Joe Rogan Experience #2121 - Jonathan Haidt

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day hello Jonathan good to see you sir good to see you again Joe um the same problems that you talked about when you were here last that I referenced many times since on the podcast have uh only exasperated unfortunately and uh that's why you wrote this the anxious generation and uh it could not be more true how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness I don't think anybody can dispute that yeah when I was on last time there was a dispute there were some psychologists who said oh this is just a moral Panic they said this about video games and comic books and you know no you know this is this is not a real thing they said now they don't yeah I think it was pretty obvious I think it was only their preconceived notions that were keeping them from admitting it before or at least looking at it before or maybe they don't have children you know could be that I think a lot of older people particularly Boomers they're a little bit disconnected from it because they're not unless they're addicted to Twitter you know they're not engaging in this stuff yeah and they're often thinking you know when I was a kid we watch too much TV and we turned out okay yeah but part of the message of the book is that social media and the things kids are doing on screens are not really like TV they're much much worse for development yeah and even the watching too much TV I don't agree that they turned out okay I I think it had a it had a pervasive effect did but nothing like this yeah well that's right because you know look when when we were watching TV I'm a little older than you I was born in 1963 um so I grew up watching a lot of TV you know maybe you know an hour or two a day weekdays and then two or three hours on the weekends but it was a bigger screen you're watching with your sisters and with your friends you're arguing about things you're eating so it's it's actually pretty social uh but now kids are spending the latest the latest survey Gallup finds that it's about um what 5 hours a day just on social media just social media including Tik Tok and Instagram and when you add in all the other screen based stuff it's like nine hours a day and that's not social it's private on your little screen you're not communicating with others so uh you know in all these ways the the new way that kids are digital is really not like what we had when we were when we were on on watching TV it's also an EXT extraordinary amount of wasted resources I'm always embarrassed when I look at my phone when I see my screen time like 4 hours like that's four hours I could have done so many different things with that's right and so that's the the concept of opportunity cost is this great term that economists have which is the cost of you know if you buy something you know if you if you invest you know an hour of your time and $100 to do something how much does it cost well you know $100 but you could use that $100 in that hour for something else so what are the things you gave up and when screen time goes up to now it's about 9 hours a day uh in in the United States nine hours a day not counting School average average average is that for a certain age group we're talk teenagers yeah not little kids but you know in the you know 13 to 15 17 that range that's when it's heaviest um it's around nine hours a day and so the opportunity cost is everything else like imagine if somebody said to you Joe you know you've got a full life here you have to do this thing this additional thing for 9 hours like that's insane that would push out everything else including sleep yeah um when you are now talking to people that agree that this is an issue what what changed so you mean what changed like why is there now more agreement yeah um so in 2019 when I was last here with you uh my book The coddling of the American mind had just come out and back then people were beginning to sense that you know this internet this these the the phones the the social media that we were all so amazed by you know there was a very positive feeling about all this stuff in the early part you know like in the 2000s um it was beginning sentiment was beginning to turn but there was a big academic debate because when you look at studies that look at how how you know do kids who spend a lot of time on on screens do they come out more depressed the answer is yes but the correlation is not very big so there was a big argument among researchers and that's when I got into this around 2019 really getting into that debate uh and and I think that Jee twangy and I really had had good data showing you know there is an issue here and then Co came and that confused everything because you know basically when I was on with you last time 2019 I was saying you know what kids most need is less time on their devices and more time outside playing unsupervised let them be out unsupervised that's what we needed 2019 covid comes in boom exactly the opposite what do kids get no more time unsupervised you can't even go out I mean in New York City they locked up the playgrounds they lock Ed up the tennis courts it was insane um no time outside with your friends oh spend your whole day on screens so that made everything worse but people thought oh yeah the kids are really messed up now from covid but they were wrong covid was terrible for a lot of kids when you look at the mental health Trends over the last 20 years Co was a blip Co actually you know what I've actually got some I've got some CH you know if if you don't mind I'd like to actually show these uh because you know did send the data to Jamie so he can pull I haven't sent it yet but I'll I'll uh oh right because you want do you want to stop and do that or yeah let's pause real quick so you give out Jamie will give you the email address okay we're back all right what are those things oh so these These are stickers for your kids um so as part of the book uh I'm trying to launch a movement called free the aness generation here you go you have two younger kids M um and so I've teamed up with the artist who did the book cover Dave cicarelli um who's created these incredible artworks there's going to be Billboards there he's putting together a a 12ft tall milk carton uh which is going to be traveling around different cities with [Music] this missing childhood do they do that anymore the milk carton thing I don't think so yeah so uh I don't know if you're I don't know what your kids think about social media and whether they think it's a good thing or bad thing but we are hopeful that members of gen Z are going to start and they are starting to Advocate that you know what this is messing us up okay so here's the graph okay so this is the graph that I showed uh last time I was I was on what it shows because I know most of your listeners are probably just listening to the audio um it shows that from 2005 to 2010 the rates of depression in girls was about 12% of American girls had a major depressive episode in the last year and for boys it was about four to 5% and it's flat there's no change then all of a sudden around 2011 2012 2013 the number 2012 2013 the number start Rising especially for girls and it goes all the up to 20% for girls so that was a huge rise and that's what I showed you last time what is the difference between boys and girls so um girls suffer from more internalizing disorders that is when girls have difficulties they turn it inwards they make themselves miserable um uh so girls suffer from higher rates of anxiety and depression that's always been the case especially once they hit puberty boys when they have psychological problems they tend to turn it outwards they engage in more violent Behavior deviant Behavior substance use uh so u boys it's called externalizing disorders but you know you can see both boys and girls are getting more depressed it's just that the effect is bigger for girls so boys have gone up to about 7% and girls are way up to 20 that's right and that was 2019 so one out of five girls that's what it was that's right and then was that's right and then Co comes