#766 - Jonathan Haidt - The Hidden Dangers Of Social Media On Mental Health
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Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is JoNathan height. This is a professor at new york university stern school of business, a social psychologist and an author.

The kids are not all right. Mental health is pluming, while anxiety, depression are on the rise. Just what are the contributing elements? Is social media, helicopter parenting, twenty four, our news or something else? Expect to learn why every generation complaints about the next one.

What is so important about the development of kids between eight and twelve years old? What the biggest problem is with test scores in primary school children, the real harm of technology on kids, why words like trigger and fragile ity are such a problem if there is a way to do identity politics well and much more. So the big announcement that I ve been playing around with for quite a while since a couple of weeks ago, when we filmed the world's first ever five camera podd cast on the biggest video wall in texas.

This is basically the same technology that they filmed demand loran on, which is a photo realistic background that sits behind the subjects. And then you match the lighting in front of IT to the backdrop. And IT creates this super immersive sense that the people are sad in whatever environment you've created.

So the first episode does live with dr. Kay this monday healthy game of phenomenal episode grade insights about mental health and improving your resilience, your robustness, how to integrate emotions and love and stuff but more than that, IT is uh, technically unbelievably hard to do this and we pulled IT off. So yeah, get ready for monday and check out the youtube channel to see some previous of what we're going to do.

I'm super excited. Thank you to everyone who is already commented on how the clip looks and made them feel and stuff. I really think this is this is cool.

There's not much stuff you can do that no one else has done before. And this is one of them. So I thank you.

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But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome JoNathan height.

We've been orbiting each other for quite a while. It's really nice to finally sit down with you. Another chat.

That's right. We ran into each other the other dox academy conference, which right away tells you that we share some common concerns about the state of society, knowledge, universities, Young people at seta. So yeah, here we are. I'm really i'm really happy.

Doesn't every generation complain about the next one that's coming along is what we're seeing at the moment, not just more old hat that occurred for every generation previously?

Um well, yes and no yes, every generation complaints and the complaints tend to be similar and that's gone on not since the dawn of history. People always quote you socrates or something. But really that begins when you start getting the journal, you start getting each generation is changing in around the sixteen, seven century in in europe.

So yes, that's been going on a long time. But it's never before been the case that the mental health of the Young generation suddenly was really different and really bad. So you know, the main argument I get against me is just the one you just said that, oh, this is just another moral panic.

There's nothing going on here. This is what always happens. No, this is not what always happens. You don't ever before get a doubling of the suicide rate of pretty girls. You don't ever get. And across the board, across many nations, pluming of mental health all beginning right around two thousand twenty thirty. And so now this time is really different.

What is IT that children need to do in childhood like we don't think about IT that importantly, it's it's just the thing that you do before you get to puberty where you start to become a person. But those experiences are very formative. What does a good childhood look like?

Yeah no, thanks. We're setting IT up that way because there's so much focus on the phones and social media and and I was focused on that too.

But what I decided to do and writing this book and writing the anxious generation was i'm not even going to talk about the phones and social media until i've taken readers through what is childhood, why do we have IT? How is human child had different from every other animals, including chimpanzees? And so if you starches with mammals, all mammals have the same life plan, which is huge investment from the parents with the mother in the, in the baby long childhood.

Big brain, how do you wire up the brain? Play, play is the thing your brain doesn't grow from nursing. Your brain grows from moving away from your mother trying to climb something.

Uh, you know, anyone has had A A puppy or kitten knows they want to play all the time, because I have to practice the skills to wear up the brain. So we have to litter kids, war up their brains. Now, humans are different because we have much bigger brains, and we have culture.

This is crucial. Other animals, they grow as you source, fast as they can, and then they reproduce. Humans, we grow fast, and then we slow down age seven to twelve, thirteen. We're not grown very fast. And I thought that that period is a critical period for cultural learning um all the way through puberty.

We're really trying to soaking in how do we do things around here um what do adults do? How do I approach the opposite sex or sexuality? So there's a lot of learning that has to happen. And the problem is we've taken that learning period.

We have said, instead of learning from grown ups around you or even from, you know, older kids in your neighborhood, how bad if we just hooky you up, here's a phone, ipad, or just hook you up and you can get socialized by random weirdos on the internet. We're selected by an allegorist m for being really extreme. How about that? But that's kind of what we've done.

Yeah, I am around kids more and more as my friends and finally become less man children and actually become fathers themselves of a actual children. And it's so interesting, like my my group of friends, largely a pretty red pilled on this, the concerns about exposures to technology.

But you know, when you go for dinner at the sort of times that you do with guys, we've got families who end up going little bit early, which means you're also around other families. And we go to these restaurants and don't get to see, you know how other families that probably just aren't aware of this a and estates zing a boy's first child. And a lot of the time at the table, no, it's the kid sorts to act up.

They're a little bit bored. And the parents are trying to have a conversation of the adults at the table, trying to have a conversation. And one of them just goes, you open up the phone, pass the phone. And the the madest thing that i've seen from sort of two to three year old children is their ability to skip ads on youtube like they understand the difference between an advert and the bottom and how they can get passed IT. I don't like what first off off look, if you're giving your kid this to anesthetize them by ug premium, it's ten ten box a month and it's it'll change your life but also the this level of engagement with, you know the capitalist system of a facebook pixel tagging and and all that from two years .

old is crazy. No, that's right. That's right. You know, we're very protective of our kids.

And if I said to people, how about how bt, if we have this thing that we have a special door, special window when we were going to put on your child's crib, and advertisers and corporations can come and they can just communicate with your kid, and you have nothing to do with that, what what do you think? X that? okay.

Like, no, we'll never let that happen. And then suppose when your daughter is eleven, twelve, thirteen will put a special window on her bedroom. And strange men can come, and they can talk her through the window. They can look at her through the window.

How about that? Would you do that? Like no, of course you wouldn't do that, but that's kind of what were doing. You know, we're saying here, your companies kind of access to our kids and they can train them with the stimulus response and strangers kind of access to our children once they get a social media account, and they can try to convince them to meet up in the real world. They can try to seldom things, all kinds of like that.

I just want to pick up, use the word and estates, which is a very good word here, because he knows many people know, like one hundred and hundred fifty years ago, there were variety of medications for children like that had opiate in them to calm the child and help them sleep, uh, or we give them alcohol. We didn't know that these things interfered red with with their development. And we all discovered as soon as we got our first iphone.

I mean, I have video, you know, like my my son was born in two thousand and six and so many of our videos of me video taping him and with him reaching for the phone and saying, iphone, iphone, like he he know he wants that. He needs IT because it's so stimulating. Back then, the early days of all this stuff, you know, two thousand eight to two thousand twelve, we thought the technology was magical.

And we thought, you know, yeah, let's let our kids get stimulated by, like, stimulation. Isn't that gonna good for the brain development? Like, so yeah, I seem okay to do IT.

It'll give my heads start. He'll be, you know, digital data. I'll be comfortable with this technology. And besides, everyone else is doing IT, so I must be OK. So yeah, we ended up nestor zing.

let's back out of the technology thing we're going to get on to that. But let's just talk about like what has changed with regards to parenting styles outside of technology over the last few decades? How is this craft the raw material foundation for the kids that would grow up?

No, that's a great question, is one that I don't write enough about as I focus on the technology. But greg and I did write about this in the calling american mind that um there is a long term transition over generations as when life is hard and families are big um and religion is important part of life you tend to have a very structure you know kids are growing a lot of structure. There are dues and dots.

There are punishments if he must behave um and there's a big liberal conservative split on this in general, conservatives want more strict childbearing. Progressives want more lenient liberal and now called gentle parenting. And in general, as as our societies have got ten wealthier and safer and our families get smaller, we've all kinds moved over to the gentle side.

Uh, you know, when I was a kid, spanking was Normal, but I was like only for the vert, like my my sisters. Now we got spent like a few times when we did something really terrible. Uh, but now it's you at least you know educated circles like that's almost unheard of whether a couple of generations before there would have been a lot .

more the school teacher, yes.

that's right. Schools would hit the kids. That's right. So you know so many ways it's progress.

On the other hand, if you take out if you take out the threats, the punishment of the negative stuff and you kind of leave IT with like what you see a lot of parents doing like now john y was that a wise choice or an unwise choice as supposed to say? I know you do not hit your sister. Um so I think we've become a little too gentle, too unstructured.

And this might also help explain a really interesting twist in the data that is not really in the book. I found a lot of IT even afterwards. Um is that the mental health crisis is much worse for children and families on the left and on the right.

Um so liberals or progressives have always had lightly higher levels of neuroticism anxiety, depression, just a little bit more than conservatives. It's a big in a long study thing. Conservatives are a little bit happier than liberals, adults and children.

