The Anxious Generation with Jonathan Haidt

1. 0:02 – 3:23

   Why “The Anxious Generation” matters: the sudden mental-health shift starting in 2013

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:02

      This is an episode you don't wanna miss. I'm speaking with Jonathan Haidt. Jonathan is a social psychologist at NYU and a bestselling author, and he just came out with his newest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Now, I know that title seems heavy, and it is heavy, but this conversation is very practical and very hopeful. We talk about the impact of phones, social media, the decline of play on our kids' mental health. And whether you have a toddler or an elementary schooler or a middle schooler or a high schooler, whether you're thinking about when to give your kid a phone or you've already given your kid a phone, this is a conversation that you want to hear. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. We'll be back right after this. Let's be honest, parenting is expensive. And I hear all the time from parents that there are so many things they want to do that just don't fit into their budget, and it can feel kind of powerless. What else can I do to have some extra cash to show up as the parent I wanna be, to give my kids the experiences they want? And I wanted to make sure you all knew of something that doesn't always come to mind, but is an amazing way to have some extra money for that family vacation, that soccer class, that lunch you want to go out to with your friends. Being an Airbnb host means that you are providing another family an amazing experience because I know you've created your home with a family in mind, and it's a great way to earn some extra money for all the different things you wanna do. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host. Hi, Jonathan.

   2. JHJonathan Haidt2:19

      Hello, Dr. Becky. Actually, what should I call you? Doctor? Professor?

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:24

      [laughs]

   4. JHJonathan Haidt2:24

      No, what should I call you?

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:25

      Regular Becky is totally fine.

   6. JHJonathan Haidt2:27

      Regular Becky. Okay. Hello, Becky.

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:29

      Yes. I am so excited to be talking to you today, and I know our listeners are, you know, gonna be really excited for this conversation as well. Your new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, is right in line with so many of the things I'm thinking about, and I know are on parents' minds as well. And I know we'll get into a lot of discussion around screens and-

   8. JHJonathan Haidt2:56

      Mm-hmm

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:56

      ... the impact screens are having, you know, on our kids, and how we can really empower parents with a message of hope, right, and capability. Like, there really are things we can do. This is not, you know, some inevitable state of our kids being impacted by this. And I'd love to start by jumping into this term you use, this kind of great rewiring of childhood.

   10. JHJonathan Haidt3:17

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy3:17

       Let's start there. Can you tell me a little, what does that mean, and what have you found there?

2. 3:23 – 6:02

   The “Great Rewiring of Childhood”: smartphones shift daily life from 2010 to 2015

   1. JHJonathan Haidt3:23

      Sure. Well, so the whole project started because all of a sudden, around 2013, we started noticing in universities, and from other adults I talked to, suddenly young people were much more depressed, anxious, and fragile. Actually, we noticed at universities around 2014, 2015, but it turns out it really started around 2013, 2014, now that we can look back at the data. It was very sudden, and all the graphs were like hockey sticks, like something happened in the early 2010s. And as I began working on this book, at first I thought it was just social media and girls, 'cause there the data's very clear. So I was really looking at, what does social media do to girls? But the problems were happening for boys, too, and it turns out it wasn't just social media. And as, as, as I dug into this, and my research as- uh, associate, Zach Rauch, we-- he, you know, he made all these graphs and charts plotting every angle we could find. It turned out what, what was really happening [lip smack] was the complete transformation of kids' daily lives between 2010 and 2015. And the way to understand this, I'm, I'm guessing a lot of your listeners are Millennials. Now, Millennials had flip phones when they were teenagers, and a flip phone is great for texting and calling, and that's about it. It's for communication. It's a communication device. And in 2010, only about ten or 15% of kids, of teens, had a smartphone. And the early Apple iPhone, you know, it didn't have all the social media on it. It just had, like, you know, a map and a browser and things. So in 2010, you still have kids making eye contact with each other, texting each other to meet up. You still have something that we can recognize as childhood. By 2015, that's gone. By 2015, 70 or 80% of teens have a smartphone. They almost all have social media, especially the girls. And now, once you take, once you take this thing, this thing is an experience blocker. So once, once you give this thing to a child, that's it. Like, that's gonna be the, the thing that they see most of the day. They're looking at that most of the day. And so everything else has to get pushed out. There's less sleep. There's much less time with other kids. There's m- less time with family. There's no more time for books. There's no more time for hobbies. So I, I, I just call that period the great rewiring of childhood. This was not a gradual thing. Over the course of five years, childhood was changed from a form in which a human being could develop into a competent, mature adult, to one that is inhospitable to human development. Now, I don't wanna overstate things. Obviously, look, most kids are okay. Most kids are doing fine. But a much larger number are not doing fine compared to kids who were born in the early '90s. So it's really the late '90s is Gen Z, early '90s is Millennials. Huge difference in their psychological outcomes.

3. 6:02 – 8:27

   “Isn’t every generation worried about new tech?”—why this time is different

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy6:02

      So- I'm in alignment with everything you're saying. It's such a massive shift. And, and even just pausing to recognize that, I think is really important as a parent, right? Wow, that is a really big change. Even using phones to kind of communicate as a way of facilitating social interaction versus using phones in a way that starts to inhibit real-life social interaction. That's a big shift. So one of the things I hear from parents often is this happens at every generation.

   2. JHJonathan Haidt6:32

      Mm-hmm. Yep.

