Jonathan, I see people
walking all over Brooklyn holding this book. It's talking about
the great rewiring. Talk to me. What is the great rewiring? So something happened to
young people born after 1995. All of a sudden,
in the early 2010s, their mental health
collapsed, rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketed. Self-harm is up 150%
for younger teen girls. Suicide is up 50%. Something happened
in the early 2010s, and my argument in the book
is a tragedy in two acts. The first act is the loss
of the play-based childhood. It's what anybody over
40 in this audience had. You were out with your
friends after school. There was nobody supervising. You had to learn how
to work out conflicts, how to face adversity. So that's what kids
have had for tens of-- hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being a mammal. You play. You develop skills. We began to crack
down on that, to lock kids up in the '90s,
to not let them out. So we're restricting what
they most need, which is play, from the '90s through
the 2000s, but mental health doesn't collapse then. It's actually pretty stable. Then we get act two,
which is the arrival of the phone-based childhood. And what that is is, in 2010,
everybody had a flip phone. The iPhone had come out, but
most teens had a flip phone, no front facing camera, no
social media on the phone, no high-speed data. And by 2015, everyone's
got all those other things. Now, suddenly, everyone
has a smartphone, front-facing camera,
high-speed internet, social media, especially
Instagram, on the phone. And almost like someone
turned a switch in 2013, girls in America, and
many other countries, suddenly become very anxious,
depressed, and self-harming. And so that's what
the book is about. Something changed
between 2010 and 2015, and I'm trying to
explain what it is. You're saying, in act
two, they introduced Chekhov's cell phone, and-- Yeah. And we know what ends
up happening after that. You look at, sort of,
the adolescent brain. Yes. How dumb and stupid is
a 13 year old's brain? [LAUGHTER] I would say not dumb
and stupid at all. I would say it's in the
process of remodeling, and it's still in
the early phases. So children have a brain, which
is actually almost full size. By age six, the brain
is almost full size. I'll fact check that. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's
right, but continue. You must be right. Yeah, thank you. The rest of childhood
is not about growth. It's about picking
which neurons survive and which ones get eliminated. It's all about
wiring up, and that happens slowly in childhood. But then, around age
11, 12 for girls, puberty starts, a couple
of years later for boys, and you get this
massive, quick rewiring of the brain to
sort of lock down into an adult configuration. It starts more in the
back of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is
the last part to develop. And so around the
age of 13, kids' emotional areas are rewiring. They have the beginnings
of sexual urges and lust. They're very
emotional, passionate, but they don't have
the self control to say, no, I'm not going to
spend a fifth hour on TikTok. I'm just going to keep going
because I can't stop myself. JORDAN: When does that stop,
because I'm looking forward to that happening soon? At, like, 47, 48? Like, when does that
part of my brain close off, and I can
put the phone down? Well, in your
case, I really can't say, but for most people-- [LAUGHTER] Buy the sequel.
I get it. I get it.
Smart, smart. 25 is when the frontal
cortex is done rewiring. OK. I'll tell you
when that happens. Well, it's interesting how
you're talking a lot about, not only these phones come in, and
they change the way kids think, and the way society thinks, but
you talk about raising a child, an anti-fragile child. And you make some bold claims
in this book, one of which is right here. You claim that this
merry-go-round playground spinner is the greatest
piece of playground equipment ever invented. Defend yourself. JONATHAN HAIDT: OK. JORDAN: First of all-- [APPLAUSE] - OK.
- How is it not-- What is better? I mean, a teeter-totter. It's just a metaphor of you're
up, you're down, you know? It's what life is
all about, you know? Work with somebody else.
One's up. One's down. There's no way to
stay in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [LAUGHTER] The key--
- Wow. OK. Well, I have no citations
to prove my claim. The psychological thing
I'm trying to get at there is thrills. This is something I talk a
lot about in chapter three, that kids need
to play, but they especially need risky play. Kids literally
need to face risk. If you don't give them risk,
they'll find a way to get it. They'll climb up on walls. They'll climb trees. If they skateboard, they'll
skateboard down stairs. Kids need to sort of-- need
to have some actual risk. And so yes, you're right. A teeter-totter,
if it's really big, and you could come crashing
down, there is risk. JORDAN: Why are you
trying to hurt these kids? Well, because you have
to put kids in a situation where they can get hurt because
only then do they learn, every day, how to not get hurt. And what we've done since
the '90s is we've put them in places that are so safe,
there's no chance to get hurt, which means they don't
learn how to not get hurt. The human program of
evolution is kids face risk. They're a little scared. They have to be
a little scared. They overcome it, and then
they're more confident the next time around, and that's the
path to adulthood, but we stopped that in the '90s. We said, no more of that. We're going to keep you
overprotected forever, and then we're going to send
you to universities like mine, where you're coming
in, still not ready for independent living. JORDAN: Now, you take
that, and then you also-- you fast forward
to this modern era where kids are
obsessed with phones. They're on the internet. They're on social media sites. Is there an argument, though,
that the antifragile way in which kids need to-- it's
not to pull this thing away, that they need to be exposed to
the risk that the internet has? I mean, this is the
world that they're going to be born into anyway. Shouldn't they be
learning how to navigate that at an early age? In theory, yes, but let's
look at, say, sexuality. We want them to learn
how to have sex. Does that mean we
should give them a running start at age eight? There are certain
things that are not appropriate at that time. Just to be clear,
I did not say that. This was not-- [LAUGHTER] This is-- that's theoretically. That was me.