in so if we can have the next slide so then Co comes in and now this is this is the exact same data set just this Federal data I just got a few extra years of data and what you can see is that you uh is that it goes way the hell up and if you look at the 2021 data point you can see that little Peak at the very top there that's because of Co that is co was Co did increase things it did make kids more depressed but as you can see it's a blip covid was just a tiny effect compared to this gigantic increase and so you know on the last slide it was 20% of girls now it's almost 30 almost 30% of girls who had a major depressive episode in the last year and for boys it's up to 12% which is you know still quite a lot it's more than a doubling although much less than for the girls it's still even if you look at boys or excuse me if you look at girls from 2018 preco that ramp is very steep the upward ramp that's right and that might be Tick Tock that is the you know what so what happens is um a lot of things change around 2011 2012 um 2010 is when you get the front-facing iPhone which when uh Instagram is founded it's when uh kids around when kids are getting high-speed data plans so you know my argument in the book is that we had a complete rewiring of childhood between 2010 and 2015 in 2010 most of the kids had flip phones they didn't have Instagram they didn't have highspeed data so they would use their flip phones and to get together with each other they communicate with each other by 2015 about 80% 70 or 80% have a smartphone most of them have high-speed data uh Unlimited Plan Instagram accounts and this really messes up the girls so that's what I think happened between 2010 and 2015 Tik Tok becomes popular only really more 209 you know 18 1920 uh and it's so new we don't have good data on just Tik Tok but I suspect that that sort of extra acceleration might be due to Tik Tok What specifically about Tik Tock so uh this is something I'm just really beginning to learn I I don't even have much on it in the book um watching so kids love stories and the stories are great all around the world people tell children stories there are myths um you know we see plays we see television shows and so just um and so I asked my my undergrads at NYU I said how many of you use Netflix almost everybody says yes how many of you wish Netflix was never invented nobody nobody watching stories is not a bad thing Tik Tok is not stories it's little tiny tiny bits of something and it they're they're short they don't add up to anything they're incoherent they're often disturbing and disgusting I mean people you know people being hit by cars people being punched in the face and it's much more addictive and with no nutritive value they're not really stories and so it seems to be much more addictive kids really get hooked on it much more so than Netflix or anything else um and I and depends on what you're watching but I suspect that so many of them are consuming stuff about mental illness um it it has a variety of effects that we're not even we don't even understand yet now I know that there's some push right now currently to ban Tik Tock um and there's a lot of people that are very torn on this because they don't want to give the government the ability to ban social media um what is the argument about banning Tik Tok What specifically are they uh talking they want to do separate them from the company bite dance that owns them and just make them an American company yeah so they can still operate I suppose figure that out data issue well it's a national security issue so yeah right so thank you let's let's separate the national security issue from the mental health issue okay um I I have a lot of libertarian friends I have a lot of libertarian sympathies I would be uncomfortable about the government Banning a company or a product because it's harmful to children I personally think we should just have age verification we should not have kids on certain things but if we just if it was just a question of you know this is really bad for children let's ban it like no I I don't think I would support that um but Tik Tok is different because it is a CH Chinese owned company and as many of your listeners will know China um it says in whatever not it's doesn't have a constitution I don't think but by law every Chinese company must do what the Chinese Communist Party tells it to do and that's what's so scary that this is so this is you know in Instagram reals and uh you know YouTube shorts they might have similar effects to Tik Tok but the Chinese government can literally tell bite dance to change the you know change what kids are seeing and they do that in China they tell them in China you have to have this kind of content and not that kind of content there was an incredible episode uh of um you had Triston Harris on uh Tristan Harris has this amazing podcast episode where they go into the National Security risks and they show that the day that Russia invaded Ukraine Tik Tock in Russia changed radically like the government was on like the you know Tik Tok was on it like yep we're going to do what you know what Putin wants us to do or you know so um so the idea that the most influential the the most influential platform on American children the idea that that must do what the Communist Party tells it to do at a time when we have mounting tension with China and the possibility of a war I mean as Triston says imagine if in the 1960s the Soviet Union owned and controlled You Know PBS ABC NBC and you know all the kids programs you know we would never have allowed that so I hope listeners this this I'm I really strongly support this this bill I think represent Mike Gallagher I think was one of the ones proposing it um uh or at least at least certainly uh advocating for for this for this issue um I hope people will not see it as a Tik Tock ban but they'll see it as an urgent National Security move to force uh Force bance to sell to a non-chinese owner and specifically what are they pointing to when they say National Security risk what's specifically have they seen so a lot of it seems to have to do with the data question um like all the you know Facebook pioneered this model in which the person using the product is not really the customer they don't pay the money they're you know they're the product the the the the user is the product not the customer um and they give them data and the data can be used for all sorts of purpos is especially marketing and advertising and so uh Tik Tok has enormous amounts of data um and they can get all psychological on it because they know exactly how long you hesitated how much you liked certain kinds of videos uh you know many people have written articles on how Tik Tok seems to have known they were gay before they did that sort of thing so uh Tik Tok has extraordinary amounts of data on most American most Americans certainly most Young Americans and they say oh but you know we don't share like it's in a server over here in Singapore I don't know where but it's you know it's not in China you know oh come on come on you know there there's no way it could possibly be the case that the data is really separated and not available to the Chinese Communist party and what are they pointing to in terms of the danger of this data that makes them want to have it sold to an American company um I don't know whether the motivation behind the bill I don't know whether it's that the Chinese would have some access to data on American citizens or whether what most what most alarmed me when I when I heard the the um the Tristan Harris podcast um was the the ease of influencing American kids to to be Pro this or Pro that on any political issue seeing that with Palestine and Gaza yeah I think so you're you're definitely seeing that now it's it's very it's very obvious well it's it's very obvious with many things uh with Tik Tock um trans stuff and there's there's a lot of different things that they're encouraging and you know people that are opposed to that are are being banned which is also very odd and specifically like female athletes we had Riley gains who was the female