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In March of last year, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published this book called \u201cThe Anxious Generation,\u201d which caused, let\u2019s call it, a stir. [CLIPS] Jonathan, I see people walking all over Brooklyn holding this book. The subtitle says it all how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. I don\u2019t think anybody can dispute that. Oh my God, enough with the panic about kids using smartphones. Facing enormous pushback from other researchers. You cannot disentangle cause from effect. He ignores a lot of the positives. Telling a scary story that many parents are primed to believe. [END CLIPS] I always found the conversation over this book a little annoying because it got to me at one of the difficulties we\u2019re having parenting, one of the difficulties we\u2019re having in society, which is this tendency to instrumentalize everything into social science. Unless I can show you on a chart the way something is bad. We have almost no language for saying it\u2019s bad. So I stayed a bit out of that debate. Because on the one hand, I couldn\u2019t settle it. And on the other hand, I didn\u2019t think I should come in and say it wasn\u2019t important. We\u2019re a year later, though, and two things have happened. Haidt\u2019s book has never left the bestseller list. Week after week after week. That is rare. It has struck a chord. The other is that policy is moving in Haidt\u2019s direction. [CLIPS] The governor of Utah has signed a sweeping bill to limit children\u2019s access to social media. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed one of the most restrictive social media laws in the country. This asshole, Ron DeSantis, might have done something. I agree with. The no cellphones in schools movement is going national. Florida classrooms, all schools in the Buckeye State, Michigan, South Carolina, This morning in Virginia we\u2019re talking statewide at all Arizona schools. And now nine other states are considering the bans bands as well. How are your phone off. I feel a lot more confident, as a parent, we\u2019re going to figure this out. By the time my kids are old enough for it to matter. And then, of course, the truck of I is about to t-bone whatever consensus we socially come to. Which scares, to be quite honest, the hell out of me. So I want to have Jon Haidt on the show to talk about all of it. He is a professor at New York University Stern School of Business. He is also the author of \u201cThe Righteous Mind,\u201d which I think is one of the best books on political psychology, as well as other books. And he is also the author of the After Babel Substack, which is free, where he and some co-authors are continuing to prosecute the case and think through the research around social media. As always, my email ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Jon Haidt, welcome to the show. Ezra, it\u2019s great to be back with you. So I want to just begin with a big question. What is childhood for? Childhood is evolution\u2019s answer to how do you have a big brained cultural creature. You have to practice all sorts of things, all sorts of maneuvers, all sorts of social skills, in order to tell your brain how to wire up, to have the adult form. So if you focus on brain development, and especially for a big brained cultural species like ours, there\u2019s a plastic period, a period where stuff comes in and it shapes who you are. And then once you\u2019ve got that, now you\u2019re ready to convert to the adult form. Be reproductive. Have a baby. But if you don\u2019t have play in the childhood, you\u2019re not going to reach the adult form properly. You had one statistic in the book that I think I\u2019ve actually read before, but every time I read it, it shocks me anew. And maybe now, because I have a five-year-old who just turned 6, but that at five years old, the human brain is 90 percent of its adult size and it has more neurons than it will when you\u2019re an adult. That\u2019s right, because we\u2019re used to thinking of bodily growth as just time equals bigger. But the brain is this amazing thing that has all these neurons that have the potential to connect in all kinds of ways. And as neuroscientists say, neurons that fire together, wire together. So if you repeatedly if you repeatedly climb trees or do archery systems will form in your brain that make you really good at that. Whereas if you repeatedly swipe, tap, swipe, tap and just respond to emotional stimuli, your brain is going to wire to do that, it\u2019s asked you what childhood is for. And now I want to ask you a related but slightly different question, which is what is a good childhood. So a good childhood. There\u2019s two ways to answer it. One is effective in making you a successful adult. That\u2019s instrumental. What it sounded for. Yeah and the other is what\u2019s a fun childhood. And they. I can\u2019t say that they line up exactly in every culture. They certainly don\u2019t line up in every culture. But we\u2019re going to thrive if they have a lot of overlap. So almost everybody over 35 or so, I guess you\u2019re an older millennial. How did you grow up when you. I am among the eldest of millennials, the elders, the millennial elders tell me when, at what age you could go out on your bicycle with your friends and go around the neighborhood. I don\u2019t remember exactly, but I do remember I spent a lot of time. I lived on a cul sac in a suburb, and I do remember I spent a lot of time as part of just a roaming pack of kids who lived on my street, and we would be playing kickball on somebody\u2019s garage door. And the other thing I remember about it that I feel like I see less of now is that it was highly age diverse. Exactly that\u2019s right. So this is what human child has always been. There are periods, the Industrial Revolution where maybe kids didn\u2019t have a childhood. But Peter gray, a developmental psychologist who co-founded let grow with me. He has some writing on Hunter gatherers and Hunter gatherers raised their kids in that way. There\u2019s no thought that the mother has to be supervising the 4, 5, 6, 7, 9-year-olds. They\u2019re all off playing with the other kids, and because it\u2019s not a bunch of four-year-Olds getting eaten by a snake, it\u2019s a bunch of kids, and there are 9 and 10-year-olds there. And so they learn to look out for each other. The older kids learn to care for the younger kids, and the younger kids remember they\u2019re trying to wire up their brain to what is a functional member of this society. And the best role models for them are not kids their age. It\u2019s kids a few years older. And so in America in the West, we\u2019ve got these factory kind of schools where we put all the eight-year-Olds together and then all the 9-year-olds are together. But the healthiest is what you just said. And so my point is, everyone before the millennials had this childhood. The millennials are the transitional generation. So you were on the elder side. You got it. But in the 90s is when we really freaked out about child abduction, even though the rates are microscopic in this country. And even though crime was plummeting in this country in the 90s, that\u2019s the decade when and you can see it in the charts. That\u2019s the decade when we really pulled our kids in. We thought it\u2019s they\u2019ll get abducted. We can\u2019t let them go in a different aisle of a supermarket or a man with a white van. I mean, all this crazy stuff comes in the 90s. Something you mentioned about the 90s in the book is I am familiar with the statistic that parents today, despite working two jobs much more often than they did in the past, despite fathers being more involved, they both spend much more time with their kids than they did before. I hadn\u2019t realized that was not a steady increase over the decades, that it\u2019s sharply an increase in the 90s. That\u2019s right, that\u2019s right. There\u2019s this weird graph that I have in the book, which shows the number of hours both men and women spend in parenting. What you would consider time with your kid doing something. And the astonishing thing is that in the 50s, 60s, 70s, even into the 80s, there were big families. Women generally didn\u2019t work. And yet women were not spending five hours a day parenting because the kids were raised the way that you just said, it\u2019s not the parent\u2019s job to socialize the child all along. It\u2019s the parent\u2019s job to provide the right environment to provide certain kinds of moral frameworks. But the real work of brain development doesn\u2019t happen when you\u2019re with your parents. Your parents are home based. They\u2019re your attachment figure. When you feel securely attached, then you go off and explore. And that\u2019s the mammal way. That\u2019s what other mammals do. You go off progressively further from your home base. And that\u2019s where the learning happens. It\u2019s playing kickball, trying to decide, what do we do today. Oh, he broke the rules. No he didn\u2019t. I want to get it. A tension in there with at least the culture of modern parenting. I think a lot of parents believe that the simplest way to ask, were you a good parent this week is how much time you spend with your quality time Quality time. That\u2019s right, I feel that. Yeah and you\u2019re saying here, that\u2019s not true. It\u2019s not true. It\u2019s definitely not true. True you want to give your kids a quality childhood. You want to be a quality parent, but that doesn\u2019t mean that you have to spend a lot of quality time with your kid. You need a warm, trusting, loving relationship. You need to provide structure and order and discipline. But this is what changed in the 90s is, and it\u2019s in part because we stopped trusting our neighbors, it turns out, why did we stop letting our kids out to play. If you think of all the Robert Putnam stuff about Bowling alone and the loss of social capital, we used