JORDAN: Yeah, theoretically. Hypothetically.
JORDAN: OK. Yes, yes.
Boy. Ooh. So I've heard this before. In theory, why
are you saying we need to protect them
less in the real world, but you're saying we
need to protect them more in the virtual world. Isn't that contradictory? Not at all. Not at all. Kids-- we're mammals. Kids need to be out
playing, roughhousing, putting their arms around each
other, touching out in nature. This is the way a
lot of us grew up. You play outside. And when you put kids
in an environment where everything goes
through the phone-- as soon as you give
your child a phone, they're going to use that--
now the latest stats are around nine hours a day,
they're on their phone, and a lot of them, it's almost
all the time because they're always checking. That blocks out time in
nature, time with friends. Time with friends is
down 65% since 2010. Kids need time with friends. Texting and sending
emojis doesn't compensate. It's done instead of time with
friends, and that, I think, is why, as soon as they
moved on to social media, and the boys on to
multiplayer video games, they got so lonely. Loneliness surged along
with depression and anxiety. JORDAN: It's interesting. You talk a little bit
about, in childhood, discover mode versus
defensive mode. And even in a
world of the arts. I did improv comedy forever,
and I think the mindset of that is a discovery mindset, right? And so you're constantly
looking for something. It was interesting, reading
this in terms of how to raise a child, and to put them
in that open mindset, but it seems remarkably
reflective of just how society feels right now, and I don't
know if that is partially because of our connection
to social media, and the anxiety that is there. But do you see
parallels there as well, that we are inadvertently
too in defensive mode because of these
devices that we have in our pockets and our hands? Well, right now, it
does seem like everything is going to hell
because it actually is. Oh, that's-- OK.
[LAUGHTER] Yeah. It's not just my
phone telling me that. But it wasn't that way. JORDAN: It wasn't that way. It wasn't that way in 2012. So the fact that this
happened in so many countries at the same time,
and a lot of people say, oh, well, the
global financial crisis. That must be what it was. There were real
economic difficulties. Yeah, that was 2008. Why do the numbers
not begin going up until 2012, 2013, when
the economy is getting better and better? So you can't make the claim
that things were so terrible in Obama's second term
compared to his first that, all of a sudden,
teens, especially teen girls, suddenly fell off a cliff. That just doesn't work. So if this had all started in
2020, we could say, well, yeah, you know, COVID, and all the
craziness that's going on, but this started in 2012. There's no other explanation
that anyone's proposed for why it happened
in so many countries and hit girls the hardest. JORDAN: It was interesting. You have a chapter in here
that looks at, also, faith, and I'm an atheist. I know you mentioned that
you are an atheist as well, but you speak to
this god-shaped hole. I think it's a
Blaise Pascal quote. A god-shaped hole in
everybody's heart. In every human heart. In every human heart, right? And that this lack of
religion is something that is affecting childhood in a way. And again, as an atheist,
I always have my dukes up when that comes about. You said you were one. So you earned yourself a pass. JONATHAN HAIDT: OK. But this lack of
religious institutions in this modern
media landscape, how do you see that as something
that's affecting a childhood? So the way to think
about this as an atheist without getting defensive is-- JORDAN: Good luck. No. I've been working on this
professionally for many years. I finally got it down.
- Let's see it. OK. Just looking at
it descriptively, psychologically, religious
people are a little happier than non-religious people. That's been true
for a long time, just as married people are
happier than unmarried people. On average, your
mileage may vary. [LAUGHTER] But people need to be tied
in, locked in in a community. I'm a big fan of Emile
Durkheim, the sociologist. He's my favorite
thinker of all time. When we're not tied in,
locked in, we're free, but that doesn't make us happy. We have nothing
to push against. We have no sense of meaning. It's like if you try to raise
a plant, not in the ground, but just up in the air. It just can't be done. And so religious kids
are rooted in traditions, faith, rituals, community. They go to church every Sunday. The Jewish kids have shabbat. They literally can't use
electronics for a day. So they were always happier
than the secular kids, but what happens
after 2012, it's quite remarkable on all the graphs. The religious kids get a little
more anxious and depressed. The secular kids get much
more anxious and depressed. So what I'm saying
is, especially if you're an
atheist, you're going to have to work much harder. You're going to
have to be much more intentional about
rooting your kid in stable social relationships. If you give them an iPad,
then he graduates to a phone, and it's all this
network, that network, interacting with strangers,
and weirdos, and bots, and AIs. That's not a community. That's crazy making. It might just be easier to
get them to believe in angels. Then take away the iPad?
