mission-driven. When it becomes personal to you and you see how dark and deep that rabbit hole can be and how you, literally, how frustrated you are and that you just don't know what to do because you just have no insight into it. And so a person with a single mission...

with talent and expertise, which is what Harae is, is why we ended up here today. So this is just an app that you download? Yep, you just go to Hora.com, you download the app, and turn on the controls on it for your child, and then you're good to go. It starts collecting data. It's almost like an Hora ring in some ways, right? Spelled differently. Spelled O-U-R-A. This is A-U-R-A. It bothers me knowing about it doesn't fix the problem with social media when it does the kids, though.

I mean, at least knowing about it, you can deal with it and maybe intervene. But there's something really wrong with what goes on on social media. Look, Matt, in my take, when we went into this, we thought, hey, this may be like the cause of a lot of these issues. It's not very clear to me that that is the case, by the way, because the way kids use social media is very different than five years ago. One thing that's very clear to us from the data, whatever it is your kid's feeling, it amplifies it.

if you're on social media, it has the ability to now sort of be a mirror that's basically giving you more and more content around things you're interested in. And interest can be dark interest or it could be something that's very positive and motivational. So depending on where the child engages with it, you end up with a lot more amplification than before. - And Joe, here's the thing, which is that we've all coached our kids through difficult, challenging things. You know, drinking, drugs, driving, sex. Like we've had to manage over a lifetime these things.

We had tools to do it. We had insights. And the brilliance of this, and I will say this, obviously I have a lot of things to be proud of in my career in terms of doing good things for families and for kids and for moms and this and that. Honestly, I'm prouder of this and Hari and what he's doing than anything I've been associated with. All right, that says something. That is...

That is a huge mark in favor of this. What's the goal? If you come back nine months from now or a year from now, what would you like to be able to say? I want every parent in the world to have this tool. I want them to actually now suddenly be armed with the ability to support their children as they move from, you know, out into the world of the online Internet.

As we tell Jeffrey, who's one of our investors, it's not going to happen in nine months, but we hope that over the next two, three years that there's a lot more adoption, engagement, and more people that use it. We get smarter about helping our customers because the models get smarter. I keep seeing Netflix come up on here and this and something. And so honestly, if we could be to safety and for security, for parents, what Netflix is for entertainment,

you know, as a streaming downloaded app, that would be beyond me. Not Disney for entertainment? You use Netflix now instead of Disney. Well, Netflix is what's come up here, but honestly... You know I was going to steer you there. Disney is the one that has set the standards and practices for us.

And what we're trying to do and nobody does it better than them. No one there You think any streamer can ever catch Netflix at this point? They don't need to is the answer. No, I mean no it's big enough world Yeah, I don't I mean I think you're gonna have a handful of very very successful scaled players out there and this and clearly Netflix has done a brilliant brilliant job and but

You know, I think Bob Iger's come back and actually pulled that place together, turned a profit on his streaming platform. He's doing a spectacular job. You got to give him a lot of credit. The stock will catch up with the performance of it. But, you know,

amazon and apple and you know even warner's discovery there's some great product on there i don't know about you but i'm deep into white lotus i didn't get to watch it last night i'm sweating because i'm i'm hours behind the rest of the world you don't want any spoilers i do not yes i didn't see last weekend but i caught up to almost last week it's pretty there's something about the guy that

is dealing with the end of his career. I don't know. I'm just so glad that I don't have to worry like that. You know what? I mean, the end of his career. Are you watching it? I'm not watching it, so no. He's getting these phone calls about this, I don't know, it doesn't even sound like he was that involved with whatever was set up. Well,

Well, I'm not reading it that way. I have to say. You think he would? Like serious fraud. Fraud where he's going to probably lose everything. And he's like, they can't take my house. I mean, can you imagine? And then the wretchedness. I think this guy's a crook. You do? Sorry. Maybe I'm wrong, but honestly, I'm reading it as this guy is a stone cold thief.

But out of everything else he did, it's this one investment in the Far East that did it, right? Whatever. I think fraud. Now I have to watch. Now I have to watch to see where I come down on this. Either way, watch. And we know how people get involved with it. I think they do something small and then they get caught with that and then they do something again. And then all of a sudden they're... But just think, here we are Monday morning. We can't wait to talk about it. It's the water cooler at work. It's brilliant. It's brilliant.

There's always something. Anyway, Jeffrey, thank you very much for coming in. Hari, thank you. Thank you. And we hope you'll come back in nine months or a year. Give us an update on how things are going. I'll check it out. Thanks for having us. Thank you very much.

And that is the pod for today. Thanks for starting your week with us. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern to get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show right into your ears. Please follow Squawk Pod wherever you get your podcasts. Tell a friend to follow, too. Have a great day. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. All right, clear. Thanks, guys. See you.

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