athlete that competed against Leah Thomas and she has said that male biologically male athletes should not be able to compete with biologically female athletes because they have a significant advantage and she was banned from Tik Tok just for saying that yeah that's right so this relates to the larger issue that we talked about last time time and that I hope we'll continue to talk about today um which is that we've social media has brought us into an environment in which anyone has the ability to really harm anyone else um there's an extraordinary amount of intimidation available via social media um and so this has led the leaders of all kinds of organizations to run scared Greg and I Greg lukanov and I saw this in universities why don't the University president stand up to the protesters who are shouting down visiting speakers why don't isn't there a grown-up in the room and then we saw it in journalism newspapers and editors who wouldn't stand up for journalistic principles um and so I think what has happened here is that um social media allows whoever is angriest and can mobilize the most Force to threaten to harass to surround to mob anyone and when people are afraid to say something that's when you get the crazy distortions that we saw on campus um or that or that Riley Gaines was seeing too just that people are afraid to speak up and in a in a democracy in a large secular uh diverse democracy we have to be able to talk about things yeah and so that's part of why we're in such a mess now is I I I've argued that it's when social media became super viral after 2009 2010 you get the like button the retweet button social media wasn't really bad or harmful before it wasn't terribly harmful before then but by 2012 2013 it had really become as though everyone had a d gun everybody could shoot everyone and that's when we began sort of like teaching on eggshells in University because our students could really do a lot of damage if we said one word they didn't like and it's not just the students which is really disturbing we've talked about this before there was an FBI security uh specialist who estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of the Twitter accounts were Bots yeah which is very strange because that means that they're they're mobilizing specifically to try to push different narratives yeah that's right so if you think you know people say well you know now TW is the Public Square or things like that you know it's not it's not a Public Square it's it's more like the Roman Coliseum it's more like you know a place where people say things and um the fans are in the stands are hoping to see blood to move our discussions onto platforms like that that can be manipulated uh that can that anyone doesn't have to be a foreign intelligence service could be anybody who wants to influence anything in this country or anywhere in the world they can you know for very little money they can hire someone to create thousands millions of bots uh and so we're living in this sort of Funhouse world where everything is weird mirrors and it's very hard to figure out what the hell is going on have you ever sat down and tried to figure out a solution to this other than trying to encourage people not to use Jamie does something happen to the volume just dropped lower okay um so what what was I just saying we were talking about Solutions other than asking kids kids to not use it which is very hard to do yeah that's right so um when we're talking about the Democracy problems and the you know manipulation of politics or anything else those are really really hard I have a few ideas of what would help and we're not going to do them because you know all of them are like the left legs and the right doesen or vice versa like what are those ideas though oh things like you know like identity authentication if if large platforms had something like know your customer laws that is you know if you want to open an account on Facebook or or on on X you have to at least prove that you're a person and I think you should be able to have to prove that you're a person in a particular country I think you should over a certain age you prove those to the to the platform not directly you go through a third party so even if it's hacked they wouldn't know anything about about you just you establish that you're a real person and then you're cleared go ahead you open your account you can post without you don't have to use your real name if we did that that would eliminate most the Bots that would make it much harder to influence that would make us have much better platforms for democracy is that possible to do internationally well the platforms can certainly require whatever they want for membership right now they are legally required to ask you if you're over 13 uh if you're 13 or over they ask it and then they accept whatever you say and that's it you're in um so those those rules could be changed and they could be required to to do more and you know they're based in you know the United most of the United States but their users are all around the world so yeah that could be done so one of the things that people are nervous about when it comes to authenic authentification authentication is that if you could do that then you could Target individuals they wouldn't be allowed to be anonymous so you eliminate the possibility of whistleblowers no no no that's no the point is that uh the point is that you just have to establish that you are a person it doesn't mean that you have to post under your real name right uh and you know in even if you want ultra high security you could just have you know dissidents in repressive countries they could just communicate by secure Channels with a journalist who posts for them so I understand the concern uh and there are values to having anonymity but I think what we're seeing now is that the craziness the way it's affecting it's you know it's it's making it harder for democracies to be good vibrant democracies and it's making it easier for authoritarian countries like China to be powerful and effective authoritarian countries so I think we have to start weighing the the pluses and minuses the costs and benefits here right but how would you ramp that up like how would you implement that internationally like say if you're you know talking about people in Poland just pick a country yeah um well the the platforms can do whatever they want but then yes how would if if a company starts in Poland uh then the US Congress would have no influence on that right like China could pretend yeah that and they could falsify the data that shows that these are individuals they wanted to empower a troll Farm oh I see you're saying even if American companies did this the chines could still get around yeah that's true they there you you're never going to have a perfect system but right now it's just so easy and cheap and free to have massive influence on anything you want um so you know but the larger question here was you ask me like what can we do what I'm saying is you there are some things like identity authentication I that I think would help but yes there are implementation problems there's all kinds of political questions so my basic point is man those problems I don't I don't know that we can solve but we we can do better I should point out um a lot of these have to do with the basic architecture of the web when we move from web one which was put up information it's amazing you can see things from everywhere to web two which was directly interactive now you can you can buy things you can post stuff um and it's the web two that gave us these business models that are about uh that have led to the exploitation of of children and and everyone else and I'm part of a group uh project Liberty if you go to Project liberty. that's trying to have a better web three um where people will own their own data more clearly uh you know as the architecture changes it opens us up to new possibilities and risks so there are some hopes for a better internet coming down the pike but I wanted actually I just wanted to like put all this stuff out there about democracy to say