to at least trust that if our kids were out playing without us, other adults would look out for them. If something really went wrong, they could knock on a door like someone would help. But we begin losing that trust. And this is really bad for the kids because the kids don\u2019t grow as much if their attachment figure is there. And it\u2019s really bad for the adults, especially the especially the women. The mothers pick up a lot of this even though they\u2019re working outside the home. So Yes, modern parenting is not good for the kids and certainly not good for the adults. So if you\u2019re tracking dynamics here, you have the 90s. We\u2019re getting more afraid of danger. You\u2019re having this deterioration in social trust. This deterioration in is the whole community parenting your kid. And it\u2019s right about now that you begin having an explosion in screen possibilities. That\u2019s it. So I remember when I was younger, I remember Nickelodeon emerging. O.K right before then, there wasn\u2019t a TV channel all that was programming for children at all times. Right Before then, it\u2019s like there are cartoons sometimes. There was kids shows Saturday morning, but not. That\u2019s right all the time. And obviously, from there, you get an explosion of cable channels. Eventually the internet eventually. You iPads and iPhones and video game consoles and all the rest of it. Talk about the handoff. Yeah Yeah. It\u2019s the conversion over to this smartphone based, tablet based childhood. That\u2019s when all the indicators of mental illness start rising around 2013, 2012, 2013. Now, I focused on the 2010 to 2015 period. But I think your question points out something I hadn\u2019t really thought much about, which is cable TV. And you\u2019re right that the digital environment just gets super interesting when you\u2019re a kid. I was born in 1963, so I grew up in the late 60s, early in the 70s. I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan\u2019s Island, you know. And I\u2019ve watched those I showed those shows to my kids and they said, this is so stupid. Like, they were really simple plots, but that\u2019s all we had. Whereas you had cable, which was more engaging, and console video games. O.K, I got a Nintendo, the NES, not the Super Nintendo. The first mass available console and mass mass adopted. There were could argue about the Atari or whatever, but the Nintendo Entertainment System, what year was that. I don\u2019t remember now, but I was young. You\u2019re talking. You\u2019re talking late 80s. Yeah O.K. To me, that\u2019s a big dividing point, because the things that Nickelodeon and the NES do is they make it possible to put something on the television at any second of the day. Yeah they will entertain a child intensely. Yeah that\u2019s right. That\u2019s a good point. I\u2019ve been more focused on the arrival of the internet, but the Nintendo didn\u2019t require the internet, right. No right. So But you were not a gamer, John. Well, I was because when I was a kid, the game was pong, they were. They were. This is 8-bit Mario, man. This is the early stuff. So the early stuff was great fun, but it was not multiplayer. You had had a your friend had to sit next to you to play. right. So this I hope this will be a theme that I\u2019m thinking a lot more about this. Like don\u2019t just think about screen time. Think about what is it that makes it good or bad. And so because I remember just as video games was coming in and you\u2019d hook it up to your TV. So like, my friends and I would get together, and we\u2019d say, what do you want to do. You play play video games O.K, we\u2019ll do that for a little bit, and then we\u2019d go off and do something else. There\u2019s nothing harmful about that. What happens in the 2000 once you begin to get the multiplayer games. Because this requires not just the internet, it requires high speed internet in order to have these amazing graphics shared in multiple screens at the same time without a lag. So that\u2019s only 2008 2009 it begins to get popular. But then in this great rewiring period, 2010 to 2015, this is when everyone\u2019s trading in their flip phones for smartphones, this is when high speed internet is increasing greatly. So by 2015 now you boys are all on these multiplayer games. My son played Fortnite. I didn\u2019t let him until he was 13, but they\u2019d laugh their heads off. The boys at least had that synchronous laughter. They\u2019re not in the same room, so it\u2019s not as good, but they at least had that. Whereas the girls are each alone on their own Instagram account, they might laugh at a meme at something, but they\u2019re not having shared laughter. One of the reasons I felt myself a little put off by the debate that emerged around your book, with a endless back and forth on the identification strategy of was this really the cause of anxiety or a correlate of anxiety. And what\u2019s going on in South Korea. Is it got at this feeling I keep having which is that we have lost any kind of independent and I would positively say, paternalistic idea of what we want human beings to be, and we have allowed it all to be dominated by metrics. So on the one hand, there is are you getting good grades, you\u2019re getting good grades and you\u2019re fine. It\u2019s not really true. We definitely see it\u2019s not true now because we\u2019re watching kids. I mean partially through grade inflation, get plenty of good grades, not get pregnant as teenagers, not do a bunch of drugs, and they\u2019re doing terribly. The other side of it, though, is that then there\u2019s this, I would call it the logic of capitalism, the logic of the consumer economy, which is that if you enjoy doing it, if you want to do it, then we need to have a very high bar for a reason to stop you. Our view is that kids should not freebase crack all the time. We\u2019ve decided like, that\u2019s not something we should let them do. But if they\u2019re playing multiplayer online, massive multiplayer online games all the time. And they enjoy it and their grades are fine. What are you really going to say. And somewhere in this, some texture is lost. I think that I associate more with classical education or something, but with we\u2019re trying to develop certain facilities that are part of being a human being. Yeah, I always think about attention as one of them. What kind of attention. We hear all this concern now that kids are graduating in high school. Even kids going to good colleges can\u2019t read a full book, a book, can\u2019t watch a movie. But there\u2019s more than that. I think we care about if our children are nice or kind. We have that. But there\u2019s a lot about all kinds of virtues that we\u2019ve just lost the way to talk about and that we\u2019re not comfortable saying. I mean, I see it with parents all the time. You need some great reason to say the kid shouldn\u2019t be on the iPad, and maybe it\u2019s that you think their grades will be bad or their anxiety will be high, but you can\u2019t just say nobody feels that comfortable saying it\u2019s just bad. I just don\u2019t want you looking at the screen all the time. I think it\u2019s bad. I think it\u2019s not the way to be a human being. That\u2019s right. What you\u2019re describing is the loss of any moral framework. And if you try to raise kids without a moral framework, it\u2019s not going to go well. So that\u2019s what I\u2019d like you to talk a bit about. You have one chapter on this in the book. It\u2019s a little shorter. It\u2019s about spirituality. But your first book is all about moral frameworks. Connect these for me because I do. We lost paternalism like I do think parenting lost an idea that it is confident about. Yeah Yeah about what we are trying to raise people towards. And this. Yeah and while I want to stay away from politics, in our talk in general, what you\u2019re bringing up is one of the divisions that I talked about in the righteous mind between left and right, and that is that in general, the right conservatism conserve what we have. There\u2019s a wisdom to our ancestors. This is Edmund Burke. And so the right tends to see they have what\u2019s called a constrained view of human nature. If kids don\u2019t have structure and order and punishment for bad deeds, they\u2019ll come out badly, whereas the left tends to habitually question existing arrangements and pull things down if they seem unjust, and the left is much more afraid to make value judgments and to impose a moral order on kids. That\u2019s why it\u2019s always the right that\u2019s concerned about the garbage being placed on TV, because the right is very concerned about the moral diet coming in. Now, I think in the modern era, I think parents should be more like the conservatives in that respect, and here\u2019s why. We already talked about the way the neurons are growing. They\u2019re wiring up and you learn to run, climb trees, do all sorts of things. But a big thing you\u2019re doing, especially in later childhood, is you\u2019re learning the moral order. And humans evolved within a moral order. And I\u2019m a secular Jewish. I was always on the left. Now I\u2019m nothing. I\u2019m not on any team. But when I was writing that book, I was really exploring ancient wisdom and discovering, Wow, I think every other society, they had this rich moral framework. They have a conception of the gods. There are reasons why you have to do things, and when you raise kids within a moral order, they have a sense of their place in the world and a sense of meaning. And when you take all that out and you say all that matters is what feels good, or all that matters is rights, or all that matters is some measure of material success. There\u2019s no. Basically what you have is what Emile Durkheim called anomie. Or normlessness. And there\u2019s a question on the Monitoring the Future study where for since the 70s, we\u2019ve asked high school seniors, my life feels useless. Do you agree or disagree with that on a 5 point