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy6:33

      You know, my parents were worried that we had a Nintendo and, you know, but I, I would be honest, for me, I f- I feel like something inside me says, like-

   4. JHJonathan Haidt6:40

      That's right

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy6:41

      ... this is different. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

   6. JHJonathan Haidt6:44

      Sure. This is the main counterargument I get, and there's some truth to it. Every generation freaks out about whatever new technology or drug the young generation is taking. That's true. That's been going on-- There are hints of it in, you know, in ancient Greece. But really, it's once you get modernity, once you get, you know, the Enlightenment, scientific revolution, now each generation really is a little different from the one before it. But let me point out The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Aesop's fable about the boy who cried wolf. So the townspeople-- You know, the kid, you know, cries wolf twice, and the townspeople then learn to ignore it. The wolf then comes and swallows up all the sheep. So, you know, just because we had some moral panics before, it doesn't mean that, oh, everything is always a moral panic. There has never, ever been a time when teen mental health did this thing of like, things are okay, things are okay, and then two or three years later, it's a disaster. That has never happened before. So, uh, there's abundant evidence that this time really, really is different. And w- the reason why I had to write a whole book on this rather than just like an Atlantic article, is that you really have to understand what is childhood. I mean, human childhood is so different, even from chimpanzee childhood. Like, we're a really unique species because this huge amount of cultural learning. And so that, I think, is one of the distinctive features of the book, is I was gonna just write a book about social media on girls, but it turned into, like, first we have to, you know, think about the evolution of childhood and what do girls have to do? What do boys have to do? What do cultures do around the world? And then we can see, you take all of that, you put a phone in the way, you throw all of that out the window, and what you have is this bizarre human experience that is not-- it doesn't fit with what kids need to do in childhood.

4. 8:27 – 9:20

   Experience-expectant development: how repeated daily patterns wire the brain

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:27

      Yeah. And I think there's some foundations here, right, where the experiences we go through in our early years set up our wiring and our blueprint for how we experience ourselves and then therefore how we experience the world, right? And so those early years, a lot of the years that still a lot of parents say they don't remember that.

   2. JHJonathan Haidt8:47

      No, no.

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:47

      It doesn't matter, right? They don't remember anything. Um, we know that as soon as we realize, wait, memory isn't just what we can say with words.

   4. JHJonathan Haidt8:55

      Yes.

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:55

      Memory are the patterns that feel normal and natural in our body.

   6. JHJonathan Haidt8:59

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:59

      That's actually our most powerful form of memory. Those early years are the most important. The ones that we can't-

   8. JHJonathan Haidt9:05

      Mm-hmm

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:05

      ... remember verbally, I always say those just play out in our body.

   10. JHJonathan Haidt9:08

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:08

       So those are extra powerful.

   12. JHJonathan Haidt9:10

       Yeah.

   13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:10

       And so what happens zero to three, zero to five-

   14. JHJonathan Haidt9:13

       Mm-hmm

   15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:13

       ... right, these early years, has a huge impact on everything-

   16. JHJonathan Haidt9:18

       Mm-hmm

   17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:18

       ... that happens after.

   18. JHJonathan Haidt9:19

       Right.

   19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:19

       It's never too late.

   20. JHJonathan Haidt9:20

       Right.

5. 9:20 – 13:08

   What play is—and why unsupervised, risky play builds competence and resilience

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:20

      Right? We can always-- But, but they do. And I think you and I are in agreement that one of the formative kind of, you know, things for kids is, is play, is how they experience play. So can you speak to that a little bit? What is play? What are the purpose and benefits?

   2. JHJonathan Haidt9:36

      First, let me, let me just comment on what you, what you just said. So you and I are both psychologists. We really understand that we, we don't see the world as it is. We see the world through filters and lenses that were learned in childhood, that were shaped by evolution, that were developed within our family, our culture. The zero to three is huge amounts of brain change, but that's especially lower level systems, walking, talking, vision, all that sort of stuff. If a kid has a really bad experience, one really bad experience at age two or three, it's probably not gonna leave any, any real effect. But what you do over and over again, day after day, if the kid is playing, that's how they wire up the frontal cortex, versus on a screen hours every day for months or years, that will change, literally change the way the brain is wiring itself up. So once you see that this huge human brain is an evolutionary novelty, and what evolution did was it said, "Huh, how are we gonna fill up this brain? How are we gonna, you know, make it configure?" Well, the genes have very little information in them. The genes don't tell the brain how to develop. They just get the ball started. And then we have what's called experience-expectant development. So, so the baby's brain is expecting to have a lot of back and forth. The infant is like, you know, "Peekaboo, ha ha ha. Peekaboo, ha ha." Like you do that thousands of times, and that develops the social centers. So, so in the early years especially, it's, it's the things that you're doing for hours and hours. Those really do change the course of development. But then the brain does a funny thing. It's growing and building new neurons up until around age five or six, and then it kinda stops, and it's almost full size. And then you have this key period of childhood around age six or seven to, to the beginning of puberty, where the kid is basically-- it's like a cultural apprenticeship. The kid is basically like looking at adults and looking at the baker and the construction worker and like, "Oh, you know, what, what are they doing?" They're trying to sort of understand what's going on around them. And then they hit puberty, and at puberty, the, the body begins to grow very fast, whereas it had slowed down before. Growth was much slower in mid-childhood. So in puberty then, the brain is rewiring even faster. So we have to really pay attention. For what we're talking about, we have to pay attention to the whole period, but they're different. Okay, so now to your question about play.

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy11:50

      That's great.

   4. JHJonathan Haidt11:50

      Um, so most of your listeners will have had a puppy or a kitten at some point in their lives, or at least they played with one that a friend had. And if you have a puppy or a kitten, I mean, they need to play all the time, and those are puppies. Um, and it's the most exciting thing for them to play. And that's true for all mammals. That's the thing. All mammals play. It's part of being a mammal. Being a mammal is about this long childhood that the parents, or the mother especially, invest a lot in. But the, the, the parents are there Basically to give the kid security to go out into the world and do things. That's where the learning happens. It's not when they're in your arms that they're learning. It's that they then go out, they try something, they build a block tower, it falls. They follow a cat, it hisses at them. They approach a child, the child rejects them, or maybe acce- It's like, those are the experiences they need to have thousands and thousands of times. And the richest kind of experience they can have, the most nutritious, is a few kids, you know, it could just be two, but especially when you get three or four kids playing together, and the adults are not telling them what to do, and the adults are not resolving the conflicts. Let them play. There are gonna be some conflicts. That's the most nutritious thing you can do. And we kinda, we cut way back on that because we were so afraid that our kids would get hurt, and that really comes in in the '90s, the, this incredibly fearful parenting.

