Modern WisdomHow Modern Life Is Making Us Less Happy - Jonathan Haidt
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,083 words- 0:00 – 1:10
The Uniqueness of the New Generation
- CWChris Williamson
Doesn't every generation complain about the next one that's coming along? Is what we're seeing at the moment not just more old hat that's occurred for every generation previously?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, well, yes and no. Yes, every generation complains, and the complaints tend to be similar, and that's gone on not since the dawn of history. People always quote, you know, Pl- Socrates or something, but really that begins when you start getting modernity, you start getting each generation is changing, you know, around the 16th, 17th century in, in Europe. So yes, that's been going on a long time, but it's never before been the case that the mental health of the young generation suddenly was really different and really bad. So, you know, the main argument I get against me is just the one you just said, that, "Oh, this is just another moral panic. There's nothing going on here. This is what always happens." No, this is not what always happens. You don't ever before get a doubling of the suicide rate of preteen girls. You don't ever get an across the board, across many nations plummeting of mental health all beginning right around 2012, 2013. So no, this time is really different.
- 1:10 – 7:06
What Does a Good Childhood Look Like?
- JHJonathan Haidt
- CWChris Williamson
What is it that children need to do in childhood? Like, uh, we don't think about it that importantly, it's just, it's, it's just the thing that you do before you get to puberty-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... where you start to become a person, but-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... those experiences are very formative. Wh- what does a good childhood look like?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Now thanks for setting it up that way because there's so much focus on the phones and social media, and, and I was focused on that too, but what I decided to do in writing this book, in writing The Anxious Generation, was I'm not even gonna talk about the phones and social media until I've taken readers through w- what is childhood, why do we have it, how is human childhood different from every other animal, including chimpanzees? And so, you know, if you start just with mammals, all mammals have the same life plan, which is huge investment from the parents or the mother in the, in the baby, long childhood, big brain. How do you wire up the brain? Play. Play is the thing. Your brain doesn't grow from nursing. Your brain grows from moving away from your mother, trying to climb something. Uh, you know, anyone who's had a, a puppy or a kitten knows they wanna play all the time, 'cause they have to practice the skills to wire up the brain. So we have to let our kids wire up their brains. Now humans are different because we have much bigger brains and we have culture. This is crucial. Other animals, they grow as, you know, sort of as fast as they can and then they reproduce. Humans, we grow fast and then we slow down, right at age seven to thir- 12, 13. We're not growing very fast. And it's thought that that period is a critical period for cultural learning. Um, all the way through puberty we're really trying to soak in, how do we do things around here? Um, what do adults do? How do I approach the opposite sex or sexuality? So there's a lot of learning that has to happen, and the problem is we've taken that learning period and we've said instead of learning from grownups around you or even from, you know, older kids in your neighborhood, how about if we just hook you up, here's a phone or an iPad, we'll just hook you up and you can get socialized by random weirdos on the internet who are selected by an algorithm for being really extreme. How about that? Well, that's kind of what we've done.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I, uh, uh, I'm around kids more and more as my friends, um, finally become less man-children and actually become fathers themselves of, of actual children, and it's so interesting, like my, my group of friends largely are pretty red-pilled on this, th- the concerns about exposure to technology, but you know, when you go for dinner at the sort of times that you do with guys that have got families, you end up going a little bit early, which means you're also around other families. And we go to these restaurants and I'll get to see, you know, how other families that probably just aren't aware of this are, are anesthetizing a boisterous child, and a lot of the time at the table, uh, you know, it's the kid starts to act up, they're a little bit bored, and the parents are trying to have a conversation, or the adults at the table are trying to have a conversation, and one of them just goes, "Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, you know, open up the phone-"
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"... pass the phone." And the, the maddest thing that I've seen from sort of two- to three-year-old children is their ability to skip ads on YouTube. Like they understand the difference-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... between an advert-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... and the button and how they can get past it. And I'm like, "Well first off, look, if you're giving your kid this to anesthetize them, buy YouTube Premium. It's 10, 10 bucks a month and it's, it'll change your life."
- JHJonathan Haidt
(laughs) Gets rid of the ads, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but also the, this level of engagement with, you know, the capitalist system of, of, of, of Facebook pixel tagging and, and all that stuff from two years old is crazy.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. No, that's right. That's right. You know, we're very protective of our kids, and you know, if I said to people, "How about, how about if we have this thing that w- w- we have a special door, a special window and we're gonna put it on your child's crib. And advertisers and corporations can come and they can just communicate with your kid, and you have nothing to do with it. What do you, what do you think? Is that okay?" Like no, we would never let that happen. And then suppose when your daughter is 11, 12, 13, we'll put a special window on her bedroom and strange men can come and they can talk to her through the window, they can look at her through the window. How about that? Would you do that? Like no, of course you wouldn't do that. But that's kind of what we're doing, you know, we're, we're, we're saying here companies can have access to our kids and they can train them with the stimulus response paradigm. And strangers can have access to our children, uh, once they get a social media account, and they can try to convince them to meet up in the real world, they can try to sell them things, all kinds of stuff like that. Actually, I want to pick up, you used the word anesthetize, which is a very good word here, because you know as many people know, like 100, 150 years ago, there were a variety of medications for children, like that had opiates in them to calm the child and help them sleep. Uh, or we'd give them alcohol. Uh, we didn't know that these things interfered with, with their development.... and we all discovered as soon as we got our first iPhone, I mean, I have video. You know, like, my- my son was born in 2006, and so many of our videos of me videotaping him end with him reaching for the phone and saying, "iPhone, iPhone," like he- he, you know, he wants it, he needs it 'cause it's so stimulating. Back then, in the early days of all this stuff, you know, 2008 to 2012, we thought that technology was magical, and we thought, you know, "Yeah, let's let our kids get stimulated by, like, stimulation. Isn't that gonna be good for their brain development?" Like, so yeah, it- it seemed okay to do it. It'll give him a head start. He'll be, you know, digital native. So he'll be comfortable with this technology. And besides, everyone else is doing it, so it must be okay. So yeah, we ended up anesthetizing them.
