- Every generation loves to complain about the generation coming along, but at the same time,
there's a very sharp change with kids who were born
in 1995 and afterwards- surprisingly sharp. Beginning with kids born in 1995, they spend a lot less time
going out with friends. They don't get a driver's
license as often. They don't drink as much. They don't go out on dates. They don't work for money as much. What are they doing? They're spending a lot more time sitting on their beds with their
devices interacting that way. These are the first kids
who got social media when they were 13, roughly. They were subjected to much
more anti-bullying content in their schools, much more adult supervision. They were raised in the years after 9/11. They were given much less
recess and free play. With No Child Left Behind, there was much more testing
pushed down into earlier grades. So in a lot of ways, Gen Z has been denied the independence, the independent play that
previous generations got. Gen Z has been raised with
what's called 'moral dependency.' There's always been an adult
there for them to go to, and so we don't know if
this is for sure the reason, but they seem to have more difficulty working out problems on their own. When we protect children
from unpleasantness, from conflicts, from insults,
from teasing, from exclusion, we are setting them up to be weak, to be more easily damaged, to
be more easily discouraged. In the 1990s, as the
crime rate was plummeting, as American life was
getting safer and safer, Americans freaked out
and thought that if they take their eyes off their children, the children will be abducted. The fear was stoked by
cable TV in the 1980s; there were a few high-profile abductions. - 'Last year, 50,000 children disappeared. Many of them from nice,
safe neighborhoods.' - 'It's okay. Come on, hop in.' - 'Talk to your children about not talking to
strangers, and do it today.' - But it's not until the 1990s that we really start
locking kids up and saying, "You cannot be outside
until you're 14 or 15." Lenore Skenazy, who wrote
the book, "Free Range Kids." She became famous as "America's worst mom" because in 2009, she
let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway. Not only did he survive, he was thrilled. He felt he'd learned something. He felt he could go out into the world. We took this essential period of childhood from about 8 to 12, when
kids throughout history have practiced independence,
have gotten into adventures, have made rafts and floated
down the Mississippi River- we took that period and said, "You don't get to practice independence," until it's too late,
until that period is over. Now, a couple years
before you go to college, "Now you can go outside. Oh,
okay, go off to college." And a lot of 'em are not ready. They're just not used
to being independent. When they get to college,
they need more help. They're asking adults for more help. Protect me from this. Punish him for saying that. Protect me from that book. Students are thinking in
terms of safety and danger. Students say, by their own
admission, they are more fragile. They use a language of
fragility, weakness, trauma, triggering. They see triggers all over the world. What are triggers? Triggers are cases where you take a part of your nervous system and you say, "If someone says that word, they can control my nervous system and make me afraid and anxious." That's a terrible idea. We should not be teaching
our kids to to see the world as being full of triggers. We should teach them to live in a world that is physically quite safe, but full of offensive
statements and ideas, especially on the internet. The bottom line is that if
we want to raise a generation of kids who can deal with
diversity of all kinds, who can go out into a world
that's physically actually quite safe but yet full of
offensive, offensive content, we need to get our
educational practices in line with some very basic, important
psychological principles. They are: We are all prone to motivated reasoning and the confirmation bias, and we're all prone to tribalism, and black-and-white thinking. We need to be educating kids so that they do less of this stuff. Always trust your feelings: It may sound wise, it may sound romantic. But wise people around
the world have noticed that we don't react to the
world as it actually is, we react to the constructions,
the perceptions. Epictetus said, "It is not things
themselves that disturb us but our interpretations of things." All of us have had experiences with these. One thing I like to think
about is Homer Simpson saying: 'Shut up, brain or I'll
stab you with a Q-tip!' - Our brains do this. Our brains go on and on, and we're like, "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" What we've begun seeing on campus is that students are encouraged
to follow their feelings. If they feel offended by something, then they have been attacked. They're supposed to not
question those feelings. But part of wisdom is the ability to say, "Now, wait a second. Are there other ways to look at this?" These are crucial skills
for critical thinking. These are crucial skills
for mental health. And we need to be teaching young people at all stages to question
their first interpretations, look for evidence, and improve the way they
interpret the world. CBT is just a way of
teaching people skills to do exactly that, to question their feelings,
to look for evidence. So in CBT, you learn the
names of these distortions, about 15 or so distortions. You can guess what they mean: Catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, labeling, mind reading. Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist in the 1960s, noticed that depressed and
anxious people have a way of constructing these beliefs that, "I'm bad. The future is bad. My future- the world is a bad place," and they're mutually reinforcing. And this is the way the
world feels to them. And if you can improve their thinking and break up those beliefs, they're released from the depression. Cognitive behavioral therapy
is not more effective than several other treatments. There are-most treatments
are about equally effective- but it's so easy to learn! Other techniques like meditation
work, but they're harder; most people drop off. So CBT is easy, really well-tested, has a huge impact on a
variety of mental illnesses, especially those related
to depression and anxiety. We think every college student, and heck, every high school student should be taught these basic skills, given how high the rates of anxiety and depression are today. 'Life is a battle between
good people and evil people.' If you think about it
for a moment, who are we? What is our species? We evolved in small-scale societies that were locked in struggle with
other small-scale societies. Human nature is really,
really finely tailored for intergroup conflict,
for tribal warfare. This is the way our ancestors
lived for a long time. Now that we've transcended
it, we're so desperate for it. We've invented team sports, fraternities, we love these sorts of competitions- our brains are made for it. Now, it can be fun or it can get dark, and it can lead to racism, all kinds of- all kinds of forms of bigotry. And on some college campuses
and in some high schools, we see forms of education, forms of training that teach students to make more and more distinctions, to see more and more binary
dimensions between people where the people who are high are bad, the people who are low are good. When we talk about identity politics, which is a controversial topic, we start by saying, "Of course, you need identity politics." Identity politics is not
a bad thing automatically. Politics can be based on any distinction. It can be based on any group interest. So, for gay students or Black students or women who organize,
that's identity politics; that's perfectly legitimate. The question is: How are they organizing? What's the overarching framework? And we've seen two versions
of it in American history: You can do it the way most of the civil rights leaders did it, Martin Luther King, in particular, where you draw a larger
circle around the group, you emphasize what we have
in common, and then you say, "Some of our brothers and sisters are being denied equal access, equal opportunity, or equal dignity." That works. That has worked historically
in much tougher times and zones, and that works and
will work on college campuses. The other way you do it, which is growing on college campuses, is 'common enemy identity politics.' It's based on the Bedouin notion: 'Me against my brother, me and my brother against our cousin, me, my brother, and cousin
against the stranger.' It's a very general principle
of social psychology. If you try to unite people,
"Let's all unite against them. They're the bad people. They're the cause of the problems. Let's all stick together." That's a really dangerous thing to do in a multiethnic society. Especially in a university,
where we're actually all trying to work together
to solve the problem. If we're creating multiethnic
environments on campuses, and in most of our organizations we're struggling to increase diversity, what you should obviously
be doing is turning down the tribal sentiments; is emphasizing what we have in common. Identity politics done with
a common humanity frame, is a good thing, and is likely to work. Identity politics done
by uniting everybody against the people with
power and privilege, one race versus another race, one gender versus another gender- this is madness. This is a really bad idea if you're trying to emphasize an increased
diversity and inclusion. We call that common
enemy identity politics. The more we encourage
people to see the people around them as good versus evil, the harder it's gonna be
to create an an inclusive, diverse environment. - Thank you, and very well said. Jonathan, thank you so much for your time. - My pleasure. - Get smarter, faster with videos from the world's biggest thinkers. And to learn even more from
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