6. 13:08 – 15:51

   Video games vs. real-world play: stimulation without fear or real-world skill-building

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy13:08

      What counts as play, and what doesn't maybe count as play?

   2. JHJonathan Haidt13:12

      Sure. No, that's a good question. It, there's not... It's, it's one of these concepts which is prototypically defined. That is, there are s- prototypes of play, and then there are other things that are less prototypical, but they're still sort of play. So I'd say the prototype, the best kind of play, the most nutritious kind of play, is mixed age, so not just, you know, two seven-year-olds, but kids who are different ages in the neighborhood, coming together outdoors, able to invent whatever they wanna play. They get to choose. They then have to make the rules about it. That's really important. And ideally, there's some risk of getting hurt, at least falling down. Because it turns out the fear makes things thrilling. The fear changes the brain so that, you know, and we can all see this. Our kids, they're afraid of certain things, but they're also attracted to them. And so, you know, they wanna look over the edge of the, you know, of the railing. You know, they, they wanna, you know, build something to the point where it might fall on... I mean, when a kid learns to skateboard, they're then gonna skateboard down the staircase, and they're gonna fall. Why is that? Why are kids looking to get hurt? And the answer seems to be, this is a, a work from this really wonderful Norwegian play researcher, Ellen Sandseter, is that kids need the feeling of thrill, that fear you have, and then you overcome it, and you're exulted. You're like, "Yes, I did it." And that is what rewires your brain to move it away from the sort of the fear, you know, the defend mode, over to a sort of a competent discover mode. "I can do it. I did this. I can do more. I'm gonna do more." So that's the best kind of play.

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy14:48

      Mm.

   4. JHJonathan Haidt14:48

      And it's not that kids have to always be doing that, but if you can find a way for your kid to play with a group of other kids unsupervised, that's the best thing. Now, then, of course, there's pretend play, which doesn't have fear, doesn't have risk-

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy14:58

      Mm

   6. JHJonathan Haidt14:58

      ... but h- has special properties, and kids engage in a lot of pretend play. So that also is very different from the physical running around, but that's also very valuable. And then there are things like video games. Definitely, there's a playful element. They're exciting. You know, but when my son-- I didn't let him play Fortnite in sixth grade when all the boys were on, but I did let him on in eighth grade when COVID hit, and that was a good thing. I mean, he, that was, you know, there was no other way for the boys to talk to each other, practically, it seemed. But what was really interesting is the character is doing all these thrilling things. They're jumping out of planes, they're parachuting into dangerous territory, they're having knife fights, they're getting killed, and there's zero fear. It's just fun. And so video games are playful, definitely, but they don't have that nutritious thrill/fear element to it. So I don't think they help boys mature into men. I think they teach boys a set of skills that are completely useless in the outside world.

7. 15:51 – 18:40

   Frustration tolerance, self-efficacy, and the self-esteem trap

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy15:51

      Hmm. You know, when you were talking about that feeling of kind of, "There's risk here."

   2. JHJonathan Haidt15:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy15:57

      "Could I get hurt? Is this dangerous? I'm gonna kinda try to figure it out, and maybe I then did successfully navigate that jungle gym," or whatever it was. You know, it reminds me something that i- it's a very different context, but I think about with my kids a lot, where I remember when my kids were younger, like doing a puzzle.

   4. JHJonathan Haidt16:16

      Mm.

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy16:16

      And they got to this point being like, "I c- can't, I can't do it. I can't do it anymore," right?

   6. JHJonathan Haidt16:21

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy16:22

      "And can you finish this for me?" Right? And I remember something that I'd say to them that I watched really resonate, and it reminds me of the same experience you're describing, right? Say, "You know, look, we could take a break, and let's take a deep breath, and you can come back to this." But the feeling you get when you think you can't do something, and then you continue, and you watch yourself do it, is kind of the best-

   8. JHJonathan Haidt16:47

      Yeah

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy16:47

      ... feeling in the world, and I don't want to take that feeling away-

   10. JHJonathan Haidt16:52

       Mm-hmm. That's right

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy16:52

       ... from you. And it is the best feeling. It is the best-

   12. JHJonathan Haidt16:58

       Mm-hmm

   13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy16:58

       ... feeling. And you're right, there is, there's no physical risk, but there's, there, there's a little-

   14. JHJonathan Haidt17:02

       Mm-hmm

   15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:02

       ... risk-taking even in, you know, doing that type of play.

   16. JHJonathan Haidt17:05

       Yeah.

   17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:05

       Like, "This is hard. Can I push myself?" And that is where I see so many parents, so many-

   18. JHJonathan Haidt17:11

       Mm

   19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:11

       ... completely well-intentioned parents kind of remove the frustration-

   20. JHJonathan Haidt17:15

       Yes

   21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:15

       ... in a way-

   22. JHJonathan Haidt17:16

       That's right

   23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:16

       ... remove the risk, and I think what we don't realize is we're also then removing this very-

   24. JHJonathan Haidt17:21

       Mm

   25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:21

       ... important feeling-

   26. JHJonathan Haidt17:22

       That's right

   27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:23

       ... from our kids.

   28. JHJonathan Haidt17:23

       That's right. The, the, the best thing you can do for your kid is raise him or her to be one who can deal with frustration, 'cause life is gonna be full of frustration. And if you take the frustration out of your kid's life, you ma- make them happier in the moment, but you're depriving them of a future of competence and success. Um, I think the word self-esteem is still used.

   29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:44

       Yeah.

   30. JHJonathan Haidt17:44

       And I, it, it shouldn't be. Self-esteem is not something that you should strive for. You know, it's like happiness, like as you've said about happiness. Like, the g- if the goal is happiness, you're gonna do things that are g- that are gonna make you unhappy. Happiness is a byproduct when you're making progress on the important things in life, and you're doing well. Same thing with self-esteem. Self-esteem is something that kids get when they know that they can do things, and they have done things. And the big mistake that many psychologists made in the '70s and '80s was to say, "We need to raise kids' self-esteem." No, you don't. You need to raise their competence. Let them do more things. Let them, let them fail and overcome, and then they will succeed, and then they will have self-esteem. You can't give it to them What you can give, I think what you're talking about, is called self-efficacy, the sense that I can do things. And if we're always stepping in to solve problems for our kids, then they don't get to develop it.