- CWChris Williamson
Let's back out of the technology thing. We're gonna get onto that,
- 7:06 – 10:59
Changes in Parenting Styles
- CWChris Williamson
but let's just talk about, like, what has changed with regards to parenting styles outside of technology-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... over the last few decades. How- how has this created-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... the- the raw material-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... foundation for the kids that would grow up?
- JHJonathan Haidt
No, that's a great question, and it's one that I don't write enough about 'cause I am focused on the technology. But Gregg and I did write about this in The Coddling of the American Mind, that, um, there is a long-term transition over generations as... when life is hard and families are big, um, and religion is an important part of life, you tend to have a very structured... there, you know, kids are grown up with a lot of structure. There are dos and don'ts. There are punishments if you misbehave. Um, and th- there's a big liberal-conservative split on this. In general, conservatives want more strict child-rearing. Progressives want more lenient, liberal, now called gentle parenting. And in general, as- as our societies have gotten wealthier and safer and our families get smaller, we've all kind of moved over to the gentle side. Uh, you know, when I was a kid, spanking was normal, but it was, like, only for the ver- like, my- my sisters and I, we got spanked, like, a few times when we did something really terrible. Uh, but now it's, you know, at least in, you know, educated circles, like, that's almost unheard of. Whereas a couple of generations before, there would have been a lot more physical punishment.
- CWChris Williamson
Your school teacher would have-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes, that's right.
- CWChris Williamson
... enacted discipline.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Schools would- would hit the kids, that's right.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So, you know, so in many ways, it's progress. On the other hand, if you take out, if you take out the threats, the punishments, all the negative stuff, and you kind of leave it with, like, what you see a lot of parents doing, like, "Now, Johnny, was that a wise choice or an unwise choice?" As opposed to saying, "No, you do not hit your sister."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so I think we've become a little too gentle, too unstructured, and this might also help explain a really interesting twist in the data, that... It's not really in the book. I found a lot of it even afterwards. Um, is that the mental health crisis is much worse for children in families on the left than on the right. Um, so liberals or progressives have always had slightly higher levels of neuroticism, anxiety, depression, just a little bit more than conservatives. It- it's a big, you know, long-studied thing. Conservatives are a little bit happier than liberals, adults and children. And if you plot out the levels of, you know, of happiness or the negative stuff, like meaninglessness, on all the graphs in my book you'll see, like, you get a straight line until around 2011, 2012, and then all of a sudden, the lines go up like a hockey stick. But if you break it out by, uh, are you a liberal or conservative, which is asked on one or two surveys, um, it's the liberal kids, especially the liberal girls, they go up first and fastest. Something happened, whatever it was that changed in the early 2010s, it hit liberal kids, especially liberal girls, the hardest. And I think part of it is what we're talking about. If you are rooted deeply in structure and community, and you have to go to church every Sunday, or, you know, you're an Orthodox Jewish kid and you've got Shabbat, you've got, you know, 24 hours where there are no devices and you're with your family, moving to the digital technology didn't wash these kids out to sea. But if you're a more progressive family, usually a smaller family, uh, more econ- more mobile, you move around more perhaps, um, you have weaker ties, a lot of freedom, a lot of creativity, but those kids, uh, seem to be especially vulnerable to being washed away in the early 2010s. It's not just left/right, it's also religious conservative- uh, religious or secular. So- so secular, religious... I'm sorry, uh, secular, conservative kids show the least increase. Everybody goes up, but they show the least increase. Whereas, uh, progressive non-religious kids or families, that's where you see the biggest increase in mental health problems.
- 10:59 – 15:16
Lack of Discipline in Modern Parenting
- JHJonathan Haidt
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder how much of it from the liberal, progressive side comes from this very softly, softly gentle approach to discipline in parenting, because, you know, I- I hesitate dropping into bro psychology this early in a podcast, but fuck it. Like, if you think about your level of discomfort exposure, what you're- what you're comfortable being uncomfortable with, h- h- how often has someone told you no, how often have you been told that you're in the wrong, how often has someone raised their voice at you, how often has someone been stern, you know, all of these opportunities are- are times where you learn, "Okay, I can self-regulate. This is-"
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yep, exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
"... this can happen to me and I'm still safe."
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"This can happen to me-"
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
"... and I'm still loved. No one's going to abandon me. I..."
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
"This isn't a comment on my moral character or my worth as a human." This is an in-built part of being a fallible, flawed human that makes errors. And Mom and Dad are going to say, "You don't hit your sister. You don't do that. Go... You're on time-out. Go sit on the step, and sit on the step until you've calmed yourself down." And if you've never experienced that and you conti- uh, like, you don't even need, you don't n- need to know anything about human psychology-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yep, that's right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to know that if you train a system on a type of stimulus, it will become hyper-sensitized when you get outside the bounds of that stimulus.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's where we are.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right.No, I think that's perfect. Um, I can just add a little psychological color to it in two ways. Uh, one is to bring in the concept of anti-fragility, which I hope many of your listeners are already familiar with. Um, you know, some things are fragile. A glass is fragile, you don't let kids play with it, it'll break, so we give them plastic, which is resilient. Uh, if a kid drops it, it won't break, but it doesn't get better. Uh, but some things are anti-fragile, um, they need to be stressed and strained and dropped and, and, and, uh, suffer setbacks in order to get strong. Uh, and this comes from this, my NYU colleague, Nassim Taleb. So bones and muscle are anti-fragile. If you raised your kids by saying, "I never want you to put stress on your bones," you know, "Never go down stairs, take the elevator," you know, th- their bones are gonna get weak. Same thing with muscle. The immune system is anti-fragile and kids are anti-fragile. So that's o-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... yeah, that's like the psychology underneath a lot of what you were just saying. But then there's another one, which I haven't really t- talked about publicly, 'cause it sort of can easily get taken out of context. Maybe that'll happen here when I, when, when <|agent|><|en|>
- CWChris Williamson
Never.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... we have this back.
