The Social Media Theory of Everything with Jonathan Haidt

John welcome back to the podcast it's great to chat again thank you Eric that this right guess I was here sometime before covid I guess everything happened sometime before covid yeah yes exactly um you're here with the with a new book uh the the anous Generation Um why don't you contextualize um this book in light of some of your other books right the the the Righteous Mind the CAU the American mind why don't you trace that that Evolution for people who haven't followed your your Evolution as closely sure so you know my day job my main area of work for my whole career has been moral psychology then moving into Political psychology and that was sort of the Righteous Mind the Left Right culture War um and then I had this side project with Greg lukanov because universities started melting down in 2015 in ways that actually were very revealing of moral psychology so it was a really fun book to write the coddling the American mind and it was about um gen Z we we didn't know that there was a genen z in 2015 we thought that students were Millennials uh but by 2017 when we were writing now there was the new name gen Z or I um and they were really different uh so I began collecting mental health data on on them and just seeing you know how bad is it and and you know trying to understand what caused it and I was all set to write a book on I got a contract actually to write a book on on what social media is doing to democracy that's my main interest and how it's how it's creating environments in which I think a lot of the assumptions about liberal democracy no longer apply and we're going to have a really hard time adapting I believe so it's going to be this big very depressing book on how technology is wonderful in many ways but you know it might cause sociological collapse and I was going to start the first chapter was going to be on this side project I have on teens and social media because it looks like you know as soon as teens move their social lives 2010 to 2015 is when their childhood changes it becomes phone based as soon as they have smartphones and social media they're mental health plummets especially for girls so I thought I'll do chapter one on that and then I'll show see now let's look at democracy like what happens when we move our our public and political life onto these platforms we go crazy too so that's what I expected to do so I I wrote the first chapter and I laid out the stats and especially once I saw just how big and consistent the increases were and then especially when I saw that they were International it wasn't just us I already knew that it was happening in brit but once once working with Zack Rous once we discovered it's actually in a lot of countries all the English speaking countries same thing same time same way um so then I realized wow this is like possibly the biggest story I will ever work on in my life like if this is really happening to like Global you know young people globally at least in the developed world I should say in the wealthy World um then I can't justify writing anything else like I've got to I've got to figure this one out so that's how that that's how the book started the anxious generation how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness I the point is I split the book in two and I said let's just write one whole book on Teen Mental health and then maybe a year or two from now I'll start working on the book on democracy and um let's um let's get into and so just to finish that point and so the book that's your next book the social social media and democracy yeah I mean they gave me an advance on I've got the money so I ow I owe them the book eventually but I don't think they're going to rush me because I think they're pretty happy with the way the anxious generation is going yes okay so let's let's for people who haven't yet yet read the book when you further flush out the the case for the for the anxious generation and and why smartphones are the are the ca right so first of all just tell it as a story and then we can get into what's the evidence about causality because that you know that's where the the relevant debate is so let's talk about that so the story is best expressed as a tragedy in two acts um so the coddling the American mind was about the overprotection of kids and how we developed this paranoid parenting in the 1990s we thought if we ever let our kids out they'll be abducted they'll be sexually abused we we we have to keep them inside we have to always be supervising you can't let a 12-year-old go to the next island in the supermarket many people think because someone might abduct them in the next island in the super I mean we're completely insane we're completely Bonkers in this country about about our fears of each other we don't trust the people around us and that started really in the 90s um in Britain and Canada as well um so we overprotect our kids we don't let them out for What's called the play based child so act one of the tragedy is from the you know mid 80s through 2010 the decline of the play-based childhood everybody listening to this podcast if if you're over 35 over 40 you remember going outside to play that's what kids did from the time you're in third grade maybe second grade um right age seven or eight the norm always was kids they go out you play with your friends you pick up basketball game you you know you light fires and and and break things whatever it is you're doing but you're on your own having Adventures we put a stop to that that's act one that weakens kids but the amazing thing is their mental health so in the 2000s the teenagers are millennials their mental health is fine it actually doesn't decline so they're getting less life experience but they don't they're not depressed and anxious and suicidal actually they're in better shape actually than Gen X which was lead poison they were the most lead poison generation in history um so then act two is the is the really the heart of the tragedy um so in 2010 kids still have a recognizably human childhood they have technology everyone has a cell phone but it's a flip phone mostly or a brick phone uh the iPhone had come out a couple years before but most didn't have one it was like about I think 15 20% had a smartphone in 2010 um so uh there's no no front-facing camera no Instagram on certainly not on I mean not the beginning of the year um and no very few people had high-speed internet and then over the next couple years Everything Changes very very quickly um teens are trading in their smartphone their flip phones for smartphones very rapidly um Instagram is bought by Facebook in 2012 that's the big surge of of young women especially onto this social media platform the front-facing camera came out in 2010 um High-Speed Internet unlimited texting you know now everything you've got the entire internet in your pocket whenever you want everything all the time for free that wasn't possible in 2010 by 2015 that's normal human childhood kids are spending well now it's about eight or n hours a day on their phones um I don't remember what it was back in 2015 but it was it was you know high so the point is recognizably human childhood in 2010 kids mental health is fine there's no sign of any problem all the way up through 2011 and then right around 2012 2013 everything goes Haywire especially for the girls it's very sharp for the girls a little more diffus for the boys so that's the story uh We've overprotected our kids in the real world we've under-protected them online both were tragic mistakes we have to undo both it's not just about the phones it's also about restoring a play-based childhood so that's the tragedy any questions yes