scale. And until 2010, it\u2019s like around 9 percent say Yes. And then all of a sudden 2012, it shoots up. It doubles within five or 10 years. And so I think part of this is if you\u2019re immersed in stories that have a moral order to them, which is what I was immersed in when I was a kid, all the stories had some moral and even I Dream of Jeannie. I mean, if you there was a moral framework that was put in by the adults who made the show. But what you see on TikTok and Instagram, they\u2019re not really stories. They\u2019re really amoral or immoral. A lot of them are just horrible things. The boys are seeing lots of videos of people getting in accidents or violence and so a long way to answer your question. Kids need moral formation. They need a structure, a shared moral framework. Morality only works like language. You can\u2019t have your own language and you can\u2019t have your own morality. It only works as a shared system, an order. And once kids move on to social media, it\u2019s just a million little fragments of nonsense. There\u2019s no moral order, but that means parents need it. And I do think there is a question of where parents get it or don\u2019t. But Instagram, TikTok, get at this in an interesting way to me. O.K, I think it was. I was listening to a conversation with you some years ago, and you said something like, it is just bad for teenage girls to be endlessly posting pictures of themselves on the internet for other people to rate right through. I stand by that bold assertion, and I remember thinking, that\u2019s so unbelievably fucking obvious and so much not how we actually just talk about it. Because what you\u2019re making there was fundamentally a moral judgment. I behind it there is evidence. But I do find that within the conversation about social media and the way we\u2019re constructing childhood, there is this demand to bring the studies. And I\u2019ve said this before, I think if you could prove to me that it doesn\u2019t matter at all for anxiety at 16 or earnings at 23, whether or not kids spend 2.5 hours or three hours a day on TikTok, I think it would change my view of whether they should do that. 0 percent O.K. Because I just think it\u2019s a bad way to live. And it\u2019s a bad way to live for other reasons. I think it\u2019ll create by nature. It creates self-obsession. By nature, it creates this management of the personal brand, by nature, a thing where you are posting a lot of videos and photos of yourself online is going to make you think a lot about yourself. It is self obsessing and even if I couldn\u2019t find correlates there of bad outcomes, I have a view on what it means to be a flourishing human being. That should not include too much of that wants to keep that boxed up a little bit in the human psyche. And this is where things feel like they ran aground to me in a lot of the debates. I feel parenting and the culture parents come from now, unless you are in some form of church, basically is incredibly insecure about making these judgments. That\u2019s right, that\u2019s right. I don\u2019t fully understand why. I don\u2019t think it is just a loss of trust thing. I think it is some set of forces that I don\u2019t really understand, but I don\u2019t feel like it was like that as much when I was young, and it definitely wasn\u2019t like that as much in the past. That\u2019s right. And separate almost from everything else. I think this is a huge failure in parenting culture. There\u2019s just inability to say we have views on what is good or bad. That\u2019s right. And they don\u2019t require 16 years of randomized controlled trials. They\u2019re just actually our views on virtue. Yeah and there I see this generational change. You can see that. You can see the tight moral order of the 1950s. And when you look at old movies like from the seconds and 40, there was a really tight moral order. And, it would be dramatic whether a woman could go into a man\u2019s apartment that was like a so there was a really intense moral order around gender, around all sorts of things. And that, of course, begins to loosen up in the 60s. And there are many good things that happen because of that. But one of the concerns about modern secular society has been gradually lose this moral framework within which to raise children. And I\u2019m really aware now of how we each we\u2019re all influenced by our parents and just maybe a little bit by our grandparents. Culture is always come down vertically through generations, but that link is getting weakened. So I think there is a progressive weakening of a sense of a moral order, which affects how you parent. And then we end up with a kind of an amoral, focused on grades and I guess, be nice and a few other things. But it\u2019s a very thin moral gruel, I\u2019d say. And you can, I think, see this spreading throughout society. The idea that this is just about the kids is wrong. I know you don\u2019t want to be political, and I know that the John heide agenda is being adopted in red and blue states alike, and we will talk about that. But you were saying earlier. Look, liberals and conservatives have these different moral foundations, and conservatives care a lot more about the moral inputs. And maybe that was true. I look around, I don\u2019t see it. I\u2019m not asking you to say whether Donald Trump is a moral or immoral person, but what I will say is that the Republican Party under him has become unconcerned with what was traditionally understood as vice in a very different way. So some of that is politeness and etiquette, but some of it is what should the policies be about. Sports gambling, right. There is a massive deregulation of sports gambling, which is so bad for boys consuming young men. Yes right. Destroying crypto is an adjacency of that. There\u2019s a gambling perfectly fine things about crypto. But what we are at specifically permitting is crypto as a Casino. I was somebody who was very supportive of marijuana legalization, and I think it\u2019s gone terribly. Yeah, I agree, and it\u2019s gone terribly. I mean, among other things, because we have just allowed capitalism to get its hooks into it and create more and more and more potent products that are advertised everywhere. We have I don\u2019t know if either side is particularly concerned with Vice right now, but the right has embraced a lot of this too. And I think part of that is just a collapse. There is no one left who has political power in this society who feels confident making, I would say, judgments that go against the market. There was a market for sports gambling. So we\u2019re going to allow it. There is a market for crypto. I think about a lot of things in modernity, as capitalism is itself a kind of moral logic, and it is a moral logic built on individual expression of wants in the moment. And it was counterbalanced by much more potent religious logics. And these two forces held each other at a rough equilibrium for much of 20th century America, and at some point the religious counterforce has weakened so much that the system fell out of equilibrium, and now the religious forces are just not very powerful at all. I\u2019m not myself highly religious, but I do think that these were countervailing players and we just don\u2019t have them anymore. And the evidence of that being a problem is actually all around us now. I think that\u2019s exactly right. I\u2019ll just bring a couple of points to bear. One is there\u2019s an incredible book called The age of addiction by David Courtwright, and he chronicles how people have always like, wanted sugar and they foraged for fruit. But then you learn to refine sugar and now you get sugar based products and then you get candy. And then so once we get a market based economy in the Industrial Revolution, we find more and more ways to make these products that our brains evolved to crave, but now they\u2019re limitless. You can have limitless quantities effortlessly. And the same is true for opiates. You get opium to heroin to fentanyl. So a free market society. The best definition of it, I heard, is the one in which you can only get rich by making other people better off. And for the most part, in our economy, that is still true. But now let\u2019s look at the products we\u2019re talking about. If you\u2019re a sports betting company if you\u2019re a crypto company if you\u2019re a video game company if you\u2019re a social media company, are you making your money by making people better off, or are you playing on addiction, manipulating social forces. Are you spreading enormous negative externalities around society. And I would argue that\u2019s what\u2019s happening. And partly it is due, I think, to the deregulatory impulse to the fact that we have lost the ability to regulate things in a smart way. And so one principle I really want to make clear in all of this is we have to distinguish between children and adults. So we are generally libertarian country compared to Europe, where they\u2019re happy to ban anything. When we\u2019re talking about adults, I think we\u2019re generally right. Generally, we should let adults do what they want unless there\u2019s compelling evidence, some reason. But when we\u2019re talking about kids, it\u2019s entirely different. And when you have entire trillion dollar industries, where do they make their money from. I didn\u2019t pay them a penny. You didn\u2019t pay them a penny. Our kids didn\u2019t pay them a penny. That entire value is created by breaking up the day into tiny little bits and sucking out the attention and selling it to advertisers and selling the data. So my point is, in general, free market good in general, free society is good. But they have this problem that certain industries have found out ways to monetize our weaknesses, and they get better and better at that every decade. And that\u2019s what\u2019s happening to us. I think I want to think about this, and I guess I\u2019m going to make this next point a little bit to be provocative. I\u2019m not sure how