Joe Rogan Experience #2121 - Jonathan Haidt

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. JHJonathan Haidt0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

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

   4. JHJonathan Haidt0:14

      Good to see you again, Joe.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      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. JHJonathan Haidt0:41

      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. JRJoe Rogan0:55

      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. JHJonathan Haidt1:07

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:07

      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. JHJonathan Haidt1:14

       (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:14

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

   12. JHJonathan Haidt1:16

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

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:20

       Yeah.

   14. JHJonathan Haidt1:20

       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. JRJoe Rogan1:28

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

   16. JHJonathan Haidt1:33

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:34

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

   18. JHJonathan Haidt1:38

       I, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       But nothing like this.

   20. JHJonathan Haidt1:39

       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. JRJoe Rogan1:58

       Right.

   22. JHJonathan Haidt1:58

       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. JRJoe Rogan2:09

       Yeah.

   24. JHJonathan Haidt2:09

       ... 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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:29

       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?"

   26. JHJonathan Haidt2:37

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:37

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

   28. JHJonathan Haidt2:40

       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-

   29. JRJoe Rogan3:07

       Average?

   30. JHJonathan Haidt3:08

       Average. Average. So that-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   And what are they…

   1. JHJonathan Haidt15:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      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?

   3. JHJonathan Haidt15:18

      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.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:40

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

   5. JHJonathan Haidt15:44

      Yeah. I think so.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:45

      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-

   7. JHJonathan Haidt16:10

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:10

      ... 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-

   9. JHJonathan Haidt16:19

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:19

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

   11. JHJonathan Haidt16:23

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:23

       ... just for saying that.

   13. JHJonathan Haidt16:24

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:36

       Yeah.

   15. JHJonathan Haidt17:36

       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.

   16. JRJoe Rogan18:02

       (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.

   17. JHJonathan Haidt18:17

       Oh, yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:18

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

   19. JHJonathan Haidt18:25

       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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan19:12

       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-

   21. JHJonathan Haidt19:26

       Yes.

   22. JRJoe Rogan19:26

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

   23. JHJonathan Haidt19:31

       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.

   24. JRJoe Rogan19:46

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

   25. JHJonathan Haidt19:48

       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-

   26. JRJoe Rogan20:00

       Yeah.

   27. JHJonathan Haidt20:00

       ... 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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:29

       Is that possible to do internationally?

   29. JHJonathan Haidt20:32

       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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan20:59

       So, one of the things that people are nervous about when it comes to authentifica- au- authentification, authentication-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Right, but Joe, you're…

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      are on it and that's how they interact with each other, so Snapchat-

   2. JHJonathan Haidt30:02

      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.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:08

      Yes.

   4. JHJonathan Haidt30:08

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:25

      And then, we'll see the data.

   6. JHJonathan Haidt30:26

      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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:36

      And what was the third?

   8. JHJonathan Haidt30:37

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:21

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JHJonathan Haidt31:21

       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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:40

       (laughs)

   12. JHJonathan Haidt31:40

       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.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:45

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

   14. JHJonathan Haidt31:52

       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?

   15. JRJoe Rogan32:06

       Yeah, that sounds like me.

   16. JHJonathan Haidt32:06

       Okay.

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:07

       (laughs)

   18. JHJonathan Haidt32:09

       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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:48

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

   20. JHJonathan Haidt32:56

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:56

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

   22. JHJonathan Haidt33:01

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan33:01

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

   24. JHJonathan Haidt33:07

       Yes.

   25. JRJoe Rogan33:07

       And-

   26. JHJonathan Haidt33:07

       Oh, my God, yes.

   27. JRJoe Rogan33:08

       Incredibly addictive-

   28. JHJonathan Haidt33:10

       Yep.

   29. JRJoe Rogan33:10

       ... 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?

   30. JHJonathan Haidt33:18

       Yeah.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      And, uh, I think the implementation-

   2. JHJonathan Haidt45:02

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:02

      ... of technology is what's gonna facilitate that. That we're ... I think we're, you know, how many years away from Neuralink and something s-

   4. JHJonathan Haidt45:09

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:09

      ... similar to it that's going to change how we interact completely.

   6. JHJonathan Haidt45:14

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:14

      And that it's not going to be a solu- it's not gonna be a question of whether or not you opt out, but whether you pick up your device. Your device is going to be a part of you.

   8. JHJonathan Haidt45:22

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:22

      And there'll be incentives that, uh, whether it's performance incentives, whether it's, uh, the, you're gonna have more bandwidth, whether, wh- what, whatever it is, it's-

   10. JHJonathan Haidt45:32

       Mm-hmm. A competitive advantage.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:34

       Yeah, that's the real fear-

   12. JHJonathan Haidt45:35

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:35

       ... of something like Neuralink or whatever-

   14. JHJonathan Haidt45:37

       That's right.