And if you clawed out the levels of you know of happiness or the negative stuff like meaninglessness on all the graph s in my book, you'll see like you get a straight line until around twenty, twenty, twelve, and then all of a sudden the lines go up like a hockey stick. Well, if you break IT out by A R U, A liberal conservative, which is asked on monetary surveys, um it's the liberal kids, especially liberal growth. They go up first and fast.

Something happened, whatever IT was. The change in the early twenty ten IT hit liberal kids, especially liberal girls, hardest. And I think part of IT is what we're talking about.

If you are rooted deeply in structure and community and you have to go to church every sunday. Or you know your orthodox jewish kid, you've got SHE bott. You've got you know twenty four hours where there were no devices in your with your family moving to the digital technology didn't wash these kids out to see.

But if you're more progressive family, usually a smaller family, uh, more I can more mobile, you move around more perhaps um you have weak ties, a lot of freedom, a lot of creativity, but those kids seem to be especially vulnerable to be washed away in the early twenty tens. It's not just left, right. It's also religious, conservative, religious esek lar. So so secular, religious, i'm sorry, a secular conservative kids show the least increase. Everybody goes up, but they show the least increase where as, uh, progressive of non religious kids or families, that's where you see the biggest increase in mental .

health problems. I wonder how much of IT from the liberal progressive side comes from this very softly, softly, gentle approach to discipline in parenting because, you know, I hesitate dropping into broad psychology this earlier in the podcast, but fucked.

Like if you think about your level of discomfort exposure, what you what you're comfortable being uncomfortable with, how often has someone told, you know, how often have you been told you're in the wrong? How often someone raised their voice at you, how often someone being turn, you know, all of these opportunities are times where you learn. Okay, I can self regulate.

This is, this can happen to me and i'm still safe. This can happen to me and i'm still loved. No one's going to abandon me.

This is not comment on my moral character. On my worth is a human. This is an inbuilt part of being a fallible flood human that makes errors.

And mom and dad a going say, you don't hate your sister. You don't do that. Got your time out. Go sit on the step and sit on the step until you've calm yourself down.

And if you've never experiences that, and you can IT like you don't even you don't need to know anything about human psychology to know that you can train the system on a type of stimulus IT will become hypersensitiveness. You get outside the bounds of that stimulus. That's where we can.

No, I think that's perfect. Um I can just add little psychological collette in two ways. Uh one is to bring in the concept of anti fragile ity which I hope many of your listeners are already from there with um you know some things are fragile. Glasses is fragile.

You don't like kids play with a little break so we give them plastic which is resilient uh if a kid drops IT IT won't break but IT doesn't get Better uh but some things are anti fragile um they need to be stressed and strained and dropped in and and suffer setbacks in order to get strong uh and this comes from this may and where your colleagues seem to lab so bones and muscle or any ragle, if you raise your kids by saying, I never want you to put stress on your bones, you know, never go downstairs. Take the elevator, you know, the buttons are gonna weak. Same thing with muscle.

The immune system is anti fragile and kids are anti fragile. So that's that's like the psychology underneath a lot of what you would just say. But then there's an other one which I haven't at least talked about publicly because it's sort of can easily get taken out of context.

May that will happen here when I would never we have the most unreasonably reasonable audience. You'll be fine.

okay? It's really important for kids to learn how to accept injustice. Now let me quickly keep talking that that doesn't just get um you know um you know john hi you know White guy says that people need to just suck IT up and accept and but the situation that you just talked about you know like you know no you do not hit your sister time out and IT might be the case that your sister hit you first and maybe there's more to the story and so maybe your parents are actually treating you unfairly and in general, we would say, you know, authority parents were always like, why did you hit your sister? Tell me why you if you can't justify, will punch even.

But sometimes sometimes things are unfair and if you're a child who is raised where in general your parents, you know you trust them in general they they are fair, but sometimes they're not, sometimes they're just not and you just learn like, okay, you know what happens? I'm a little mad. Not get over kay.

Now fast forward fifteen, twenty years. Imagine your an employer hiring two recent college grads. One of them has never had to face injustice.

One of them, everything was always fair. And if they thought I wasn't fair, they could say, I think that's unfair, and then they could work IT out. Another kid had authoritative parents who sometimes made mistakes and sometimes treated unfairly. Who would you rather hire? And I think what we're seeing in universities is that there's a certain kind of activist Young person who who sees flaws in the world and thinks that they see everything as IT is and they should never have to accept any unfairness and they can just become very, very difficult to to work with because they're used to getting their way. So yes, we're doing kids no favors with this sort of, you know gentle, you shouldn't to do anything but does not make you comfortable like no, sometimes in life you do have to do things that make you uncomfortable or that no, or that you think you to respond to situations that you think are unfair.

Does your light just enough if you lost light on your face?

No IT s nothing .

changed about my city. okay? I spend a lot of time running a big events company in the U.

K. I N. Nightclubs for for a decade in a half. And one of the things that I very quickly I realized stepping into that industry is its full of scum bag. I was trained in the art of scum bagerhat.

But um you know if i'd gone into that, I I had this really interesting experience because I was a university, right I was seeing and I was doing two business degrees to the masters in a bachelor ism business. Ff, but I was running a business. And from doing nightlife you get to see H R marketing, b to B, B to c hiring fire.

Every you see the full works, right? It's a full government of everything. So I was getting to learn about business one or one. But I was also experiencing business. And when I was being taught and when I was experiencing would diverging very quickly.

But the interesting point here is up until you leave university, most people can campaign the way out of situations that they don't want to be in. This is wrong. The standards that this professor is holding me too or too high.

You know, we've seen this happened, a good bunch. ETC. Tc, right? Because when you went to the world of business, someone doesn't need to play by your rules.

They they can bring you up to the brink of signing a contract, your balls deep and lower fees. Everything's ready to go. You bet the business on IT and they can go.

By the way, this is IT called cracking on confirmation is is the the actual tactic and they just cracked the fuck out if you they go, hey um yeah we're going to pay twenty percent and I saw this deals dead in the water you go, no, I got I and yeah we know they give this deep in IT which is why we want to pay twenty percent less like this business works like this is what crying km confirmation isn't IT happens in nightlife over over, over, over again. My point being, if you like, if you are unable to deal with someone coming and twisting you, are you going alright? Well, I know that you need me.

Let's let's play game chicken here with who needs who the most you just going to be. So just regulated that you can't do with anything. My point being this sort of hyper, I think of IT like an over to window of sensitivity.

You know, you have the entire gammage of human experience, and then you have this range within which you're familiar. The tighter that you make that any small movement outside of that is going to feel like like this regulation. And I suppose as well, this gets into something of spoken about with doctor animates in in tons of people to do with child reading. The importance of risky play and why is so important?

Yes, that is such a key word. And that this is something I think that won't be as familiar to uh to listeners um you know even listeners who might read the calling american mind or might know about the importance of play.

There's really interesting research as a uh a play researcher from norway named elen sand sitter and SHE has a couple of papers from twenty ten and more recently on the need for risk, specifically risk and thrill and the keyword that I really resonate with this thrill. So you know we know that even if you know kids need to play, but we don't want them to play in any place dangerous. We don't want them to climb trees.

As far as I can tell, a new zealand, and is the only english speaking country left in the world where children are allowed to climb trees. Like, I remember that you know that recess when I was a kid. If there is a tree now some as we climb tree um but we sort of decided we have to keep kids safe from danger so nothing that could have any real danger.

But what sense city points out is why are kids seeking out danger? Why is this almost a universal feature? Why are kids doing things that they are almost certainly gonna make them get her, you know, why are boys dog jumps on their bicycle? They know they are onna get.

Why are kids skip boarding down steep hills? They know they're na fall at some point in. The reason, he says, is because A A part of our evolutionary programing is to test our abilities, learn to manage risks that are smaller risks, uh, because life is full of, once you're not protected by your parents.

Boy is like to injuries out in the jungle, out in the wild, out in the world of nightclub um so we have to part of our our Mandate as a child is try things that are little bit dangerous and you get to select how dangerous IT is. And so you know, when I would take my kids to tony island here in new york city, in big museum park area, um there the kids, like, in the car there will be so much discussion. I like, are you gonna do the thurnall able today or the, you know, the sink shot like, oh no, that's no.

That's too scary for me. You know, everyone, they're all trying to adjust. But then once they do IT, they come off, I mean, they are jumping, they are exhilarated.

This thrill is what they've been craving. And what sancia says is it's that process of being afraid, being really afraid, like. The world, a cross is about to go over the top and it's about like you're really afraid.

And then on the way down, you're screaming and it's thrilling and pleasure and fearful and then we get to the bottom and you're you naked off the other end. It's just really and when you do that, you're actually changing your brain. You do that over over again.

