Impact that its products have on smartphone addiction in children cnbcs leslie picker has more on this story for us. Leslie hey, bill, thats right, its a twist on activist investing. Jana and california state teachers retirement system, sending a letter over the weekend to apples board pushing for changes there. In the letter, they say that apples ubiquity has created unintended negative consequences for children, particularly when it comes to their physical and mental health. They want apple to form a committee to study this issue and add more restrictions for younger users. Apple already provides tools that allow parents to restrict what their kids do on their phones, but jana and calsters believe there should be more thats done there. The letter was part of the firms announcement of their own social impact fund the plan is to raise money then use their activism knowhow to target Companies Like apple they they believe could do better when it comes to social issues now, investors and hedge funds have been increasingly focused on environmental social and governance issues. This one is in many ways a response to that but its also a way for henl fund activists to turn around their image which has been tarnished in recent years, guys. Yeah, leslie, thank you theres going to be a lot more on this. Lets talk more about it now, bring in ed lee from recode along with ross gerber from gerber kawasaki, an apple shareholder. Brian, director. The center for research on Media Technology and health at the university of pittsburgh welcome to everybody let me just start with you because you to have some research on this topic what have you found . Well, there have been in the past a lot of mixed findings a lot of people have been concerned about potential impact of social media, but a lot of people have said social medias also a good social thing to do so what we did was a National Survey of over 2,000 young adults, and we found that no matter how you sliced it, more social media use was associated with higher levels of depression, higher levels of anxiety, and even higher levels of social isolation. The perception that one is socially isolated. You buy that, ed . I mean, yes, social media certainly has had a huge effect. I have a 13yearold shes glued to her phone at home all the time thats the key, though, right . Its the apps on the phone that shes glued to, not necessarily the phone, itself. Of course, the phone is the proxy for all of this. Apple is the ecosystem which all these apps live. I think theres merit to the argument, certainly. At the same time, you shouldnt its not just about apple. I think, you know, you have to look at facebook, have to look at snapchat and twitter. A host of other social media apps that are out there that keep people tied in. I think thats a big part of it. If youre going go after apple, go after facebook as well. I wonder if thats coming next for the time being, since youre an apple shareholder, what do you think about what a these other shareholders are doing in terms of putting pressure on the company . You know, imagine the nightmare in my house being a major apple shareholder with products everywhere. And i own video game companies, i got video games, i got oculuses at my house its a nightmare for screens yet my kids are out playing outside every day. Theyre only allowed to use the screens for an hour. My wife is vigilant on screen time like i cant even tell you but when i was in listen, when i was in college, i was a com major at Annenberg School at penn let me tell you, we studied Television Television is horrible for children, too, and fast food is horrible for children. I mean, our problem is obesity in america its not eyeball problems. Its and, look, these kids are smarter and more sophisticated than any generation thats also because of technology so i think parents need to take responsibility for the behaviors theyre creating, and showing, because theyre mimicking their own parents. Right. So, please, like, america, please, take responsibility. Yeah, i mean, i would agree that let me add one more comment before you get to that. Yeah, sure. I think it isnt just about children, i think its about everybody. I happen to have been in a doctors waiting room this morning, people about my age, kelly would call old no. Were all in there and everybody, every Single Person had their nose in their phone. Thats right. I mean, everybodys doing this right now, not just kids. Whats the impact . Yeah, i mean, i agree i think its very important to engage parents and its very important to engage people in general because as youre saying, this is a universal type of issue but everybody cant have parents that went to Annenberg School of communication. And so i think that its common sense, come on, thats common sense thats not fair. No, im not so sure its common sense this is exactly what we heard with regard to the Tobacco Industry and food industry, you know, well, its parents should bear the brunt of the responsibility, but the fact is that developmentally, we learned later on that just doesnt make sense because developmentally, young people are programmed to go against a lot of what their parents tell them. And so Companies Use this as a way to, you know, show them how to rebel i do think that parents should bear some responsibility, but not the whole thing. I mean, i dothink we need to come together as a society youre missing something. Ross, hang on hang on. Ed, you also mentioned you have a 13yearold. Yes. What do you think about this is going to be one of those times im going to agree with ross, one of the rare times. No, this is a parent problem this is not necessarily a tech problem. At the same time, i wouldnt be surprised dont think or do something about this i wouldnt take the responsibility entirely away from the tech community. I think they should do what they can. I think they should offer better tools to make it easier for parents to police it but it really is a parent problem, not a tech problem. Jim cramer raise the this issue earlier today as well, hang on, aeeverybody. Take a quick listen to what jim had to say. Literally while you were talking went from settings to general to