What happens when creators consider what lifelong human development looks like in terms of the tools we make? And what philosophies from Sesame Street can inform how to steward the power of AI and social media to influence minds in thoughtful, humane directions?

When the first episode of Sesame Street aired on PBS in 1969, it was unlike anything that had been on television before - a collaboration between educators, child psychologists, comedy writers and puppeteers - all working together to do something that had never been done before: create educational content for children on television. 

Fast-forward to the present: could we switch gears to reprogram today’s digital tools to   humanely educate the next generation? 

That’s the question Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, the Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content for the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

This documentary offers a rare window into the early days of Sesame Street, revealing the creators, artists, writers and educators who together established one of the most influential and enduring children’s programs in television historySesame Street: Ready for School!: A Parent's Guide to Playful Learning for Children Ages 2 to 5 by Dr. Rosemarie Truglio

Rosemarie shares all the research-based, curriculum-directed school readiness skills that have made Sesame Street the preeminent children's TV program

G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street co-edited by Shalom Fisch and Rosemarie Truglio

This volume serves as a marker of the significant role that Sesame Street plays in the education and socialization of young children

The Democratic Surround by Fred Turner

In this prequel to his celebrated book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America, showing how in the 1940s and 1950s American liberalism offered a far more radical social vision than we now remember

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Neil Postman’s groundbreaking book about the damaging effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century

Sesame Workshop Identity Matters Study

Explore parents’ and educators’ perceptions of children’s social identity development

Effects of Sesame Street: A meta-analysis of children's learning in 15 countries

Commissioned by Sesame Workshop, the study was led by University of Wisconsin researchers Marie-Louise Mares and Zhongdang Pan

U.S. Parents & Teachers See an Unkind World for Their Children, New Sesame Survey Shows

According to the survey titled, “K is for Kind: A National Survey On Kindness and Kids,” parents and teachers in the United States worry that their children are living in an unkind world

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Are the Kids Alright? With Jonathan Haidt

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

When Media Was for You and Me with Fred Turner

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_