8. 18:40 – 21:43

   Why modern parenting shifted: fear, declining community trust, and the “college arms race”

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:40

      Yeah. So I'm curious like why, why we think this is. Why is this generation of parents-- Because I see parents as-

   2. JHJonathan Haidt18:50

      Mm-hmm

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:50

      ... they're so motivated to be good parents.

   4. JHJonathan Haidt18:52

      Yeah. Yeah.

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:52

      Like, people really care about this. And at the same time, right, it is, it feels harder than ever to tolerate our kids'-

   6. JHJonathan Haidt19:00

      Mm-hmm

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy19:00

      ... tantrum at, you know, the puzzle, or to tolerate the risk involved-

   8. JHJonathan Haidt19:05

      Yeah

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy19:05

      ... in letting them go to the playground without us kind of being right there. W-why is that?

   10. JHJonathan Haidt19:10

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. So a lot has changed. So y-you're a clinical psychologist. You're strong on sort of, you know, what's going on with the feelings, the emotions inside. I'm a social psychologist, so I'm especially dialed into how do we affect each other? And so norms around parenting change generation to generation, and they really hit moms much less dads. Moms are really judged by everything they do, and the moms are judging each other, and, you know, the whole thing is really hard on women. But let's start with the material changes. So our grandmothers probably had three or four kids. They didn't have much money, and they were raising their kids in a building, in a neighborhood with a lot of other kids. And we grew up in this nice suburban town where, after school, we were all on our own. There were a lot of kids around. So what's happened since then? Um, family size is way down. So most families, there's only one or two kids. And moms are working, so there are not eyes on the street anymore. And so we lost... You know, 'cause it used to be if I-- you know, if my friend and I were out of line, like, some other adult would say something to us. If we fell on our bicycles and we were really in trouble, we knew somebody would call our mother or so- you know, somebody would help. But in the, in the '80s and '90s, we lost a lot of that trust in each other, and this is a really important sociological change. Actually, I learned about this especially from a British sociologist, Frank Furedi, who has a book called Paranoid Parenting. So this happened throughout the English-speaking world. We'd lost trust in our neighbors.

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy20:37

       Mm.

   12. JHJonathan Haidt20:37

       We started thinking everybody is a sex predator. If I send my kids to, you know, uh, uh, you know, sports or Boy Scouts, they'll be sexually molested. And there were real scandals, don't get me wrong. But we lost so much trust that now this amazing thing happens to moms in the '90s. Moms are working more, they're spending more time out of the home, but all of a sudden, around nineteen ninety-five, ninety-six, we see a huge increase in the number of hours per week that moms are spending with their kids. So in the '90s, moms are working more and spending more time with their one or two children, and the economy is changing so that everyone's now freaking out about getting into college. So parenting became, it became much more about how do I get my kid into a top college? How do I prepare my kid to compete with the other kids? Rather than-

   13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:26

       Hmm

   14. JHJonathan Haidt21:26

       ... my kid needs to play. Go out. Get out of here. Go. Come back when the streetlights come on. So parenting changed, childhood changed, kids changed, and that begins in the-

   15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:33

       Yeah

   16. JHJonathan Haidt21:34

       ... '80s and '90s. That kind of is the, is the backstory to The Great Rewiring, 'cause it didn't all happen between twenty ten and twenty fifteen. That was the technological change.

9. 21:43 – 26:04

   Supervise less in the real world, more online: how optimism about the internet backfired

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:43

      So there's this, this quote you have in the book that has really stuck with me, and I think it's a good transition to the next thing I wanna ask you about. You're talking about oversight and how kind of, I don't know-

   2. JHJonathan Haidt21:55

      Mm-hmm

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:55

      ... helicopter-ish-

   4. JHJonathan Haidt21:56

      Yeah

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:56

      ... we are with our kids. And one of the things you say is, "Parents should supervise less in the real world, but more in the virtual." And I feel like we're understanding together the role of play, how play is so much harder-

   6. JHJonathan Haidt22:09

      Mm-hmm

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:09

      ... to come by now, and we're maybe, as parents, both less tolerant of the risks and of the-

   8. JHJonathan Haidt22:14

      Yeah. That's right

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:14

      ... frustration our kids inherently feel. And I feel like a message is this is what we as parents have to learn to tolerate more so our kids-

   10. JHJonathan Haidt22:21

       Mm-hmm

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:21

       ... can benefit from-

   12. JHJonathan Haidt22:22

       Mm

   13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:22

       ... frustration and risk. And, and then we have the virtual world, right? And so we're supervising a ton in the real world, and these moments aren't happening as often. We're kind of removing those experiences, and yet our kids are developing this entire virtual kind of world as well, where I agree, us parents, maybe also 'cause we didn't grow up with it-

   14. JHJonathan Haidt22:42

       Mm-hmm

   15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:42

       ... we're not as knowledgeable. It's not as in your face visually. We are far less involved. So let's jump into that.