restrictions. Apples done Amazing Things to try to make it so parents are not alone. Thats right apple is probably the most sensitive to this stuff, versus, say, a facebook or google or snap which is the equivalent of captain morgan for kids. Like, wow, i really want to get involved with the captain. So do they already have th e thethes thethes these there are tools already in place, but, again, like to my earlier point, its not just an apple problem, right i think facebook in particular is so much control over the users attention, and thats what my daughters on, shes on instagram most of the time you know, its fair something they have to become literal in absolutely you dont want to take it away entirely how you use it, if those companies can offer better tools, all the better. By the way, brian, a sidebar question, im curious, i read where your research was funded by the National Cancer institute. Which i dont understand and the fein foundation which i dont know was there an ideological thought behind this going into the research to begin with no, the fein foundation is a local foundation that is just interested in maximizing social media and mental health. And so when we went into this research, we actually did not know which direction it was going to go. In fact, our hypothesis was there was going to be much more of a nuanced curve where maybe low levels of social media might actually be harmful to young people, medium levels of social media might be, you know, sort of okay, and then very, very high levels might be a problem but thats not what we found what we found was this basically this straight line, and so theyre much more interested in just maximizing how we use social media and we as an organization, you know, as a center for research, we do just as Much Research on how can we leverage media to do positive things, as, you know, what are the potential problems . In other words, we realize that media are here and here to stay, and it is not feasible to take them away or desirable so before we go, ed, one interesting sort of twist on all this that just came up today is there is another little survey out showing that the more people use Something Like an amazoni k ec echo, the less they use their phone. Is this a passing moment in time or do you think phone is here to stay and i think the phone is going to be here for a while. Theres a merit to the survey, though, shows its more about ultimately ambient commuting ease of use. Ease of access youre still distracted by it, still sort of engaging with it if its more efficient, probably the better again, i dont think the phone is going away in the noform tha we have it. All right i know youre all youre very interested in getting back to your emails yes. Well let you go. Important. Thank you, guys thank you. Ed lee, ross, brian, thanks for your research. Ross, i want you to tweet out a picture of your crazy living room i want to seed ill tweet some pictures of my entertainment palace. For more on apple, by the way thank you, everybody, guys, appreciate it. Were going to have tomorrow on Halftime Report tomorrow at noon barry rosenstein, an exclusive interview with the firm partner from Jana Partners, of course, theyre the ups behind this move with calsters investing in apple and pushing some of these concerns. Turning now to the markets, how about stocks coming off their best start to the year in more than a decade there could be more room for the bulls to run Senior Market commentator Michael Santoli is here with the story. Yeah, trying to can get the field position in place before we get into 2018, to put it in broader context here and essentially were approaching the ninth anniversary as you know of this bull market if were counting from march of 2009 the distance traveled in terms of the cumulative gains, where weve gotten to in terms of valuation levels, and even the public participation, the public exposure to the equity markets, are now higher than basically any bull market except for one, which is the greatest bull market of alltime the one that ended in the year 2000 so if youre extremely bullish on stocks right now coming into this year, if you think that last years 20 return can repeat this year or next, youre basically talking about thats the conversation youre having is can this one outdo that one so its well, what are your first and second questions after that is that a skacary thing what are the differences and similarities scary not so much. I dont think youre seeing similar behavioral kind of knockon effects of this market being so high. Youre not seeing a rash of halfbaked ipos people are scooping up. No, we got icos this time, mike. Its all happening outside of equities, right . Which actually gives me pause because people in 2007 said, eeroh thats a credit problem. Right. However, youre also yes, its highly valued right not in terms of a p e basis but a huge distance to where we were in 2000 it probably surprises people that if you look at the aggregate exposure to stocks by households in the u. S. , its not that far below where we were in 99 and 2000 just because the markets up so much. Wow. Maybe its a narrower holding of stocks but its still as significant. That is surprising. Stay with us as well, mike. Were going to bring in j. J. From Td Ameritrade welcome to you. Hey, guys, happy new year. What do you think 123. I think mike is right in some sense. We just released our imx, shows our clients interaction with the market its atan alltime high. But wait, what does that mean im sorry, thank you for saying that. What it means is clients who made at least one trade in a month that engaged with the market at least once and how long have you been tracking this . Weve been tracking this for five years. Okay. Alltime high. Not a 25year high. No, its a fiveyear high. Could be but you havent tracked it that long. Mikes right about one thing, when i look at this month, youre not seeing many of the what ill call speculative stocks in there, in fact, its come back to what you see ge, microsoft, bank america. Stocks that if we do turn around, i think people are like, okay, these are also good longerterm holdings now, you also do see alibaba, this is from