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Joe Rogan Experience #2121 - Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist, professor, and author. His latest book, "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness," will be available March 26. www.jonathanhaidt.com

Jonathan HaidtguestJoe Roganhost
Mar 19, 20242h 1mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:29

    Why this isn’t “moral panic”: screen-based childhood vs. the TV era

    1. NA

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. JH

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Hello, Jonathan. Good to see you, sir.

    4. JH

      Good to see you again, Joe.

    5. JR

      Um, the same problems that you talked about when you were here last, that I've referenced many times since on the podcast, have, uh, only exasperated unfortunately. And, uh, that's why you wrote this, The Anxious Generation. (smacks lips) 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.

    6. JH

      Yeah. Th- 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, this is, this is not a real thing," they said. Now they don't.

    7. JR

      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? It could be that.

    8. JH

      (laughs)

    9. JR

      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.

    10. JH

      (laughs)

    11. JR

      You know? They're not engaging in this stuff.

    12. JH

      Yeah. And they're often thinking, "You know, when I was a kid, we watched too much TV and we turned out okay."

    13. JR

      Yeah.

    14. JH

      But part of the message of the book is that social media and these things kids are doing on screens are not really like TV. They're much, much worse for development.

    15. JR

      Yeah. And even watching too much TV, d- I don't agree that they turned out okay.

    16. JH

      (laughs)

    17. JR

      (laughs) I think it had a ... It had a pervasive effect. It did.

    18. JH

      I, yeah.

    19. JR

      But nothing like this.

    20. JH

      Well, that's right. Because you know, like, 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 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 or with your friends. You're arguing about things. You're eating. So it's, it's actually pretty social.

    21. JR

      Right.

    22. JH

      Uh, but now, kids are spending the latest, the latest survey Gallup finds that it's about, um, well, it's five hours a day just on social media. Just social media-

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. JH

      ... including TikTok 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, in all these ways, the new way that kids are digital is really not like what we had when we were, when we were on t- on t- watching TV.

  2. 2:29 – 6:31

    The opportunity cost of nine hours a day: what screens replace

    1. JR

      It's also an extraordinary amount of wasted resources. I'm always embarrassed when I look at my phone and I see my screen time. I'm like, "Four hours?"

    2. JH

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      That's four hours I could've done so many different things with.

    4. JH

      Yeah. 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 $100.00 to do something, how much does it cost? Well, you know, $100.00, but you could use that $100.00 and that hour for something else. So, what are the things you gave up? And when screen time goes up to, now it's about nine hours a day, uh, in, in the United States. Nine hours a day, not counting s- school, work-

    5. JR

      Average?

    6. JH

      Average. Average. So that-

    7. JR

      Is that for a certain age group?

    8. JH

      We're talking 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, y- y- you've got a full life. Here, you have to do this thing, this additional thing for nine hours." Like, that's insane. That would push out everything else, including sleep.

    9. JR

      Yeah. Um, when you are now talking to people that agree that this is an issue, what, what changed?

    10. JH

      So, you mean what changed, like, why is there now more agreement?

    11. JR

      Yes.

    12. JH

      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 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 I think that Jean Twenge and I really had, had good data showing, you know, there is an issue here. And then COVID 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 'em 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 locked 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, but when you look at the na- uh, mental health trends, uh, over the last 20 years, COVID was a blip. COVID actually ... You know what? I've actually got some, I've got some charts. You know what? If, if you don't mind, I'd like to actually show these, uh, 'cause you know at the start of our-

    13. JR

      Did you send the data to Jamie so he can pull it up?

    14. JH

      (clears throat) I haven't sent it yet, but I'll, I'll uh, oh. Right. 'Cause you want-

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. JH

      Do, do you wanna stop and do that? Or do you wanna-

    17. JR

      Yeah, let's pause real quick so you can-

    18. JH

      Okay. I'm sorry.

    19. JR

      ... give out the, Jamie will give you the email address. Okay. We're back.

    20. JH

      All right.

    21. JR

      What are those things?

    22. JH

      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 Anxious Generation. Here you go. You have two younger kids.

    23. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    24. JH

      Um, and so I've teamed up with the artist who did the book cover, uh, Dave Ciccarelli, um, who's created these incredible artworks. There's gonna be billboards. There w- He's putting together a s- a 12-foot-tall milk carton, uh, which is gonna be traveling around different cities with this...