- CWChris Williamson
We have the most-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Uh... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... unreasonably reasonable audience on the internet, you'll be fine.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay. It's really important for kids to learn how to accept injustice. Now let me quickly keep talking so that that doesn't just get-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
... taken out of context. Um, you know, oh, you know, John Haidt, you know, white guy says that-
- CWChris Williamson
Support.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... people need to just suck it up-
- CWChris Williamson
Ye-
- JHJonathan Haidt
... and accept injustice. No, but, but that-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 15:16 – 20:47
The Importance of Risk in Play
- CWChris Williamson
I spent a lot of time running a big events company in the UK, so I ran nightclubs for, for a decade and a half.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm. Fine.
- CWChris Williamson
And one of the things that I very quickly, uh, realized stepping into that industry is, it's full of scumbags.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
I was trained in the art of scumbaggery, but, uh, you know, if I'd gone into that... I, I, I had this really interesting experience because I was at university, right? So I was sitting and I was doing two business degrees, did a master's and, uh, and a bachelor's in business stuff. But I was running a business, and from doing nightlife you get to see HR, marketing, B2B, B2C, hiring, firing, every... You see-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the full works, right? It's a full gamut of everything. So I was getting to learn about business 101, but I was also experiencing business. And what I was being taught and what I was experiencing were diverging very quickly. But the interesting point here is, up until you leave university, most people can campaign their way out of situations that they don't want to be in. "This is wrong. The, uh, standards that this professor is holding me to are too high." You know, we've seen this happen a good bunch.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yup.
- CWChris Williamson
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? P- people being... When you enter the world of business, someone doesn't need to play by your rules. They can, they can bring you up to the brink of signing a contract, you're balls deep in lawyer fees, everything's ready to go, you've bet the business on it, and they can go, "Uh, by the way, this is..." It's called crank-on confirmation, is, is the, the actual tactic. And they just crank the fuck out of you and they go, "Hey, um, yeah, we're gonna pay 20% on this while this deal's dead in the water." And you go, "No-"
- JHJonathan Haidt
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
"... you, you can't do this because I've got-"
- JHJonathan Haidt
Wow, it's like blackmail. "... I, I'm s- I'm..." And they, "Yeah, we know that-" Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
"... you're this deep in it, which is why we want to pay 20% less." Like, that's just the-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh my god.
- CWChris Williamson
... way that business works. Like this is-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... what crank-on confirmation is, and it happens in nightlife over and over and over and over again.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Ugh.
- CWChris Williamson
My point being, if you, like, if you're unable to deal with someone coming and twisting you, or you're going, "All right-"
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"... well, I know that you need me. Let's, let's play a game of chicken here with who needs-"
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"... who the most," you're just gonna be so dysregulated that you can't deal with anything. My point being, this sort of hyper... I, I think of it like an Overton window of sensitivity. You know, you have the entire gamut of human experience and then you have-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... this range within which you're, uh, familiar. The tighter that you make that, any small movement outside of that is gonna feel like, like-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... dysregulation. And I suppose as well, this gets into something I've spoken about with Dr. Anna Machin and, and, and tons of people to do with child rearing, the importance of risky play, and why-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... that's so important.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes. That is such a key word, and that, this is something I think that won't be as familiar to, uh, to listeners. Um, you know, even listeners who might've read The Coddling of the American Mind or might know about the importance of play. There's really interesting research, there's a, uh, a play researcher from Norway named Ellyn Sandsteter, and she has a couple of papers from 2010 and more recently on the need for risk, specifically risk and thrill. And the key word that I really resonate with is thrill. So, you know, we know that even if you know kids need to play-... but we don't want them to play in any place dangerous. We don't want them to climb any trees. As far as I can tell, um, New Zealand is the only English-speaking country left in the world where children are allowed to climb trees. You know, like, I remember cli- you know, at, at recess when I was a kid, if there was a tree, you know, sometimes we'd climb a tree. Um, but we, we sort of decided we have to keep kids safe from danger, so nothing that could have any real danger. But what Sandzeder points out is why are kids seeking out danger? Why is this almost a universal feature? Why are kids doing things that they're almost certainly gonna make them get hurt? You know, why are boys doing jumps on their bicycle? They know they're gonna get hurt. Why are kids skateboarding down steep hills? They know they're gonna fall at some point. And the reason, she says, is because, uh, part of our evolutionary programming is to test our abilities, learn to manage risks that are small risks, uh, because life is full of r- once you're not protected by your parents, boy is life dangerous out in the jungle, out in the wild, out in the world of nightclubs. Um, so we have to... A part of our, our mandate as a child is try things that are a little bit dangerous, and you get to select how dangerous it is. And so, you know, when I would take my kids to Coney Island here in New York City, in a big, you know, amusement park area, um, there, the kids like in the car, there would be so much discussion of like, "Are, are, are you gonna do the Thunderbolt today or the, you know, the Slingshot?" Like, "Oh, no, that's, no, that's too scary for me." You know, everyone, they're all trying to adjust. But then once they do it, they come off. I mean, they are jumping. They are exhilarated. The thrill is what they've been craving. And what Sandzeder says is it's that process of being afraid, being really afraid, like the rollercoaster, it's about to go over the top, and it's about... Like, you're really afraid. And then on the way down, you're screaming, and it's thrilling and pleasurable and fearful, and then when you get to the bottom and you make it off the other end, it's just thrilling. And when you do that, you're actually changing your brain. You do that over and over again, and you develop the brain of a person who can face down some scumbag or some person threatening them, who can actually deal with threats and stand their ground and think quickly and not just panic and melt down. So our kids need risk and thrill. That means they're gonna get hurt. They're gonna sometimes break bones. Um, but the alternative is to keep them soft so that they're gonna break their minds.
- 20:47 – 27:16
Is the Education System Ruining Kids?