   16. JHJonathan Haidt22:49

       You know, that's basically a summary of, of my book, is that we've been, uh, we've been overprotecting our children in the real world and underprotecting them online. Um, in the real world, we have over a hundred years of experience putting in fences around pools and requiring seat belts. Took a long time to do this, but we've created a physical world in which adults and children can both live in it and we, you know, we minimize the risk to kids. The online world comes in beginning in the '90s, and this is very important to understand. When it came in, it was miraculous. We were all like, "Oh my God, you mean I can get all the information ever, always, instantly? Like, this is godlike powers." And so from the '90s, when we thought the internet was so amazing, and it's gonna take down dictators, and it, and it's gonna-- there's gonna be a surge of democracy, and kids all over the world can learn and invent. It's gonna be amazing. So, you know, then the iPhone comes out, and it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. And so, you know, and our kids love it. And my g- you know, my, my son-- I got my first iPhone in two thousand eight. My son was two years old. Two years old, he takes the iPhone and, you know, after a couple days, like, he's swiping and tapping. But when you go back to that era, we thought we had nothing to fear. Like, "Hey, you know, these kids are digital natives. The technology's amazing. The internet's great. Let's let them on early. They'll get a head start." Like, that's the way we were thinking in two thousand ten, eleven, twelve. So we didn't know that what we were doing was giving our kids an experience blocker that would block out almost everything they need in childhood. Um, so that's sort of how this all, how this all started. And then once the norms were set that you just give your kid an iPad, that's what parents do. Oh, and it can connect to the internet anywhere, so they can open accounts. You know, your seven or eight-year-old can open an account on Instagram, 'cause Instagram, you know, Meta, they don't, they don't check. They don't wanna know. They really don't wanna know if your kid is underage, otherwise they, they could be responsible. So these habits developed of extreme fear about everything, nutrition, strangers. You know, I mean, think about how careful we are about our kids interacting with strangers in a park. You know, if a, if a creepy man comes up to you in a park, like, that's a terrifying thing, and we don't ever want that to happen. No k- no, no, stay home. Stay home. Here's your computer. Go on Instagram, and guess what? There are no more perverts in parks. That's too dangerous. They're all on Instagram and TikTok. If we care about our kids interacting with creepy, strange men who are gonna try to have sex with them, like, why would you let your kid, your 11, 12, 13-year-old, on social media? That's where it all happens. You know, kids are harmed in so many ways. You know, there are kids who are tricked into sending a nude photo of themselves, and then they're sextorted. There are kids who become objects of, you know, mob hatred. I mean, there's just so many ways that the kids can get harmed on the internet. And we're like, "Well, you know, everyone else is letting their kid on, so, you know, this is just what we do."

   17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy25:29

       [sighs] There's so many things I wanna double-click on, and we're going to get to, uh, kind of very actionable, well-

   18. JHJonathan Haidt25:35

       Mm-hmm

   19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy25:35

       ... what can parents do? 'Cause I know y- you care very much-

   20. JHJonathan Haidt25:38

       Yeah

   21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy25:38

       ... about that too.

   22. JHJonathan Haidt25:38

       Yeah.

   23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy25:38

       We're not just presenting a problem. Like, we have some ideas here. But before we get there, 'cause I just want, uh, you- you've- you do such a amazing, thorough job in really laying out kind of all of kind of the risks and harms to-

   24. JHJonathan Haidt25:51

       Mm-hmm

   25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy25:51

       ... this phone-based childhood our kids are now exposed to. Um, and you-

   26. JHJonathan Haidt25:55

       Mm-hmm

   27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy25:55

       ... break it down, and I love when people break things down very concretely. So can you share a little bit more about that, the kind of four-

   28. JHJonathan Haidt26:01

       Mm-hmm

   29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy26:01

       ... basic harms of this phone-based childhood?

10. 26:04 – 32:18

    Five core harms of phone-based childhood: what gets displaced and what gets damaged

    1. JHJonathan Haidt26:04

       Sure. So, you know, it has different effects on boys and girls, but there are a few major effects that it has on everyone. So actually sort of the first, there's actually really five in the sense that the first one is what's called the opportunity cost. That is, given that kids are now, are now spending five hours a day just on social media, including TikTok and Instagram, and if you add in all the other stuff, it's around nine hours a day on average. So a lot of kids are spending more than 10 hours a day on their, on their devices, not counting school. That's most of the day. So that pushes out everything else. So imagine if your kid never read a book, never had a hobby, didn't go over to friends' houses. Like, that would be horrible, and that's one of the effects. So that's the opportunity cost.

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy26:39

       Yeah.

    3. JHJonathan Haidt26:40

       Uh, then more specifically, um, the social deprivation is the, probably the most important deprivation. That is, what kids really, really need is each other. What they really, really need is one or two close friends that they hang out with. They have a best friend. They have a group. They have a gang. That's what they really need. And kids used to do that. And the, the data, we have data in the book, it's amazing. Young people used to spend a lot of time with their friends, whereas older people spent much less. But what happens after 2012 is the young people start plummeting, and they, even before COVID, young people had mostly socially distanced themselves because it was all on their phone. So that's a very serious deprivation, is time with friends. Uh, another really serious one is sleep deprivation. Sleep is so important for the developing brain. And so if your kid has a device in his or her room, you know, some of them can handle it, but many can't. They're gonna take it under the cover. They're gonna lie to you. They're- they've got to be on to, you know, update all their notifications and their relationships. So sleep deprivation is very serious, and that also increases a lot after 2013. The fourth one on this list is attention fragmentation. Jean Twenge just had a, a substack about the rapid decline of reading. Kids don't read books very much, and they're telling their teachers they can't read 10 or 20 pages 'cause they get distracted. When you are interrupted every few minutes by your phone and sent into rabbit holes, you don't have the experience of thinking for 30 minutes straight. Some kids have never thought for 30 minutes straight. They've never had 30 minutes without interruption. So attention fragmentation is extremely serious. If you want your kid to do well in school, to be able to think, maybe to create something someday, don't raise them on a, on a phone. It'll fragment their attention. And the final one is addiction, behavioral addiction. There's an argument among researchers whether, uh, social media should be called an addiction. But as far as I'm concerned, if we agree that gambling is an addiction, if we see gambling addicts at slot machines, they lose track of time. They, where they waste money. They regret it, but they can't stop. Well, that's exactly what's happening to our kids with social media. And of course, the social media-

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy28:44

       Yeah

    5. JHJonathan Haidt28:44

       ... companies literally copied Las Vegas. They literally copied. Like, the, you know, you pull down to refresh, and then it kinda, like, spins. Like, they took that from slot machines. So these things are engineered for addiction. And, you know, if you let your kid spend hours a day on a device that was designed to be addictive, some of them are gonna get addicted, and those costs could be very serious, especially if it goes on for years and years. It really can change brain development permanently.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:15