this is really hard but when we talk about kids and mental health this is actually amazingly doable like we could do this in a year or two and the trick the key to solving this whole problem with kids is to understand what's called a collective action problem so collect there are certain things where um you know like if if you have a bunch of fishermen um and they realized oh we're over fishing we're over fishing you know the lake um let's reduce our our our catch and if one person does that no one else does well then he just loses money but if everyone does it well then actually you can solve the problem and everyone can do fine with social media what we see over and over again is kids are on it because everyone else is and parents are giving their kids a phone in sixth grade because the kid says everyone else has one and I'm left out and over and over again you see this when you ask kids you know how how would you feel if I took your how would you feel if I took your Instagram or Tik Tok away oh I'd hate that I hate that but then you say well what if it was taken away from everyone what if no one had it and they almost always say that would be great I did this I there's an academic article that showed this with college students um I did I did it as a test with my students at NYU and a review of of the book of the anxious generation in the times of London in the the UK times um the woman ended by asking her 16-year-old would you have liked there to be a social media band until you were 16 I think the daughter was like 18 at the time this was last month um and the daughter says would everyone else be off it too and she says yes and then the daughter says yeah I would have rather liked that and so you have this consumer product that the people using it don't they don't see value in it they're using it because everyone else is um and there's evidence suggesting it's messing up their mental health so anyway this is a solvable problem if we act together and that's really what the book is about how would you do that though how would you would you get all the parents to do it would you get the social media companies to do it like how would you do that yeah I'm not counting on the social media companies or congress I'm assuming we'll never get help from either one now I hope I'm wrong about Congress um but as a social psychologist I'm trying to point out you know we can actually solve this ourselves and so let's work the simplest one is is this so I I propose four Norms if we can enact these four Norms ourselves as parents and working with schools we can largely solve the problem we can reduce we can certainly reduce rates of mental illness a lot the first Norm is the simplest no smartphone before high school um now people say oh my God but my kid needs a phone sure give him a flip phone the Millennials had flip phones and they were fine flip phones did not harm Millennials mental health they're they're good for communication you text you call that's it so the first rule is no smartphones before high school and as long as a third of the parents do this well then the rest of the parents are free to say when their kid says mom you know I need a smartphone you know some other kids have one then you can say well no you'll here's a flip phone you'll be with the kids who who don't have one oh and by the way you're also going to get a lot more freedom to hang out with the other kids so um we don't need everybody but we need to break the feeling that everyone has to have one because everyone else has one yeah that sounds great on paper I just I can't imagine that most parents would agree to it because most there's just so many parents that don't pay attention that's true especially two two family families where two people are working yeah no you're right you're right when just when we look right now um it's you know kids with married parents are are trying harder to keep the kids off these things are good babysitting devices in the sense that the kids are off doing their thing you don't have to think about them um so it is true that that this would not be adopted universally at first um but I think we could still develop a norm that it's just not appropriate for children to have a smartphone they should have flip phones and I think that any community that wants to do this because what I find over and over again is that most parents are really concerned about this and this this is across social classes most parents are seeing the problems and so I don't have to convince parents to change their minds about something what I'm trying to do with the book is to show them here are four Norms that are pretty easy to do if if others are doing them and these are going to make your kids happier less mentally ill yeah it sound like I said it sounds like a good suggestion I just don't imagine that with the momentum that social media has today and the ubiquitous use that kids are going to give it up they're not going to want to give it up I think there's a lot of kids that have had problems that if you talk to them alone and you say wouldn't it be better if social media didn't exist if they've been bullied or what have you they' they'd say yes yeah but the idea of getting massive group of people to adopt this it's highly unlikely well you know you may be right but I'm encouraged because whenever I speak to genz audiences uh and you know I've spoken to middle schools high schools College audiences I always ask you know do you think I got this wrong or do you think this is a correct description of what's Happening they agree they I've never they're not in denial they see the phones are messing them up they see that social media is messing up the girls especially so you know even in Middle School certainly high school they the kids actually agree that this is a problem um and so if it was offered to them you know what let's let's do the other three Norms let's get them all for on the table then you all right so the first is no smartphone before high school second is no social media till 16 that one's going to be a little harder to do um but um you know the big platforms like Instagram the pl where you're posting and the whole world is seeing and strangers are protecting you you know I think the age is currently 13 and it's not enforced I think that needs to go up to 16 um here it would be nice if Congress would raise the age to 16 and make the companies enforce it but even if they don't parents if as long as many other parents are doing it me I as a parent you know my my my kids are 14 and 17 um as long as many other parents are saying 16 is the age then it's very easy for me to say that also that's the second Norm yeah if you again if you could get them to say it and I think the kids would put push back so hard because so many other kids are on it and that's how they interact with each other snap you're just you're just reiterating the social the the collective action problem you're just saying they react because all the other kids are on it yes so it does require a big push but I think we're ready I don't think we were ready in 2019 it wasn't as clear uh but now that we're through covid now that the numbers are through the roof um I think I think we're ready and if it starts in some places not others that's okay with me that's the way it's going to be and then we'll see whether it spreads and then we'll see the data yeah but because look at smoking you know smok is highly addictive it was very common uh up through the 1990s and now it's very rare in high school very few high school kids smoke so it's possible to change norms and what was the third the third is phone- free schools and this one is happening this is already happening um so I've published articles in the Atlantic and and on my on my substack the after babble.com um she bringing together the research when kids have a phone in their pocket in school they're going to be texting because if anyone is texting during the day during the school day they all have to check because they don't want to be out of the loop they don't want to be the one who doesn't know so um when kids started bringing smartphones into