- CWChris Williamson
What... Uh, i- this obviously rolls from infancy, parents, into preschool, school, secondary school. What's happening to children when they get into school and they are first faced with test scores and assessment and, and structure? You have to, "You get to school at this time, and no, you can't do that, and the teacher..." Like, uh, how much of this is laid at the feet of parents, and how much of this is laid at the feet of the education system?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, it's a kind of a... Yeah, it is a mix. Um, the sort of the normal human progression is up until age six, seven, maybe even eight, um, there's really no value at all to homework or having too much structure. You know, by eight, nine, ten, you know, they, they, they can really learn, um, you know, to, to fit in, to conform. But the early grades, especially kindergarten and first grade here in the US, um, there's really very little evidence that they benefit from being pushed to read faster or to learn math faster. We have this naive idea that if they start learning multiplication in kindergarten, they will end up in high school further ahead. It's kind of a naive notion that we'll give them a head start, and they'll end up further ahead. But that's not true. In Scandinavia, especially Finland, where they don't really start kids until age seven, they don't really do any academic stuff until age seven, and their kids are among the best in the world in all these academic measures. So, um, so I guess I would say at a certain point, yeah, they do need to learn all that stuff. Uh, they do need to be self-regulating, and if they're gonna fit into a free market capitalist economy and be functioning people and be prosperous, they need self... They need all those skills. But that doesn't mean you have to really start them very strictly early on. What kids need in kindergarten and first grade is especially a lot more play than we give them. Uh, we need to really back off on the homework and the heavy academics, uh, in kindergarten and first grade is my opinion.
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening to test scores with regards to students?
- JHJonathan Haidt
So, uh, there are two... There's a global measure of test scores around the world. That's PISA, the Programme for International something Assessment. Um, Scholastic, I suppose. And, uh, with PISA, what we see is that scores were going up from the '90s. I think it started in the '90s. Scores were sort of going slowly up, um, from the '90s to the 2012 assessments every three years. And beginning at the 2012 assessment, some of them start to go down, and then they go down further in the most recent, and everybody points to that and says, "Oh, COVID. Wow, COVID was so terrible." And it was. It was terrible that we took kids out of school. It was terrible that we took kids who weren't in any danger and said, "You don't get to go to school, uh, because what if you bring home the virus to an adult?" Um, and so it's true that COVID, you know, being out of school did hurt test scores, but what people are only just beginning to realize, when you look at those graphs, it didn't start with COVID. It started when kids and everybody got on phones around 2012. In America, we have the NAEP, N-A-E-P, National Assessment of Educational Progress. It's called The Nation's Report Card. Same thing. There we have data back from the '70s. So s- we were making progress. Like, kids literally, you know, in fourth or eighth grade, whenever they measure it, kids literally were learning more about math, science and, and better at... And reading. There was progress for decades, slow but steady progress until 2012, and then it begins to reverse. And yes, it reverses even more during COVID, but the reversal started around 2012. So-Um, I think the main thing we should be focusing on here is phones in schools. Um, we'll, you know, we'll talk more about what phones are doing to all of us, but the idea that a child has access, you know, like a seven, uh, you know, a seventh grader has a smartphone in their pocket, they're going to text if any... If the phone is available, someone is texting. And if someone is texting or group texting or posting on, on, on Instagram, then everyone has to be checking. Otherwise at lunch, they're gonna be the one who doesn't know the thing that happened during third period. So once kids... Uh, around 2012 is when we get the phone-based childhood, that's ro- rough- that's roughly when teens switch from flip phones to smartphones, right around then. As soon as that happens, they're not paying as much attention in school, they're not learning enough, they're not learning as much as they did, they're not paying as much attention to each other, and they start getting lonelier. So after 2012, our kids are getting stupider and lonelier. And I think a lot of it, not all, but a lot of it is because of the phone.
- CWChris Williamson
What was that article that you tweeted about Gen Z reading books for pleasure, or them not doing it?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes, so Jean Twenge, uh, who's been fantastic, she was one of the first to really call attention to this in 2017 that something big is happening to our kids. And Jean is a master of these four giant data sets that we have in America, long-running surveys. Uh, Monitoring the Future goes back to the 1970s. Every year they, uh, they interview repres- large samples of 12th graders, 10th graders, and eighth graders. Um, and so we have decades of data. And one of the questions they, they ask a lot of questions, one of them is, uh, you know, "Have you... Uh, how often do you read books for pleasure?" Or, "Have you read a book for pleasure in the last month?" I can't remember the exact timing. And what, what Jean shows is that the number who have read no books, that, I think that's how it is, like h- you know, "How many have you read," you know, zero in the last year for pleasure or, you know, one to three or five to 10. The number who have read zero books in the last year, uh, has been going up for a while, it didn't start in 2012. Um, as kids are watching more television, cable TV, going on the internet, book reading has been declining, being replaced by o- by other screens. That's been going on for a long time. But it accelerates after 2012 because again, once you have a smartphone and you have social media which is gonna suck up all of your time, it, there is no limit to how much you need to consume or post or monitor. So, um, life on a smartphone, what I'm calling the phone-based childhood, takes up so much time there is no time for hobbies or reading or anything. And so Jean shows these dramatic graphs of, you know, the number who never read a book, those go up, and the number of books people read on average goes down. We have a nation of young people who have read very, very few books.
- 27:16 – 30:45
The Problem With Ideological Academia
- JHJonathan Haidt
- CWChris Williamson
Is there anything else that we need to say about the education system and what it's got wrong? Maybe from a disciplinarian standpoint-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... w- we know about this sort of, um, early thrusting of academic achievement onto kids in the hopes that it kind of, starting earlier pushes them out ahead more late.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Is there anything else aside from the technology that the education system's-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... got wrong?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh my goodness, yes. So, um, one of the... You know, uh, in this book I'm trying to be totally not political, uh, and, and just really just focus on the kids. But since I'm talking with you, Chris, I'll, I'll share some other thoughts related to other parts of my-
- CWChris Williamson
We're all bigots here. It's fine, Jonathan.