    25. JR

      Mm. Missing childhood. Do they do that anymore?

    26. JH

      No.

    27. JR

      The milk carton thing.

    28. JH

      I don't think so.

    29. JR

      Mm.

    30. JH

      Yeah. So, uh, I don't know if your... I don't know what your kids think about social media and whether they think it's a good thing or a bad thing, but we are hopeful that members of Gen Z are gonna start... And they are starting to advocate that, "You know what? This is messing us up."

  3. 6:31 – 7:53

    The mental health inflection point (2011–2013) and gender differences

    1. JR

      Mm. Okay, so here's the graph.

    2. JH

      Okay. So this is the graph that I showed, uh, last time I was, I was on. What it shows... 'Cause 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 was about 4 to 5%. And it's flat, there's no change. Then all of a sudden around 2011, 2012, 2013, the nu- or 2012 to 2013, the numbers 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.

    3. JR

      What is the difference between boys and girls?

    4. JH

      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, uh, 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.

    5. JR

      Mm. So boys have gone up to about 7% and girls are way up to 20%.

    6. JH

      That's right. And that was 2019.

    7. JR

      So one out of five girls.

    8. JH

      That's what it was. That's right. And then-

    9. JR

      Was?

  4. 7:53 – 9:55

    COVID as a blip, TikTok as an accelerant, and the ‘great rewiring’ (2010–2015)

    1. JH

      Was. That's right. And then COVID comes in. So if we can have the next slide. So then COVID comes in-

    2. JR

      Whoa.

    3. JH

      ... and now this is, this is the exact same data set, just this is federal data. Uh, I just, uh, got a few extra years of data. And what you can see is that y- 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 COVID. That is COVID was... COVID did increase things. It did make kids more depressed. But as you can see, it's a blip.

    4. JR

      Mm.

    5. JH

      COVID was just a tiny effect compared to th- 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.

    6. JR

      It's still, even if you look at boys, or excuse me, if you look at girls from 2018 pre-COVID, that ramp is very steep, the upward ramp.

    7. JH

      That's right. And that might be TikTok. That is the-

    8. JR

      Mm.

    9. JH

      ... you know what... So what happens is, uh, a lot of things change around 2011, 2012. Um, 2010 is when you get the front-facing iPhone. It's when, uh, Instagram is founded, it's when, uh, kids are 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 high speed data. So they would use their flip phones and s- to get together with each other. They'd 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. TikTok becomes popular only really more 2019, you know, '18, '19, '20. Uh, and, uh, it's so new, we don't have good data on just TikTok, but I suspect that that sort of extra acceleration might be due to TikTok.

  5. 9:55 – 11:10

    What makes TikTok different: addictive fragments, disturbing content, and self-diagnosis culture

    1. JR

      What specifically about TikTok?

    2. JH

      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 stories are great. All around the world, people tell children's stories. There are myths. Um, you know, we see plays, we see television shows. And so just, uh, uh, 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. TikTok 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 are 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 s- and depends on what you're watching, but I suspect that so many of them are consuming stuff about mental illness. Um, it, it, it has a variety of effects that we're not even... we don't even understand yet.

  6. 11:10 – 16:24

    TikTok divestment vs. mental health regulation: national security and influence operations

    1. JR

      Now, I know that there's some push right now currently to ban TikTok. 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.

    2. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      Um, what is the argument about banning TikTok? What specifically are they, uh, talking about?

    4. NA

      The main thing they wanna do, uh, separate them from the company-

    5. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    6. NA

      ... ByteDance that owns them and just make 'em an American company.

    7. JH

      Yeah.

    8. NA

      So they can still operate, I suppose, they gotta figure that out, but...

    9. JR

      So it's a data issue?

    10. JH

      Uh, well, it's a national security issue. So le- yeah. Right. So thank you. Let's, let's separate the national security issue from the mental health issue.

    11. JR

      Okay.