And you develop the brain of a person who can face down some fun bag or some person threatened them, who can actually deal with threats and stand their ground and think quickly and not just panic and meltdown. So our kids need risk and throw. That means they are gonna get hurt. They're gonna a sometimes break bones um but the alternative is to keep them soft so that they're gonna break their minds.

What this obviously roles from infancy parents into the school, school, secondary school.

what's .

happening to children when they get into school and they have first faced with test scores and assessment and and structure, you have to get to school at this time. You know you can't do that in the teacher. Like how much of this is later the feet of parents and how much of this is later the feet of .

the education system? Yeah it's a kind of yeah IT is a mix. Um the sort of the Normal human progression is up until eight, six, seven, maybe an a um there is really no value at all to homework or having too much structure.

You know by eight, nine, ten they know they can really learn um you know to fit in to form. But the early grade, especially kindergarten first grade here in the U S. Um there is really very little evidence that they benefit from being pushed to read fast or two learn math fast. We have this native idea that if they start learning multiplication in kindergarten, they will end up in high school further ahead is kind of an naive notion.

Able to give a head start, they'll end up for the but that's not true in sanna abia, especially filling where they don't really start kids until age seven, they don't really do any academic stuff until eight, seven and their kids are among the best in the world and all these academic measures. So um so I guess I would say at a certain point yet, they do need to learn all that stuff. Uh, they do need to be self regulating.

And if you're going to fit into a free market capitalist economy and be functioning people and be prosperous, they need sock and need all the skills. But that doesn't mean you have to really start them very strictly early on. What kids need in kindergarten, first grade is especially a lot more play then we give them, uh, we need to really back off on the homework and the heavy academics, uh, in kindergarten first grade is.

my opinion, what's happening to test scores with regards to students.

So uh, there are two there's a global measure of text cores around the world that's pizer the program for international something assessment um clastic I suppose and uh with pizza, what we see is that scores were going up from the nineties and think start of the nineteen scores were sort of going slowly up from the nineties to the twenty twelve assessment is every three years. And beginning at the twenty twelve assessment, some of them start to go down and then they go down further in the most recent and everybody points that says, oh, coit, well, cove. IT was so terrible and IT was, IT was terrible that we took kids out of school.

IT was terrible that we took IT to warrant in any danger and said you don't get to go to school uh because what if you bring home the virus to an adult um and so it's true that covered you know being at a school did hurt test cause but people only just begin to realize when you look at those graphs, IT didn't start with coffee. IT started when kids and everybody got on phones around twenty twelve. In america, we have the knee N A E P.

National assessment of educational progress called the nation's report card. Same thing there. We have data back from the seventies.

So we were making progress like kids literally, you know, in four th eighth grade, whatever they measure, kids literally were learning more about math, science and Better and reading. There was progress for decades, slow but steady progress until twenty twelve. And then IT begins to reverse, and yes, reverses even more during covet.

The reversal started around twenty twelve. So um I think the main thing we should be focusing on here these phones in schools, um we will talk more about what phones are doing to all of us. But the idea that a child has access, you know like a seven h you know seventh greater has a smart phone in their pocket. They're going to text, if any, if the phone is available, someone is texting, and if someone is texting or group texting or posting on on on instagram that everyone has to be checking otherwise at lunch, they're going to be the one who doesn't know the thing that happened during the third period. So once kids, uh, around twenty twelve as and when we get the phone based child that that's a that's roughly when teen switch from flip phones to smart phones right around them, as soon as that happens, they're not paying as much attention in school, they're not learning enough, they are not earning as much as they did, they're not paying as much attention to each other and they start getting long lier. So after twenty twelve of our kids are getting stupider and lonely, and I think a lot of IT, not all, but a lot of IT is because of .

the what was that article that you tweet about jensie reading books for pleasure or they not doing in? yes.

So gene twi, uh, who's been fantastic SHE is one of the first really call attention to this in twenty seventeen, something big is happening to our kids. And gene is a master of these four giant data sets that we have in america, long running surveys. H monitoring. The future goes back to the one thousand nine hundred and seventy every year they uh they interview represent a large samples of twelfth quaters, tenth graders and eighth quaters um and so we have decades of data and one of the questions they they ask a lot of questions one of them is, uh you know have you uh how often do you read books for pleasure or have you read a books for pleasure in the last month?

I can't member at the exact timing and what what gene shows is that the number who have read no box that I think guys how what is like know how if you read you know zero in the last year for pleasure or in a one to three or five to ten, the number who have read zero books last year has been going up for a while. I didn't start in twenty twelve um as kids are watching more television, cable T V going on the internet book reading has been declining, being replaced by by other screens, has been gonna a long time. But IT accelerates after twenty twelve because again, once you have a smart phone and you have social media, which is gonna suck up all of your time, there is no limit to how much you need to consumer post from monitor.

So um life on a smartphone, what i'm calling the phone with childhood takes up so much time, there is no time for hobby or reading or anything. And so gene shows these dramatic graphs of, they know the number who never read a book. Those go up, and the number of books people read. An average goes down. We have a nation of Young people who have read very, very few books.

Is there anything else that we need, say, about the education system and what it's got wrong? Maybe from a disciplinary in standpoint, we know about this sort of early thrusting of academic achievement onto kids in the hopes that is kind of starting earlier, pushes them out ahead more late. Is there anything else assign from the technology the .

education got wrong? Oh my goodness. yes. So um one of the you know in this book i'm trying to be totally not political and and just really just folk on the kids, but it's i'm talking with you, kris. I'll i'll share some .

other thoughts for the big party.

It's um so education schools have been accused of being ideologically progressive since the one thousand and thirties uh and they are they lean left um the military leans right, the police lean right, the arts lean left. Education education schools lean left. That's just the way IT is. That's not necessarily problem. But what i've been focused on since twenty eleven as a social scientist is the loss of you point diversity when everyone trying to figure something out, if everyone's on the left or the right, you don't get you don't get your confirmation bias.

He's chAllenged and you start getting what i've called, you start getting structural stupidity that is, you know some can say something really stupid and and no endurance to chAllenge them because if you chAllenge them you look like you are a conservative or you know or of sexist or racist or something of the accused, something so people just keep their mouth shut. I get emails from students in, uh, grad programs in education periodically, and they say, basically help. I came here to learn how to teach.

All we learn how to do is racial justice and equity, like we never learn, you know, everything is oppressive. Everything's racism. We don't learn how to teach. So I can't save this situation for all that schools. But the lead schools, I think they are large, that they become very, very ideological.

They were that before two thousand fifteen, but in the kind of the greater opening that we've had in the real intensification of of so the left right culture war, uh, you know we can see the right going off the deep end in a lot of ways. But you know for that time at schools, it's really you know the left in the education schools. So I think that um there's always been a debate between sort of progressive educational ideals and conservative and I always seen that is a Young sort of thing like you actually need detention of them pushing.

But since there are a very few conservatives left in higher education um you know in the social sciences and an and in education schools, it's on a very, very ideologically progressive and that means you have a lot more the gentle parenting, the focus on equality of outcomes by race um regardless of inputs. Let's get rid of tests, let's get rid of honnor classes. Uh so I think education schools have been working very, very hard to lose the trust of centrist republicans uh and anyone who actually cares that their kids get an education um so again, you know in the current book on mental health, I not I don't want to get get into IT, but if we're talking about what's happening to our kids schools and education, I think I think the educational establishment is becoming structurally stupid. Um and we are clear evidence of this instances ancyra during covet where the school board was you know they were totally focused on pulling down statues of a link in renaming schools um you know um and the the citizens of san Francisco who are you know very far left so fed up with that they voted out the school board um so yeah I think the education system is is becoming in this country very, very ideology.

Talk to me about the newest data that you ve found around smartphones. You've circle ling this wagon for quite a while. It's spent a good bit of time on this book since your last one, which was something not too to similar. What what are the primary harms of technology on kids and and what's in the latest data about sure.

So there's been know a lot there's a huge academic literature on whether we all agree that is a correlation. We all agree IT. Turns out even there's a few major sort of skeptics and critics and then there's gene twenty and the on the other side that sort of where a lot of the debate has been and IT turns that we actually agree on the size of the correlation between how much time you spend on social media and how anxious to press you are.

When you say we agree, you mean you in gene or you in the other note.

no me in the other side, they've done a number of meet analysis and they say, you know, the correlation is around point one to point one five, uh, but that's for boys and girls together with gene and I. Many others have found the coalition is much bigger for girls. Social media harms girls much more than boys.

So a gene I found that the correlation for girls is about point two. Well, that's actually pretty much the same. If they say it's point one to point one five correlation for everyone, that means they are basically saying the correlation from point in five may be even higher for girls.

So we actually and that that correlation is actually pretty big in public health effect, is not big in a mathematical sense of variance explained, but it's about the same size as you get from many other public health things you know kali um consumption and later audio process. I mean all sorts of effects are around that size. So we actually agree on that.