school instead of flip phones um academic achievement actually went down kids are stupider today than they were 15 years ago I mean stupider meaning measuring their academic progress after 50 years of improvement it turns around after 2012 and this is true in the US and internationally so there's just no reason why kids should have the phone on them they should come in in the morning put in a phone Locker or Yonder pouch go about their day and guess what the schools that have tried it after a week or two everyone loves it the kids are like oh wow we actually talk in between classes you we have five minutes in the hallway we actually talk and you hear laughter whereas right now in a lot of schools it's just zombies looking at their phones in between as they're walking from class to class yeah um so the assumption is that from 2012 kids are just much more distracted oh my God I mean look Joe I think I heard you say in one of um yeah it was a conv you had a few weeks ago with a comedian friend of yours and I think this was a direct quote from you my [ __ ] phone runs my goddamn life does that sound like you yeah it sounds like me okay so so um you know as adults you know we have a fully formed prefrontal cortex you and I had a normal childhood our brains developed we have the ability to stay on task and man it is hard with notifications coming in there's always so many interesting things you could do instead of what you need to do um so it's hard enough for us as adults imagine if you didn't have a normal childhood where you developed executive function where you developed that ability um as a as a teenager because it puberty is when the prefrontal cortex the front part of the brain that's when it rewires into the adult configuration so the fact that we're scrambling kids attention at the time when they're supposed to be learning how to pay attention I think is terrible where do you think this is going this is my concern is that this is just the beginning of this integration that we have uh with devices and that the the social media model and it's been immensely profitable my God incredibly addictive and there's a massive massive amount of capital that's invested in keeping us locked into these things where do you think this goes from here have you paid attention to the technology like AI yeah yes so let me just draw a very very sharp right line between adults and children I'm very reluctant to tell adults what to do um if adults want to spend their time on an addictive substance or device or gambling I'm reluctant to tell them that they can't so when we're talking about adults I think where this is going um is well where it's where it's gone so far is everything that you might want becomes um available instantly and for free with no effort and so in some ways that's a life of convenience uh but in other ways it's it's messing us up and it's making us weaker so you know you want you want sexual satisfaction okay here you go free porn and it gets better and better and more and more intense um you want a girlfriend or boyfriend who you can customize you you you know you have that already uh advances in robotics are such that um I'm you know it's it's just a matter of time before AI girlfriends are put into these incredible female bodies that you can customize so I think the adult world for young adults especially is going to get really really messed up um and again I'm not saying we need to ban it now but what I'm saying is for God's sakes don't let this be 11-year-old children's lives let's at least keep children separate from all this craziness until their brains develop and then they can jump into the whirlpool and the tornado but the fact that our 11-year-old girls are now shopping at Sephora for anti- wrinkle cream or you know all sorts of expensive skin treatments this is complete Insanity yeah so let's at least protect the kids until they're through puberty well that would be nice that would be nice I just kind of essential I think it's just the the way I see adults being so hooked on these things um I there's so many adults that I know that are engrossed in this world of other people's opinions of everything they think and say and it just doesn't give you enough time to develop your own thoughts and opinions on things that's right so many people are dependent upon other people's approval and there's there's just so many people that are addicted to interacting with people online and not interacting with exceptional people in the real world yeah that's right um one way to think about this is let's look at let's look at junk food uh which became very popular after the second world war you know the manufacturing of food became very good there were science labs um they at Fredo they studied the exact degree of tensile strength for that a chip should have before it snaps and you know how do you make this what's the perfect crunch so they designed the foods to be as addictive as possible and in the 70s and 80s Americans switched over to a lot of junk food and we became obese like huge increase in obesity um and that kept going on for a few decades as I understand it obesity has finally turned around a little bit and many people are still eating huge amounts of junk food but at least some people are are beginning to beginning to say you know what I'm going to resist that deep evolutionary programming for for fat and sugar um the companies played to that they hijacked those desires and they got us hooked on junk food but we're f after you know 50 years we're making some progress in in pushing back and having healthier snacks and eating eating less what's the root of that progress I don't actually know the numbers I just know a few years ago I saw something that for the first time obesity actually went down in the United States I don't know that that's still true today this was like three or four years ago before Co I saw something do we know what caused it to go down um don't uh I'm I'm just assuming that this is an issue that we dealt with as a society and we didn't know what we were doing at first and we got hooked and the efforts to um uh you know efforts to educate people and to develop healthier Alternatives so again I don't know I haven't I you know I should have looked at the data before I came here um but I'm just using this as an analogy where I'm sure Jamie can find something points to look it up online point is obesity still rising in the United States or is it actually a little lower than it was 10 years ago that's the question I mean I quickly found this study here but I haven't even got a chance to look at it yet ah this is the second time I've done this something about this is giving me anxiety I'm spilling this update on the Obesity uh after the sudden rise is the upper trajectory beginning to flatten okay yeah so it's a question in what year was this so do you think it's just people recognizing that they're developing health issues and they're taking steps to discipline themselves and mitigate some of these issues or is there is there some sort of information push that's leading them in that direction that I don't know because it's not my field but I would say that that is a a probably necessary precondition like understanding the problem and developing people a desire to to change it and then it's hard to change you know I love I love chips I love chocolate I love ice cream it's hard to change but you know over time a society adapts and now the question is will we adapt to social media because the desire for sugar and fat and salt is very deep the desire for others to think well of us to to the other to Hold Us in esteem I would say is just as deep and much more pervasive it's much stronger I would say um and so because you know as adults were're very concerned you know when I like when I put out a a tweet um you know I know all this stuff I know how terrible this is for me to check I'm busy I've got things to do but I'll go back and I'll check how the Tweet is doing 30 seconds later like I'll go you know and then I'll chat again five minutes later 10 you know so it's hard for me to me to resist that like what are people