a lot of people will agree with you on on on the coddling or the kids need to to play outside I think you're you're both coddling American mind head uh unanimous agreement at least from from from our world but but on this book of course because we we've created these Technologies or funded them there's uh there's more push back so so yeah when you talk to the the mark andreon you know Tyler Cowan had some push back um he's you know tangentially affiliated with with our world of course um not being a tech person but but a prot tech Economist know we all love Tyler I know if yeah yeah what is the smartest push back that you've you've gotten um and and how do you respond to it oh that's an interesting way to phrase it because let me think because I do get push back but let me see if I can consider any of it really smart that's an obnoxious thing to say but because no because some of it is is is just very simple and simple minded so first I'll start with the bad stuff so the bad push back is oh Height's offering a one factor theory he says everything is social media but but life is complicated and and everything has multi- causes which is what we social scientists always say and do and that's fine and my book has multiple causes my book isn't just about social media it's about the complete transformation of childhood and an evolutionary analysis of childhood and what kids need to do and how neural development works and how cultural development works and how emotional development works and how when you shift onto a phone so anyway so nobody should ever accuse me of offering one factor theories I mean look at the cing of the American mind it's a six fact I mean I don't do simple I do you know let's let's understand the textual the complexity the interaction so okay so that push back I think we can ignore um uh the other the main push back which all your listeners will be uh familiar with is the claim that I've mistaken correlation for causation yes mental health collapsed at the same time in the same way in dozens of countries yes but and that happens to be the exact time that kids were traed but you know maybe it was the financial crisis like maybe that's why maybe in 2008 with delayed effect you know bottom falls out in 2008 econom is recovering by 2010 2011 but for some reason teenage girls get super depressed in 2012 because of the financial crisis okay that's the only one that's been offered as a global reason and then people offer local reasons school shootings you know we had the new town massacre in 2012 which is true and so if this was just an American thing I'd say yeah maybe it's school shootings so my my response to those who say that I've mistaken is first okay you tell me any other theory that can explain why this happened in so many countries at the same time hitting girls heart like give me some other explanation that's the first the second is okay you want to roll up your sleeves and get into the data let's do it I've been accused of cherry-picking um by my critics and so people especially know there's there was a review of the book in nature by Candace hoders who's a professor in California um and she said I have no evidence of causation no evidence which I think is not it's not a correct thing to say um you know in the book I have a long section on correlation versus causation I describe experiments throughout the book I have about four data heavy chapters I describe experiments I always attend to the issue of causality versus correlation um but the main way I would respond to that charge that I don't have evidence or I'm just cherry-picking a few studies um is that yeah I am cherry-picking but guess what I am the only person in this debate who picks all the cherries I'm the only one when I started this in 2019 after working with Jee twank so she's my partner in this and and Zack Rous so the three of us in 2019 I was confused you know people people push back back on I suggested in the codling maybe social media has something to do with this we don't know and people pushed back and said no no there's no evidence you know it's it's you know social media is as bad as eating potatoes according to one study which is like zero not it's not bad um and I didn't know and so I said okay look everyone citing different studies there's so many let me put them all in a Google doc and so I I just I put them all in the Google Doc and so it's it's as though I picked every single Cherry that's out there and I laid them all out on a blanket and I and I categorized them I said here are the relational studies here are the longitudinal studies here are the experimental studies here are the Quasi experimental studies in every category we divide them into which are the ones that indicate a problem which are the ones that show no correlation or no causation so I picked all the cherries I've laid them out there since 2019 they're all there visible to see I have multiple substack posts where I go through it so you don't even have to read these long Google Docs you can just read the substack post on correlation versus causation so the claim that I have mistaken it is just false and it's it's as though you know people who say that haven't read my work they haven't read the book they haven't read my substack um and let's see and the claim that there's no evidence is also false I mean I don't know how much more I can say it look here are 25 experiments plus eight quasi experiments so don't say I have no evidence you can say I'm not persuaded by your evidence that's fine that's fine if my critics want to say yeah there's a correlation but I don't think it's big enough and yeah he's got evidence of causation but I don't believe it okay fine that's the academic debate right there but to say that I don't have evidence and I don't know the difference that's just not true yeah so let's try to present better forms forms of push back I'm curious what you'd say to to this argument as as an example that and you've heard it dozens of times that it's temporary that every time there's a new technology oh oh that oh yeah just just another moral Panic this always happens yeah right yeah and that we we're going to develop the antibodies to get used to it and people are saying the same thing about novels or TV or other um you're not sympathetic to that um not at all not at all but put it this way put it this way it's a very reasonable starting hypothesis and back in 2017 2018 that was the prevailing view among psychologists we've been through this with TV and video games and radio and novels and arist uh Socrates was worried about writing you know so so perfectly reasonable to start with that hypothesis uh and of course we have to be wary of moral panics because you know a few scare Stories the media runs with it but here's why this is so so different so different so first there's never been a new technology where as soon as like really within a year or two soon as kids moved on to it you see huge mental health effects that didn't happen with novels as far as I know didn't happen with radio or TV that's the first the second uh is that a traditional moral Panic is fueled by very rare stories that perhaps never happened that are blown up by the media so that some kid you know he shot up his school and he watched video games you he did you you know so it's a rare thing um or you know a kid smoked reefer and chopped off his parents heads and and then the media runs with the story this is totally different wherever I go no matter who interviews me if they have kids they usually say you know I've seen it my own kids or you know a friend of mine daughter committed suicide I mean this is not occasional scare stories you know this is most people are seeing this in people