- JHJonathan Haidt
(laughs) Um, so education schools have been accused of being ideologically progressive since the 1930s. Uh, and they are, they lean left. Um, the military leans right, the police lean right, the arts lean left, education, education schools lean left. That's just the way it is, that's not necessarily a problem. But what I've been focused on since 2011 as a social scientist is the loss of viewpoint diversity. When everyone trying to figure something out, if everyone's on the left or the right you don't get conf- you, you don't get your confirmation biases challenged and you start getting what I call, you start getting structural stupidity. That is, you know, someone can say something really stupid and, and no one dares to challenge them because if you challenge them you look like you're a conservative or, you know, or a sexist or a racist or something, you'll be accused of something, so people just keep their mouth shut. I get emails from students in, uh, grad programs in education periodically and they say basically, "Help, I came here to learn how to teach. All we learn how to do is racial justice and equity. Like we never learn... You know, everything is oppression, everything's racism, we don't learn how to teach." So I can't say this is true for all ed schools, but for the elite schools I think they are largely become very, very ideological. They were that before 2015. But in the kind of the great awokening that we've had and the real intensification of, of sort of the left/right culture war, uh, you know, we can see the right going off the deep end in a lot of ways. But you know, if we're a- talking about schools, it's really, it's th- you know, the left and the education schools. So I think that, um, there's always been a debate between sort of progressive educational ideals and conservative, and I've always seen that as a yin/yang sort of thing. Like you actually need the tension of them pushing. But since there are very few conservatives left in higher education, um, you know, in the social sciences and in edu- and in education schools, it's all now very, very ideologically progressive, and that means you have a lot more the gentle parenting, the focus on equality of outcomes by race, um, regardless of inputs, let's get rid of tests, let's get rid of honors classes. Uh, so I think education schools have been working very, very hard to lose the trust of centrists, Republicans, uh, and anyone who actually cares that their kids get an education. Um, so again, uh, you know, in the current book on mental health, I, I'm not, I don't want to get, get into it, but if we're talking about what's happening to our kids' schools and education, I think, I think the educational establishment is becoming structurally stupid. Um, and we saw clear evidence of this in San Francisco during COVID w-... where the school board was, you know, they were totally focused on pulling down statues of Abe Lincoln and renaming schools. Um, you know, um, and the, the citizens of San Francisco who are, you know, very far left, were so fed up with it, they voted out the school board. Um, so yeah. I think the education system is, is becoming, in this country, very, very ideological.
- 30:45 – 38:47
Latest Data on Social Media’s Impact
- JHJonathan Haidt
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about the newest data that you found around smartphones. You know, you've been circling this wagon for quite a while.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, and spent a good bit of time on this book, since your last one-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... which was something not too dissimilar.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What, what are the primary harms of technology on kids, and, and what's the latest-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... data about that?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Sure. So there's been, you know, a lot, there's a huge academic literature on whether... We all agree that there's a correlation. We all agree, it turns out, even, there's a few major sort of skeptics and critics, and then there's Jean Twenge and me on the other side, and that's sort of the, where a lot of the debate has been. And it turns out, we actually agree on the size of the correlation between how much time you spend on social media and how anxious and depressed you are.
- CWChris Williamson
When you say, "We agree," do you mean-
- JHJonathan Haidt
It's a-
- CWChris Williamson
... you and Jean, or you and the other side?
- JHJonathan Haidt
No. No, me and the other side. They've done a number of meta-analyses and they say, "You know, the correlation is around 0.1 to 0.15." Uh, but that's for boys and girls together. Whereas Jean and I and many others have found the correlation is much bigger for girls. It, social media harms girls much more than boys. So, uh, Jean and I found that the correlation for girls is about 0.2. Well, that's actually pretty much the same. If they say it's 0.1 to 0.15 correlation for everyone, that means they're basically saying the correlation is around 0.15, maybe even higher, for girls. So we actually agree, and that, that correlation is actually pretty big in public health effect. It's not big in a mathematical sense of variance explained, but it's about the same size as you get from many other public health things, you know, calcium consumption and later osteoporosis. I mean, all sorts of effects are around that size. So we actually agree on that, but then the debate, uh, uh, they say it's small, we say it's actually as big as everything else. Um, uh, the big debate is, okay, there's a correlation, but correlation doesn't show causation. You know, we have to prove causation. And so I've been, uh, collecting... I, I started this, uh, in 2019 after I w- I was challenged on the Coddling of the American Mind. Um, I said, "Well, let's get to the bottom of this." Is there a mental health crisis? Because back then, the critics were saying, "There isn't even a mental health crisis. It's just, you know, self-report stuff. It's- it's not, it's an illusion." Well, now it's clear, no, it was not an illusion. The rates have been going up since 2012. Um, now the question is, what caused it? And I've been collecting experiments, w- over these big Google Docs. If you go to jonathanhaidt.com/reviews, you can find all of our Google Docs, created with Zach Rauch. Uh, and we have one that lists all the studies we can find that are cor- you know, the correlational studies, the longitudinal studies, the experimental studies. Sorry, and this is, like, getting too geeky and all, but the point is, there's like, we have about 20, 25 exper- true experiments that we found, and, uh, the ma- and the large majority of them do show causal effects. And the ones that don't show causal effects is very interesting. If you look at the six or seven that fail to find an effect of, like, taking kids off phones, they all use a very short time period. So if your experiment is, we're gonna make kids st- or college students stay off of social media for a week, you know, or three days, and then we're gonna see how they're doing. And guess what? You take somebody who's heavily addicted, you take away their drug, and you check in on them a day later or a week later. How are they doing? Not well. But the studies that waited a month almost all find they're doing a lot better, they're much happier. So, you know, I don't know what else we can do here. Like, we've got the correlational evidence, we've got the experimental evidence. The experimental evidence shows a clear pattern, where if you refine it to the ones that are, match theoretically what's happening, the effect gets bigger. You've got the quasi ex- I mean, you know, eh, people should go look at this Google Doc. I mean, I don't know what else we can do to convince people that it's not just correlational. There's a lot of causal evidence.