But then the debate, they say it's small, we say it's actually as big as everything else. Um uh the big debate is okay, there's a correlation but correlation doesn't show causation. You know we have to prove caution and so i've been uh collecting I I started this um in two thousand nine and after I I was chAllenged on the calling american mind um I said, well let's get to the bottom this is there a mental heath crisis because back then the critics were saying there isn't even a mental health crisis.

It's just you know self reports stuff. It's it's not it's an illusion. Well that was clear. No, IT was not an illusion.

The rates of go on up since twenty twelve um now the question is what caused IT and i've been collecting experiments these big google dogs if you go to JoNathan hytner com slash reviews, you can find all of our google dox create with jackals uh and we have won that list. All the study we can find that are coalition studies, the lunger studies, experimental studies. Sorry, this is like getting too geeky up.

But the point is there's like we have about twenty twenty five true experiments that we found and uh the man and the large majority them do show caul effects and the ones that don't show caul effects is very interesting. If you look at the six or seven that failed to find an effect of like taking kids off phones, they all use a very short time period. So if your experiment is we're going to a make kids stare, the college students stay off of social media for a week, you know, three days, and they're going to see how they're doing.

And guess what, you take somebody who's heavily addicted, you take away their drug. Can you check in on them a day later or a week later? How are they doing? Not well, but the studies that waited a month almost all find they're doing a lot Better.

They're much happier. So you know, I don't know what else we can do here like we've got the coalition evidence. We've got the experimental evidence.

The experimental elegance shows a clear pattern where if you refine IT to the ones that are matched theoretically, ally, what's happening? The if that gets bigger, you ve got the quail. I X, I mean, you know, people should go look at this google dog. I mean, I don't know what else we can do to convince people that it's not just correlational. There's a lot of cause evidence.

What ways could you be wrong about this evidence?

Um so on the experimental evidence, the published experiments, uh, my critics say that if you look at each of these studies, they are mostly pretty weak. Um some of them have small sample sizes, just one or two hundred um some of them there's some other flaw. And so you can you know you can find you can definite find flaws in most of the experiments.

Um so it's possible that they're right and that only experiments to find an effect get published um that is conceivable but um there are so many different lines of evidence here and so I I would ask uh listeners to think about a situation in which the parents see the problem. The parents whose kids are dead think that IT wasn't IT was only because of social media. Did you know that the kid committed suicide? They can they can see the harassment taking place on online.

So you have the parents saying this is, this is causal. I don't know any parents who say, oh, no was wonderful for my kid to be on social media the teacher see IT the principle see IT the psychologist see IT um the kids themselves see IT um you had free india SHE is one of the best writers on what is happen into girls uh and fare I published a great essay on on my subject. I think you refer to IT on on on your show uh on the the algorithm c concern belt of just once you express an interest in something, the allegorist ms are going to pull you all the way to eating disorders or self harm or whatever IT is.

Um so given that I can't fight, I literally cannot find anything written by someone agency that says, no, we love our phones. Our phones are great. Where our phones are make our world Better you know smart social media.

So good for like I can't even find anyone saying that, but we have lots of people like fra. We're saying this is destroying us. So when you look at the experimental evidence that uses very limited manipulations, one very particular Operationalize ation of the question finds a certain effect size. You got to ask yourself, which is more plausible that everyone is wrong and all the experiments are wrong? Or maybe it's the case that something is really happening here.

What is the proposed mechanism by people that say smartphones don't have this big of an impact on mental health? Because the mechanism is what being debated. The change in mental health is pretty undeniable.

We have very, very high rates of whatever is like the most catelan mic language about girls between age twelve and sixteen, like persistent feelings of hopelessness or listlessness, or something like just this, like awful pocula PC language. What are the people who disagree with you saying? Is the mechanism that causing this to happen?

right? They don't. They don't. That's amazing thing. So you have, you know, you look at the graphs and they go up in very much the same way, same time in the U.

S, the U. K, canada, australia, new zealand. Uh, scanned the ivy.

We've got graphs of all this I hope your listeners will go to after bb, that comments. My subject is free. We've got all the graphs from all these countries. We've got the world's position of data internationally. IT all starts in the early twenty tens.

And so my critics say, well, the amount of very is explained is very small, so you know that so you using social media can only explain a small amount of variance, therefore can't explain the explosion. And we're done here. And then I said, well, what do you think does explain IT? No one, no one even offers.

There's no alternate theory. The global financial crisis is at least global, but that was two thousand and eight. So why is that? That nothing happens to teen mental health until twenty 2， twenty thirteen, by which time unemployment is dropping, stock markets rising, everything's getting Better, you know.

So the global financial crisis doesn't work. There is no other explanation that I can find, not even when it's been proposed, other than the loss of the playbook childhood to be replaced by the phone based childhood. And that really happened between twenty ten and twenty fifteen when the phone based childhood came in.

That explains the globes of IT. IT explains the sudden of IT. IT explains the gender difference. IT explains everything that I found. And you know, my critics say, well, we're not convinced, but we have we not even going to offer alternative explanation.

So boring, super me, alright. What are the primary harms of technology on kids?

Uh, so once you see the kids have to grow up in a physical world, we evolved outdoors, nature, animals, people um when kids grow up on screens so it's not just about social media when you grow up with what i'm calling a phone based childhood where you're spending the latest data I think is nine hours a day average for american kids, uh, eleven hours, fader said there's a british study IT was ten eleven hours a day for british kids on their phones, which includes other includes tablets, I think, and video games I think.

In any case, IT doesn't include homework or school or just recreational time, nine to eleven hours a day that pushes out everything else. And so what I say in the book is that there four foundational harms. Once you see that it's taken up ten hours a day pushing everything else out.

What matters? The most important thing is time with other kids, time with friends. That's crucial. I am for all of you in person that's right in person uh and i'll talk about whether virtual is is good IT is not but time actually with other kids are with the new friends and that has plumaged um since twenty twelve.

IT was dropping before in the earlier internet age but boy really speeds up in the in the smart phone social media age um and so kids the the most nutritious thing your kid kindo is be out playing with other kids and this is even true routine and just hanging out with no adult telling them what to do um so that's crucial that's really nutritious as they were now if kids you might say, well, but you know the spending of this ten eleven hours, a lot of that is spent virtually interacting. Like on video games. Well, let's look at multiplayer video games now.

Those are at least synchro. Synchro is good, you're talking. So that's actually good thing.

The girls on social media is a synchronize. I comment I wait anxiously for you to comment on my comment. So we're not really connecting. We're actually performing a very anxious um video games are the synergy. But you actually you tell me I D I was never a gamer IT seems to .

me that I you look at me and just think the read that wasted a lot of hours playing video games and I wasted a lot of hours playing video games.

There you go, stereo pes sometimes have a basis in reality. Um oh look, basically you know you're a healthy mail. That means you almost certainly playing video games.

I mean, that's just the way it's been since the nineties. Um so but you tell me in video games, you have to get in fights like a like you get mad each other because someone broke a rule. Oh, how does how does that happen? Because I assume that the game itself regulates .

all the interactions. How game? No, no, I have disagreements. You have disagreements, you shout, you say that that that was totally stupid. Like it's more in no.

But what I mean is like I think about when you when you and your friends played to, you know, pick up soccer game or baseball game and whatever in your kids and someone says, no, you know, was out of bounds. No IT wasn't. Yes, I was.

No IT wasn't like you argue that. And what i'm trying to say is the arguments are really nutritious. The arguments, uh, john P.

J, the great developmental psychologist really talked a lot about this. When kids play marable, they get all kinds of disputes. That's crucial. They learn how to work IT out. So you tell me when you when you're playing video games in an average day, you know you four hours of video game playing, do you get those kind of fights about, yes, I was. No, I wasn't.

Yes, everyone. Game is the game. The rule set. No needed.

That's right there. You got. So it's just like if I said we're going to replace all your kids food with rice, White rice and then someone said, yeah that that should be just as good.

I just got just the same number calories you know you might say, yeah, but it's missing all the other nutrient and that's what we do when we put boys on video games. Yeah, it's social. It's great fun. IT has some benefits that gives them some social calories they're talking, but it's missing a lot of the nutrients that you get from face to .

face interaction OK face face interaction that get 1 then .

that's just one。 I'll go fast around the rest of the number two, sleep deprivation um when kids have a screen in the room, again, these things are designed to be addictive. And when you let your kids spend hours with a device designed to be addictive, sometimes they get addicted.

And so the kids who have a who are dependency, they're gone to take their phone into bed with them under the covers. You know, mom can see that the light is still on because it's under the covers. So social media in particular, and browsing the internet takes a way a lot of sleep.