much I believe it. I understand argumentatively and politically why you want to just say, look, it\u2019s fine for adults to do basically anything they want. But kids, kids are. The children are our future. We got to do something very different. They\u2019re fine. I think in practice, it doesn\u2019t work. Why is that. Because if you are going to allow something to be both highly morally and legally permissible the moment somebody is 18, or frankly, in a lot of your frameworks, 16 I\u2019m not saying it is literally impossible that you will implement such a hard core age verification system that it will be impossible to do beneath that, it\u2019s probably going to be pretty hard. Now, I think there are places where it works, but typically you want friction that is both moral and structural. It\u2019s a little bit more of a gradation throughout society. What we have lost in a lot of places is friction, and there are things that you want to have some access to but there would be friction. We had access to things like sports, gambling, but you had to drive to Vegas, at least on the West Coast where I grew up, taking away all the friction, making it available virtually everywhere and online has just then made it very, very, very dangerous to people because some percentage of people are going to develop a gambling problem, and we know that pretty well. I have this view that the correct moment of marijuana decriminalization was when it was medically legalized under a kind of wink, wink, nod, nod structure in California. So you could get it. You weren\u2019t putting people in jail for it, but you couldn\u2019t have a store on every block. Selling hyper potent formulas to everybody who walked in the door. What we have done, and I mean this is the genius of capitalism. What it does is it seeks out how to make the thing more interesting, more potent, more seductive, more alluring. And that\u2019s really great until a certain point. Yeah that\u2019s right. At which point the friction between you. And the thing becomes too low. And then it\u2019s very, very, very hard for the limited software of the human mind to regulate the wants, at least in some people. Yes And so there\u2019s something about the loss of friction. And I suspect that and again, this is partially moral frameworks. If we\u2019re going to be completely fine with it at 19, it\u2019s going to be very hard to not be at for it to not be too present at 17. O.K all right. Hold on a second here. In general, I agree with you that the technology makes everything easy. And for adults, that actually is often good. Not always, but often good. But for kids, it\u2019s disastrous because kids need to learn to do hard things, and the technology makes it easy for them to not do hard things. But if I could just add on started this off by saying, oh, you don\u2019t think that we\u2019re not going to get an actual age verification system. The one real obstacle that I have faced once I put the book out, parents love it. They\u2019re embracing it. Teachers are embracing it. The main objection I get is resignation. It\u2019s just people saying, what are you going to do. You the technology is here to stay. The kids, they\u2019re going to have to use it when they\u2019re adults. Might as well learn when they\u2019re kids. You can\u2019t put the genie back in the bottle, but actually we can and and we\u2019re doing it. And so I just really want to make the point that we don\u2019t have easy age verification now. But if we incentivize it, we\u2019ll have it within a year. So my colleague at NYU, Scott Galloway, gives the example of how the social media companies, this industry, they have figured out, they put a lot of research and money into advertising. And so they figured out a way that when you click a link anywhere on the internet and then the page loads in between that time, there has been an auction among thousands of companies for the right to show you this particular ad. This is a miracle of technical innovation. And they did that because there was money in it. And now the question is, do you think maybe they could figure out if somebody is under 16 or over 16. So that auction knows how old it thinks you are. Yeah that\u2019s right. Exactly they know everything about us. And they\u2019re saying Oh, what are you going to do. The kids are going to lie like, what are we supposed to do. So we\u2019re going to get age verification. Australia is pushing it. It\u2019s going to work. It doesn\u2019t have to be perfect at first, but within a few years it will be very good. So I will stop just trying to be provocative because I do believe you can do age verification. One reason I wanted to have you on right now. Is it feels like the world is tipping in this. Yeah So run me through you. Let\u2019s stay. Not in Australia, but. But in the US. I feel like every day I turn on the news and I see some other governor or mayor announcing no phones in schools. Yep tell me the scope of this at the moment. Like, where are that we weren\u2019t two years ago in terms of the laws being passed and the kind of announcements being made. So the way to understand why it\u2019s changing so quickly is to go back before COVID. And Jean Twenge comes out with her famous article in 2017. Have smartphones destroyed a generation. Now, at the time, the empirical evidence was not clear at all, and she was savagely attacked by other researchers who said Oh, this is just a correlation. No, you have no evidence. It\u2019s not causal. So that\u2019s 2017. So by 2019, we\u2019re beginning to see actually, wait, there is some evidence. And everybody\u2019s now seeing something\u2019s creepy about this, and we\u2019re seeing our kids drift away. And then COVID comes in and what happens. What kids desperately need. In 2019, gene and I were saying was more time outside playing less time on screens. What happens. We freak out. We put in way too strict restrictions. We say, no, you can\u2019t in New York, they closed the playgrounds. They closed down the ball fields. So no playing outside. You might catch COVID. So things get far, far worse over the next couple of years. But the kids have to be on screens. So it\u2019s only as COVID began to clear away, people are of coming back to their senses about this. And that\u2019s why everybody\u2019s ready to act. And that\u2019s why when my book came out a year ago, it came out in late March of 2024. I didn\u2019t have to persuade anyone. Almost everybody saw, wait, something is going terribly wrong here. And so what\u2019s happening around the world is that legislators are mostly parents, and they\u2019ve seen it and they\u2019re uncomfortable with it. It doesn\u2019t matter if they\u2019re Democrat or Republican heads of state mostly are parents. The way the Australia bill got started was in South Australia. One of the states, the wife of the premier was reading the anxious generation in bed, and she turns to him and says, Peter, you\u2019ve got to read this book and then you\u2019ve got to effing do something about it. It\u2019s the way that he described it, at least in. So it is often I think mothers have felt it more keenly than fathers, mothers just they\u2019re more emotionally connected in ways where they could feel the kids being pulled away. So that\u2019s why it\u2019s happening everywhere, because it\u2019s obvious. It\u2019s common sense. Most people see it what is happening everywhere. So I would say it\u2019s a parent\u2019s revolution saying we\u2019re sick and tired. We\u2019re not going to take this anymore. All over the world, family life has turned into a fight over screen time. We\u2019re all fed up. We want to do something about it. O.K, what do we actually do. I wrote the book as an American, assuming that we\u2019ll never get help from Congress. Now, I hope I\u2019m wrong. There are some bills that could get through, but I was just assuming we have a dysfunctional Congress, let\u2019s try to do this the way Tocqueville said that we do it like, let\u2019s get together, let\u2019s figure out how to do this. And so that means action at among families and at schools and at states. I am finding states are incredibly responsive. States, in the United States are either mostly red or blue. But this is a bipartisan issue. So the number one step that they\u2019re all taking is so easy and so obvious. And it doesn\u2019t cost anything, which is phone free. Schools check your phone in the morning. What are some of the states that are doing it well. Florida was one of the first, but they did it just during instructional time, which is worthless because then everyone rushes for their phone. They\u2019re on their phone in between classes. They don\u2019t talk to each other, so I\u2019m not sure where they are now. Arkansas Utah. But Utah is interesting here because of every state has still the strongest religious culture because of the Church of Latter day Saints, and they have by far the strongest regulations on social media around children. That\u2019s right. I mean, you see the way those two things, that moral framework and that willing to regulate what feels like a vice is happening there. That\u2019s right. They also have a really excellent governor. Governor Cox has been just superb. He wants to make Utah the most family friendly state. And many states want to. And if we feel that we can\u2019t let our kids out and our kids are rotting away on screens and their screens all day in the school, that\u2019s not a family friendly place. So yeah, Utah has been great on this. Oh, here we are in New York. Governor Hochul has been great on this. We\u2019re going to get phone free bell to Bell legislation here in New York. New Jersey is moving that way. Connecticut so we\u2019re seeing it all over the country. That\u2019s the phone free schools. So in the book I say there are four norms with four norms. We can roll back the phone based child. The first is no smartphone before high school. Do not give your kid a touch screen. This includes an iPad. Don\u2019t give them