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** OPINION
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** A first-of-its-kind survey reveals just how glued kids are to their phones
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USF researcher Dr. Justin Martin, shown here recording an episode of “The Poynter Report Podcast” hosted by Poynter’s Tom Jones. (Courtesy: USF)

The latest episode of “The Poynter Report Podcast” ([link removed]) is out today, part two of my conversation with Dr. Justin Martin from the University of South Florida. It’s a fascinating, first-of-its-kind survey about kids and their use of smartphones and social media, as well as news consumption.

Martin, the Eleanor Poynter Jamison Chair in Media Ethics & Press Policy and associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Digital Communication at USF, led the Life in Media Survey ([link removed]) , a must-read in-depth study that looks into the minds of kids and, Martin hopes, reveals well into the future how social media and technology impact a person.

In our conversation, we talk about exactly what kind of social media younger people use. While older people tend to gravitate towards Facebook and X, kids (we’re talking as young as preteens) tend to spend most of their time on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram — in that order. Then comes Roblox and Snapchat.

And how much time are we talking about? Kids weighed in on their favorite apps.

Martin told me, “And it was about four hours. So for kids who said YouTube was their favorite platform, they said they spend about four hours a day using it, and it was close to four hours for Instagram, TikTok, or between three and a half and four hours for the other major platforms as well. That's a lot of time to spend on a single app. And, of course, kids use other apps, other applications, other platforms, other screens. They don't just use tablets and smartphones, but they use smart watches and still, televisions yes, and other screens as well. So the time commitment among these kids is substantial.

That eventually brought us back to just how much young people use their devices. The answers can be a tad worrisome.

Martin told me, “I think just as a smartphone becomes an appendage for us as adults, it becomes an appendage for children as well. And so many of them feel that they can't sleep without the phone in their hand. It's literally kind of a quasi part of them and … we found that one in five kids never turn their notifications off. Their notifications are always on, including at nighttime. They want their phone in their hand to vibrate and wake them up in the middle of the night when someone sends them a text, even though that's a very harmful thing that just disrupts REM sleep cycles.”

Martin said he even had one student tell him a few years ago that he slept with his phone on his forehead so the vibration from a notification would wake him up.

“That's obviously an extreme example,” Martin said. “But many kids can't envision a moment without being with their phones, including when they're sleeping.”

In terms of the impacts of social media, Martin said, “We find in some cases that heavy social media use is associated with symptoms of anxiety — not necessarily depression, but symptoms of anxiety.”

Oftentimes, Martin said, the greatest impact of that anxiety, as well as simply taking a phone to bed, is that it affects sleep.

Martin said, “So kids who sleep with their phone in their hand or in bed with them get 8.6 hours of sleep a night, on average. If the phone is outside of the room when they're sleeping, they get 9.3 hours. So they're getting the minimum amount — that's about a difference of three and a half hours a week in sleep that they're developing brains are getting, compared to kids who don’t have their phones in bed with them or outside of the room. And so one of the recommendations that we have in the study to parents and adults is to not let kids and smartphones sleep in the same room.”

There’s a whole lot more to the study, and our podcast conversation, so I encourage you to check out the latest episode. We also talk about AI, news consumption, and kids and “fake news” — Martin says ​​about one in five kids said that they come across fake news online daily or multiple times a day.

On that point, I also wanted to give a special shoutout to Poynter’s MediaWise ([link removed]) , and my colleague Sean Marcus, who was co-author of the study report.

Listen to “The Poynter Report Podcast” ([link removed]) on Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) , Spotify ([link removed]) or Amazon Music ([link removed]) (and please don’t forget to leave us a rating and review — it really helps).

A MESSAGE FROM POYNTER
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** Tampa Bay Event: The Future of Facts Online
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Can you trust what you read? Join Poynter in person for The Future of Facts Online: A Community Conversation at 6 p.m. May 6, as we explore how forces such as AI and the tech platforms’ rejection of fact-checking are shaping the information landscape. Hear from leading journalists working to protect facts in the digital age and learn how not to be deceived.

Get tickets now ([link removed]) .


** Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast ‘Suave’ returns for a second season
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For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Amaris Castillo.

On Oct. 20, 2022, David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez found himself in a room full of journalists at Columbia University. It was a momentous day — the Pulitzer Prize awards ceremony. Gonzalez was there with award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa, producer Maggie Freleng and others to celebrate winning a Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting ([link removed]) .

In 1988, Gonzalez was found guilty of first-degree homicide in Pennsylvania. He was a juvenile and sentenced to life in prison without parole. “Suave,” the seven-part series co-hosted by Hinojosa and Freleng, focused on the criminal justice system through Gonzalez’s story. In the official announcement, Marjorie Miller — the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes — called the podcast “a brutally honest and immersive profile of a man reentering society after serving more than 30 years in prison.”