       Parents might have 99 problems, but getting our kids dressed in the morning shouldn't be one of them. Enter Garanimals. Garanimals, the original mix-and-match clothing brand for babies and toddlers, has been making mornings easier since 1972. With colorful and playful styles designed to always go together, Garanimals boosts your kids' self-confidence by giving them the power to decide what to wear. And when mornings become a race against the clock, Garanimals Kid Packs take the guesswork out of getting dressed. Every Kid Pack contains carefully curated tops and bottoms that easily mix and match. Pick any top, any bottom, and voila. An Instant outfit. And with up to a month's worth of outfits in just one box, Garanimals Kid Packs take care of a whole lot of outfit planning. One less thing on the to-do list. We'll take it. Check out Garanimals Kid Packs on Walmart.com, or follow Garanimals on Instagram for a peek into their latest spring collection, available in sizes newborn to 5T. Say goodbye to wardrobe battles and hello to hassle-free mornings with Garanimals. If you're a parent of a tween or teen, this next message is for you. We are living in a digital-first world, and we're raising our older kids amidst an unprecedented mental health crisis. We know that the landscape has changed, and raising tweens and teens has never been harder. Plus, the data around us and the news coverage is staggering, and we know that reports of anxiety and depression amongst tweens and teens is at an all-time high. We know all of this is true, and still I don't wanna spread a message of fear, not at all. I want to spread a message of empowerment and hope because after all, here at Good Inside, we're really on a mission to help you be a sturdy leader, so you can raise sturdy kids. And I know it's never too late to start this journey. I am so excited to let you know that we are extending our support and resources in Good Inside Membership to parents of tweens and teens. From how to navigate phones and social media, to how to support your teen through insecurity and anxiety, we equip parents with exactly what they need to help their teens successfully navigate through this turbulent world. Good Inside Membership is now supporting parents of kids ages zero through 18. And what will you get? You'll have access to a digital searchable library of short videos, scripts, and workshops for every single in-the-moment problem and struggle you might be facing. You get access to a safe, private, away-from-social-media community monitored by trained Good Inside coaches. You

11. 32:18 – 36:37

    Why social media hits girls harder: relational focus, comparison, and emotional contagion

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy32:18

       also have access to ongoing support groups with other parents, led by Good Inside coaches, to talk about the unique struggles of the teenage years. It's all available at goodinside.com. I can't wait to see you inside. [gentle music] So let's jump into social media. I, I think social media obviously has impacts on girls and boys, but why are girls especially-

    2. JHJonathan Haidt32:48

       Yeah

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy32:48

       ... vulnerable to social media?

    4. JHJonathan Haidt32:50

       So boys and girls, the differences in their abilities are very small, but the differences in their interest are huge, as most parents will observe. What they choose to do when they have freedom is very different. And boys have more of what's called a, a need for agency. They're out trying to break things, build things. They're much more interested in mechanical things. Um, girls and women are more oriented towards communion needs, relationships. They're interested in what people's relationships are. They remember each other's birthdays. They know who's mad at whom. So they're m- just much more interested in the, in the social world. So those are well-known gender differences. They start early in life. They go through all of life. So what happens? Video games come along, and they say to boys, "Hey, you wanna break things? You wanna fight? Here you go." And you can do that for hours a day. Social media comes along and says, "Oh, you have communion needs? Check in on what someone just said about you. Check in on somebody's, uh, relationship updates." So social media really baited its hooks for girls. They know exactly what girls' needs are, but they know exactly what girls' insecurities are. How can I get m- this girl away from her homework to come over to Instagram or TikTok? How can I do that? Because we have to... Their, their business model is advertising-based, so they have to maximize eyeballs. Um, so for all these reasons, the social media, uh, girls are much more likely to be addicted to social media than boys are, and what it does to them is, of course, the chronic social comparison. We all know about that. E- every girl can feel that she is below average because what she sees is not the honest representation of her pool of friends. And then there are so many direct harms to girls. There's much more relational aggression, bullying, um, which is worst in seventh grade, seventh and eighth grade. Um, girls share emotions more than boys do. So if a girl is depressed, it actually makes her friends depressed, whereas if a boy is depressed, it doesn't spread as much in his network. So for all these reasons, it's just insane that middle school kids are on social media. We- that has to stop. And what I say-

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy34:45

       Yeah

    6. JHJonathan Haidt34:45

       ... in the book is really it should be 16.

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy34:47

       Yes.

    8. JHJonathan Haidt34:47

       You know, we need to see this. It's ju- this, like, none of this is appropriate for children. This is really adult stuff, and it's even bad for us. [laughs] Look, most of us are struggling with this. It's terrible for kids going through puberty.

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy34:58

       Yeah. You know, when I was working with teens in my private practice, that would come up related to how I think, yes, their, their spending so much time on social media has had this massive impact on how they form their-

    10. JHJonathan Haidt35:10

        Mm-hmm

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:10

        ... sense of self.

    12. JHJonathan Haidt35:11

        Yeah.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:11

        Right? And really, right, I mean, there's many ways to form our sense of self, but I think there are two roads as w- and we learn this growing up. Do I have good, valuable things-

    14. JHJonathan Haidt35:22

        Mm-hmm

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:22

        ... inside me?

    16. JHJonathan Haidt35:22

        Mm-hmm.

    17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:22

        And can I gaze in to feel good about myself, or do I have to gaze out and see what-

    18. JHJonathan Haidt35:30

        Yeah

    19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:31

        ... other people say about me to get the good outside-

    20. JHJonathan Haidt35:34

        Mm-hmm

    21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:35

        ... in? And I had this one client who spoke so poetically, and she was able to say to me, "When I'm not, like, on social media-

    22. JHJonathan Haidt35:45

        Mm

    23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:45

        ... and when I'm just kind of alone, I feel like I am in a room that's empty-

    24. JHJonathan Haidt35:52

        Mm

    25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:52

        ... with white walls." That's what she said.