their own touchscreen before high school or age 14. And that\u2019s not a law. That\u2019s a norm that we\u2019re trying to promote. The second is no social media until 16. And that could be a norm. I mean, if enough of us do it, it gets easier. But we really need law. That\u2019s where we really need law. And that\u2019s why I\u2019m so excited about Australia. Indonesia is, I believe, planning on it, a whole bunch of nations. If it works in Australia, it\u2019s going to go global very quickly. I\u2019m just clarification and I actually don\u2019t know. Australia is no smartphone or no social media before 16. The key is the age of internet adulthood. At what age are you old enough to sign a contract with a giant corporation to give away your data and your rights, and let them stuff stuff into you, chosen by their algorithms. At what age. And current American law says as long as you\u2019re old enough to lie, you\u2019re old enough to do this. If you\u2019re 10, you just say you\u2019re 13 and you can. The companies can do whatever they want for you. Oh, and we can\u2019t sue them. They\u2019re freed from that by Section 230. So that\u2019s the current law, is that there is no age of internet anywhere in the world. Like you just lie. But what Australia is saying is you\u2019re going to the companies are going to have to figure out how to do this, that you have to do some age assurance so that if you\u2019re 16, you can sign this away without parental consent. Your parents don\u2019t have to know. And right now, 10-year-olds are getting on Instagram and TikTok, even eight-year-Olds. So this has to stop. And Australia, they finally put their foot down and said this is going to stop here. O.K, so that was the second. Yeah and you said the third. The third is phone free schools. And that I think we\u2019re going to I don\u2019t know how many, but I think it\u2019s going to be the majority of kids. The majority of American kids are going to be in phone free schools within two years. So many states have done it already, and I think a lot of the rest are going to implement it by next, next September. So that one is that\u2019s the main norm where there\u2019s been spectacular change around the world. And then the fourth is far more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world. Because what I urge people to do is don\u2019t just focus on taking away the screens, focus on restoring a fun childhood. As we were talking about before a human childhood, a childhood spent not under your parent\u2019s gaze, doing homework or on a screen, but a childhood where you\u2019re having fun with your friends in mixed age groups. So one of the things that I think is interesting and important about this, and it\u2019s very present in your book, is how hard it is for parents to do it individually. Yes And I remember one of the solutions in your book is these little packs that would only activate when 10 parents signed it to not give the kids phones before ninth grade or 12, 12th grade, whatever it might be. And the idea was that until at least 10 other parents did it, you couldn\u2019t do it because then your kid would be the only one without it. And it feels like it\u2019s why it\u2019s such an interesting and important place for legislation, because it really is hard to be a parent saying your kid can\u2019t have. That\u2019s right. What all the other kids have. And be on these messaging systems that they\u2019re all using to plan things and. You actually do at a certain point, isolate your child at this moment that you\u2019re trying to figure out a way to give them deeper social bonds. So legislation here. I mean, I find it very, very encouraging. It would be freeing. That\u2019s right. What you\u2019re describing is a collective action trap. And so the reason why we have to give our kids phones and Instagram is not because we like it, but because they say, mom, everyone else has it. I\u2019m excluded. I\u2019m being left out. And so the way you get out of a collective action trap is with collective action. And so that\u2019s what I\u2019m really urging in the book. It can be as simple as just talk to the parents of your kid\u2019s friends, agree that you\u2019re all going to have these norms, and then they\u2019re not the only one. And especially if you get the kids together a lot, then they have a fun childhood. Two horrendous statistics that I can\u2019t get out of my mind. The first is percent, which is the percentage of American teens that say that they\u2019re online almost constantly, almost constantly. They\u2019re not necessarily looking at the phone 16 hours a day, but if they\u2019re talking to you, they\u2019re actually thinking about the drama going on, and they can\u2019t wait to check. So half of our kids are basically their consciousness, their lives are owned by a few big social media companies. Here\u2019s the other stat that I just learned last week 40 percent That\u2019s the percentage of two-year-Olds, two-year-Olds in America who have their own iPad. Because we\u2019ve all discovered just give the kid an iPad or give them your old phone that you traded up from and she\u2019ll be quiet. And you can do your email, and you can cook dinner and you can do what you want. And so it\u2019s become normal to give kids this little babysitter, which is really like, I think, giving them morphine or something like that. I remember when I gave our kids an iPad to use, and I remember what age it was called three or four or probably one of them was sick. And I realized pretty quickly that YouTube was terrifying. Yeah and I don\u2019t just mean because they would end up in weird computer generated the garbage that sometimes turn very creepy, although that happened too, but that it was the endlessness of it, the ability that they would never even watch a full thing because they were always like hitting the next thing. There\u2019s always something more interesting. And this was when I began thinking a lot more about friction. Yeah, because the difference between me putting a movie on for them, right, a Pixar movie or something, and then having access to the algorithm. Yeah that\u2019s right. You could really tell the difference in it. What the difference in what it asked of them. I think there\u2019s a place I want to bring in something that obsesses me, maybe just strangely, which is attention. When I think about what it is, I want to try to parent in my children, I want them to be kind. I want them to be interested and curious about the world. But I want them to have a healthy attentional faculties, right. I want them to have healthy bodies and healthy attention. And I don\u2019t really know how to do it. I have some theories, but this is one of these things that just terrifies me. When I read these things about these kids graduating who can\u2019t read a book, it\u2019s not because they\u2019re stupid. It\u2019s because we have raised them on technologies that have deranged their dopamine systems. It\u2019s not normal. I mean, you talked about Hunter gatherers earlier. I don\u2019t know what kind of attention Hunter gatherers had, but you have to cultivate the attention to read a tale of two cities. Yeah that is are developing an attentional faculty that changes the literal shape of your brain. That hijacks other centers used for other things. And I think that was good. I think that the written word and creating the literal brain was good. And we are uncreating it now. So two things. The first is in the anxious generation, I think I grossly underestimated the harm that\u2019s happening because I focused on Mental Illness. But the bigger damage, I think is the destruction of human attention. In millions, possibly tens or hundreds of millions of kids around the world. And you talk to pre-K teachers, they\u2019re saying the kids are coming with language delays, social problems because they were raised on iPads. So let me give a suggestion to parents like you with young kids, I wish I\u2019d understood this when my kids were young. Let\u2019s distinguish between a pretty good use of screens and a really, really bad use of screens. So a pretty good use of screens is to put on a long movie like 90 minutes or a long movie. They\u2019re going to pay attention to a long movie about characters in a moral universe. So there\u2019s issues of good and bad and norms and betrayal, and it\u2019s part of their moral training, their moral formation, and they\u2019re watching it with another person. Now, that can be, ideally, but it\u2019s O.K if it\u2019s a sibling or a friend because it\u2019s social. Here\u2019s what\u2019s really, really bad iPad time by yourself. Because that\u2019s exactly the opposite. It\u2019s solitary. It\u2019s not stories. And if they are stories, there are 15 second stories that are amoral or really immoral, really disgusting, degrading things and terrible people doing terrible things to each other. And then the other thing that I really want parents to understand is that this is not like TV. TV is a good way of entertainment. TV puts out a story, but a touchscreen is a behavioral behaviorist training device. A touch screen, you get a stimulus, you make a response, and then you get a reward, which gives you a little bit of dopamine, which makes you want to do it again and again and again. So a touch screen can train your child the way a circus trainer can train an animal. TV isn\u2019t like that. So iPad time, iPhone time for your 345-year-old is just not a good thing. Well, it trains us all. I mean, to go back to something I was saying earlier, one reason. I am skeptical of this very sharp cut between kids and adults is, I think, an adult\u2019s attentional faculties are being deranged, including, by the way, mine. But there is this problem where I mean, I professionally need to keep my attention healthy, right. And it is a day to day fucking struggle. That\u2019s right. And so for adults too. And also kids become adults, right. All these kids are talking about from this generation. You\u2019re