Yeah. JORDAN: I was going to say. That iPad is there. I do want to-- [APPLAUSE] You've written a lot of
very interesting books. The book you wrote
before this, The Coddling of the American Mind,
you co-wrote, sort of looked at safetyism. It looked at the
college landscape. And now, what we see
on college campuses, these protests
are breaking out. I wonder, as somebody who
looked closely at that, and the ways in which students
kind of moved through it, what you see now
on these campuses. Yeah. So, you know, I don't want
to comment on the substance of the protest. This is a complicated issue. I respect people on all sides. We all agree--
on campus, we all agree students have
a right to protest, constitutionally protected,
but two things I see going on. One is the protest, and
this is what Greg Lukianoff, my co-author, first noticed
in 2014, the shouting down of speakers, the activism
on campus that was really illiberal, and it
was intimidating, and it was stopping
people from speaking. It was based on arguments
about fragility, about my mental health,
or her mental health. We can't let this
person on campus because it'll be dangerous. It'll be harmful. Speech is violence. So that's a new idea
that comes in with Gen Z because they haven't been
given an antifragile childhood. They've been given
way too much therapy. They think
everything is trauma. So we see that
beginning in 2014, 20-- it wasn't there in 2012. It was very new in 2014, 2015. And so the protesters now-- I don't know the
details, but just one thing I read this morning. Someone sent me a quote
from a student at Harvard where she was in
the encampments, and she said, if
Harvard cares so goddamn much about my mental health,
why don't they just divest and do all the things
that we're demanding? Yeah, Harvard, do these because
our mental health is at stake. That's something new,
and it's just not going to get them very
far in political life, going forward, once
they leave campus. [APPLAUSE] I read this book. I want to do this right. How do I helicopter
parent my child correctly? What are some tactical things
I can take away from this? Well, you just push them
out of the helicopter. No.
JORDAN: That's what it is. OK. Sorry. Learn how to fly, right? That's that antifragile. That's right. For birds, it works. I guess not for us. OK. So the key thing
to the solution. Even though a lot of my
books, a lot of my writing is very dark about things are
actually going to hell in a lot of ways, but this
one, we can solve it in a year or two because the
reason it got so bad so quickly is that we're trapped in
what's called a social trap. It's a collective action trap. The reason why we
all feel we have to give our kid a smartphone
by the time they're 10 is because everyone else did,
and your kid says, you know, dad, I'm the only one. I'm being left out. So we're all doing that, and
the reason my students are spending so much time
on TikTok, they say, is because everyone else
is, and I have to keep up. I have to know
what's happening. So we're all trapped in this. What that means is that,
if we decide to escape, we can escape together. So I propose in the book--
there's a lot of suggestions, but four norms that will break
these collective action traps. First, no smartphone
before high school. Just clear this
out of the lives of elementary and
middle school kids. Send them out. Give them a flip
phone, a dumb phone, a phone watch so
you can text them, but don't give them the
entire internet, including strangers all over the
world, who are trying to get at them sexually. This is just craziness. So no smartphone
until high school. The second is no
social media until 16. The things that are sent around
on social media, the things they're exposed
to-- like I just recently learned
about the video cat in a blender, which was
popular a while ago. JORDAN: I don't know-- It is exactly-- it is exactly what
it sounds like. This is just part of childhood. It's hardcore porn, animal
cruelty, beheading videos. So let's just at least
wait until they're 16 before they see that stuff. JORDAN: I was going to say,
that's the appropriate age to watch a cat in a blender. Is that 16 It's like, oh,
you get to drive a car, and, hey, why don't you
check this thing out. Yeah.
- Yeah. What I'm after here is
not the optimum age. It's what's a
minimum age that we could actually all do together,
because that's the key. If most of us do this,
we solve the problem. The third norm is
phone-free schools. This is the most powerful
one that we can do instantly. So if you're watching this,
and you have kids that go to a school that
lets the kids keep the phone in the
pocket, buy a copy of my book for the principal. No. I have videos. Send them a video of my
talks on phone-free schools. Every school needs to go
phone free by September. The phones, they
don't just make the kids anxious and lonely. They make them
less intelligent. Test scores have been dropping
around the world since 2012. Once the kids bring a phone
to school, they're doing this. They're not listening
to the teacher. So get rid of
phones in schools. And then the fourth
norm is far more independence, free
play, and responsibility in the real world. We have to-- so this is not
just about let's take away, take away. It's let's give them a
real childhood, the kind of childhood that
us older people, the kind that we look back on. [APPLAUSE] So if we love our children,
the best thing we can give them is a real human childhood. And if we do it
together, we can get this done in the next year or two. JORDAN: I love it. Just give your kids some space,
a beer, and a bag of glass, and they should be OK. [LAUGHTER] It's a fascinating read,
and an important one. The Anxious Generation
is available now. Jonathan Haidt.