- CWChris Williamson
What ways could you be wrong about this evidence?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so on the experimental evidence, the published experiments, uh, my critics say that if you look at each of these studies, they're mostly pretty weak. Um, some of them have small sample sizes, just one or 200. Um, some of them, there's some other flaw. And so you can, you know, you can find, you can definitely find flaws in most of the experiments. Um, so it's possible that they're right and that only experiments that find an effect get published. Um, that is conceivable. But, um, there are so many different lines of evidence here, and so I w- I would ask, uh, listeners to think about, we have a situation in which the parents see the problem. The parents whose kids are dead think that it wasn't, it was only 'cause of social media the k- you know, that the kid committed suicide. They can, they can see the harassment taking place on- online. So you have the parents saying, "This is, this is causal." I don't know any parents who say, "Oh, no, it's wonderful for my kid to be on social media." The teachers see it, the principals see it, the psychologists see it. Um, the kids themselves see it. Uh, you, you had Freya India on. She is one of the best writers on what is happening to girls. Uh, and Freya published a great essay on, on my Substack. I think she referred to it on, on, on your show, uh, on the, the algorithmic conveyor belt of just, you know, once you express an interest in something, the algorithm's gonna pull you all the way to eating disorders or self-harm or whatever it is. Um, so given that I can't find, I literally cannot find anything written by someone in Gen Z that says, "No, we love our phones. Our phones are great. We- our phones w- make our world better." You know, "S- social media's so good for us." Like, I can't even find anyone saying that. But we have lots of people like Freya who are saying, "This is destroying us." So when you look at the experimental evidence that uses very limited manipulations, one very particular operationalization of the question finds a certain effect size, you gotta ask yourself...... which is more plausible, that everyone is wrong and all the experiments are wrong, or maybe it's the case that something is really happening here.
- CWChris Williamson
What is the proposed mechanism by people that say smartphones don't have this big of an impact on mental health? Because the mechanism is what's being debated, the change in mental health is pretty undeniable.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
We have very, very high rates of whatever it is. Like the- the most cataclysmic language about girls between age 12 and 16, it's like persistent feelings of hopelessness or listlessness or something.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like just the- Yeah. ... this, like, awful apocalyptic language. What are the people who disagree with you saying is the mechanism that's causing this to happen?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right. They don't, they don't. That's the amazing thing. So you have, you know, you look at the graphs and they go up, uh, in very much the same way, same time in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, uh, Scandinavia. We've got graphs of all this. I hope your listeners will go to afterbabel.com. That's my Substack. It's free. We've got all the graphs from all these countries. We've got the world's repository of data internationally. It all starts in the early 2010s. And so my critics say, "Well, the amount of variance explained is very small, so you know, the," (clears throat) "so using social media can only explain a small amount of variance, therefore it can't explain the explosion, and we're done here." And then I say, "Well, what do you think does explain it?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
No one ha- no one even offers. There's no alternate theory.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, boy.
- JHJonathan Haidt
The global financial crisis is at least global, but that was 2008. So why is it that nothing happens to teen mental health until 2012, 2013, by which time unemployment is dropping, stock market's rising, everything's getting better.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
You know, it, so it, the global financial crisis doesn't work. There is no other explanation that I can find, not even one that's been proposed, other than the loss of the play-based childhood to be replaced by the phone-based childhood, and that really happened between 2010 and 2015 is when the phone-based childhood came in. That explains the globalness of it, it explains the suddenness of it, it explains the gender difference, it explains everything that I found. And you know, my critics say, "Well, we're not convinced, but we have, we're not even gonna offer an alternative explanation."
- CWChris Williamson
So boring. Super lame. All right. What are
- 38:47 – 46:12
Primary Harms of Technology on Kids
- CWChris Williamson
the primary harms of technology on kids?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Uh, so once you see that kids have to grow up in a physical world, we evolved outdoors, nature, animals, people, um, when kids grow up on screens, so it's not just about social media, when you grow up with what- what I'm calling a phone-based childhood, where you're spending, the latest data I think is nine hours a day average for American kids, uh, 11 hours, Freya just said there was a British study, it was like 10 or 11 hours a day for British kids on their phones, which includes other, it includes tablets, I think, and- and video games, I think. In any case, it doesn't include homework or schoolwork, just recreational time, nine to 11 hours a day, that pushes out everything else. And so what I say in the book is that there are four foundational harms. Once you see that it's- it's taken up 10 hours a day pushing everything else out, what matters? The most important thing is time with other kids, time with friends. That's crucial. I- I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
In-person.
- JHJonathan Haidt
... all of your ... In-person, that's right, in-person. Uh, and we'll talk about whether virtual is- is good, it is not, but time actually with other kids, other, with your friends, and that has plummeted, um, since 2012. It was dropping before in the earlier internet age, but boy, it really speeds up in the- in the smartphone, social media age. Um, and so kids, the- the most nutritious thing your kid can do is be out playing with other kids, and this is even true for teenagers, hanging out with no adults telling them what to do. Um, so that's crucial. That's really nutritious as it were. Now if kids, you might say, "Well, but you know, they're spending of this 10, 11 hours, a lot of it is spent virtually interacting, you know, like on video games." Well, let's look at multiplayer video games. Now those are at least synchronous. Synchronous is good. You're talking, so that's actually a good thing. The girls on social media, it's asynchronous! I comment, I wait anxiously for you to comment on my comment, and so we're not really connecting. We're actually performing and we're anxious. Um, video games are at least synchronous, but you actually, you tell me. I've n- I was never a gamer. It seems to me-
- CWChris Williamson
When you assume-
- JHJonathan Haidt
... that I'm a g-
- CWChris Williamson
... that I'm a g- Look at me, and just think-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, you look like a gamer.
- CWChris Williamson
... "That's a guy"-
- JHJonathan Haidt
... you're a tough guy.
- CWChris Williamson
... "that wasted a lot of hours playing video games."
- JHJonathan Haidt
Am I wrong?
- CWChris Williamson
I wasted a lot of hours playing video games. Your perception is correct.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay, there you go. Stereotypes sometimes have a basis in reality.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so oh, look, basically you know, you're a healthy male. That means you almost certainly were playing video games. I mean, that's just the way it's been since the '90s. Um, so but you tell me, in video games do you ever get in fights? Like, uh, uh, like you get mad at each other because someone broke a rule?
- CWChris Williamson
Of course.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, d- how, how does that happen? Because I assume that the game itself regulates all the interactions. How could someone cheat?