talking about I mean, 24-year-olds were 16-year-olds not very long ago. They were growing up in this. Yeah and this is one of the things I worry about it for democracy, but I just worry about it. I think there are more and less healthy forms of attention. And I think that we have tipped at some point into a society less healthy, a society less healthy form of attention. And we don\u2019t really know what to do about that. And we don\u2019t want to scold people about it. We barely even have the language for it. Yeah but I think we\u2019re developing it because everyone feels. Most people feel what you just said, I feel it, we all feel it. I focused on kids. Because in terms of policy, the ability of our country or states to put limits on kids for their own protection is very, very high. As soon as you turn 18, it\u2019s an entirely different game. So I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to ask for a lot of legislation to protect US adults. Now, Johann Hari has this wonderful book, Stolen Focus, and I believe he\u2019s right when he says, if we adults clear it out, if we take, well, take a Shabbat. Although, a Sabbath is one day that\u2019s not enough. You need a couple of weeks, actually, to get the dopamine circuits to re-adapt to normal levels. But if we adults clear it out, then we can regain our attention. I think he\u2019s right in saying that. Whereas if you go through puberty doing this, if we have 10-year-olds on TikTok and they stay on it until they\u2019re 18, there\u2019s a possibility, we don\u2019t but there\u2019s a possibility that it will cause permanent changes and that they will be permanently less able to pay attention to read a book. This is a way in which I think we have trouble talking about it. Take the fight we\u2019ve been having about TikTok. We are willing to have this debate about whether something is intentionally important as TikTok. TikTok is, I would call it, critical. Attentional infrastructure should be owned by a Chinese company. Yeah that\u2019s right. It\u2019s the greatest demolisher of attention in human history. Well, whether you even want to go that far, which I would too. But it is something that is capturing an almost unfathomable amount of the attention of Americans every single day. So we can have this conversation about do we think it should be owned by a Chinese company. We are not willing to really have a conversation about is it good that so many people are training themselves to have such fast attentional change for, I mean, for many of them, hours a day, right. The stickiness of TikTok use is extraordinary. If you look at it, if you look at survey data on its user base, and I mean, it\u2019s built to be that way. It is. It is successful because it is sticky. That\u2019s right. And we have unleashed this or allowed this to be unleashed on the entire country. I teach a course at NYU Stern called flourishing. These are all business students. They\u2019re mostly sophomores, 19 years old. And I say, do you want to be successful. And they all say Yes. Say, well, if you give away all of your attention, I can almost promise you, you\u2019re not going to be successful. You\u2019re not going to do anything. So step one in this course is you must regain control of your attention. And the students who are heavy social media users who cut down from four hours a day to less than 1, they get transformative results. They have so much time. They can do their homework. They\u2019re not as distracted. They have more. They\u2019re more open to other people. But something you just said, it goes back to this question that sits for me about what are we connecting our judgments to. Because you said, well, look, these are business school students. You\u2019re telling them you can\u2019t be successful and not have control of your attention. I would say absolutely can be successful and not have control of your attention. Give me a layout of. Elon Musk is highly successful and is a man who is clearly attention. You don\u2019t think. Yes O.K. But you don\u2019t think that when he was building these businesses, you don\u2019t think that he sometimes went hours at a time focusing on a problem. I think probably when he was building. But this is a bit of what I mean, that everybody who is in these worlds can see people now who are by any measure successful in part by dominating the attentional sphere. Yeah and posting constantly. And I don\u2019t think Donald Trump has a great attentional faculties. I do think you can be successful in the modern world. We are reshaping the modern world. There\u2019s a whole category of influencer, right. I think part of being an influencer is almost by nature, having truly adapted yourself to this attentional environment, in part because of these systems, these platforms are building themselves to reward it. They are. They are encouraging this. You have to post enough or you\u2019re not going to get into the algorithm and get what you want out of it. I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s healthy. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s not healthy. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s not healthy. But part of how Elon Musk became the richest man in the world was harnessing all this attention, much of it negative. Part of how Donald Trump became the President of the United States twice is harnessing all this attention, really embodying the attentional ethic of these sites. And even in a smaller way, there are fewer newspapers now, there are fewer stable jobs and institutional media. In many ways, it\u2019s probably more likely that you can become an independent creator, certainly, than it was like 20 years ago. Is there a danger that the way you want us to raise children is actually suffused in nostalgia for an economy, for a politics that no longer exists. It\u2019s not being deformed. It\u2019s being adapted. In theory, Yes. There is a danger of that. And history would suggest examples of it. Every generation is wary of the technology that comes in that the kids are using. But if it turned out that our kids were flourishing, then I would just be an old man shaking his head at the clouds. But our kids are the least flourishing generation that we know of ever. Certainly in modern times. If it was the case that our kids loved this stuff and they said, no, we love TikTok, no, let us keep TikTok, then maybe I just don\u2019t understand it. But we did a survey with the Harris Poll. Percent of Gen Z said they would prefer that TikTok was never invented. Never invented. They feel trapped by it. So if you\u2019ve got the kids, they don\u2019t want to give it up, which is the paradox, but they don\u2019t want it, but they don\u2019t want to be the only one. If we could all give it up, then they actually most of them would do it. The idea that would be banned was not greeted with flowers and chocolate. No, but guess what. There wasn\u2019t much objection. There were creators, there were people making money from it. But I was surprised there was not a youth rebellion saying, no, let us keep. I think you\u2019re not on TikTok well, and you\u2019re not a legislator getting no. Letters about this. Well, right. Because TikTok paid I mean, TikTok motivated a lot of them to write to their legislators. But the point is that when you survey them, they feel trapped and they\u2019re looking for an escape. They\u2019re just terrified of being the only one. So in theory, I maybe I could be wrong and we will adapt to this, but I think the way you described it. Well, no, they\u2019re just, they\u2019ve adapted to it. I would say they\u2019ve been deformed by it. So there\u2019s a sense in which they fit. But they fit not as agents. They fit not as full human beings who are making a future of themselves. They fit as human fodder that has been sucked into the machine and molded to what the machine wants out of them, which is their attention. And if these trillion dollar companies are sucking out all of their attention and making trillions of dollars with it, and leaving what behind a person who spent their entire childhood consuming content. This is one of the tricky things about success right now, because visible success is almost definitionally constantly present on social media. So what people see, what whole. A whole generation sees as the kind of success that you can look at it constantly and see it advertising itself to you as success is success, it is highly, intentionally present, which is very different than the kind of success of a tremendous physics researcher whose work you can\u2019t read. And that\u2019s right, because it\u2019s very complicated. And they\u2019re not posting a lot of memes about it. So what you\u2019re describing is a path that opened up to prestige. Now we\u2019re really focused at all ages. We care a lot about what other people think about us. And boy, do you see that with teenagers, they\u2019re the most sensitive of all. So teenagers are desperate for prestige and what the social media companies did. And we know this from things that insiders have said is they hacked that. They said normally throughout history, to become prestigious, you had to become a good Archer or a good leader or a good basket Weaver. You had to do something in the world, and then people would respect you and you would gain in social status. That\u2019s the way it always used to be. And what social media is able to do is say, you don\u2019t have to do anything. Just do whatever it takes to get people to follow you. And bingo, you\u2019ve got prestige. And where does it end. I\u2019ll tell you where it ends. And one of the most disgusting apps I\u2019ve ever seen. Well, there\u2019s lots of competition, but there\u2019s a thing called Fame Fame. And the idea is lots of young people are lonely. They\u2019re not able to get followers. They\u2019re putting stuff out there. Nobody\u2019s watching. Well, that\u2019s really crushing. Imagine you\u2019re a 9-year-old not getting any followers. But if you give her Fame