And if you take a way steep from teenagers who are already not getting enough, they're gonna crankier less healthy, they're gona gain weight. There's all kinds of things that happen physiologically and emotionally, uh, which exacerbate the mental illness epidemics. That's too lossless sleep.

Uh, the third is attention fragmentation. One of the main things kids need to do in as t your brain is revering throughout childhood, know your brain is sort of pretty big by the time your five or six. And then a lot of is just the required, the milliner of circuits.

Uh, in your teen years, the frontal cortex marinates, the prefrontal cortex especially, is the see of executive control. Can you set a goal, keep your eye on the goal, do the things necessary to reach the goal, even though there are distractions? And as adults, we've all learn to do that to some degree.

But crucially, that learning was those teen years when the front of cortex is really laying down. You know, like, how do you do this? And instead, what we do is, is like, we put little distractors.

You know, if a lot of the kids get interrupted every couple of minutes for the whole life, they never even spent ten minutes without an interruption. This appears to interfere with their development of executive function. So we're creating, uh, Young people who when they come to the office, they can't just pay attention to something.

They need more stimulation, and then they don't pay full attention. So attention fragmentation is devastating to their ability to be productive and creative. And the fourth foundational harm is addiction. Um I do not get big arguments with this, with some of the researchers who are who study video games, who think video games are good um and they point out, you know most boys are having a great time and there's no sign of problem. Well and that's true that's true.

Most boys who play video games, I can't say that they're damaged by IT, but five ten percent are um the ones who develop problematic gaming who are have compulsive use when they're not playing. They become surely their brain is deficient in doping. They are addicted, they have a uh dependency. Um if you are going through your puberty years as a boy getting this incredible amount of its stimulation, but you know from you a fortnight eight or you know whatever game you're playing, this is uh in addition of messing up your life, you're not you're not spending time with friends, you're not learning how to talk to girls, whatever IT is um this is like to have some very lasting possible permanent effect so those the four foundational harms they affect boys and girls.

Girls on social media, not much video games um and then there's all the specific arms that effect boys and girls we can gain to those but if if all you knew was here's this consumer product, it's gona take your kid away from his friends, it's gona deprive him of sleep, it's going to fragment his ability to focus and it's onna addict him. What do you say? If do you want this? Your kid? Like, who would ever say yes? But we did .

is IT right to call social media use and addiction. I had this discuss with an equipment a couple of years ago. I sort of.

yeah, what did he say?

He said, IT looks to him more like a compulsion than an addiction. IT feels like compulsive behaviour. He said, know if if you saw an animal scratching, scratching, scratching in the corner, looking for food, scratching, scratching, scratching, scratching, scratch you to think that animals sick and IT IT feels to me, you know, you're anna plan.

How many times is that a specific great example? You're on a plan. You have no signal, you know, you have no signal.

You pull your phone out, check IT up. You go, the little cycle of APP. So whatever is that you do and you go, yeah, goes back down. So to me, that seems compuserve. Now, obviously, addictive things can have a compulsion. That's the reason I got anything long and thing that I can use, but that's the reason that smokers will get pens and chew down on pens that actually satiate.

I think I saw something that saying people who have smoking addiction concentrate a little bit of the a desire for the next cigarette by actually putting a replacement cigarette in so much that is about the like, physiological, the movement of that habituated. Thank yeah. So I I mean, the semantics of what is an addiction, where is that cross across into a compulsion? Can something which is addictive lead you to have this sort of obsessive compelled behavior that way you can in place? You kind of doesn't really matter.

But if you, if you any, no, I, I, I do know. I know that among addiction researchers, there's a debate about whether behavioral addictions are true addictions. And if you look at what happens in the brain when a persons addicted to heroin or to cocaine know there's that's incredibly well studied.

No, I don't know the details. This is not my arabic parties. That's incredibly well study.

And then I think some of them are saying when you look at behavior addictions, it's it's a little difference, not quite the same. Fine, I can totally accept that. But to me, the question is just let us take gambling addiction. You know most, most of us have been to a casino. The great majority don't have any problem, don't have any addiction, but a small number I don't know what the percentages.

I'm guessing it's probably you know two to seven percent because that's what I keep finding for behavior addictions um for for some number they uh went they get into a zone the its straight behavior psychology stimulus response variable reward schedules, they get into a zone and they lose track of time and they forget their troubles and of course their troubles are in part because they're blowing all their families money on slot machines but they can't stop. So uh I think would you say that a person who compulsively use slot machines spends most of her family's money, so the families now bankrupt, and yet he still keeps doing IT. Would you call that a compulsions? Er r an addiction? both.

okay. Would you even if to call that's fine with me, you want to call just a company, that's fine. My point is whatever that .

is a gambling at wall. What if you .

want to call IT? That is what is happening to social media, compulsive users. I know whatever you want to call is the same thing. And it's I mean, the sense is literally same thing because some of the features of our life on phones were directly copy ed from casinos. The thing where you pulled down to refresh and then the kind of bounced up and you see thing like that was literally copied from slog machines out.

Stan Harris, yeah.

he is right. yes. And as a hero in all of .

this brought telling everyone about this, yeah, for sure. All right. So there's been a lot of talk recently. I've got Daniel cox coming on the guy that did that really fantastic study about Young boys breaking to the right, Young girls breaking to the left.

I got, yeah, but we seeing a lot of sex differences in world view and belief in mental health. Yeah, what mental health is is declining. But the ways that is declining, the sort of usages of technology. So talk to me about the sex differences in technology, how to boys and girls .

use technology differently? sure. Yeah so the master variable here I believe is is a set of motivations uh that we've talked about psychology for fifty years um called agency and communion.

So everybody has needs for agency to be an agent to make things happen. You know, a child knocks over a blockhouse. It's thrilling.

I did that. I caused that to fall such agency. And in communion is connection being part of a group, being welcomed and embraced and connecting? Uh, so everyone has both noted.

But on average, boys have stronger agency motives. And when you let boys and girls choose what to do, the boys are gonna graduate more towards games that allow agency. And so fake war is one of the best examples.

They want to practice their skills. Boys, I think, our evolutionary programmed for hunting and war, to enjoy hunting in war. I found this, that when I was twenty nine years old and for the first time in my life, played a paint ball with my buddies and hunting each other. We are mixing with other other people, but hunting each other in small groups and shooting guns to try to hit each other was the most thrilling thing we'd ever like.

Yeah, yeah.

So that was really collect. wow. There's like a room in my heart for being a hunter and a warrior like, I didn't really know I was there, but if there was so anyway, boys choose to pursue agency motives.

Girls choose to pursue more community motives. They talk mark with each other as Richard reefs, this wonderful, wonderful british man, was this, uh, he was been, been making the case for boys. Have you?

Have you had Richard on? He's no initiative. That is the center for boys and men.

American institute.

boys and men. yeah. Thank you. Ah that sounds awesome. I am fully Richard rebs pilled among board.

Oh, good. yes. Me too. All Richard reads pilled. yes. So Richard points out, uh, uh, girls like to do things face to face. Boys like to do things shoulder to shoulder, like where next each other. We were doing something.

I've IT. I I need to bring this up. So I, in a Robin dunbar book, friends, which came out maybe eighteen months ago, got this phenomenal study.

So the next time you got to party, look at the angle of the feet that women have when we talk to each other, and look at the angle of the feet that what women, like women will talk. Uh, purpose cur hundred eighty degrees, they'll be pretty much straight on like this. Men talk IT about hundred and twenty degrees.

Oh, that's fascinating. So they bay. And the reason being that this is a bit of sort of evolutionary road psychology coming in, I think it's true if you if even try IT, you can try IT the next time that you you rode a party.

Just know you'll stood sort of like this with a guy and just turn yourself so that you're actually straight onto them and there's this just time and and rise this up in inside of you because really the only time that two guys would do that is if they were going to fight, they were kiss. And if you don't intend to do right and you just feel you like this feels right, IT is something about that angle. It's like two magnet, two north poles .

of a magnet, right?

No good example give. Yeah, you did look at a hundred twenty degrees for men, hundred eighty degrees for women. It's and you can not say, once you see that you can't see IT.

I will look for that. And actually that this could suggest a really cool difference between real and virtual. You know, virtual interactions are not embodied. We can see and we can see each other's upper bodies here. But but I think what we would find, because I don't want to all feel freaked ed out by you, me, my, yeah, but I don't IT all feel like, oh, we've either got a kiss .

or fight like wait till we finish yeah .

yeah you know you are, you are prety handsome, I must say. Um so so again, something we know we are embodied atures where physical creatures were animals. We evolved outdoor as we had fights, we had hunts. We're physical creatures and when we interact now virtually we have only it's it's like the White right thing. We have just like a little fewer the new tints, but we're missing most of the um so anyway on the boys and cross and I am taking too long on this but the the point is, boy, so when when uh you know laptops and then especially smartphones come out, all the kids love them. All the kids gravitate, all the kids are on them.