saying about the thing that I just said yeah um but the question is will We Will We adapt to it in some way so that we begin you know as with junk food we're still going to be consuming junk food but maybe we'll keep a lid on it I don't know I don't know but what I can say with not confidence but what I think is the case is as long as our kids are going through puberty on social media and video games and they're not developing executive control I do not think think they will be able to keep a handle on this as adults I do not either again as you're saying we are adults we grew up without the internet we up without all these problems and it is hard I try to tell all my friends to use my strategy which is I call Post and ghost okay I don't read anything I just post things I post things I don't read comments and I made me immensely more happy it's a massive difference I I very rarely use Twitter the only reason why or X whatever I the only reason why I use it is to see information to see things I don't read anything about myself and I certainly don't I very rarely post it all and if I do post I certainly don't read what CU first of all I'm aware of this number this FBI security specialist 80% of it and I see it all the time there's so many times where I'll see any any social issue any political issue anything that's in the Zeitgeist when you see someone post about it you'll see these people posting and I'll look at it it's like a couple of letters and a bunch of numbers and I'll go okay is that a real person and then I go to their page nope nope not a real person how many of them are there there's a lot of them there's a lot of them especially when it comes to things like Ukraine Israel Gaza right because those are areas where where various actors are various parties and actors and countries are trying to manipulate us yes and they're doing it they're doing a great job of it they're very focused it's it's really incredible it's it's incredible to see the impact that it when you see 50 posts on 50 comments and 35 of those seem to be not real people that's right I think your strategy is very wise and and for this reason when social media began you would put something up um and then people could comment on it okay that was that goes until about 2013 2014 I think it's 2013 when Facebook introduces threaded comments so now you put something up someone says some horrific nasty you know racist whatever thing in your comment thread and now everyone can reply to that comment and people can reply to reply to so you get basically everyone fighting with each other in the Common Thread yes and what social media is good for is putting out information quickly you know you know I'm I'm a I'm a a professor I'm a researcher um I am engaged in various academic disputes and debates and Twitter is amazing for finding current articles for finding what people are talking about so the function of putting information out is great but the function of putting something out and then watching everyone fight in the comments that's why I used the analogy of the Roman Coliseum like with the Gladiators that's just sick that just there's nothing good comes from that right my concern is that we are paddling up River yeah and that there's a raging waterfall that's powering this whole thing that you cannot fight against and and that we are moving in a Direction as a society with the implementation of new more sophisticated technology that's going to make it even more difficult unless you completely opt out and some people are going to opt out but it's going to be like my 600 lb life you know people that are realizing like oh my god what have I done I've ruined my my body I've ruined my life how do I slowly get back to a normal State and it's going to take a tremendous amount of effort think about the amount of effort amount of focus that people have on comments and thing if you're addicted if you're currently deep into it right now where you're tweeting constantly I I've there's people that I follow that I know they're tweeting 12 hours a day yeah that's right it's it's sad it's so sad yeah they're addicts yeah like how where my fear is that this is only going to get greater yeah I share that fear and um you know if current trends continue it you know it's really not clear how we get out of this something might break in a big way um Humanity has faced many crises before that doesn't mean uh you know as they say you know past performance is no guarantee of future success so we fa many crisis and we've always come out stronger but um we've never faced anything like this that's right this is a categor that's right exactly that's right so we Face many external threats we faced diseases we faced Wars uh those have come and gone but this is a rewiring of the basic communication Network of society in ways that link up with so many of our deepest motivations this is a challenge unlike any we've ever faced uh and and you know so I think you know what we really need I'm speaking as a university Professor is we really need great social sciences we need great sociologists we need uh uh people really studying this um but you know it's all happening so fast and then the problems in universities of of you know U political concerns Sweeping in so I feel I fear we're sort of heading towards this well you said like going Upstream to a waterfall I think it was like going like Downstream we're about you know at the top of waterfall going to go over the edge that too yeah well we're trying to paddle but that's the direction that we're moving in yeah that's right that might be the case that you know so um yeah we live at a very interesting time in history when the you know in the 90s the future looked so bright and yeah now it doesn't my fear is that we are no longer going to become human that we will no longer be human we'll be a different thing and that I think the implementation of technology is what's going to facilitate that that we're I think we're you know how many years away from neuralink and something's similar to it that's going to change how we interact completely and that it's not going to be a Sol it's not going to be a question of whether or not you opt out whether you pick up your device your device is going to be a part of you and there'll be incentives that whether it's performance incentives whether it's uh you're going to have more bandwidth whether whatever it is competitive Advantage yeah that's the real fear of something like neuralink or whatever if they can figure out a neuralink that doesn't require surgery if they can figure out something that does that without surgery the advantage of having that in a competitive sense in terms of like business and and technology and industry it's it's going to be massive and it's going to be so difficult to get people to not do that that it's going to be like phones I mean I remember when I moved to Los Angeles in 1994 I bought a Motorola star Tack and I was like look at me I got a I had a phone in 1989 oh wow one of the big ones that went to a satellite it was actually connected to my car 1989 and it was very advantageous my friend Bill Blen Reich who owns uh the he owned the comedy connection he owns the Wilber Theater now in Boston and I got a lot of gigs from him because he could call me when someone can someone got sick and they said hey can you get to Dartmouth at you know 10 p.m. I'm like [ __ ] yeah and so I got gigs from that we joke about it to this day that I was like the first guy that he knew that had a cell phone it was very it was a huge advantage and I remember when I had one in '94 I was like this is great I can call my friends I don't even have to be home there was so many positives to it and it it gave you an advantage it gave you an advantage you you didn't have to be home if there was a business thing that I had to deal with there was something going on with my career I could I could deal with it on the phone at Starbucks or wherever I was my fear is that this is going to be that times a million it's going to be you have to have it in order to compete just like you H you kind of have to have an email today you kind