Fame, will generate as many followers as you want. Millions you got it. Millions of followers and you can see them video. They\u2019re praising you. They\u2019re giving you hearts. So family is a way to take what you just said that. Oh well, Yes. Well they actually they are searching for a way to be successful without any attention. No need. Just give them family. And this is I followers I followers. That\u2019s right. Oh, this is the most Black Mirror shit I\u2019ve ever heard. Exactly, exactly. This is where we\u2019re heading. And as AI comes in. And this is why I am so passionate about how we have to move quickly. This year, 2025. This is really our last year before I really has a big impact on life. And we see now that we\u2019re moving not just from can know everything to now we have agents, you can do everything. I mean, the internet in a sense gave us omniscience. But now I with agents is going to give us omnipotence. And that would be horrible for children. Let\u2019s talk about I. I have this not just fear, but certainty. If you ask me, do I think that by the time my 3 and 6-year-old are in middle school. We will figured out the smartphones and social media and schools question. I think we will. We will. I feel really bad for parents three years ago even right now. But give it a couple of years. I think partially due to your good efforts. We\u2019re getting there. But I right. And it goes from me back to friction. What I is functionally the collapse of all friction between you and any desire that can be fulfilled by on a computer. That\u2019s right. So relationships are the one I actually think about the most. I\u2019ve said this many, many times before, I\u2019m a believer in transformational artificial intelligence. I think it\u2019s coming very, very fast. If you ask me if I think we will see economic supergrowth anytime soon, I would say no. I think it is going to be more evident in its upheaval of relationships before it transforms our economy. Because our economy has all kinds of friction in it, it\u2019s very hard to rebuild firms around AI. But what about when you can have any kind of digital friend you want, or for that matter, digital lover and that friend, that Lover There\u2019s a really good daily on this recently about AI sex bots. Yeah, I listened to that. That was great. The sound in that, though, was frightening to me because you got Why the was a good partner, more responsive than any man, probably more responsive than any man. And it is so much worse at doing that right now than it will be in two years. That\u2019s right. Yes, that\u2019s right. Like, it is going to be so good and and it\u2019s going to endlessly adapt to what you want from it. And I think the friction of relationships between human beings is really, really important. It\u2019s good for me as a person that my wife just does not adapt herself into whatever I want her to say, right. It is part of being a healthy human being that other people exist with friction to you. And I\u2019m not saying that I think kids who get character-I are going to stop wanting human friends. I don\u2019t believe that they\u2019ll have less desire. I was a very lonely kid. I did not have many friends. What if I had had a lot of friends. And that began to pattern my expectations of other human beings, and then when they did not fulfill them. Yeah then that was a frustration to me, and it made my community that much more alluring. This scares the hell out of me. I\u2019m not saying that on a 20 year time frame we won\u2019t adapt, but on a 5 or 10. We don\u2019t even know how to think about. The way we adapt is by preventing kids from having these friendships. So I think you\u2019re a little too focused on friction. You\u2019re right. It\u2019s important. But you keep coming back to that. But there\u2019s always 5 to 10 major psychological things going on when kids and adults too are interacting with this kind of powerful technology. So here I\u2019ll draw on a really insightful analysis from a Christian writer, Andy crouch. I did a session with him at NYU. We had a conversation mostly on chapter 8 of the anxious generation on the spirituality chapter, and he said something so powerful. I always bring it up because it\u2019s so helpful. He said what is magic. Magic is instant, effortless effect on the world. Snap your fingers. Something appears. It\u2019s always been the human dream. And technology is essentially magic. Technology allows us to do things. You want a car to come pick you up, press a button. Hey, here\u2019s this car. So the technology is magic. And he says, now let\u2019s look at how children are formed. How do you get an adult. And again, he\u2019s coming from a Christian perspective. So they care a lot about the moral formation, the religious formation of their children. And he says the three areas of formation for children are home, school and church or any religious organization. So he says those are the three areas. And he says all three of those areas are now colonized by tech. All three of them. In all three of them. Kids have magic available to them all the time, even in church. I\u2019m hearing from pastors they say, pull out your Bible. They pull out their phone, they look at the passage, but then they go on and do something else. So I think we have to stop. It\u2019s not this is not even about the content. We have to stop saying oh, we just need better content moderation. No we don\u2019t. We need to realize kids have to go through a childhood in the real world with other kids within a moral universe where they experience the consequences of their own action, and they have to learn how to deal with real people who are frustrating. And if we give them AI companions that they can order around, they will always flatter them. We are creating people that no one will want to employ or marry, so we\u2019ve got to stop. As I alluded to I was a pretty friendless kid. I had a lot of trouble socially. I would often have one or two friends, but for a lot of my childhood, I alienated people. And I remember at one point my mom saying she wanted to. This is kind of a sad story, but wanted to pay this nice older kid on the street to watch me, but function to be my friend. I had the embarrassment or the presence of mind to say no to that. O.K I try to imagine, though, as I was like moving school to school to get away from bullying and was having that much trouble. And my parents had no answers for me because they did not trying to keep that kid as that kid\u2019s parent from disappearing into the computer. Disappearing into this world where well, somebody will be something will be his friend. Something will be his companion. And, of course, what\u2019s going to be the thin edge of the wedge is I tutors, right. Which can be very effective, very powerful. That\u2019s right. And they\u2019re going to be positive too. It\u2019s not that this technology will have no good adaptations. Even now, I sometimes use ChatGPT with my kids and we sit together and we make up stories and it illustrates them, which is like a really fun thing to do. And it\u2019s great. It\u2019s all easy to sit here and say, well, I don\u2019t want my 13-year-old having a sex bot or an array of sex bots in their pocket, but it\u2019s not going to come in that much in the way that the internet came in more benignly before it got jacked up to 11. It\u2019ll come in for kids who are having a lot more trouble socially. But now there\u2019s somebody for them to talk to. For kids whose parents work multiple jobs, they have a single parent, neurodivergent kids, neurodivergent kids, and a lot of it will be good. It will be good for some kids. And the more adoption there is, and the more these companies are already in the door and competing with each other, then for your kid\u2019s attention, the more the darker side of it will begin to flower. That\u2019s right. And that\u2019s what worries me here. It\u2019s all so new. It\u2019s all so new. But it\u2019s all so adaptable. I was talking with somebody who works at one of the big AI companies about this, and he was saying to me Oh, but the good thing about AI is that it\u2019s really flexible. You can tell it, you can give it whatever value prompt you want to give it. If you want to tell it to not just do whatever your kid want. You could do that. And yeah, it always true that you could. But when I look at the way the markets actually work here, that eventually what\u2019s going to happen is we\u2019re going to give people what they want, not what we think they should want. And that\u2019s the part. I can imagine negotiating structures on this over a long period of time as we have a social media, maybe, but we\u2019re not going to understand it for a long period of time, right. We\u2019ll never catch up with it. And it\u2019s going to be evolving very rapidly during this period of time. And it really frightens me as a parent. Yeah, as it should. So a couple of concepts here. One is the concept of entanglement. So Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology points out that social media has gotten so entangled in our world that it\u2019s really hard to roll it back. Many schools communicate on Instagram. They require their kids to have smartphones, so it\u2019s really hard to rip it out once it\u2019s already taken root. Both of my kids\u2019 schools communicate with me by app. Yeah, that\u2019s right. It\u2019s like hard not to have a phone. They don\u2019t. It\u2019s like it\u2019s by app. It\u2019s not even by the computer. It has to be on my phone. Your phone. That\u2019s right. So social media is so entangled, it\u2019s very hard to rip it out. It\u2019s going to be very hard to get it out of our kids childhoods. But that\u2019s what we\u2019re working on. AI is not yet entangled. AI is just coming in, and in two or three years it will be entangled. And as you say, there are many good applications. Khan Academy uses AI very well. And if we could have a device that just did. Khan Academy and nothing