The boys heads straight for video games in youtube um the boys are spending more time on the games on youtube, in porn um the girls go straight for the visual social media platforms, especially instagram, uh tumblr, pinter rest in the early days uh and so what are the effects the girls are now on these platforms that are all about? I post a picture of me in my life and then I wait for strangers to comment on IT and that's really, really bad for mental health and that I think is why the girls, as soon as we hit twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, uh, uh, the girls have very sharp elbows in the graph. S H.

The hockey stick lines in the graphs. Um boys in other hand, um they're playing video games, especially video games aren't making them depress. Now the boys are getting more depressed and anxious.

They are a roughly twice as depressed, anxious as they used to be. But it's more gradual. IT starts a little sooner. IT starts more like two thousand and two thousand and ten, and IT is more gradual. So I think what's happening and what what that question I concluded in in the book, and here we do run, Richard webs is, you know, for girls, boom, they get on social year, they get depressed. Boys, they've been withdrawing from the real world since the seventies and eighties, you know, used to be a male world there, used to be a paid riari.

But boy, what has IT been dismantled? And as everything shift towards girls, and as schools get more and more structure towards girls and girl's needs and girls ways of learning, and as we all freak out about gender gap, and we think that is the girls we have to help, in the nineties, which wasn't true, girls had already past boys. Um boys are finding that they don't do well in school, they don't like school.

But now these video games are just getting Better and Better and and you know it's it's hard to approach a girl. But man, the pornography is getting Better and Better um and now you've got A I girlfriends and soon A I girlfriends will be put into incredible sexy robots. So what we're seeing is the progressive withdraw of boys from effort in the real world that will pay off in a long run. And instead, boy's predictive energy and their desires are being directed into a virtual world that generates nothing, absolutely nothing of any value in the real world. Yeah, the audience is gonna .

what i'm going to bring up, but i'm going to do IT again. It's my i've only had two stations ever in academia, and this is one of them. So um you'll be aware of yg male syndrome.

No, tell me more violent. Yes, correct. High proliferation ation of Young, sexy men. I T hyrst k take they get set, set on fire and push over the granting.

It's knocked totally agree.

we have the highest rate of of lonely and sexlessness amongst Young men, at least in the modern world maybe ever apart from and maybe some like crazy jeronimo acy style like tribal bullshit ten thousand years ago um well as all of the self violence like this isn't a request, but why are we not seeing more mass shootings? Why we not? So it's my contention that men are being sedated out of the status seeking and reproductive seeking behavior through accommodation, ation of social media, video game and pn.

So they're not given a sufficient dose to make them happy or satisfied. But IT is enough to dampen down and earth that um that impulse. And this is why I called the male sedation hypothesis and this has been studied.

So why have we not got this a yet? I'm a legitimate in legitimacy demise now um but this I is a question to be asked but know everything that you're talking about that that it's trigger ing. It's playing off the back of this desire for them to um work together as a team, to have inter tribal war fare, to create mastery, to increasing status, to be able to accomplish things. Okay, but it's within the virtual world.

You can become an e game or and so and self, but how much can you cash out that status into the real world? But then a more interesting question comes which, you know, the game is very well, may do and say, well, if i'm enjoying IT, why do I need to catch IT out into the real world? What is real and what isn't? why? Why is that? So of weird axiomatic value judgment about the fact that the real world is Better than the virtual world.

It's all part of a world. It's all just in dopamine, satan in taken around in my brain. Who cares? Same thing goes for porn. I I worried about getting me too, or I don't have to this thing, or whatever, whatever, like all of these things allow them to do that. A couple of White pills that mean a friend, William costa.

Think, with regards to the A I girlfriend virtual relationship thing, uh, first one, being dating and floating is something that is incredibly anxiety in using for created C, B, T, made IT, so that he could overcome approach anxiety. Jack, was this the other guy? The other dude, right now, I get the night.

yeah. David told me about him. IT was created to to help with the project that maybe I am back with that too. I everyone is just has a problem.

I, so yeah, but the are the primary chAllenge that you have in dating is that there is no such thing as practice dating. If mean you want to get Better a pick ball, we can go to the local table court and you can just hit drives at me. And I can practice my drop valley, right? I can't.

IT is one of the few things where you practice in public. You learn out loud. So there's always this high pressure to to, to not fail.

And what that means is that men often have really, really, they never get beyond, they never go zero to one, they never actually get that first step done. So mean, William think that a really phenomenal. And this, you don't even need to wait for the sexy robot thing, or whatever the in person robot.

You could do this with apples V R headset if IT was sufficiently well trained on a good data set. So you have a virtual interaction with a woman like a computer game. And in this virtual interaction, the ata is able to see your improvement. They can hear what you're saying to use natural language processing to work out the intention and and they're able to go back.

And fourth, and they can, you know, you can programme and shit like consent, and you can program shit in like a floating and and and I want to know, increase the difficulty, the disagree ability of this girl, I want her to make me work. And you leave up and leave up and level up. And if you can form that on actual human psychology, you can have guys practice.

Playing the video game in the safety of their own home. Yeah and then go to deploy this in the real world. It's like a one look one of these like at home, jim, it's like we spots right like you know you playing a video that's a Better example. You playing a we sport to tell me you playing tennis saw whatever and then you got into the real and you like, hey, I played a video game, but i'm kind of fitter and this is the same I played a video game, but i'm kind of Better at floating .

yeah I think uh um um I think having practice flooding in the virtual world is actually a great idea I think um you're right that I remember you know when I was in seventh grade and the adults would organized dance IT was terrifying you know occasionally would asked the girl to down and either should say yes or no but that was terrifying but again, that's like fear and thrill when he does occasionally say yes um I I agree that in theory we could do that that the headsets, that the virtually reality you really could give boys practice thirteen with realistic girls and the difficulty level could get harder and harder.

Now how would this actually play out in the real world? Um I fear that it's not really gonna be hay. Let's try to make you into the best possible romantic partner, likely to find a really wonderful woman, and they get happily married.

I fear that is gonna turn into either. Here's, you know, the game is to get the woman in bed and then move on to the next woman. And here you know, you will learn, teach you how to how to bed women um or it's gonna design the woman you want and you're gonna know let's make her or even lovelier let's give her even Better sense of humor.

How about SHE never gets mad at me? You know, you program in all these things that are just going to take you in an unrealistic way. So over you've got an evolutionary background.

I'd have to say I I want to bring you back and once this tourist and I want to bring back on and if you can remember IT to talk about the happiness yo thesis, because IT IT was one of the three books that got me into the world of VP and really sort of made me fall in love with that. But we given that background, again, me and William spoken about this an awful lot.

We talked about this A I girlfriend revolution, one of the problems that you have, and one of the reasons that I don't think we need to fear the A I girlfriend think quite as much, is no guy brags about the fact that he is subscribed to some woman's only fans. The reason you don't brag about IT is that there is no status associated with being selected. There is no like A R and but not only that, even if IT didn't, even if IT was neutral in the like loser O S metrics because you haven't been preselected by the gatekeeper is the Price of a cheeseburger per month and therefore anyone has access to this and because of the access is no, maybe if you have a thirty thousand dollar sex robot, it's a flex of your wealth.

But it's also like, do do you spent thirty thousand dollars on a sex robot, how we are to you? So and I just know I don't I don't know what's gona happen, but I certainly know that that press election, the status associated with a woman who is the great leap of choosing a man who is the protagonist that accounts for so much of the drawing rights of the guy. Yes, great.

So this brings in a key tag keyword. We haven't mentioned his status. And boys are boys and growth each competing for status. But, uh, boy's competition is really much more.

It's about ultimate, about a physical toughness dominance originally and through the prime eval state, often me back up by the ability to physically beat the shit out of somebody. Um but in modern times that gets converted into other other ways of contesting. And we've had a long slow evolution of our economy, uh such that, such that we've hardest male ambition for status and turns in productive directions.

In fact, I was gona write a book. I got a contract, write a book called three stories about capitalism, the moral psychology, economic life. I was gonna write a book like the psychology of capitalism. And then the universe is melt IT down and over the coddling. And I got drawn off until these other other things.

But one of the key insights um is there a uh um is your adam Smith realized that when you get economy set up the right way, it's not from the benefits of the butch in the Baker in the brew that we expect our dinner, but from the regard for their own self interest. When people can get money for doing something that helps others will, then men try very hard to make money. But it's not just money when you can get status by doing something productive that's onna chAllenge.

Like men are like rockets, like they have this they have this incredible capacity for work, but they're often been aimed. And so I think is quite remarkable that you know when you know elan musk, jeff basis want to face off how do they do IT who can build a more effective rocket launched system into outer space? I mean, that's a great way from to compete.