On the day of the awards ceremony, everyone dressed their best. Gonzalez wore a black suit and a bold red tie. He said everything seemed right on the outside when Futuro Media ([link removed]) and PRX ([link removed]) won the Pulitzer.

“But nobody ever asked me, am I hurting? Am I sleeping? Am I eating? Am I dealing with the trauma? Am I adjusting well?” Gonzalez recalled in a recent call with Poynter. “Nobody ever asked no questions, because everybody always assumed that, ‘Oh, he’s doing great. He won the highest award in journalism.’ Well, the reality is that, even when they announced the Pulitzer, I was going through real traumatic events in my life — which was trying to adjust into a community, trying to fit in into normal life out here.”

The struggles of life after incarceration form the crux of the podcast’s new season ([link removed]) , premiering April 7 — the same day Futuro Media launches Futuro+, a new subscription program offering new podcasts with ad-free listening, extended interviews and more. Listeners who sign up to be Futuro+ members get early access to “Suave: Season 2.”

This new seven-part season will be available to all on April 15, one episode per week, wherever people get their podcasts. It will dive into the long shadow of prison and the trauma that continues to trail Gonzalez. While in prison, he lost family members, including his own mother. He was unable to attend the funeral.

“I never dealt with the trauma of incarceration. So I come home and I’m trying to live this normal life, but I’m still locked up mentally. I’m still incarcerated,” he said. “I’m still functioning as if I’m still in prison. Can’t be in a relationship, because every relationship reminds me of my cellmates. ‘If we disagree, you got to move.’ That’s not the way it is out here.”

Like the first season, “Suave: Season 2” also covers the source/journalist relationship-turned-friendship between Gonzalez and Hinojosa. They met in 1993 at the Graterford State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania while Hinojosa was working on a story.

Gonzalez has since written a book ([link removed]) , “From Prison to The Pulitzer Prize,” the proceeds of which he said he’s donating to a community organization in Philadelphia that helps people deal with trauma after incarceration. Even with therapy and the help he’s received after being released from prison, Gonzalez doesn’t believe he will ever be fully a part of society because he’s lost out on so much.

“I just got to learn how to live with it, learn how to deal with it, and learn to understand that, you know, I spent 31 years in prison. I’m home now,” he said. “And being home don’t mean that I’m totally free. It just means that I’m having an opportunity to start over again and to adjust to this life.”

Gonzalez’s voice broke when I asked if there was anything else he wanted to share about the new season of “Suave.”

“To the people that’s listening: don’t judge me,” he said. “Don’t judge me, because what I’m going through, it could be your son, it could be your daughter, it could be your father.”

My thanks to Amaris Castillo, now for the rest of today’s newsletter …


** Question of the day
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The most bizarre part of President Donald Trump’s dizzying array of tariffs placed on countries throughout the world was the 10% “reciprocal tariff” slapped on the Heard and McDonald Islands — located near Antarctica and inhabited only by penguins and seals. As The Independent’s Katie Hawkinson noted ([link removed]) , they are “only accessible via a two-week voyage from Perth via a boat.”

“Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan asked a question of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that might have come off as humorous, but actually was a question worth asking. She asked, “Why are the Heard and McDonald Islands, which don’t export to the United States and are quite literally inhabited by penguins … why do they face a 10% tariff? Did you use AI to generate this?”

Lutnick laughed and said, “Because the idea — what happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us. Any country — like, we had tariffs — the president put tariffs on China, right, in 2018. And then what China started doing is, they started going through other countries to America.”

It still seems like AI might have had something to do with it.


** Interesting dynamic
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On Sunday, Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager who is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, posted a lengthy tweet ([link removed]) about the tariffs Trump has put in place. Ackman started by writing, “The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country. But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust.”

He later writes, “But, by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.”

Ackman then writes the president now has “an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals.”

After a whole lot more analysis, Ackman concludes by writing, “The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a timeout and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail.”

Ackman sent out this post to his 1.6 million followers, but you get the sense he was writing to one person.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who is NBC News’ senior business analyst, retweeted Ackman’s tweet and wrote ([link removed]) , “& this is where we are. Wall St investors writing pitches they hope admin officials will print out and read to POTUS in hopes of influencing his next moves. Policy lobbying via tweet.”


** Lester Holt’s comments
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“NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt gave the keynote address at Friday night’s George Polk Awards — administered by Long Island University and honoring investigative reporting. Holt told the attendees the importance of recognizing journalists, saying, “By highlighting and honoring work of such high caliber, we are reminded that what we do matters. That our work remains relevant and impactful. And retains the power to transform lives, to expose and right injustices.”

He also said, “I have always put a great deal of weight into what viewers tell me on the street when they want to engage on something that we’ve reported on the broadcast. I listen very carefully to know if our reporting was clearly received. Because, I believe, it’s largely on us when the nuance of a particular story is missed or buried or grossly misunderstood. If we are to fulfill our role as a pillar of democracy, we have to do more than report. We have to illuminate and drive greater understanding.”