    12. JH

      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 TikTok is different because it is a Ch- Chi- Chinese-owned company, and as many of your listeners will know, China, um, it says in whatever, not... it's co- it 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, Instagram Reels and, uh, you know, YouTube Shorts, they might have s- similar effects to TikTok, but the Chinese government can literally tell ByteDance to change the, ch- 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 kinda content." There was an incredible episode, uh, of, um, of w- you had Tr- Tristan 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, TikTok in Russia changed radically. Like, the government was on, like, the, you know, uh, TikTok was on it, like, "Yep, we're gonna do what, you know, what Putin wants us to do," or, you know. So, um, so the idea that the most influential, th- 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 Tristan 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, uh, this, this, I'm, I really strongly support this, this bill. I think Represen- Mike Gallagher, I think, was one of the ones proposing it, um, uh, or at least, uh, or at least certainly, uh, advocating for, for this, for this issue. Um, I hope people will not see it as a TikTok ban, but they'll see it as an urgent national security move to force b- uh, force ByteDance to sell to a non-Chinese owner.

    13. JR

      And specifically, what are they pointing to when they say national security risk? W- what specifically have they seen?

    14. JH

      Mm-hmm. So a lot of it seems to have to do with the data question. Um, like all the, you know, uh, Facebook pioneered this model in which the person using the product is not really the customer, they don't pay them money, they're, uh, you know, they're the product. 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 purposes, especially marketing and advertising. And so, uh, TikTok 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 like certain kinds of videos. Uh, you know, many people have written articles on how TikTok seems to have known they were gay before they did, that sort of thing. So, uh, TikTok 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," or 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.

    15. JR

      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?

    16. JH

      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 i- most of, 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. They can influence this.

    17. JR

      Right. You're seeing that with, uh, Palestine and Gaza.

    18. JH

      Yeah. I think so.

    19. JR

      Y- 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 TikTok. Um, trans stuff, and there's a, there's a, 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, uh, specifically, like female athletes. We had Riley Gaines-

    20. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    21. JR

      ... who was the female athlete that competed against Lia Thomas, and she has said that male, biologically male athletes should not be able to compete with biologically-

    22. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JR

      ... female athletes because they have a significant advantage. And she was banned from TikTok-

    24. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    25. JR

      ... just for saying that.

  7. 16:24 – 23:47

    Bots, the ‘Roman Colosseum’ public square, and proposed identity authentication

    1. JH

      Yeah. That's right. So th- you know, this relates to the larger issue that we talked about last 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 Lukianoff and I saw this in universities, why don't the university presidents stand up to the protesters who are shouting down visiting speakers? Why don't, w- isn't there a grownup in the room? And then we saw it in journalism, uh, 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 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 s- uh, diverse democracy, we have to be able to talk about things.

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. JH

      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 dart gun, everybody could shoot everyone. And that's when we began sort of, like, teaching on eggshells in universities because our students could really do a lot of damage if we said one word they didn't like.

    4. JR

      (smacks lips) And it's not just the students which is really disturbing. We've talked about this before. There was, uh, an FBI security, uh, specialist who, uh, estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of the Twitter accounts were bots.

    5. JH

      Oh, yeah.

    6. JR

      ... which is very strange, 'cause that means that they're, they're mobilizing specifically to try to push s- different narratives.

    7. JH

      Yeah. That's right. So if you think of ... You know, people say, "Well, you know, now Twitter 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 Colosseum. 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 ... It doesn't have to be a foreign intelligence service, it 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 s- 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.

    8. JR

      Have you ever sat down and tried to figure out a solution to this other than trying to encourage people not to use ... Jamie, did something happen to the volume? Just dropped lower. Okay, um, so, w- what was I just saying? We were talking about solutions-

    9. JH

      Yes.

    10. JR

      ... other than asking kids to not use it, which is very hard to do.

    11. JH

      Mm-hmm. 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 gonna do them 'cause, you know, uh, all of them are like, "The left likes and the right doesn't," or vice versa.

    12. JR

      Like, what are those ideas though? Let's-

    13. JH

      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 wanna open an account on Facebook or, or on, on X-

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. JH

      ... you have to at least prove that you're a person, and I think you should be able to ... You have to prove that you're a, 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 of the bots, that would make it much harder to influence, that would make us have much better platforms for democracy.

    16. JR

      Is that possible to do internationally?

    17. JH

      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, uh, you know, in the United ... most in the United States, but their users are all around the world, so yeah, that could be done.

    18. JR

      So, one of the things that people are nervous about when it comes to authentifica- au- authentification, authentication-

    19. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    20. JR

      ... is that if you could do that, then you could target individuals and they wouldn't be allowed to be anonymous. So you'd eliminate-

    21. JH

      No, no, no. That's-

    22. JR

      ... the possibility of whistleblowers.