else that I can see would have a positive impact on education, maybe we don\u2019t have to throw out all the iPads from the schools. Maybe we could use them if we can reduce them to one function. The one thing I worry about with using the AI to draw everything my kid wants to draw is that does it reduce the interest in actually drawing. Oh Yes. Yeah that\u2019s right, it does. I mean, kids are losing the ability to draw, to write. So what I\u2019m saying is these technologies so far, Silicon Valley has a horrible track record at living up to its promises, especially for kids. So social media is going to connect everyone. No, it actually disconnected everyone. So when the purveyors of I say Oh, there\u2019s all these amazing uses and AI, there clearly will and there already are. I mean, I\u2019m finding that Claude and ChatGPT are just really helpful adjuncts to research. So I love AI as an adult. But we have to understand children are not adults, and given the track record so far, we have to assume we have to assume that these AI companions will be very bad for our children. That\u2019s what the Silicon Valley people themselves say, in the sense that they have already voted to keep their kids away from social media and technology. They send their kids to the Waldorf school. So we have to approach all of this with a really skeptical eye, especially for our children. Start by assuming it\u2019s harming your kids, and then you can bring in some uses where it\u2019s not. Let me ask you about another dimension of this, which I\u2019ve found myself obsessing over recently. So you\u2019re a professor at business school and you\u2019re a professor at an elite school. And we were talking about instrumental education earlier. I think that it was a pretty reasonable expectation. I think parents would raise their kids and push them to study with the expectation that what. If they could get to the NYU Stern School of Business are probably going to be O.K out there in the economy, right. You could orient your they could be the classic immigrant thing if you could be a lawyer or a doctor. You\u2019re going to be fine. And then you mentioned how good AI is getting at being an adjunct to your research. And I already see that I\u2019ve been playing around with deep research, and I can already see how good that is getting at research and how quick it is. And it would change what I needed in terms of research. It feels like an event horizon to me. It does of what should my children be educated towards. In many ways, I would say it\u2019ll be much safer to be educated towards being an electrician than to be educated towards being a contract lawyer. Yeah and I doubt. There has been a moment as a parent when what society, the economy will want or value or reward in people in 15 or 20 years has been as liquid. Yeah that\u2019s right. How would you think about this. So the way I think about it is that I often hear the argument, well, this is the world that kids are in. And for them to be successful, they need to master the technology. And it\u2019s going to be in the workplace. And my answer is very simple. I\u2019m teaching these kids, if you want to send me someone who\u2019s going to do well NYU Stern, don\u2019t send me someone who has mastered Instagram. Send me someone who was homeschooled. Never had any of this garbage. They\u2019re able to pay attention. They\u2019re able to read a book. They\u2019re in a sense, our brains are LLMs in a sense. And so if don\u2019t send me kids whose LLMs were filled in by TikTok, send me a kid whose LLM was figured in within a stable moral community, and that kid is going to be adapted for the future because he didn\u2019t have the current technology when he was growing up. The current technology is a giant obstacle to human development, and so if you want to prepare your kid for the future, think very carefully about the technology you immerse him in. I do feel like this is a connecting thread in a lot of your work, which is that human beings need to develop as human beings around other human beings in little human societies. That\u2019s what we evolve, and that the more particularly in childhood, pull them away from that, the worse they will turn out in terms of mental health, but probably a lot of other things. Sometimes I would never say that as a blanket rule. We don\u2019t have to raise our kids the way Hunter gatherers did. There are many aspects of modern life that are improvements. So I would not endorse a blind well, this is the way it used to be. This is what we should do. But when we begin to see evidence and it\u2019s just kind of obvious, what do you think. Do you think kids should be raised around other kids or around screens like it\u2019s just kind of obvious. So, so Yes, I\u2019ve always studied morality, but I\u2019ve always done it from multiple perspectives. I\u2019ve always been a developmental psychologist, a social psychologist, an evolutionary psychologist. I cultural I read anthropology. So you put all these together and you get this view of this amazing, amazing species that developed culture. No other species has culture. I mean, chimps have a tiny bit, but. And the miracle of our ability to develop these skills and the ability to communicate. And then we come in and we radically change childhood and we think maybe it\u2019ll be O.K. Well, it\u2019s not O.K. We didn\u2019t radically change childhood. We didn\u2019t think about radically changing it. A few companies did. A few companies have radically changed child, and we\u2019ve accepted it, and we can\u2019t. And we feel we can\u2019t stop them. And they\u2019re able to stop bills in Congress and they\u2019re able to they have giant PR budgets, and they\u2019re able to manipulate the narrative behind the scenes. So yeah, it\u2019s a hell of a struggle. But what we\u2019re seeing is a parents revolution around the world. And I think if most parents rise up and say no more, I think we\u2019re going to win. It\u2019s interesting that you\u2019ve had to sit down and ask, what is a syllabus on flourishing. Yeah Yeah. What is a syllabus on flourishing. Oh, I can tell you in just a few words. The course is organized around making you stronger emotionally so stronger, smarter. And more sociable. Because if we can do that together, if we can have to cultivate new habits, make changes to your routine. If you can become stronger, smarter. And more sociable, then you are likely to be more successful in love. Broadly construed relationships, in love and in work. And that\u2019s the modern formula for happiness, success in love and work as Freud, as Freud originally said. And if you are more successful in love and in work, then you will be happier. That\u2019s almost guaranteed. So that\u2019s what the course is about. What that you assign connects the most. Oh, this. Well, I know you\u2019re going to ask me about the three books. What Why don\u2019t we just do. Let\u2019s just do the three books right now. Because this is the three books. O.K, so what do I assign the three books for the undergrads, especially. And this is what I would recommend to any member of Gen Z, any young person in their 20s. Anybody who feels their attention has been fried and they want to get it back. Here are the three books. The first is the Stoic challenge by William Irvine. It really makes stoicism just so accessible. You learn to when you get setbacks. The students learn to say Oh, I just missed the subway. Now I\u2019m going to be late. Like stoic challenge. You just say stoic challenge. It\u2019s as though they\u2019re stoic gods and they\u2019re testing me to make me strong. And yeah, I missed my train. But am I going to also hurt myself by stewing for 20 minutes. Nope I\u2019m going to be calm about it. And so you develop that habit more stoic reactions and they get stronger. They\u2019re not so anxious. They don\u2019t. They don\u2019t get angry or irritated at other people. So much so stoic. Challenge the second book is by Cal Newport. It\u2019s called deep work, and this is why I\u2019m so passionate about attention. Without your attention, you can\u2019t do anything. And as Newport says, a deep life where you do a lot of deep work, a deep life is a good life. It is a rich life. And so Cal Newport, we work on that to regain their attention. I tell them we work on turning off almost all notifications, on moving social media off your phone onto your computer, and then for some deleting it from the computer. So that\u2019s a wonderful book. And then the third book is Dale Carnegie how to Win Friends and Influence people. It is timeless. He seconds and he is such a great social psychologist. So I urge everybody, listeners, if you have not read Dale Carnegie how to Win Friends and Influence people, I urge you to read it, ideally in the 1936 edition. It\u2019s so charming. Don\u2019t get the modern one for the digital age. It\u2019s completely rewritten. It\u2019s not. The writing\u2019s not nearly as good. But those are the three books, and so the first one makes you stronger. If you do the stoic challenge over a couple of months, you get stronger. You\u2019re not as reactive to negative things. If you read deep work and take it seriously, you\u2019re going to spend a lot less time on social media. You\u2019re going to take control of your time so that you have time for deep work. And if you read Dale Carnegie, you\u2019re going to be just much more effective in conversation and maintaining relationships. That\u2019s it. Those three books. Jonathan Knight, Thank you very much. Thank you, Ezra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In March of last year, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published this book called \u201cThe Anxious Generation,\u201d which caused, let\u2019s call it, a stir. [CLIPS] Jonathan, I see people walking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":3981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[5195,4935,2163,57],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n