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, you mean like fights in-game, right. No, no, no. I mean you just-
- JHJonathan Haidt
You know, the way-
- CWChris Williamson
... have disagreements. You have disagreements, you shout, and you say that, "That was, that was totally stupid." Like it's more in-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh yeah, fine. No, but what I mean is like think about when you w- when you and your friends played a s- you know, a pickup soccer game or baseball game or whatever when you were kids, and someone says, "No, you know, it was out of bounds." "No, it wasn't." "Yes, it was." "No, it wasn't."
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, yes, yes, yes, yes.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Like you argue about it. And what I'm trying to say is the arguments are really nutritious. The arguments, uh, Jean Piaget, the great developmental psychologist, really talked a lot about this. When kids play marbles, they get in all kinds of disputes, and that's crucial. They learn how to work it out. So you tell me, when you, when you're playing video games, on an average day, you know, y- four hours of video game playing, do you get in those kind of fights about, "Yes, it was." "No, it wasn't." "Yes, it was." "No, it wasn't." Where does everything resolve?
- CWChris Williamson
Well, no, because the game, the- the game is, the game mandates the rule set for you.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
There- there- there is no-
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
... mediating needed.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's right. There you go. So it's just like if I said, "We're gonna replace all your kid's food with rice, white rice," and then someone said, "Yeah, that- that should be just as good. I mean, it's got just the same number of calories." You know, you might say, "Yeah, but it- it's missing all the other nutrients," and that's what we do. When we put boys on video games, yeah, it's social, it's great fun, it has some benefits, it gives them some social calories, they're talking, but it's missing a lot of the nutrients that you get from face-to-face interaction.
- 46:12 – 49:48
Is Social Media Use Addiction or Compulsion?
- JHJonathan Haidt
- CWChris Williamson
Is it right to call social media use an addiction? I had this discussion with Andrew Huberman a couple of years ago and, um, I sort of-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm. Yeah, what did he say?
- CWChris Williamson
He said it looks to him more like a compulsion than an addiction.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
It feels like compulsive behavior. Um, he said you know, if you-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... if you saw an animal, uh, scratching, scratching, scratching in the corner looking for food, scratching, scratching, scratching, scratching, scratch, you'd think that animal's sick. And it, it feels to me, you know, I, you're on a plane, how many times, this is such a great example. You're on a plane, you have no signal, you know you have no signal-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you pull your phone out-
- JHJonathan Haidt
And you keep checking.
- CWChris Williamson
... you open it up, you go through the, the little cycle of apps-
- JHJonathan Haidt
(laughs) Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... or whatever it is that you do and you go, "Ah, yeah." It goes back down.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So to me, that seems compulsive. Now obviously-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... addictive things can have a compulsion. That's the reason... I haven't got anything long and thin that I can use, but that's the reason that smokers will get pens-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and, you know, chew down on pens.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
It actually satiates.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I think I saw something that's saying that, uh, people who have smoking addiction can satiate a little bit of the, uh, desire for their next cigarette by actually-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... putting a replacement cigarette in their mouth-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... 'cause so much of it is about the, like, uh, physiological, the, the movement of that habituated thing.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so I, and I mean, the semantics of what is an addiction, where does that cross across into a compulsion, can something which is addictive lead you to have this sort of obsessive compelled behavior that where you kind of pull this, uh, it kind of doesn't really matter, um, but-
- 49:48 – 56:46
How Boys & Girls Use Technology Differently
- CWChris Williamson
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
All right, so, you know, there's been a lot of talk recently, I've got Daniel Cox coming on, the guy that did that really fantastic study about young boys breaking to the right and young girls breaking to the left. I've got him coming on soon.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But we're seeing a lot of sexed differences in worldview, in belief, in mental health, uh, I...
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, mental health is, is declining, but the ways that it's declining, the sort of usages of technology. So talk to me about the sexed differences in technology. How do boys and girls use technology differently?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Sure, yeah. So the master variable here, I believe, is, is a set of motivations, uh, that we've talked about in psychology for 50 years, um, called, um, agency and communion. So everybody has needs for agency, to be an agent, to make things happen. You know, a child knocks over a block tower, it's thrilling, "I did that, I caused that to fall." So that's agency. And then communion is connection, being part of a group, being welcomed and embraced and c- and connecting, uh, uh, so everyone has both motives. But on average, boys have stronger agency motives, and when you let boys and girls choose what to do, the boys are gonna gravitate more towards games that allow agency. And so fake war is one of the best examples. They want to practice their skills. Boys, I think, are evolutionary programmed for hunting and war, to enjoy hunting and war. I found this out when I was 29 years old and for the first time in my life played, uh, paintball with my buddies, and hunting each other, we were mixed in with other, other people, but hunting each other in small groups and shooting guns to try to hit each other was the most thrilling thing we'd ever done.
- CWChris Williamson
That'll get you, yeah, yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. So that was really clear, like, wow, there's like a room in my heart for being a hunter and a warrior, like I didn't really know it was there but it was.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So anyway, boys choose to pursue agency motives, girls choose to pursue more communion motives. They talk more with each other. As Richard Reeves, this, you know, w- wonderful, wonderful, uh, British man who has this, uh, who's been- been making the case for boys... Have you, have you had Richard on the show?
- CWChris Williamson
Of course, yeah, he's great.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Of course, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
He's coming back on again soon. Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, good, okay.
- CWChris Williamson
His new initiative, uh, the Center for Boys and Men?
- JHJonathan Haidt
American Institute for Boys and Men, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you. Uh, that sounds awesome. I, I'm fully Richard Reeves-pilled. I'm on board with-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Good.
- CWChris Williamson
... with all the stuff he's doing.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, good, yes, me too.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
We're all Richard Reeves-pilled, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so Richard points out, uh, uh, girls like to do things face-to-face, boys like to do things shoulder-to-shoulder. Like we're next to each other but we're doing something in common.
- CWChris Williamson
I've gotta, I get, I need to bring this up. So in, in, uh, Robin Dunbar's book, Friends, which came out-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... maybe 18 months ago, he's got this phenomenal study. So the next time that you're at a party, look at the angle of the feet that women have-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh.