they know so this is gigantic this is not like previous moral panics um and then another difference is that in previous moral panics over what the kids are doing the kids are like leave us alone like we like this not now talk to members of gen Z if you survey them if you ask the question in the right way you know because they don't want to be taken off it but if you say well what if everyone's off it then they say oh yeah that would be great so uh there was a study came out from University of Chicago Leonardo buron um B Burston bernston Burston um they they college students they said how much would we have to pay you to get you to up Tik Tok for a month or or Instagram and they gave some number of dollars they'd have to be paid but then they said now we're trying to get everybody in your college to do it if we could get everyone to do it to go off for a month now how much would we have to pay you and the scale included you that you pay us and the answer is if you if you say everyone's going to get off then people say oh my God I would pay I would pay $100 for that like that would be great if we can get everyone off and my students say the same thing they're on it because everyone else is so we've never had this is just not like a previous moral Panic the evidence of harm is gargantuan and all the signals of a traditional moral Panic that which is groundless those signals are absent but what about the the take that it's it not that it's not big but that it's temporary that we're going to develop tools or and maybe yeah all right so let let me let me try something let me try answering this in an unusual way I once heard a joke something like there's a very devout man and he lives in a house and there's a flood and the flood was AR Rising and he he you know a neighbor comes by says hey you know Bill we better evacuate and and he says you know no no God you know God will save me um and then the flood Wars rise and then another Neighbor comes by in a boat and says Bill we better evacuate you know come get in the boat he says no no God will save me and then the flood wordss continue to rise he goes up on his roof a helicopter comes by you know the the Rescue Services you know come get aboard and he says no no God will save me um and then the waters keep rising and he is washed away and he drowns he goes up to heaven and he says God why didn't you save me and God says I sent you a neighbor I sent you a boat I sent you a helicopter you didn't get on okay so now the reason I told that joke um is because like in my conversation with Tyler you know I mean I I really like Tyler we've you know we disagree especially on the role of government that's his that was our big disagreement but you know Tyler was like well we're going to adapt and I'm like yeah we're gonna adapt by keeping kids off until they're 14 on a phone and keeping them off until they're 16 on you know on social media and we're going to adapt by having phone free schools like this is how we adapt so you know yeah I mean if if the argument is oh it's okay to give our two-year-olds to raise them on iPads because you know nurly somehow within a 100 Generations we'll adapt so we don't need to walk anymore we can just you know be on whatever the future of an iPad is a chip in your brain so yeah we're not I mean CH childhood is a product of evolution we can't change our Evolution kids need to run around unsupervised take risks play with each other have conflicts and none of that happens in the in in a in a helpful way on social media it happens in a weird way that doesn't seem to Pro produce growth hey we'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors quick math the less your business spends on operations on multiple systems on delivering your product or service the more margin you have and the more money you keep but with higher expenses on materials employees distribution and borrowing everything costs more so to reduce costs and headaches smart businesses are graduating to net Suite by Oracle netsuite is the number one Cloud Financial system bringing accounting financial management inventory HR into one platform that's one source of Truth with netsuite you reduce it costs because netsuite lives in the cloud with no Hardware required accessed from anywhere you cut the cost of maintaining multiple systems and improve efficiency by bringing all your major business business processes into one platform 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think is extremely dire and I don't know what the solutions are um whereas with the Teen Mental Health crisis I can say exactly what's happening and I can say exactly what we can do and we're going to do it because they're all easy if we do them together and we're going to actually change childhood in the next two years so so that but on the Democracy side um the basic idea is if you is especially if you go back to the the founding fathers thinking about the Constitution and the you know we started this thing called the American experiment and what that meant if You' ever if you've ever heard the phrase the American experiment people might hear but they don't know what it means it's an experiment in self-governance and the question that the world was asking in the late 18th century was can Free People govern themselves without a king it had never been done I mean it had been done but it usually blew up and it usually didn't last very long you there were democracies in the past but they they burned up very quickly and the founding fathers knew that they read everything they could on ancient history Don democracy they were amazing social psychologists and so um especially if you read Federalist 10 um um Madison writes about I forget the exact quote it's a beautiful quote but like our tendency to get upset over trivia and if nothing is happening we'll make something up and then we fight about it um uh he he talked about how um uh the the passions of the people are such that they're inflamed by demagogues and so you don't want a direct democracy um what you want is an indirect democracy where the people can ultimately kick them out of power if they're not happy but the people don't get to make the rules because you don't want like you don't want like what California has where you do everything with these stupid um you know what do you call them everybody votes and on something um what are they called not aend um ballot measures whatever the initiative um yeah so you know the found you don't want that um uh but they said but you know what because we're such a huge country we actually have an advantage over small republics which is something might happen in Massachusetts but by the time the you know the news of it reaches Georgia I mean it's going to be a couple weeks and by then things will have burned M themselves out and so because news traveled slowly they kind of in their world they figured out ways so that passions won't overtake and and you know you won't have demagogues and the people whipped up and you know storming the capital and all that sort of stuff like that's not going to happen because of the way things are well you know now you say okay let's bring in not just like the telephone which obviously sped things up and connected people in mostly very good ways um but you bring in now how about instead of the telephone connecting people we have this like funhouse mirror weird thing where representatives and you know Congress people and Senators they give a speech you know um Ted Cruz you know I one example you know Ted Cruz was giving some sort of a speech uh and he sits down and the photographers behind him they see they catch he is looking at how his speech just played on Twitter not even to his constituents it's like