    26. JHJonathan Haidt35:54

        Hmm.

    27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:55

        And what I'm looking for, and what happens sometimes, but not all the time, is, like, I go on, and I'm looking for kind of this data outside-

    28. JHJonathan Haidt36:04

        Right

    29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:04

        ... to, to give me color.

    30. JHJonathan Haidt36:05

        Right.
12. 36:37 – 41:33

    The collective action problem: why good parents still give phones—and the “four norms” solution

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:37

       So I wanna get to what parents can do and, and also, right, 'cause here's what we know, me and you. Like, parents want to do-

    2. JHJonathan Haidt36:46

       Yeah

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:46

       ... a good job. Parents love their kids.

    4. JHJonathan Haidt36:48

       Yeah.

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:48

       And so we're holding that, and at the other side, we're holding, okay, so there are all these kids kind of engaging-

    6. JHJonathan Haidt36:56

       Mm-hmm

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:56

       ... in their phones with social media in a way that we know as parents-

    8. JHJonathan Haidt36:59

       Mm-hmm

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:59

       ... isn't good for them, and that's a conundrum. So, like, the most generous interpretation of why that is-

    10. JHJonathan Haidt37:05

        Oh, yeah

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy37:05

        ... let's start with that.

    12. JHJonathan Haidt37:06

        Oh, easy.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy37:06

        Like, why do you think this is happening?

    14. JHJonathan Haidt37:07

        Because it's a social, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a collective action problem. This is the key to solving it. There are many problems you can solve yourself. If you want your kids to eat more vegetables, that's up to you. You can feed them more vegetables. But if you don't want your kids on social media, or you don't want the kids to have a phone, it's not entirely up to you, or at least you can try, but it's gonna be a struggle every day to control their technologies because their friends have it. These things are socially addictive. They're engineered to do that. So, you know, I, I, I teach a class at, at NYU, a flourishing class. My undergraduate students, you know, we talk about how the terrible things that, you know, spending four hours a day on TikTok, like this is a terrible thing for a college student to do. Why don't you stop? Well, you know, I, I can't get off because everyone else is on. Like, I need to be in the loop. I need to know what everyone is saying. So it's a trap, and it's engineered to be a trap. It's designed that way. So here's the key. All of us as parents, we've all been struggling with this. We've all been trying to regulate it. We've all been trying to set limits, and there's all these ambiguous cases, and it's constant conflict. This is happening all over the country, all over the world. It's hard to regulate if you're on your own, but it's much easier if we do it together. So the way out of a collective action problem is to act collectively. So what I'm saying in the, the book is four norms. If we adopt four norms, we can solve this problem most of the way. We can get most of the stuff out, especially for K through eight. Here are the norms. One, no smartphone till high school. I- if you wanna talk to your kid when he's at school, well, you shouldn't be talking to him during school, but, uh, you need to communicate for all sorts of reasons. Give him a flip phone. Flip phones, as we said, are not harmful. They're for communication. So no smartphone till high school. We need to make that a national norm. Not a law, but a norm that kids before high school do not have smartphones 'cause they'll, they'll be sucked into all kinds of internet stuff. Um, second norm, no social media till 16, especially not TikTok, Instagram, the big ones that are designed to do this. My kids run track. They have-- There's some things that are technically social media, so they can keep up with other runners. My daughter's 14, you know, running is her life. Like, okay, you know, I understand. I'm gonna make an exception for that. But I really held the line at, uh, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. So no social media until 16. That's the second norm. The third norm is phone-free schools. And this is one I really want listeners... I mean, we can change this in the next year. Every principal hates the phones. Every teacher hates the phones. I ask them, "Why don't you ban them?" They say, "Because some parents freak out. They wanna talk to the kid all the time. You know, they, they, they need that contact." So if you're listening to this, this conversation, and your s- kid's school doesn't require phones to be locked up during the day, please contact the principal, the head of school because if that person hears from a flood of parents saying, "Please give my child seven hours a day when she can listen to her teachers and her fellow students. Seven hours a day off of her phone." Th- th- all kids need this during the school days. That's the third norm. That's really powerful. That's happening in Britain. Britain, the parents have already begun to rise up, delaying smartphones, banning them in schools. So Britain is ahead of us, but this is the year that we do it in America. The fourth norm is more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. And this is really the Lenore Skenazy free-range kids side of the book. Um, Lenore Skenazy wrote this wonderful book, Free-Range Kids. She actually helped me on the parents chapter here. She's brilliant. She's funny. And if we take away the phones and a lot of the screens from kids, what are they gonna do all day? Now, we can say, "Oh, read a book," or, "Learn to play guitar," and that would be nice, but that's no- not really a good childhood either. If we're taking away the phones, we have to restore a play-based childhood. We have to give them each other, not playing with us directly, but ideally, we set it up so that they, they and a couple of other kids, maybe they're hanging out in, in somebody's backyard. You know, maybe there's an, a, a, you know, a park or a playground that they can go to publicly. Maybe they go to a coffee shop or a pizza shop, whatever. But, you know, the way we used to all grow up was after school, the kids are on their own, and this was during the crime wave. There was a crime wave. There were drunk drivers. I mean, there were dangers in the '60s and '70s and '80s, but kids went out, and they became mentally healthy. Now, the world is very, very physically safe. We locked up the drunk drivers. We locked up most of the perverts or sent them to Instagram. And, you know, so it's much safer to send your kid out now than it was in the '70s and '80s, but we're afraid. We have to get over that. So we have to give kids-

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy41:30

        Yeah

    16. JHJonathan Haidt41:31

        ... back a play-based childhood.