    23. JH

      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.

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. JH

      Uh, and, you know, and 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.

    26. JR

      Right, but how would you ramp that up? Like, how would you implement that internationally? Like, say, if you're, you know-

    27. JH

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    28. JR

      ... talking about people in Poland-

    29. JH

      Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

    30. JR

      ... just pick a country.

  8. 23:47 – 25:45

    Collective action problem: why kids (and parents) can’t quit alone

    1. JH

      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 collectively ... There are certain things where, um, you know, like if, if you have a bunch of fishermen, um, and they realized, "Oh, we're overfishing, we're overfishing, you know, the lake, um, let's reduce our, our catch." And if one person does that and 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... uh, how would you feel if I took your Instagram or TikTok away?" They're like, "Oh, I'd hate that, I'd 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, uh, The Ti- The UK Times. Um, the woman ended by asking her 16-year-old, "Would you have liked there to be a social media ban till you were 16?" Or that g- 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 th- 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.

    2. JR

      So how would you do that, though?

    3. JH

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      How would you... w- 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?

  9. 25:45 – 31:45

    Haidt’s four norms to ‘free the anxious generation’ (and why phone-free schools work)

    1. JH

      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, uh, 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 them a flip phone. The Millennials had flip phones and they were fine. F- flip phones did not harm Millennials' mental health. They're o- 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 gonna 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.

    2. JR

      Yeah. That sounds great on paper. I just, I can't imagine that most parents would agree to it because most pa- there's just so many parents that don't pay attention.

    3. JH

      That's true. That is true.

    4. JR

      Especially two, two family, uh, families where two people are working.

    5. JH

      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 show them, here are four norms that are pretty easy to do if every- if others are doing them, and these are gonna make your kids happier, less mentally ill.

    6. JR

      Yeah, it sounds... 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 gonna give it up. They're not gonna 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-

    7. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    8. JR

      ... they'd be... they'd say yes.

    9. JH

      Yeah.

    10. JR

      But the idea of getting a b- a massive group of people to adopt this is highly unlikely.

    11. JH

      Well, you know, y- you may be right, but I'm encouraged because whenever I speak to Gen Z 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 off for our videotape and then you can-

    12. JR

      Okay, yeah, please.

    13. JH

      All right, so the first is no smartphone before high school. Second is no social media till 16. That one's gonna be a little harder to do. Um, but, um, you know, the big platforms like Instagram, the place where you're posting and the whole world is seeing and strangers are contacting 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 of the parents are doing it, me, I as a parent, you know, my, my, my kids are 14 and 17. Um, as long as many of the parents are saying 16 is the age, then it's very easy for me to say that also. That's the second norm.

    14. JR

      Yeah, if you... again, if you could get them to say it. And I think the kids would push back so hard because so many other kids are on it and that's how they interact with each other, so Snapchat-

    15. JH

      Right, but Joe, 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.

    16. JR

      Yes.

    17. JH

      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 and not others, that's okay with me. That's the way it's gonna be. And then, we'll see whether it spreads.

    18. JR

      And then, we'll see the data.

    19. JH

      Yeah. Well, uh, 'cause look at smoking, you know? Smoking was 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.

    20. JR

      And what was the third?

    21. JH

      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, uh, afterbabel.com, um, sh- uh, bringing together the research. When kids have a phone in their pocket in school, they're gonna be texting because if anyone is texting during the day, during the school day, they all have to check 'cause they don't wanna be out of the loop. They don't wanna 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. D- 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.

    22. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JH

      So there's just no reason why kids should have the phone on them. They should come in in the morning, put it in a phone locker or a Yondr 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 know, we have five minutes in the hallway, we actually talk," and you hear laughter.

    24. JR

      (laughs)

    25. JH

      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.

  10. 31:45 – 54:54

    Executive function at puberty, the future of AI/robotics, and ‘post-and-ghost’ coping

    1. JR

      Yeah. Um, so the assumption is that from 2012, kids are just much more distracted?

    2. JH

      Oh, my God. (smacks lips) I mean, look, Joe, I think I heard you say in one of, um ... Yeah, it was a conversation you had a few weeks ago with a comedian friend of yours, and I think this was a direct quote from you. "My fucking phone runs my goddamn life." Does that sound like you?