how am I doing on Twitter and this is a complete disaster for the design of our Republic so that's just one piece of it there's a lot of other stuff I could say but the point is um liberal democracy Evol evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries in 20th century too it evolved in the Gutenberg era based on print very stable you know the early Gutenberg here was full of war and chaos but we kind of got it right we got you know editors and fact Checkers and journalism and so we have this very slow Evolution that is consistent with American democracy and then we have a sudden phase change around I think around 2014 I mean it's building in the you know early 20 early 2000s but around around 2014 I think is when we go from a world that was recognizably not completely insane to a world that is completely insane and always will be how much of it in your mind is the the fact that it's algorithmically based or the fact that social media exists at all because I see a lot of people or I see some people trying to conflate this idea of hey the algorithm optimizes for engagement verse just hey we don't have three TV channels anymore and now the people can talk to each other and expose what's happening and that led to Donald Trump getting elected or or you know contributed or something like I my candidate didn't win um so yeah I'm curious for yourself that's a great question um people see you know people who don't know a lot about it seem to focus on the algorithms I I don't talk about algorithms much I do see the role that they play um but Twitter as far as I remember Twitter didn't even use algorithms until 2017 you know Twitter was just chronological feed if you follow people you know so things that go viral it's sort of like that's the number like it went viral it didn't need help from an algorithm and then of course once you algorithm izee now now things are even more viral so my analysis I have an article with Tobias R Stockwell in 2019 in the Atlantic um is that it's really the retweet button and the like button those both come out in 2009 those two innovations really change the Dynamics and it's really you know it's the metaphor we use there is you know it's really like um you know if God suddenly changed the gravitational constant of the universe like one day he says I'm sick of this you know whatever it is you know 2 * 10 I don't know what it is I'm SI let's just multiply by 10 let's just see what happens like there' be chaos throughout the Universe and everything would change so suddenly connecting people uh you know early Facebook I don't think was was destructive it was some performative but you know is you connect to your friends it's once you get the news feed and then the news feed done by algorithm because you have so much data from the like and retweet and then the retweet is like exponential you introduce a new exponential term into our political life so that's why I think things began to go insane you know the early internet was amazing like we all loved it like we thought it was going to be the best friend of democracy and that's why we didn't notice this coming in the 2010s because we were still all very positive about the internet and the Arab Spring and it's going to bring down dictators um but from 20 from 2009 to 2014 is the period when I think the Tower of Babel fell when this like human civilization that we built up over so long really begins to crumble um I think it's December 2013 is when you get Justine sacko which is the first Global cancellation the woman who made a bad joke on Twitter landed in South Africa and the world was laughing at her and she was fired I mean this is just crazy that this happens and that was the first big one that was December 2013 so that's sort of like the harbinger of insanity to come and that's right when you know the coling American mind like Greg and I noticed like 2014 that's when universities begin to melt down so anyway that's my story about how you know the changing technology just inadvertently changed the basic fabric the the interconnections the wiring of society in ways that may be incompatible with liberal democracy yeah one thing you you mention is or you speak about is how this has affected liberals more than conservatives uh going back to sort of um the increase in in depression and and and and and struggles uh there and and one reason is because you say conservatives have um at at this point more of a structure whether it's family whether it's religion there's some the structures that particularly protected against um some of these you know negative causes and you know I almost expected you post coddling American mind where you talk about hey um sort of the the far you know Progressive left has internalized you talk about sort of the reverse of CBT right uh these these negative behaviors that lead to depression I'm I'm curious why there isn't you didn't almost write a book analyzing how the left came to adopt those mindsets and and not just the left but all of our universities you I guess in terms of the left takeover of a lot of our institutions and I know you've been trying to push back against that but um do you think you have done that thorough investigation or how yeah I wrote a whole book I wrote a whole book on it it's called The Calling of the American mind yeah so but okay but what you're talking the specific thing you're talking about is the finding um this is I think mentioned in the book but I have a bunch of substack posts on it one is why liberal girls fail first and fastest I think something like that so if listen you go to after babble.com it's free there's no pay wall um after babble.com uh this is where I've been putting out a lot of Empirical research since finished finished the draft of the book in like July August of last year year and then have done a lot of additional work with Zack Rous on the substack so the finding is that almost all the graphs in the book you'll see are hockey sticks no problem everything is leveled nothing really changing a lot until about 2010 2011 and all of a sudden 2012 2013 everything goes up all the bad stuff goes up and then in later work or as we were finishing the book we did a but we broke it down further okay this is because we always break it down by gender you have to always say here's the line for boys here's the line for girls you never want to mix them because they're often different um but then we said okay let's break it down by politics and gender and so here's the line for Liberal boys conservative boys liberal girls conservative girls what you find um is that the is that everybody is up so conservatives are are you know they're more anxious and depressed than they were but it's only a little whereas the Liberals especially the liberal girls they go up first so they're already going up by 2012 conservatives it takes another year or two before they start going up um and and they go the highest to the point where um uh what's his name Zack Goldberg I think was the first to notice in this Pew data set uh that was published it was collected in March right like a month or two into Co um and the question was um a um a mental uh has a mental health professional ever told you that you have a psychological disorder and when we look at uh at just what uh white girl white people on the left well no you just look at white people you break them up by age and politics and what you find is that you know women have higher rates than men that's been known for a long time that's been true for a long time internalizing disorders depression um older people have lower rates than younger people um older people are just much mentally healthier because they were from a tougher Generation Um and let's see what