So that's productive. Um and H I think what you're saying we're pointing out is part of dating. I mean, part of is a very intrinsically motivated that you want a girlfriend, you want sex, you want love, but you also, yeah, you want a hot or friend and you want some of the other guys will respect you for because, yeah, I got this woman.

So any discussion of boys, yes, we must consider status, especially what are other men gonna think of me, and also, what are other women gona think me best on who I did? Um women are extremely concerned with what other women will think of them is as well separate status competitions. But yeah, that's a key.

And video games give them an alternate world in which they can gain status within that alternate world. But I keep coming back to the metaphor of the black hole. You know, black hole is a place where anything gets stuck, but nothing comes out.

And so okay, here here's another controversial idea era with you maybe you I prove IT um here I just put this as a contention. I don't know this is true. I tention is that nobody or is that hardly anyone in gz has has done anything yet that has really made an impact on the world? We just qualify.

They're always gonna athletes. Always there are always gonna singers coming along. That's not the issue.

The issue is, did you start a company? Did you make some discovery? Did you write an amazing book? Did you do something that the world notices and says like, oh, wow, you know, that's impressive. And when I asked this of audience is they only come up with two names. And I will ask you, who are the members of gencer who have really identify if they're done something?

When did jensie start and finish a jensie .

is now twenty eight years old. So everybody is twenty eight years old or Younger. You start .

year old. I was gonna boy's SAT, the guy that founded, and was the CEO of the ocean clean up? You know, that huge thing that cleaning plastic out of the ocean. But twenty nine, he's twenty nine. So the .

millennial are creative and productive and mentally healthy. But J, Z, so try again. I'm sure you're going to come up with the one name that everyone comes up with. What's one percent to twenty nine? Who really has changed the world?

Get to turbo.

That's IT. That's whenever and comes up with. And then there's a second that people sometimes come up with.

Mila oh, mala.

the woman pakistan from pakistan, SHE was shot by, you know, fundamentalists, but he survived. She's I was never going to get okay anyway so great to read is the one that everyone comes up with um but that's IT so there are no americans um there no men um and I started thinking this two or three years ago, I keep waiting. Someone's gone to find me A A enza person who was really done something big.

Now a lot of them want to struck on business as a influencer. They want to create nap. So i'm not saying they're not lazy. What i'm trying to say here, as as far as I can tell, they have been raised in an economy where what you're desperately trying to do is get more followers, get more influence and it's all quantified. And as long as you're working hard at that, you're not generating anything that will leave the black hole of social media, nothing that will affect the world outside of your closed world. I mean, people.

i'm sure that you are aware of IT, but the percentage of primary school kids that say that they want to grow up to be a youtube and influences, so know you have, they are being fed in on the front end to this Price supose tion, and then they are being spatt out on the back. And two, with this lack of impact in the real world, ah, what mean? Maybe this is one of the White pills of automation and A I and a.

what's a White pill? I've never heard that term.

So A A black pill is something that's nyalong tic and it's an insight that makes you feel kind of apocalyptic fatalists. And a White pill would be a reason for hope. It's a justification for hope.

nice. yeah. okay. I've got to start developing a few because my talks and get kind of dark right.

Why pills go? Yeah just talking about a White pill a White pill from and it's particularly useful to use in contrast to something that people see is something that's bad. A I is going to come IT. It's going to take all our jobs and everyone's gonna. It's gonna the matrix. But one of the advantages is that if we're in this current low of real world invention venture from gz, maybe um the increase in leveraged we have through cold means that a smaller number of people can have a large amount of impact. So the few that break through from gene and do do great things can maximize and magnify their impact on the world in a way that might be able to compensate for the rest of their generations lack.

Okay, that's a good point. I agree that that's possible. Um but this just sort of slots right into one of my main concerns about what's happening, which is that digital technology and now artificial intelligence is likely to usher in an era of material prosperity.

If we all have an infinite number of servants to help us make whatever we want, yes, there's gonna a rise or productivity. And all these people who point to the coming golden age, they're looking at material prosperity. They're looking at physical health.

Discoveries will book your cancer. Yeah materially things are gonna a get Better as they have been continuously um you know that really pointed this out sea pinker pointed this out. But i'm a social psychologist and I play sociologist in my spare time because I think what we're heading into is a social gc.

That is all the things that take to make a stable society. They're not visible. Uh I learned this from the builder k time and from reading conservative writings um institution structures, traditions, all the things that make our society possible.

But many people don't see, and these are being routed out. And this proceeds, this proceeds the internet. I mean, they know there was, you know, there's the thing, uh, hard times create strong man.

Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. So, you know, there's been a kind of a decline since that world war two was a huge stimulus for all kinds of amazing after effects um and there's a decline since that. So it's not all caused by by the recent technologies, but I think it's been accelerated by IT. And so what you're pointing to is, yes, more material prosperity and yeah, that's true. But if we have collapsing institutions, no trust in anything um and we're willing to consign a generation to just wasting their time struggling for status on you know on tiktok because as long as twelve of them are creative and create gigantic new things will be just as good office we were in ten years ago.

Yes so yeah, the great pill. Yeah .

good great pill.

Striped, it's stripe. okay. So we're spoken about boys and what's happening with them know is so much conversation around Young team go mental health. Give me the latest data. What are you seeing what's happening with with the Young old?

Sure so i'm afraid I cover covered this beautifully and and he writes about this beautiful ly on substate girls um but sort that you know the big picture here is let's start with the metal to help but a lot more going on uh with the mental health very specific for girls. It's which called internalizing disorders. It's especially depression and anxiety.

Um you know other things are up but like you know schizophrenia. Bi polo is sort they're up a little bit but it's really depression anxiety um uh girls have water suffer more from water called internalizing disorder. So if their stresses and problems, they can turn in words and they suffer anxiety.

E depression boys historically um suffer more from what or called externalizing disorders when there are problems with development, they act out. They make other people this rebel crime, you know division violence um so so that's history ally the way girls and boys were. But what's happened is actually both girls and boys have moved more the direction of internalizing disorders, girls especially.

So the numbers are hard to believe, but they're up around thirty or forty percent of girls. Uh, teenage girls would qualify having depression or anxiety disorders uh, that used to be more like ten or fifteen percent. So uh, it's now a Normal thing to be an american or british teenage girl is just a Normal thing that you think about suicide and you have your anxiety and you manage your anxiety is part of your identity.

It's part of, uh, it's with you all the time. So it's tragic. It's it's so sad, you know.

Um IT used to be the case that middle age people are at the least happy. So well known thing called the u shape curve of happiness. Happiest people used to be Young adults, you know, teenagers and Young adults.

And then people in their sixties and seventies, they're done with the hard work they get to enjoy their lives. But there's always people in the middle, you know, taking care of kids and parents. That's not true anymore.

In western countries, the Young people have plunged and especially the girls. So we have a graph in the book, canadian data. Uh, canadian Young canadian women used to be the happiest.

Now they're by far the least happy uh, group of people in canada. So uh for girls, the mental health, the anxious depression that stick the central finding. But there's a lot more um you you question about that.

Go on, go on go on.

okay. Um so you know so much of the debate is just about the mental health data, but there's so much else that's working girls development making them less happy um the the hyper sexualization, the punishment of everything, the fact that you've got these Young girls on instagram aping these millennial women with gigantic boobs and buts and fillers and all kinds of things, this just this is just really, really bad for them.

So even if they don't get to press and anxious when they do, but even if they didn't, the fact that they oh my god, the number of girls know middle school girls who are using skin care products and who are concerned about their skin um and you know and doing makeup tutorials, you know like know your skin is perfect. Go have fun you know yes, you care about how you look. Girls always care about how they look.

That's part of life is part of for boys too. But to take to take these you know wonderful, sprightly, funny, you know fifty six grade girls, and then suddenly to have them focus so much on on their face and their beauty because their own social media is a tragic loss of girlhood. There's that there's the exposure to older man, uh, creep by men who want to watch them dance, who want to talk with them.

There's the the whole economy of news from the boys in their class if the boys will send them a dick pic and then say, come and send me one of years come on, come on yeah don't be approved don't approved um and if a and then if a girl does said anything, now the boys really got something valuable and we say, uh, you know, there's A A A book american girls know, see, the author documents how middle school boys will get a new photo of a girl and then they can give IT. I can trade IT to high school boys for beer. And so the girl's nakedness, the girl's humiliation, is valuable to the boy because he can get alcohol and prestige by giving IT to an older boy who can buy him beer or get him beer somehow, rather.

So, you know, the commodification, the hyper sexualization, the humiliation of girls wednesday into the world. Social media? No, it's just I mean, just on so many fronts, the phone base childhood is not a human childhood 的， and kids are stuck in IT.

You have an evolutionary background. You titled the book, the anxious generation of all of the littery of different human emotions that we have. Anxiety is the one that's very prevalent with hearing about anxiety disorders and things that the downs am from IT.