december, see alibaba and tencent. Weve seen these i talked to you guys every month for the last couple years. These are stocks weve seen the last few months. Right. And amazon. Why . Because theyre in the retail online space which as we know has been a great, great space to be youre not seeing any of the traditional brick and Mortar Retail in fact, our millennials were sellers of some retailers, such as costco and nike so, again, i think its very interesting how people are looking at that way. I will say i think one thing the traditional markets missing about all the coin activity is this is the greatest opportunity people complain that we havent been able to get millennials to trade okay, maybe this isnt the product id like people to start with, but this is the greatest opportunity weve had in the market to get people who werent traditionally interested in the market. You think this could be a gateway drug in a good way. I do. I really do, kelly i hope it doesnt end poorly. Get into ge. Well, you know what, traditionally weve been like, well use 10 of your money to speculate, use 90 as what theyre saying is we dont want to do that, we want to do 90 speculative. Do i agree with that no, not necessarily, but for us to say, youre wrong is silly. Say, okay, what are you comfortable with investing in the stock market lets start there. What about this idea, though, that some of the stocks, the most popular, have been ones that actually were around its true. During the previous bull market you were highlighting there, the disneys, the ges. Sure. Even amazon. Even amazon, even microsoft i mean, you know what, its funny, there should be an m in faang. That stock has actually been right there with those other ones so, again, you can actually do an apples to apples in that case you dont have ge is not at 45 times earnings the way it was, even if its not cheap right now. I do think its sort of a contrast in tone that we have right now. I dont think i honestly dont think were going to get a rerun of that type of environment in terms of demographically none of it fits right to get another frenzy like the late 90s. It doesnt mean you cant have an overvalued market real quickly, if its possible we are seeing the greatest of alltime rally, what are we measuring it by, just the length of total the total gains. Okay. The total gains and to be honest, the valuation, itself. I mean, basically just how much the stock market capitalization compared to gdp and Everything Else the tom brady 16 a year weve done since the 2009 bottom. A lot of times at the end of a bull market the trailing tenyear return is over 20 . Thats not necessarily a ceiling but it does tell you weve come a long way baby. Michael jordan. He would tell me muhammad ali. Initially the greatest. Go thank you, guys. J. J. , good to see you. Mike, see you next hour here as well. We got much more coming up on the closing bell. Bitcoin volatility. The cryptocurrency craze is on the move again like a violent roller coaster. Plus, warnings on the horizon of a trade battle. Who will be the target whats the worstcase scenario and hows it going to play in the stock market one more closing bell, email us, find us on facebook and follow us on twitter the most important hour of the trading day is back in two minutes with bill griffethnd llevs. A nobodys putting their money into equities. Theyre not investing in commodities or fixed income. What people are really putting their money into is what they hope to get out of life. But helping them get there requires a real refusal to settle for average. Because when you approach investing with a tireless desire to beat the status quo, Something Wonderful can happen. Those people might just get what they wanted out of life. Or maybe even more. By the way, shares of seagate surging 7 on a report it may have a sizable investment in ripple, the expensive cryp cryptocurrency, not the cheap wine seema mody has more on the cryptocurrency movers which are going down, right . Its important to make that distinction. Yes. As you point out, seagate is rising on speculation about its ties with ripple which has been seen as a rising star in the cryptocurrency world up 1,000 over the past month. But today ripple has been under pressure, down as much as 35 . Its a twofold story here. First, coinbase disappointed investors by saying it will not be adding new cryptocurrencies like ripple to its platform any time soon. But ripple tweeted out earlier today that its price fluctuation has to do with coin market cap thats a site that lists cryptocurrencies which has excluded korean exchanges from their pricing averages now the losses are not confined to just ripple litecoin, ethereum, bitcoin also under pressure on more signs of regulation overseas. South korea inspecting six local banks that allow clients to trade cryptocurrencies for antimoney laundering practices. Traders i speak to say not to focus on the daytoday price action when it comes to cryptocurrency, keep an eye on the longerterm picture if you can. Daytoday price volatility is hard to endure or stomach for many. One thing to explain daytoday moves in the stock market, when the world of crypto, i mean, honestly, why is it up 30 one day, why is it down 30 buyers and sellers. Yeah, exactly. There are different theories. I think regulation is a big part of the discussion. Any time you see a story around south korea, china, cracking down on cryptocurrency trading, you see the cryptocurrencies sell off but always come back if you take a look at a longerterm chart. What about venezuelas introduction of the petro, own cryptocurrency venezuela to even russia last week, Vladimir Putin says theyre looking at a cryptoruble. The use of Digital Currencies in some countries dealing with sanctions as a wa i to get around that is definitely something to watch. Whether that can watch. Because its a cryptocurrency doesnt mean it can do anything it wants. Thats true. It might be difficult to track. Youre right, this is a whole new front on this battle seema, thank you. Thanks, seema. 39 minutes left in the trading session. Weve had a pause today for the most part after a big week last week the dow right now down abou