was the other the other effect in politics you know uh liberals have more than conservatives but when you look at the interactions what you see is that when you look at the Young liberal girls their level is so much higher that it's over 50% so at least in this survey I think it was 57% this was Pew data uh 57 % of young liberal girl jenz liberal girls said they had a they were told they have a psychological disorder now part of that is you know that subgroup is much more into therapy they're much more open so part of it I think is is just um differing you know it's it doesn't necessarily mean those are the real rates of underlying disorder but I think everything we're seeing suggests no actually there is a real difference and the way that Zack and I have interpreted this because you add this together with the religion finding religion is the same thing um High School seniors uh those who say on one question on the moding the future study religion is important to me you know strongly agree agree don't religion is important to me and my family something like that the ones who say yes they only go up a little it's as though they were protected as though they were rooted and this this is the big word for us now they were rooted so kids who were rooted in a real Community you have to go to church on Saturday you do Shabbat on Friday if you're Jewish you have no social you know no electronics on Saturday you visit your grandmother at the table we say prayers you go to bed at a certain time we use authoritative and sometimes authoritarian parenting on the right um whereas liberals use authoritative and sometimes permissive parenting much looser so even going back to the Righteous Mind that's the big difference liberal moralities are liberating let's throw off all the chains conservative moralities are binding let's try to get people to do their Duty let's try to restrain you know our innate urges of lust and desire so so what I'm saying is conservatives and religious people were sort of prepared for the for the tsunami that hit teens in 2012 whereas especially secular liberals were not rooted and they got washed away I mean really devastated and this has huge implications I believe for the Democratic party and for Progressive causes because there have been a number of Articles um it was called the elephant in the zoom if you just Google the elephant in the zoom there's several articles about how a few years ago this was U like 20121 uh 2022 that Progressive organizations like those that are for Progressive advocacy they're consumed with infighting over somebody said something everything is somebody said something and now we all have to do something because somebody said something so this is really causing problems for the left and it's a gift to the right frankly and this is where I want to wrap everything with a b a little bit in terms of um combining the ideas here's my perspective on on on on your book so I actually agree with the with the recommendations or I I I don't find you know I think they're eminently reasonable if I had kids I would I would adopt them hey um no you know phone till 14 no smartphone no till 16 um you know phone free schools that that sounds great like you know my kids would be Happ the fourth the fourth is far more free far more Independence free play and responsibility in the real world you can't just take away the phones you got to give them back a real childhood yeah so continue about how much you agree with me I I think all of that sounds reasonable I I think some people you know some quibbles on the on the margins of and you're not saying there's perfect you know uh correlation causation and everything but you know the the Norwegian smart bands I'm not sure had a massive impact or or or suicide rates in Germany among women I think think are are are plummeting um not that everything needs to be explained by this Theory but I think enough anyone who's close to smartphones and has kids has a sense for for what's uh what's happening so I think that's pretty reasonable but here's my my worry with only focusing on smartphones I'm not you're not only focusing you also Ro the col American mind but I worry that it's NE but not sufficient in the sense that I agree yeah yeah so I worry that it gives other things a pass like like one like what tell me one so one that liberal ideas are making people Miserable as well or okay I yeah yeah and so without a focus on that um sort of the things you just mentioned does that need to be altered or is there a way for people to be more Progressive in a way that doesn't adopt some of the bad ideas that you talk about or actually pushes back against some of those bad ideas and then the second thing really quick is just that also schools I think make kids miserable too yeah so yeah that's my but just briefly schools make kids a lot more miserable now than they did before 2012 Jee twangy and I have a paper analyzing pza data from around the world guess what kids with there are questions about how lonely you are there's there's like six items like I feel Lon I often feel lonely at school I don't make frenzies or you know there six items be sum them them together they were pretty stable from like whatever 200 1 through 2012 and then after 2012 all over the world kids are more lonely in school because they're not talking to each other in between classes if this you know if the school has been successful in in making everybody hide their phone in their lap that's what my kids do in New York City Public Schools you're not allowed to use your phone in class you have to hide it in your lap um and so if the schools are successful in suppressing some use during class as soon as class is over they're on their phones hallways are much quieter than they used to be so yeah kids are unhappy in school in part because they're all on phones all the time or Chromebooks or tablets that's something we should talk about we're starting with the phones but it's looking to me like giving kids distraction machines you know an iPad you know a Chromebook on their desk it's like when I was growing up if we were allowed to take our TV our VCR our pong you know and everything put on our desk like that would be crazy we wouldn't do that but that's what we do now all right that's a side thing um your question was oh yeah about the encouraging people to be conservative I uh identify with a religion adopt Family Values adopt nationalist values if that like yeah how do we think about that yeah well I you know I'm so there's I'm I'm focused on the descriptive question what's going on I'm very gentle on the normative question what should you do now I'm going to say what should you do to protect your kids ah but you're saying you should send your kids to church or synagogue more often well I think that's actually true you know if you so I'm I'm a Jewish atheist I'm a very secular person but when I moved to New York City in 2011 my family we joined a synagogue I wanted my kids to have some some Jewish culture and education um so I think the way I would say it is this um if you're religious or conservative and especially religious conservative you have built in protection your kids are rooted in anchored if you're a secular liberal you have to be a lot more intentional if you're raising kids and you're a secular liberal you have to really think hard about how are you going to give your kids a stable community of people who will be there for decades it's not enough to send them to different lessons and play groups and this emotion discussion group and that you know meditations you know that's not real Community that's temporary um so secular liberals have to be much more intentional going forward um and also religious