    3. JR

      Yeah, that sounds like me.

    4. JH

      Okay.

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. JH

      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 'cause at puberty is when the f- 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.

    7. JR

      Hmm. (smacks lips) Where do you think this is going? This is my concern, is that this is just the beginning-

    8. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    9. JR

      ... of this integration that we have, uh, with devices.

    10. JH

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      And that the, the social media model and it's been immensely profitable.

    12. JH

      Yes.

    13. JR

      And-

    14. JH

      Oh, my God, yes.

    15. JR

      Incredibly addictive-

    16. JH

      Yep.

    17. JR

      ... 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?

    18. JH

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      Have you paid attention to the-

    20. JH

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      ... t- technology, like-

    22. JH

      Like AI?

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. JH

      Yeah. Yes, so f- let me just draw a very, very sharp, bright 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, w- 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? W- who you, you, ha- 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, i- for young adults especially, is gonna 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 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, uh, you know, all sorts of expensive skin treatments, this is complete insanity.

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. JH

      So let's at least protect the kids until they're through puberty.

    27. JR

      Well, that would be nice.

    28. JH

      (laughs)

    29. JR

      That would be nice. I just-

    30. JH

      Kind of essential, I think.

  11. 54:54 – 1:02:31

    Overprotected offline, underprotected online: predators, free-range childhood, and moral panics

    1. JH

      So the f- uh, right. So the first three are about phones. No smartphone before high school, no social media till 16, phone-free schools. Okay. But if you take away the phones, and you don't kib-... you don't give kids back each other, and play time, and independence, what are they gonna do? You're gonna 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... Uh, you know, I'm a big fan of Lenore Skenazy, the woman who wrote Free-Range Kids. She and I co-founded an organization called Let Grow. Parents, please go to letgrow.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, uh, more... you know, less fragile. Uh, 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... So, let me ask you. The... I think our disagreement last time was, uh, I, I t- 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 something like, "Hmm, no. I'm not letting my kid go to sleepovers 'cause I don't trust the other families." Does that sound familiar to you?

    2. JR

      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.

    3. JH

      Yes. You had that also.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. JH

      We, we did talk about sleepovers, but we also talked-

    6. JR

      My kids have sleepovers.

    7. JH

      Okay.

    8. JR

      They've always had sleepovers.

    9. JH

      Okay.

    10. JR

      If you know the parents and you trust the parents-

    11. JH

      Yeah.

    12. JR

      ... it's a great way to give the kids independence-

    13. JH

      Okay.

    14. JR

      ... and have them interact with-

    15. JH

      Good.

    16. JR

      ... other people.

    17. JH

      Good. Yes.

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. JH

      So tell me that... But what was your policy with your kids, with your younger... with, uh, 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.

    20. JR

      Well, it's-

    21. JH

      What... Do you remember what age or grade?

    22. JR

      No, I don't. I mean, it's fine if you live in a good neighborhood. The, the problem is if you're... if... you know, childhood predators are real.

    23. JH

      Not really, not anymore. What I mean is-

    24. JR

      What do you mean?

    25. JH

      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.

    26. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JH

      Um, so there were child predators out there. That's true. They're all on Instagram now.

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. JH

      The kids aren't out, and Instagram, and, uh, especially Instagram, uh, makes it super easy for them to get in touch with, with children.

    30. JR

      Yeah.

  12. 1:02:31 – 1:21:22

    How social media empowers extremes: identitarianism, intimidation, and foreign ‘active measures’

    1. JH

      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, 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 the 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, uh, 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 happened in 2015 on campus that really elevated identitarianism into the dominant paradigm, not dominant in that most people believed it, but dominant in the sense that if you go against it, you're gonna be destroyed socially, and that's what cancel culture is. That's what Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, their new book, The Canceling of the American Mind, is about. Um, so yes, th- it's the people who are putting identity first, and that's sort of their religion and their morality. You know, I mean, they're welcome to live in the United States, but when they get, when they get influence in universities or school boards, yeah, bad stuff will happen.

    2. JR

      It's just bizarre the effect that it does have when people push back against identity politics. It's a small-

    3. JH

      (clears throat)

    4. JR

      ... very vocal minority-

    5. JH

      Mm-hmm.

    6. JR

      ... that pushes this agenda, and it's-

    7. JH

      That's right.