of have to have a cell phone today yeah that's right that's right yes we we are certainly headed uh headed in that way and I think the word human is a very good word to put on the table here some things seem human or inhuman and when you simply connect people you know Mark Zuckerberg sometimes says how could it be wrong to give more people more voice if you're simply connecting people making it easier for them to contact each other you know I think that's mostly going to have good effects and that happened with the telephone you know we all got telephones and we could do all sorts of things we could coordinate with our friends telephones are great um but when it became not technology making it easier for this guy to reach you or me to communicate with you but rather um it's it's a way it's a way to put things out to try to gain Prestige for me in front of thousands or maybe millions of people now it changes all of our incentives it changes the game we're playing you know what games are we playing as we go about our day and the more people are playing the game of I'm struggling to get influence in an influence economy where everyone else is on these seven platforms so I have to be too or they have an advantage over me right that is the way that things have been Reed already already we're there now you're raising the possibility that the next step is more Hardware based that it's going into our bodies and I think that is likely to happen um and so I I you know I hope what we'll do now and I hope I hope my book The anxious generation will sort of promote a a pause let's think where we are let's think what we've done let's look at what has happened when our kids got on phones and social media we thought oh this could be amazing like they can connect they can form communities it's going to be great and now it's clear no it's been horrible it's been really really terrible as soon as they got on their mental health suffered um you know they might feel like they have a community but it's much worse than what it replaces so I think what we're seeing is the sort of the Techno Optimist the sort of the futurists who say oh it's going to be amazing you know we'll have neuralink we'll have all this technology we'll be able to do everything like here's where we have to heed I think the warnings of the Ancients of religious authorities of those who warn us that we are leaving our humanity and we're stepping into to an unknown Zone where so far the initial the initial verdict is horrible so if we keep going without you know without putting on some breaks yeah I think we're going to a horrible Place yeah my fear is that it won't be horrible oh it'll feel good yeah that it'll be amazing so my fear my genuine fear is the re rewiring of the Mind in a way that that can enhance dopamine enhance serotonin and do things that can genuinely make you feel better yeah and that in short run yes and that we will decide that this is a better thing you know just like look regardless of how you feel about ssris most people think that they're being dispensed too readily and that too many people that get on anti-depressants could have solved that issue with exercise and this is big part of the reason why people are feeling shitty in the first place is their failing yeah and having less having less sex I read recently that the ssris are suppressing sex driving many people so there's that there's there's a lot of issues that come along with those and yet there's a immense profit in making sure that people take those and stay on those my fear is that if you can do something that allows people to have their mind function have their brain their their endocrine system have all these things function at a higher level then everyone is going to do it you you you would not want to just be natural and depressed if you could just put on this little headset and feel fantastic and maybe it could be a solution to so many of our society issues maybe bullying would cease to exist if everyone had an increase in DOP just it sounds silly but if dopamine increased by look if you have an entire Society that's essentially on a low dose of MDMA MH you're not going to have nearly as much anger and frustration and you also are not going to have as much Blues you're not going to have as many sad songs that are that people love you're not going to have the kind of literature that people write when they feel like [ __ ] you know it's unfortunate but also as a whole as a society it probably would be an overall net positive if people did not want to engage in bullying did not want to engage in violence did not want to engage in Theft were more charitable you know if if you if more benevolent if you look at it things in that direction that's my concern is that the rewiring of the mind yeah what we're essentially seeing right now is a rewiring of a mind that we didn't anticipate it it has negative consequences we thought about it in in a positive way oh this is going to be great we're all going to be connected you know what how would it be bad that people could have more voices like Zuckerberg says but my fear is that it's going to just change what it means to be a human being and my genuine feels that this is inevitable and that as technology scales upward this is unavoidable right now it certainly feels that way and and while I'm not optimistic about the next 10 years I I share your vision of the of what's coming but I'm not resigned to it people always say to me I go around saying we need to do these four Norms we can do them and people say oh that ship has sailed like you know oh the trains left the station uh you know but if a ship has sailed and we know that you know it's going to sink we can actually call it back I've been on airplanes where they leave the you know leaves the the jetway and then they call it back because they discover a safety issue so we are headed that way I I agree um but I think there are I think we can I mean we we humans are an amazingly adapt able species um we I think we can figure this out and I there are definitely Pathways to a future that's much better these Technologies could in theory give us the best democracy ever where people really do have the right kind of voice it's not just the extremes who are super owered as as it is now so you know we're in we're in a we're at a point in space and time let's say right now and I can imagine a future that's really fantastic and um but how do we get there and and are we a to get there is there a path or is it like you know there's no path from A to B so I don't know but I think we sure as hell have to try and and the first thing we have to do is not be resigned and just say oh well the world's going to hell what are you going to do about it it's too big so let's start I have a proposal let's start with the one area that we can all agree on which is our kids it's the most amazing thing um in Congress you can't you know any issue if the right likes it the left won't and vice versa except for this one this is the only thing in Washington that's really bipartisan the Senators and Congressmen have kids they see it so let's you know let's test the proposition that All Is Lost and we're helpless Let's test that proposition and let's test it in the place where we can we're most likely to succeed which is rolling back the phone-based childhood and replacing replacing it with a more play based childhood oh so actually I said there are four Norms we talked about three so if you don't mind I'll put in the fourth Norm now yeah so the right so the first three are about phones no smartphone before high school no social media till 16 phone preschools okay but if you take away the phones and you don't give you don't give kids back each other and playtime and Independence what are they going to do you're going to keep them at home all day long without screens so the fourth Norm is more Independence free play and responsibility in the real world and this is a thing that you and I talked about last time I think we actually had a small disagreement um where you know I'm a big fan of Lenor ski the woman who wrote Freer range kids she and I