conservatives have many more controls on phone use whereas secular Liberals are more like you know yeah honey do whatever you want they're more permissive so secular liberals really are going to have to work harder than religious conservatives going forward I I would put it that way it's you know I see the point of your question it was you know I said all this stuff um in you know in the codling that people who are anti-woke love why didn't I say all that stuff in the anxious generation and the answer is this is I think the biggest Public Health crisis we've ever had for young children I mean the you know Bubonic plague was much worse but there weren't that many people back then in terms of the total Destruction of human capital now that we have whatever eight billion people and you know some large number of children and we're just talking about the developed world now now that you know so what's happening is so so massive um that I really want these Norms to be effective and so I did make a decision I was right the book you know what I'm not going to do any politics stuff let's just you know I can do that on the substack if it's relevant I can do it when I but the book you know right now as you see in Congress repu you know every bill it's they've got Republican sponsors Democratic sponsors like Congress because they mostly have kids I was just down there a couple weeks ago they're almost all parents and they all see it and they're working together on this and so I just made a decision you know what let's let's just keep this apolitical we've got we've got to work together you know side by side we got to work together to change childhood back to a human and humane form yeah and I get the prag pragmatic nature of it I I think um there's some percentage of parents I don't know if that's 30% of parents or closer to 50 or or more or less who who who might say something like hey you know we take this Smartphone away in in schools that's great but what that doesn't solve the problem that I worry about is that they're being taught ideas about race or gender or something else in school in schools that are that are making them miserable no that's true I see what you're saying no I do agree with that I do agree that and I have a substack post on this and you know when you teach kids the oppressor victim mindset and everything is oppressor victim you know you're really you're you're hurting them you're narrowing their thinking you're making them simple-minded moralistic sort of the opposite like my first book was the happiness hypothesis ancient wisdom for living a good life that's sort of the opposite uh you know be let's be more judgmental and binary in our thinking um so yeah I I I see your point I I didn't try to do everything in this book I really focused as a social psychologist on now we're in a a set of collective action traps where if anyone tries to do the right thing they get penalized and interestingly the tech companies the social media companies are in the same trap because if meta were to start kicking off 12 year olds and 11 year olds if they were to make an effort those kids would just go to other platforms so so the companies themselves are trapped and that's why we need Federal legislation to say there's a minimum age you know CA said it at 13 and said oh no enforcement as long as you don't know you're okay you don't have to ever check um so I I wrote the book assuming that this is going to be four Norms I wrote the book assuming Congress is dysfunctional it will never help us um I wrote the book saying what can parents in schools do on their own and that's the four Norms um but you know if Congress saw fit to help us with age verification that would be really great you know Britain is doing it Britain um they just actually issued guidance today ofcom issued guidance today pushing ahead their U age appropriate design code and their and their Online safety act they are going to man mate various forms of age verification under certain circumstances so there is progress being being made there but you know what I think wait we have like 15 more minutes I think okay what I would most like to do is ask you to give me more criticism because you know as I was saying before what I've noticed is whenever I talk to parents they see it they agree with me you know they you know we all see it but when what I hear from people in the tech World they say you know you know my friends are all like they're all circulating stuff says you're wrw they don't believe it so I want to First make the point and I often make this when I'm speaking publicly the tech the tech industry is being demonized and I often say you know what it's only five or 10 companies that are causing the problem there are thousands of companies that are making our lives better so I don't demonize the tech industry I especially focus on meta Tik Tok Snapchat uh you know Twitter's not I mean Twitter has its lots of issues but it's not so important for kids you know there's Discord there are others but but the huge damage I believe is being done by U Instagram Tik Tok Snapchat or the big three uh and also YouTube shorts any the short form video is incredibly toxic for kids like that you really want to keep your kids away from that do not let them on Tik Tok um or or YouTube shorts or Instagram reels so anyway all right so over to you yes please you know I want to I want to talk to the tech industry I don't demonize you other than the five or 10 companies what are they saying I I so part of it a small part of it is is is is what I alluded to of this idea that focusing only on the smartphone and I you're doing it for pragmatic reasons is kind of a cover for some of these other um more more Insidious um problems or or or also Insidious problems but I think the bigger part is is and it connects to your next book or what I expect you'll cover in your next book is this is is this idea that hey over the last 10 years social media has been um criticized by lots of people who had some bad arguments um it turns out you know people think Cambridge analytica wasn't as big as people say there's a few sort of you know things that okay fine was still really bad yeah that that they came out that basically like people who were mad that Trump got elected blamed Faceook when they weren't mad about the Arab Spring or they weren't mad about Obama um and what happened um and there's sort of this class of disinformation researchers some of whom I I bet are are are very good people but it just feels like there's been it's been very one ided like it's very it's very it's rare that the people who are targeting disinformation identify misinformation on the left that that hurts the left usually it's information that hurts hurts the right and and maybe there is more misinformation on the right or that's you know that helps the right but it's it's probably not to the same degree that these researchers are are identifying as such and so they're pushing back against what they see as overreach on the so anything that looks like um criticizing of of social media feels like it's enabling this sort of class of activists that cre a living and and been very effective right um in in in criticizing um Tech and making social media the um like did the New York Times face as much scrutiny for for getting us into Iraq or something I'm not saying they did that I'm just say like it feels like there's a as asymmetry of how these platforms are treated and absolutely absolutely yeah so okay so I'd like to address that um so I think the covid response in this country was so disastrous the scientific Community um really politicized things and especially as you know everyone on the right is really especially talks about how