There's even a disorder now where people can't distinguish tween anxiety and depression. A and IT IT means that then I literally learned yesterday from David Brooks, god damage anyway, if they they struggle to work out the difference between anxiety and depression. So it's bleeding into wow. First off, from an evolutionary perspective, I think it's a bit of a cope by people with my intellectual interest background of ap to say, well, you know, we're built to be vigilant. We've got the smoke detect the principle where .

blab B I like, yeah.

but it's really tuned up now. It's not just tuned up. It's like super charged. And again, my my question being, why anxiety? What is IT about the soup, the cocktail? E of stimulus that we have at the moment that's causing anxiety to be the predominant outcome.

yeah. So I think it's too late. There are many contributing factors, but two big ones. One is the loss of thrilling play and child that would we talked about. If kids don't get to take risks, they don't learn to manage risks, and then any little thing seems threatening.

This is why students were sudenly asking for trigger warnings, in part because the idea that a book that describes a greek myth in which zoos rapes a woman, can we expect Young women to just have to read this? Like, so what is just exposure? If kids don't have exposure when Young and they don't have thrills, they don't have risk, then any little thing is going to be much harder for them when they're older.

That's one peaceful, the other is growing up on the stage um you know when you're growing up, you make a lot of mistakes. You say something stupid to your friend and then your friend might criticize your friend might even get angry at you and then you make up but when that happens on the stage, you say something. And before you know IT, everyone is talking about IT and they're adding on their own comments and you're the but of the joke.

And is anyone ever knows who's been through any kind of a cancellation attempt or any kind of public online thing. It's painful and away beyond anything that we know in in times of physical suffering. Um IT IT really makes people wanted disappear and IT is a spurt suicide.

So when the entire school is laughing at you, you know or the final the photo, you cent ent of your of your generators or the thing you said that somebody caught and then added to you. So kids should not grow up on a stage. The british, i'm told, have a saying, don't put your daughter on the stage.

mr. Worthington is something you've ever heard. No, okay.

Older british people is, I believe it's a noel coward song from one hundred years ago but um don't put your daughter on the stage mr. Worthington um is good advice, especially for great. And girls are much more interesting than boys.

So if a girl grows up, everything he says can be amplified. Every image of her is commented on. SHE never developed just the basic security to move from minute to minute, an hour, hour in person, a person like, because anything could blow at any time, people always judge. So we have to give kids a Normal human childhood if we expect them to develop Normal human strength.

what can we do?

Uh, good. Because I ve just noticed we are our time is running out. Let's turn to the solutions. And here is my White pill um if we were talking about democracy and american democracy um i'd be all black pill.

Like I think where you know I don't know how we get out of this in american democracy, but we're talking about the team mentor health crisis. We can get out of IT in a year uh and they were very started in britain. Uh and here's what you do um because it's all the series of collective action problems.

The reason why fifth graders now are getting smart phones is because all the other fifth grades are getting them. The reason why my students can't with instagram and tiktok, even though they know it's wasting their time and making them anxious, is because everyone else is on IT. So they have to be on IT.

So it's a these are all collective action problems in the way you deal with. A collective action problem is with collective action. So if we just have four clear north, four dorms, we can solve this first north, no smart for until high school, if you wanted, I send you go h in america, radiation fourteen.

So in britain the movement is fourteen. So I think you don't have quite the exact cut off. We have a very clear almost all schools it's like through eighth grade is still middle school early puberty but then ninety, ten, eleven, twelve is high school the rough age fifteen to eighteen um for fourteen and fifty eighteen.

So if if we just delay smartphone till high school, give them a flip phone, let them communicate with each other and with you as the parents, but to give them the internet in their pockets so that when they're on the bus, they're not talking with the kids. They're flipping through stuff at lunch. They're flipping through stuff.

Um so no smart until high school at the earliest two no social me details sixteen this one can be a little harder to uh, get as enormous you know if most of us parents would say, I know you're not getting until sixteen, they can't say but i'm the only one i'm excluded. They have to say, you know half the kids have IT but hf don't and you say, well, you know you're going to be in the half that don't and before you know IT, it'll be a lot more than half don't uh, the third norm phone free schools, this is in a must. And this when we can do this year, this year like this september.

Um the teachers hate the phones. The principles hate the phones. I asked them, why don't you ban them? Why don't you have the kids lock him up? And they say, because some of the parents will freak out, they demand to be able to contact their kid any time during class, text them anything.

But most parents are now beginning to see this is messing up our kids. So i'm urging if if you're listening to this, if you have kids in school and the school allows kids have phones on them, please contact the principle of your kids school and say, please go phone free. It's it's messing up their education.

It's making them lonely. There's no good that that comes from kids have phones in schools. Same thing with access to anything that context, that's the third norm.

The fourth norm is more independence, replay and responsibility in the real world that you can just take away the phones in the screens or you can you can just like reduce IT eighty percent, let's say. And then say, now sitting your room and look at the wall, or, you know, learn how to kit or something, what kids really want. I went right of a long ago. I read a book. I like the secret life of dogs.

Like, what do dogs really the answer is each other like they're pack and was they really wanted be with other dogs and the same true for kids um what do they really want to hang out with other kids? And so doing that on a video game isn't nearly as satisfying but try to arrange us that your kids can really spend a lot of time with other kids unsupervised. No adult telling them what to do.

No adult resolve in the conflict. Um so we do those four things, no smart from until high school, no social media, sixteen phone free schools, more independence, responsibility and free play in the real world do these four things. We will roll back the phone based childhood.

This childhood only really came in around twenty twelve. We only had about twelve years IT wasn't like this in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine um so it's not permanent. You know we can change IT and we have to change IT uh because IT is devastating our kids.

There is no other explanation for the multination mental health crisis. And with four norms of collective action we can act collectively to reverse IT. How's that for a White pill?

I like IT, and I also love the fact that you've incle this new lexicon is just is swimming through that owns, you know, and it's staring out through your eyes. Um that's what happened when you write a book. I'm gonna guess that theyll be a lot of parents listening who have got kids that maybe going to be getting to that age, that probably kids get phones now, maybe like eight, nine, something like that, maybe not really.

But yeah, they get there on ipad. But you can't do we don't have a god's I view and we can't coordinate perfectly. Would a small scale solution be something like try and speak to your child's friends, parents and say.

yes.

let's go a cartel. Let's have this. I've listen to this phenomenal episode with this great psychologist and this very handsome british dude. They said that we really need to do this.

Why don't we hate? Do you have a watch? Read the book generation? Can we get together? We can do this nationally, but can we do this locally? Presumably that a good first?

absolutely. That's that's exactly the thing to do. Um and there are a number of organizations almost all started by moms um who are helping her in the U K. Um i've only recently learned about delay smartphones dot org U K and smart phone free childhood dut code dut U K. So those are two organizations that are trying to help parents do exactly that.

Now of course, if you simply know that you're in touch with the parents of your kid's best friends, which usually you are, you can just text them, you can just call them, you can just talk to them. And at at school, pick up or whatever. So yes, cording ing on a small scale will really, really make IT easy for you and your those other families to give your kids back a play based to childhood.

The goal isn't just delay the vote. The goal is to give me play based childhood if the school can help and say we're going from free and if the principal can say in parents, given the latest research, you know, I urge you to consider delaying, you know, try to at least wait until high school if the school could give some guidance that really helped up the norm. So this is why i'm so optimistic because the revolution began in the U.

K. Last month, literally and there was an article, the guardian, these these two women, the women who run smart from free childhood um they had a WhatsApp group. There is little publicity here. Huge numbers of parent, everyone the parents hate this of the parents are ready to act. And in britain they are rising up and taking matters into their own hands.

And my hope is that, uh is that we're ready to pop in the united states that in in march, in April of twenty twenty four, everyone will really understand, like, you know, we know somethings is wrong here. Let let's try to really put a finger on IT. And what do we do? What we do is in at these forever norms.

Helio JoNathan height, ladies and gentleman, JoNathan, I love your work. Have been a fan of IT for a very long time. Great to finally have you on the show. You're officially a modern isom alumni now. Um why should people go? They want to keep up to date with all you're writing and you did really interesting writing process for this where very transparent in a way is pretty typical.

Yeah, I started a sub stack. Um I thought I would never do that because I don't have time to write, but I started a sub stack at after babel 点 com and that question that we put out all our findings， all our research, all our graphs, inviting comment invite criticism um and now we're bringing in voices like fra india and and Ricky slot um are bringing E O jensie. So just please go to after babel dot com sign up, subscribe to the sub stack uh the website for the book is anxious generation 点 com and of course I hope you'll buy the book itself uh， anxious generation um you know the sold wherever books resolved.

JoNathan, I really appreciate you. Thank you that day.

Chris, we're fun.