Holt, who was honored with the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism in 2018, announced in February that he would step down as anchor of the “Nightly News” sometime in the coming months. He will stay on at NBC News, including an expanded role with “Dateline.”

Holt said Friday night, “I will soon be stepping away from the broadcast and day-to-day news gathering at NBC News, in order to expand my role as anchor of Dateline. I’ll be working with a talented team that has helped set the standard for long-form journalism. In a career spanning 45 years, I have answered the bell for the big story far more times than I will ever be able to count. Earthquakes. Wars. Mass shootings, and so many more breaking events. I have traveled much of the country and much of the world. Interviewing people of great power as well as people who are powerless. The job has been an all-access pass like no other for which I am profoundly grateful.”


** Best thing on TV all weekend
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Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin, left, posing with Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky on the ice Sunday after Ovechkin broke Gretzky’s record for most career NHL goals. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)

No question the best thing I saw over the weekend was Washington Capitals superstar Alex Ovechkin breaking a record once thought unbreakable: Wayne Gretzky’s mark for most goals in National Hockey League history. On Sunday afternoon, Ovechkin scored his 895th goal.

It’s one of the most-hallowed individual records in a North American team sport, right up there with Barry Bonds’ record of Major League Baseball home runs and LeBron James’ NBA scoring career scoring record.

The game — on Long Island, home of the New York Islanders — was delayed for an on-ice celebration featuring quick remarks from Gretzky, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and Ovechkin, who was surrounded by his wife and two small children, his mom and his father-in-law, as well as teammates and Caps owner Ted Leonsis.

The game was televised nationally in the U.S. on TNT with Kenny Albert making the call ([link removed]) . In addition, TNT’s sister station, truTV, had an Ovechkin-cam. That is, the screen was divided into two boxes. On the left was the same game broadcast that TNT viewers were seeing. On the right was a camera fixed on Ovechkin the entire time, including the long moments when he was on the bench. It really wasn’t super interesting, but at least TNT Sports tried something to commemorate the event. With TNT having another game to air after the Caps-Islanders game, truTV had all the postgame coverage of Ovechkin’s special day.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post got Hall of Fame goalie Ken Dryden — author of the “The Game,” ([link removed]) perhaps the greatest book ever written about hockey — to write a piece: “The goal scorer.” ([link removed]) Meanwhile, Post sports columnist Barry Svrluga wrote, “Alex Ovechkin is hockey’s greatest scorer. He’s also Washington’s — forever.” ([link removed])

And here’s a really well-done and deeply researched story ([link removed]) from Brianna Schroer, Bailey Johnson, William Neff and Artur Galocha that tracks Ovechkin’s career from its beginnings until now.


** Media tidbits
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* Another reprieve for TikTok. Last weekend’s deadline for TikTok to either be sold or banned in the U.S. has been pushed back another 75 days by President Donald Trump. CNN’s Clare Duffy and Alayna Treene have the details ([link removed]) .
* The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell with “How the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg got added to the White House Signal group chat.” ([link removed])
* New York magazine’s Charlotte Klein with “The Newspaper Flourishing Without a Paywall.” ([link removed])
* CNN will host a town hall on Wednesday with Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Anderson Cooper will moderate. It is scheduled for 9 p.m. Eastern.
* George Clooney is on Broadway with “Good Night and Good Luck,” a play about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow based on Clooney’s 2005 movie of the same name. The New York Times’ Jesse Green has a review ([link removed]) .
* “Saturday Night Live” had another funny cold open ([link removed]) mocking Trump’s tariffs from last week. James Austin Johnson gave another spot-on impression of the president and former cast member Mike Myers continues to sleigh it playing Elon Musk.
* Speaking of Trump, here’s an interesting passage from Natalie Andrews’ Sunday story ([link removed]) in The Wall Street Journal: “This weekend’s trip marks Trump’s eighth visit to Mar-a-Lago since he took office 11 weeks ago, according to Mark Knoller, a former CBS News journalist who keeps track of presidential activities. The president has spent time at golf courses at least 19 times, Knoller said. When Barack Obama was president, Trump criticized him for golfing.”


** Hot type
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* Powerful and heartbreaking story from The Washington Post’s Roman Stubbs: “A beloved skier, an audacious jump and the complex grief left behind.” ([link removed])


** More resources for journalists
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* Establish your investigative foundation to deliver journalism that matters. Enroll now ([link removed]) .
* Update your immigration policy expertise with Poynter's Beat Academy. Enroll now ([link removed]) .
* Gain essential skills that protect your mental health while producing nuanced coverage that serves vulnerable communities. Enroll now ([link removed]) .
* Integrate principled AI guidelines into your newsroom operations. Start here ([link removed]) .

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