    8. JR

      ... it's not the majority of people.

    9. JH

      That's right.

    10. JR

      The majority of people mostly disagree with these ideas.

    11. JH

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. This is, again, a really important point about how our society has changed. (clears throat) Those of us from the 20th century still think in terms of public opinion, like, "Do most people believe this, or do most people not believe it?" And most people are sane. Most people are not at all crazy. Most people are pretty reasonable. And I think what's happened since social media became much more viral in 2009, 2010, um, is that the extremes are now much more powerful, and they're able to intimidate the moderates on their side. So on the right, you, uh, you know, uh, uh, the sort of the center right, you know, dr- what I call, like, you know, true conservatives or, like, Burkean, you know, Edmund Burke conservatives, you know, they get shot, and they get excluded, and there's not many of them in Congress anymore. And on the left, you have the far left, the identitarian left, you know, shooting darts into, you know, people like me, into, into, you know, anybody who, who is, you know, anybody who questions. So they shoot their moderates, and what you have is even though most people are still moderate and reasonable, our public discourse is dominated by the far right, the far left, and all these crazy fringe, you know... I mean, it can be, you know, Neo-Nazis on one side and then these, you know, identitarians defending minor-attracted people on the other side. So, don't lose faith in humanity. Lose... Well, don't lose faith in humanity. Recognize that we've moved into this weird, weird world because of social media in which it's hard to see reality and in which people are afraid to speak up, and so we get warped ideas rising to dominance even though very few people believe them.

    12. JR

      And I think this is where bots come into play-

    13. JH

      Yeah, they really amplify it.

    14. JR

      ... because I think, I really do believe that this is being amplified, whether it's by foreign governments or by special interest groups-

    15. JH

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      ... or by whatever, whoever it is is trying to push these specific narratives.

    17. JH

      Absolutely, and this can bring us right back to TikTok and the national security threat. So, Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent in the 20th century, and the KGB going back, I think it was in the '50s, they had some sort of a meeting or a, you know, something where they decided that they were gonna take, I think it's called active measures. You know, they were gonna-... try to mess up American democracy. And they would, you know, they'd spray paint racial slurs, they'd put swastikas on synagogues. They saw that we're a multiethnic democracy, we're making a lot of progress towards tolerance, and the Russians were trying to... the Soviets were trying to put a stop to that and make us hate each other. So, they were doing that back since the 1950s.

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. JH

      And it was expensive. They had to fly people over, or they had to try to win people over. You couldn't scale the operation. Um, but that's the tradition that Vladimir Putin comes from. Now, the Soviet Union falls in 1991. Um, I think he's, uh, I think he's, like, in Berlin or s- I can't remember where he was when it, you know, but, but he was very influenced by this and the humiliation of the Soviet Union. Um, and so, you know, he rises to power again in the 21st century. Do you think he suddenly no longer wants to mess with American democracy? Like, did he suddenly drop that desire? You know, we basically handed them the tools. We said, "Okay, you know, you can open as many Facebook accounts as you want, Twitter accounts. Open as many as you want. There's no identity authentication. There's no age verification. Create bots all you want, um, and have them mess with us." And Renee DiResta has a, has a book coming out soon. She really did amazing work to get to the bottom of this. Um, you know, they started running tests in 2013. They, they'd created accounts on all these platforms long before, but they started running tests. Could they, you know, could they get Americans to believe that an explosion had occurred at a n- a refinery plant in Louisiana? Yes. They made it all up, and people believed it. Um, could they get, uh, Americans to believe some, you know, extreme BLM post that was completely outrageous? Yes. And, you know, same thing, uh, you know, to enrage, uh, you know, to enrage people on the left. So, the R- we know that the Russians are messing with us. We know that the Russians know our weak point. Uh, and, and by Russians, again, I don't mean the Russian people.

    20. JR

      Right.

    21. JH

      I mean Vladimir Putin.

    22. JR

      The government.

    23. JH

      Uh, the government. Um, so we're, you know, we're handing them the tools and the instruction book for how to divide us, how to weaken us, how to make us lose our resolve and our will.

    24. JR

      Have you seen Yuri Bezmenov give a speech?

    25. JH

      Oh, is that the-

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. JH

      Oh, yeah.

    28. JR

      That-

    29. JH

      Yes. I've seen that.

    30. JR

      That conversation about the ideological-

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