- 56:46 – 1:02:37
The Male Sedation Hypothesis
- JHJonathan Haidt
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, the audience is gonna know what I'm gonna bring up, but I'm gonna do it again. It's my... I've only had two citations ever in academia, and this is one of them.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
So, um, you'll be aware of young male syndrome.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Uh, no, tell me. What... Just that they're, you know, more violent and-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Young, young... Yes, correct. Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
High proliferation of young, sexless men, high T, high risk-taking.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
They set shit on fire and push over granny, it's not good.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Totally agree.
- CWChris Williamson
We have the highest rates of loneliness and sexlessness amongst young men at least in the modern world, maybe ever, uh, apart from in maybe some, like, crazy gerontocracy style, like, tribal bullshit-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... 10,000 years ago. Um, where's all of the incel violence? Like, this isn't a request, but w- why are we not seeing more mass shootings? Why are we not seeing the rest of it?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, that's a good point.
- CWChris Williamson
So it's my contention-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... that men are being sedated out of their status-seeking and reproductive-seeking behavior-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... through a combination of social media, video games, and porn. So they're not given-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... a sufficient dose to make them happy or satisfied, but it is enough to dampen down and nerf that, um, that impulse. So-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And this is what I call the male sedation hypothesis, and this is being studied. Uh, so why have we not-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Cool.
- CWChris Williamson
... got this, uh... Yeah, I'm a legitimate-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... illegitimate academic now. Um, but this is th-
- JHJonathan Haidt
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And I... There's a, there's a question to be asked there, but w- ev- you know, everything that you're talking about there that it's triggering, it's playing off the back of this desire for them to, um, uh, work together as a team, to have intertribal warfare, to, uh, create mastery-
- 1:02:37 – 1:12:34
Are Gen-Z Bothered About Status?
- CWChris Williamson
got an evolutionary background. I have to say-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... I, I want to bring you back on. Once this tour is done, I want to bring you back on, and if you can remember it, to talk about The Happiness Hypothesis, because it, it was one of the three books that got me into the world of EP and, and, and, and really sort of made me fall in love with it. But w- given that background, again, me and William have spoken about this an awful lot, we talked about this AI girlfriend revolution, one of the problems that you have, and one of the reasons that I don't think we need to fear the AI girlfriend thing quite as much, is no guy brags about the fact that he is subscribed to some woman's OnlyFans. The reason that you don't brag about it is that there is no status associated with being selected.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
There is no-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, it makes you look like a loser. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And... But not only that, that even if it didn't, even if it was neutral in the, like, loser, uh-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, I see.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, metrics-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... because you haven't been preselected by... The, the, the, the gatekeeper is-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... the price of a cheeseburger per month.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Therefore, anyone has access to this, and because of the access, it's... You know, maybe if you have a $30,000 sex robot, it's a flex of your wealth, but it's also like-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm. No.
- CWChris Williamson
... "Dude, you spent $30,000 on a sex robot. How weird are you?" So, and I just-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I, I don't, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I certainly know that that preselection, the status associated with a woman who is the gatekeeper choosing a man who is the protagonist-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that accounts for so much of the bragging rights-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... of the guy.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yes. Great. So this brings in a key t- a keyword we haven't mentioned is status, and boys are... Boys and girls are each competing for status, but, uh, boys' competition is really much more... It's about, ultimately about, like, physical toughness, dominance, originally, in sort of the primeval state, ultimately backed up by the ability to physically beat the shit out of somebody. Um, but in modern times, that gets converted into other, other ways of contesting. And we've had a long, slow evolution of our economy, uh, such that, such that, it... We've harnessed male ambition for status and turned it in productive directions. In fact, I was gonna write a book. I got a contract to write a book called Three Stories About Capitalism: The Moral Psychology of Economic Life. I was gonna write a book on, like, the psychology of capitalism.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And then the universities melted down. I wrote The Coddling, and I got drawn off into all these other, other things. But one of the key insights, um, is there's a, uh, um, is, you know, Adam Smith realized that when you get an economy set up the right way, it's not from the benevolence of the butcher and the baker and the brewer that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own self-interest. When people can get money for doing something that helps others, well then, men try very hard to make money. But it's not just money. When you can get status by doing something productive, that's gonna challenge... Like, men are like rockets. Like, they have this, they have this incredible capacity for work, but they're often misaimed. And so, yeah, I think it's quite remarkable that, you know, when, you know, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos wanna face off, how do they do it? Who can build the more effective rocket launch system into outer space? I mean, that's a great way for men to compete. So that's productive. Um, and, uh, I think what you're saying, what you're pointing out is part of dating... I mean, part of it is very intrinsically motivated. You want a girlfriend. You want sex. You want love. But you also... Yeah. You want a hot girlfriend. You want someone that other guys will respect you for because, "Yeah, I got this woman." So any discussion of boys, yes, we must consider status, especially, "What are other men gonna think of me?" And also, "What are other women gonna think of me based on who I date?" Um, women are extremely concerned with what other women will think of them as, as well. It's separate status competitions. But yeah, that's a key. And video games give them an alternate world in which they can gain status within that alternate world. But I keep coming back to the metaphor of the black hole. You know, a black hole is a place where s- anything gets sucked in but nothing comes out. And so, okay, here. Here's another controversial idea.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
I'll air it with you. Maybe you can, you can, uh, disprove it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, here, I'll just put this as a contention. I don't know if this is true. My contention is that nobody or it's that hardly anyone in Gen Z has r- has done anything yet that has really made an impact on the world. Let me just qualify. There are always gonna be athletes, always. There are always gonna be singers coming along. That's not the issue. The issue is, did you start a company? Did you make some discovery? Did you write an amazing book? Did you do something that the world notices and says like, "Oh, wow." You know, "That's impressive." And when I ask this of audiences, they only come up with two names. Uh, uh, so I'll ask you. Who are the members of Gen Z who've really, you know, dented the uni... They've really done something? Who are-
Episode duration: 1:29:09
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