they were told you can't go to church we're going to arrest you if you go to church oh but you know black lives matter protest well that's for justice so yes go ahead and do that um and so over and over again um it is clear and look one of the biggest problems I've been working on let me put it this way my mission is to help to use research in moral psychology to help important institutions work better because without our institutions we are headed for collapse so I've been focused on universities as a key institution and in 2011 I began to notice you know what wait we're all in the same team here everyone's on the left there are no Republicans in Psychology there's one I found one um and I said this is really bad like you know we just for the quality of our work and for the fact that Republicans aren't going to support us if so many of us are being activists and using our research to help the Democrats like we got to stop this so I've been very and that's what led me to co-found heterodox Academy the idea that we need Viewpoint diversity and what we've seen happen in the 2010s and driven in part by social media um is that sort of the natural Left Right asymmetries have gotten super Amplified so that you know journalism always leaned left but now it's like really far left and museums you know always lean left and now they're crazy far left and um you know over and over again we're seeing a purification and when you get a purification politically then you get sacred values and the group acts like you know uh by any means necessary we're going to you know we're going to advance this agenda even if we have to betray our our fiduciary duties our our professional responsibilities so I hear those those critiques about how you know anything that's about content moderation is going to favor the left like yep you know you're right that is that is g to happen and that's why I almost never talk about content moderation um I am especially because my my good friend Greg lukianov has has rubbed off on me I am I Am Naturally very concerned about free speech and about censorship and so a really important Point here uh is that everyone focuses on the content and the content isn't that important and this was Marshall mclin's point about television when he said the medium is the message so back in you know in the 1950s and 60s it was all like we have to there's too much sex and violence on TV we have to protect kids from seeing sex and violence it's all about the content and that's what Mark Zuckerberg wants is let's keep the focus on the content because you know Senator we have World leading you know as he said his testimony we we spend a lot of money we are the best in the business at getting this content off and that's important to do that's a good thing to do but um these these platforms especially I think Facebook and Instagram and Twitter you know they they they're complex ecosystems that were designed with no immune system there's no immune system to catch you know now we've got Nigerian sex dorion Rings you know welcome to you know welcome to Instagram um there's no there's no immune system on these platforms and you know really bad stuff happens this is not about content this is about structure this is about architecture this is about design decisions that's why um that's what I mostly focus on and so one of the design decisions is how about if we have no ageg gating we just make people say they're 13 and and then you know like that's a terrible terrible idea um and so what I'm pushing for these are all content neutral you know politically neutral uh you know I'm not saying let's keep uh you know let's keep liberal kids off but let's let the you know conservative kids on so they get messed up like I'm not saying that I'm saying you know let's look at the big things that are changing the nature of childhood now of course you know the beheading videos I mean I was just in the UK and that there's a lot to talk about beheading videos the sextortion the suicides from sex SE extortions um well that's not oh and then I heard about have you heard about the cat in a blender video do you know what that is no it's exactly what you think it is now I have not watched it because I do not want to watch it but it's apparently it was a real video it was a guy in China but a lot of kids have seen this uh be you know and so like so content does matter I mean the horrifying content we can all agree like kids should not be seeing headings and cats whipped up in a blender like that's just not something we should be exposing them to um but the big change is going to come from the four Norms that I talked about I'll just list them again for your audience because repetition is good no smartphones before high school no social media not just Instagram no social media before 16 and this includes Snapchat um no uh phone-free schools um just you know you have to lock them up in the morning you get them back in the afternoon in a phone Locker y under pouch and the fourth is more Independence free play and responsibility in the real world and I co-founded letg grow.org with Lenor skenazy if you have kids under about the age of 12 please go to let grow.org and support let grow.org um we have some really simple powerful ways that schools and families can give their kids back a play based childhood the and I think a lot of people listening will agree with that just because you asked for the the critiques um and and this this could help uh explain some of them are you familiar with the the Baptist and boot leer um sort of uh analogy or Parable no no what's that Mark Adon brought it up in his AI regulation piece where he he fears the AI regulation is going the way of social media regulation where there are people like called the Baptist who are truly concerned about um the issues and are making good recommendations but then there are bootleggers who are just trying to achieve some sort of outcome um and in this case you know one critique that the tech has is when people talk about saving democracy what they really mean is letting the Democrats win saving the Democratic party like when if Hillary Clinton were to win 2016 it would and you know it would be this great force of uh you know a democratic win thanks to social media just like Obama and you know someone once called Steve Bannon is said to Steve Bannon hey our democracy is in danger and Steve said hey we just had the most people vote in this election ever it looks like it's actually pretty healthy and they said oh yeah but look at the outcome and and so the Baptists are in Europe Europe is doing the exact same thing about their populist movements yes exactly so yeah populism bad democracy good right right people winning and so the Baptists the idea is that the Baptists uh have some truth on the side and and the right motives but they end up empowering um these people who just have more nefarious or or narrow-minded uh not nefarious but narrow-minded aims um IE they just want their tribe to win right um and and so that is a concern that people especially have as as you face in your in your next book but also here because it's a critique of social media and involves potentially some regulation yeah okay but still you're that's still focused on content I mean I don't you know if I'm recommending that we delay and keep kids off till 16 am I a Baptist maybe but how is that enabling Bootleggers like what you said makes sense when people think everything is content moderation and I'm like how about we talk about everything other than content moderation content moderation it's impossible to do it well and it's going to be political we can't stop that and it's going to produce backlash so that's why I just don't talk about content