13. 41:33 – 53:52

    Making it real: flip phones, staged access, boundary fatigue, and building independence

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy41:33

       So there's two things I wanna, I wanna share with you. So one, when you talk about collective action. So one of the things, I have a 12-year-old, and when he was in first grade, it was kind of clear, like this kind of friend group he was developing, and I was actually friendly with the parents too. And I did, I kind of called this meeting of the parents in first grade, in first grade. And back then, uh, now I feel like kids in first grade are almost feel like, "Oh, are we close to giving our kids phones?" But then it was like, "We're so far away." And I was like, "This is the time." And we met, and we kind of talked about this collective v- set of values we did have, where none of us wanted to give our kids a phone too early, and we were all aware that the social pressures, when you feel like your kid is being left out of things, nobody wants their kids to have that from an understandable place. So there are these tensions. So we said, "Well, what if we could remove that? What if we could come together and say, collectively, we're not gonna give our kids devices till a certain age?" And-

    2. JHJonathan Haidt42:29

       What was the age you picked?

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:31

       So we picked the end of fifth grade, right, in Manhattan.

    4. JHJonathan Haidt42:34

       Ah.

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:34

       Our kids started.

    6. JHJonathan Haidt42:35

       Okay, yeah.

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:35

       So that's what we said, and I'm open to, you know, rethinking things, and I'm also, you know, you are too, a pragmatist here.

    8. JHJonathan Haidt42:43

       Okay.

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:43

       Our kids, they travel around Manhattan on their own. They're on different buses, and we felt like they needed some type of communication device.

    10. JHJonathan Haidt42:50

        Well, that's right. No, but I did the same thing in my family. We didn't think of flip phones. So I'm not saying you're wrong to give them a phone in fifth grade, but we need to, we need to start them on flip phones, not smartphones.

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy43:01

        Yes, and I also think, though, that, and this is gonna relate to my second point, where when we say we're giving our kids a phone, and I'm thinking a lot about this here at Good Inside, we don't think of what version of a phone, and I, uh, one version is a flip phone. But for example, when a kid even gets a smartphone, there is no reason That kid needs to have access to apps they never had on a family iPad before.

    12. JHJonathan Haidt43:24

        Mm-hmm.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy43:24

        Like, all of a sudden, I see people getting phones, and they have every app.

    14. JHJonathan Haidt43:29

        Yeah.

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy43:29

        Where to me, there's also a gradual way of doing this, saying, "You're, you're not getting unlimited access to-

    16. JHJonathan Haidt43:36

        Mm-hmm

    17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy43:36

        ... YouTube or to Safari," and there's a way to hold boundaries into that. Now, this is the-

    18. JHJonathan Haidt43:42

        Mm-hmm

    19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy43:42

        ... point, though, that I wanted to talk about with you because to me, I know so many parents who feel like those guidelines make sense, right?

    20. JHJonathan Haidt43:52

        Mm-hmm.

    21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy43:52

        And they'd wanna do them. And to me, where it tends to break down is a pattern of parenting that starts so far, uh, it's so many years before anything digital-

    22. JHJonathan Haidt44:04

        Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:04

        ... which is just the comfort parents have these days with setting and holding boundaries and letting-

    24. JHJonathan Haidt44:11

        Yeah

    25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:11

        ... their kids be upset with them about it.

    26. JHJonathan Haidt44:13

        Mm-hmm. That's right.

    27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:14

        And I feel like this has been h- this is harder than ever for parents.

    28. JHJonathan Haidt44:20

        Oh, it is... That's right. It is so much harder. But this is, like, the major topic that parents wanna talk about, is the phones, technology, social media. Everyone is dealing with it. And what you, what, you know, what you say, it makes sense and it sounds like, "You know, let's do it gradual and let them earn more res- you know, responsibility, and we'll put limits on." But then you constantly have boundary skirmishes. You have little border wars over everything.

    29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:45

        Mm-hmm.

    30. JHJonathan Haidt44:46

        Um, and the kids are incentivized to cheat. The kids are gonna figure out ways. You know, they can download Instagram and make it look like a calculator so that you don't see it. I mean, there's all, you know, you get into this-
14. 53:52 – 57:01

    Hope and urgency: changing childhood by 2025 through shared norms and local action

    1. JHJonathan Haidt53:52

       Sure. So I, you know, I would say there's, there's a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness around all of this, and people say to me like, "Oh, that train is, that train's left the station. Oh, you know, what are you gonna do? You know, you can't call this back." No, that is not true. You know, we had leaded gas, which was poisoning kids' brains, and we said, "Let's ban leaded gas." Like, when something is this big a public threat to our kids and it's damaging so many kids and families, we have to act. But I, I don't wanna just say like, "Oh, there's a terrible situation. We have to act." What I wanna really communicate is this is actually easy to solve if we act together. The four norms that I suggested cost nothing. Nothing. They're free. I mean, you have to-- schools have to buy phone lockers, and it'd be nice if states put up a little money for, but that's it. Other than that, these norms cost nothing. They are totally bipartisan. This is not a left-right cultural issue. Everyone wants their kids to spend more time playing with other kids rather than on their phones all day. Um, and if we do these four norms, they will work. We know that if kids are, are taken off screens and given a lot more play, they will be mentally healthier. So I wanna leave listeners with a real feeling of hope, that we've been put in a trap by the tech companies and by the absence of any helpful regulation from our government, from the Congress especially. Um, we have to take matters into our own hands. So I wanna leave parents with a feeling of hope. I think we can change childhood by the end of 2025, especially for elementary and middle school. It, harder to get the phones away from high school kids. I'm not saying we absolutely, we, we should. But, but we can stop giving fourth and fifth graders smartphones. We can at least let them get up through early puberty with a reasonably healthy childhood, and that is gonna change mental health in this country.

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:32

       Thank you, Jonathan.

    3. JHJonathan Haidt55:33

       Thank you, Becky. What a joy talking with you.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:37

       Thank you to our podcast sponsors, Airbnb and Garanimals. Thank you for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com/podcast, or you could write me at podcast@goodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world, and you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered and confident for this very important job you hold. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership. It's the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like-valued parents. It's game-changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they have. Good Inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Knapp, and Kristen Mueller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Brooke Zanth, and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside.

Episode duration: 57:05