co-founded an organization called let grow parents please go to letg grow.org all kinds of ideas for how to how to uh help your kid have more Independence which makes them more mature and makes them more you know less fragile U so this fourth Norm um this is the harder one this is the one that we have to really overcome our fears of letting our kids out um and so actually let me ask you I think our disagreement last time was uh I I talked about this and like and I said like letting kids go for sleepovers and spend more time with other kids and unsupervised and then you said I think you said like no I'm not letting my kid go to sleepovers cuz I don't trust the other families does that sound familiar to you I don't believe that's what I said I think our concern was with people wandering around with kids being free to walk home in cities yes you had that also we did talk about sleepovers sleepovers okay they've always had sleepovers if you know the parents and you trust the parents it's a great way to give the kids Independence and have them interact with other people yes tell me that but what was your policy with your kids with your younger with with all three on when you let them out like they could go out the door get on a bicycle walk seven blocks to a friend's house without any adult with them what do you remember what age or grade no I don't I mean it's fine if you live in a good neighborhood that the problem is if you're if you know childhood predators are real not really not anymore what I mean is what do you mean well when you and I were growing up there were childhood Predators out there in the physical world approaching children and I think you said there you told the story about one who approached you when you were doing magic tricks um so there were child Predators out there that's true they're all on Instagram now yeah the kids aren out and Instagram and especially Instagram uh makes it super easy for them to get in touch with with children yes so the phys so this is my point I can summarize the whole book with a single sentence we have overprotected our kids in the real world and under-protected them online would agree to that so that you know yes child predators are terrible but guess what we actually locked up most of them you know when you and I were growing up they weren't all locked up they were just eccentrics who were exposing themselves remember flashing flashers that you know that doesn't happen anymore because if you do that now you're going to jail for a long long time so we actually locked up most of the Predators and they know don't approach kids on a playground approach them on social media I don't know if we are doing that and there's this new push oh yeah no once you're once you're identified as a sex offender you'll never you know you are gone for a long time and then there's sex offend no we've really done a lot since the '90s to change the re change to make the the real world safer but there is push against that you're aware of this term minor attracted persons that's being pushed disgusting disgusting and freaky yeah it's such a bizarre term that I I got to imagine is only being done by people who don't have children and they're they're pushing this thing that it's an identity and that it's not the fault of the person who has this issue yeah that's how where's what's the root of that have you investigated that yes I not that specific issue but I can I can you know from so look I study moral psychology that's my academic discipline uh and I study the roots of it evolutionarily historically and Child Development what is our moral sense and there are different moralities and in some ways that's good and you know left and right push against each other um so I'm very open to different moralities but when when a group make something sacred and they say this is the most important thing and nothing else matters other than this then they can kind of go insane and they kind of lose touch with the reality and I think you know again I don't know the history of this particular movement that that horrible term um but there is a certain kind of morality which is all about you know oppression and victimhood and once you uh you know someone I guess somewhere said oh you know men who are Ed to boys or you know little girls are being you know are are victims I don't know what some some in some little Eddie of weird morality someone put that forward as a new victim class because you know we've been you know we've been trying to address victimhood all over the place it once someone puts that up as a new victim class and you have to do that you have to change the terms this is very orwellian you change the terms and then some others who share this morality which is focused on um on not making anyone feel marginalized you know not allowing any labels that will slander someone or make them look bad I think you know I think people who approach children for sexual goals I'm very happy to have them slandered and labeled and uh and separated um but I you know I I suspect that some people once they lock this in as a group that's being marginalized they say well we have to we have to defend them and we don't think about what the hell we're actually saying it it seems purely an academic thing it seems that this is something that with people that only exist in sort of an academic space where they it's almost like an intellectual exercise and understanding oppression MH that's not it's you can't apply it in the real world it's just it's too [ __ ] up that the the consequences of it are horrific yeah that's right normalizing victimizing children that's right now the one thing so before we go any further with this particular topic I would want to point out one of the problems that our social media world has given us which is somewhere in all of the academy in all the universities some philosopher let's say proposed that term or raised an idea so this has been going on for thousands of years someone in a conversation proposes a provocative idea what if we think about this as minor attract you know minor attracted person they put that idea out and then other people say no that's really stupid um and it doesn't catch on because this is not an idea that's going to catch on even in the academy so but I think where we are now is I'm guessing someone proposed this somebody else got wind of it posted it online and now you're going to have a whole media ecosystem going crazy about this terrible idea so maybe can you look up um minor like minor attracted person is this just like a thing that was from one academic talk or is this an actual movement well I've seen politicians discuss it no way wa as like as like decriminalizing or de destigmatizing destigmatizing there was a a recent politician that went viral for this discussion all right May more more than one there was two specific women that were doing that and I didn't investigate whe these women had families or what what it was but that this is this push to to try to alleviate bullying or alleviate shame or alleviate the stigma that's attached to what they're calling an identity yeah that's right so actually so that that brings us to the issue of identitarianism which I think is a useful term for us um these days so um yeah I think a lot of what's happened on campus uh is the move to focus on identity as the primary analytical lens in in a number of disciplines not in most disciplines but in a lot of humanities the studies departments um so putting identity first and then ranking identities and saying some identities are good some are bad this this really activates our ancient tribalism and I think that the liberal tradition going back hundreds of years is really an attempt to push back against that and to create an environment in which we can all get along and so um you know as I see it from inside the academy it's we've always been interested in identity it's an important topic there's a lot of research on it going back many decades but something happen in 2015 on campus that really elevated identitarianism into the dominant Paradigm not dominant in that most people believed it but dominant in th