   15. JRJoe Rogan45:37

       If they can figure out a Neuralink that doesn't require surgery-

   16. JHJonathan Haidt45:40

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JRJoe Rogan45:40

       ... if they could figure out something that does that without surgery-

   18. JHJonathan Haidt45:43

       Mm-hmm.

   19. JRJoe Rogan45:43

       ... the advantage of having that-

   20. JHJonathan Haidt45:45

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan45:45

       ... in a competitive sense, in terms of, like, business and, and technology and industry, it's, it's gonna be massive and it's gonna be so difficult to get people-

   22. JHJonathan Haidt45:54

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan45:54

       ... to not do that, that it's going to be like phones. I mean, I remember when I moved to Los Angeles in 1994, I bought a Motorola StarTAC, and I was like, "Look at me."

   24. JHJonathan Haidt46:06

       (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:06

       I got a ph- I had a phone in 1989.

   26. JHJonathan Haidt46:09

       Oh, wow. One of the big ones that went to a satellite?

   27. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       It was actually connected to my car-

   28. JHJonathan Haidt46:13

       Oh, okay.

   29. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       ... in 1989. And it was very advantageous. My friend Bill Blumenreich, who owns, uh, the, he owned The Comedy Connection, he owns The Wilbur Theater now in Boston, and I got a lotta gigs from him because he could call me-

   30. JHJonathan Haidt46:27

       Mm-hmm.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:13:22

   I- it seems purely…

   1. JHJonathan Haidt1:00:00

      or make them look bad-... I think, you know, I think people who approach children for sexual goals, I am very happy to have them slandered and labeled and, uh, and separated. Um, but I, you know, I suspect that some people, once they lock this in as a group that's being marginalized, they say, "Well, we have to, we have to defend them," and we don't think about what the hell we're actually saying.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

      I- it seems purely an academic thing. It seems that this is something that it- with people that only exist in sort of an academic space, where they... Uh, i- it's almost like, uh, an intellectual exercise in understanding oppression.

   3. JHJonathan Haidt1:00:40

      Mm-hmm. That-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:41

      That it's not... It's... You can't apply it in the real world. It's just, it's too fucked up that the-

   5. JHJonathan Haidt1:00:47

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

      ... the consequences of it are horrific-

   7. JHJonathan Haidt1:00:49

      Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:50

      ... normalizing victimizing children.

   9. JHJonathan Haidt1:00:52

      That's right. Now, the one thing... So before we go any further with this particular topic, I would wanna point out one of the problems that our social media world has given us, which is somewhere in all of the academy, in all the universities, some philosopher, let's say, proposed that term or raised an idea. So, this has been going on for thousands of years. Someone in a conversation proposes a provocative idea, "What if we think about this as minor-attract-..." you know, a minor-attracted person? They put that idea out, and then other people say, "No, that's really stupid," um, and it doesn't catch on. 'Cause this is not an idea that's gonna catch on, even in the academy. So, but I think where we are now is, I'm guessing, someone proposed this, somebody else got wind of it, posted it online, and now you're gonna have a whole media ecosystem going crazy about this terrible idea. So, I don't know. Maybe can you look up, um, minor-attra- like, minor-attracted person? Is this just, like, a thing that was from one academic talk, or is this an actual movement?

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:52

       Well, I've seen politicians discuss it.

   11. JHJonathan Haidt1:01:54

       No way.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:55

       Yes.

   13. JHJonathan Haidt1:01:55

       Wa- wait, wait, wait. As, like, as, like, decriminalizing or de- destigmatizing?

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:59

       Destigmatizing.

   15. JHJonathan Haidt1:02:00

       Oh, God.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:00

       Yeah. There was a recent politician that w- g- went viral for this discussion.

   17. JHJonathan Haidt1:02:06

       Oh, no. All right, then maybe I'm wrong.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:02:07

       There's more, more than one.

   19. JHJonathan Haidt1:02:07

       Okay.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:02:07

       There was two specific women that were doing that, and I didn't-

   21. JHJonathan Haidt1:02:11

       Oh, Geez.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:11

       ... investigate whether these women had families or what, what it was.

   23. JHJonathan Haidt1:02:15

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:15

       But that this is this push to, to try to alleviate bullying or alleviate-

   25. JHJonathan Haidt1:02:25

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:25

       ... shame or alleviate the stigma that's attached to what they're calling an identity.

   27. JHJonathan Haidt1:02:31

       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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:04:01

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

   29. JHJonathan Haidt1:04:09

       (clears throat)

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:04:09

       ... very vocal minority-

Episode duration: 2:01:40