moderation let's talk about everything else that's where most of the action is yeah it's it's somewhat content moderation in the sense of they can't see the the the content on their on their phones at at at school or or maybe before 14 or 16 that's not content moderation I mean that's like saying you know not letting them take heroin is like plant intake moderation or something I guess another version would be that analogy other things you know cause people to feel like fashion magazines make people women feel bad like there are other things that also make women feel insecure or depressed and and so should we regulate like it should we regulate those or or socially regulate those those two oh well you know if the evidence was as clear that as soon as a girl looks at a fashion magazine she falls off a cliff then yeah I think we probably would I mean we've done that with hardcore porn for a long time you know I mean when I when I was growing up you you know I I couldn't buy a Playboy magazine and then I didn't even know that there was Hardcore because that wouldn't even you know that wouldn't even be in the 7-Eleven that would not be anywhere in the 7-Eleven franchise um so you know I think we in the 20th century we developed all kinds of ways by which adults and children could share the same world and adults could basically do what they wanted but sometimes like you know you have to show your idea to buy cigarettes that's annoying but you know like we do these things or you know you have to have a fence around your swimming pool Ian there's all sorts of there's some regulations so that we can share the world with children um in the virtual world there's nothing absolutely nothing beheading videos hardcore porn anal sex whatever it is you know sex trafficking welcome you know you're old enough to type you're old enough to exchange nude photos with a stranger totally and let me close on this because people have this critique of you too which is they say you're staring the facts in the face and you still won't switch sides so to speak and and they're what fact wait wait wait what fact is in my face that I'm not acknowledging uh uh sort of the the liberal conservative bent on not only happiness but you're talking about in the Cod like all the bad ideas that are that are coming out of the left basically Eric I think I have done far more than my share of people in this country to analyze the bad ideas coming out of the left that are hurting the left as well as other people so AG I resemble that remark or whatever the joke is yeah you know I I reject that criticism I chose to write a book with very little politics in it for strategic reasons my goal is not for either side to win my goal is to strengthen our institutions our amilies and our children and I I think you've done a great job with that my last question related to that is what would need to be true for you what would need to happen in the world for you to say hey uh I haven't left left the left left me or some version of that which is to say and oh no I would say that I would say that right now yeah yeah no I've I have not I have not said I was on the left for 10 years like when I was writing the Righteous Mind I said wait oh you know I'm I'm now in the center like I was always on the left I started that project hoping to help the Democrats stop losing you know as they did to George W bush twice but once I wrote chapter eight of the righteous mind and I really tried to lay out intuitions about proportionality not just equality the left loves equality the right left's proportionality and Liberty I I said to my wife Jane I don't think I can I can keep calling myself uh being on the left I think you know there's really good ideas on both sides now I think the Republican party has terrible Dynamics they've gotten rid of all their moderates and so one argument I get from people on the left is well just just look at the parties only one of them is completely insane only one of them is starting the C and I have to say yeah you know what if we just look at the parties you know you're right you're right but then I talk to people on the right and they say but look at every institution what they're doing to our schools our museums our science you know the medical I mean medical schools Psychiatry and you know you know because and and you know that's all caused by the left not the right yep you're right so there's this really there's this really asymmetry where I've said for a long time that in Washington I think the the Republican party is the more dysfunctional party um but in our cultural institutions that really is on the left sledger not much more than than the right so once again I don't know why you're pushing me to it sounds like you're trying to pull me over the Divide to say that I'm on the right or something but I no I'm very happy being a principled Centrist um learning from everybody and pointing out this very serious problems on both sides yeah I I was just responding to your uh one of the critiques that that oh good yeah yeah I um I and I think most people in Tech to the extent that they have critiques they also acknowledge that a lot of how people learn about some of these issues in the first place is thanks to books like the the the coding of the American mind or even before that the righteous mind and I think you've you've done I we uh think you've done amazing service and I I you I'll close by saying this I think that most intellectually honest people listening to this reading the book have to uh find sympathy with with with your recommendations that social media is um you know the addiction to it and its addictive nature can break brains especially younger people but even girls especially yes um and um they're just concerned about how that argument might be used um by other people who are trying to advance an agenda and I think that's something we'll hopefully talk about uh after your next book which uh which I I can't wait to read in the next uh few years or or whenever it's out um but uh I want to say uh thank you your your books have uh greatfully influenced my my thinking and I think you've done a really valuable service um with them and and and this one um especially um so thank you John for for coming to the podcast it's great discussion oh thanks so much Eric for having me on I really I haven't had many chances to talk to the Tech Community um so I really appreciate this and I hope everybody will go to after babble.com which is the substack and anxious generation.com which is the website for the book and if you click on the take action tab we have all kinds of things that parents can do that schools can do that legislators can do and that tech companies can do so um you know I I I want we have to solve this problem you know so and and if you know if we work together on this we really can and we will thanks I know there are people listening to this who who work at some of these companies who who can can help make a difference so so do do do reach out to either of us um and and the conversation will will continue thanks so much for coming on thank you Eric hey everyone Eric here at turpentine we're building the First Media outlet for tech people by tech people we're the network behind the show you're listening to right now we have a slate of hit shows across a range of Topics in industries from our Ai and investing cluster of podcasts to shows that drive the conversation in Tech with the most interesting thinkers Founders investors and influencers like 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Channel: Moment of Zen

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Length: 57min 53sec (3473 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2024