Speaker 1: The law is you have to say that you're thirteen
Speaker 1: in order to give away your data without your parents'
Speaker 1: knowledge or consent. But the law has written such that
Speaker 1: companies have to have affirmative evidence that you're underage. So
Speaker 1: if they have proof that you're under thirteen, then they're responsible.
Speaker 1: They're not supposed to open account for you. But as
Speaker 1: long as they don't know it's yours, it's not their fault.
Speaker 1: They have no obligation.
Speaker 2: Today we have doctor Jonathan Heights on the podcast. Jonathan
Speaker 2: is a social psychologist at ne York University's Stern School
Speaker 2: of Business. Heights research examines the intuitive foundations of morality
Speaker 2: and how morality varies across cultural and political divisions. He
Speaker 2: also writes about positive psychology and the decline of teen
Speaker 2: mental health. His latest book is The Anxious Generation, How
Speaker 2: the Great Rewiring of Childhood is causing an epidemic of
Speaker 2: mental illness. This book is the main topic of our
Speaker 2: discussion today. Jonathan argues that the disappearance of a play
Speaker 2: based childhood has been replaced by the great rewiring of
Speaker 2: childhood that came with the emergence of smartphones and social
Speaker 2: media around twenty twelve. He argues that this had a
Speaker 2: big impact on the mental health of teams all around
Speaker 2: the developed world, most so for young girls. In this episode,
Speaker 2: we do a deep dive of the research surrounding his argument,
Speaker 2: as well as the criticisms that have been leveled against
Speaker 2: his hypothesis. This was a stimulating conversation with a friend
Speaker 2: who I admire and I appreciate that he was so
Speaker 2: open to discussing criticisms and having such a nuanced discussion
Speaker 2: about such an important and pressing topic. So that further
Speaker 2: Ado I bring you doctor Jonathan Height.
Speaker 3: Jonathan Height, Doctor Jonathan Height, is so great to have
Speaker 3: you back in the Psychology podcast.
Speaker 1: Scott Barry Kaufman. It's great to be back with you.
Speaker 1: We go back a long way.
Speaker 3: We do. Now. I know you from the positive psychology world,
Speaker 3: and I used your textbook The Happiness Hypothesis in my
Speaker 3: pen Psychology positive psychology class for years. So that's that's
Speaker 3: the context where I first met you.
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly, it was Marty Seligman had a
Speaker 1: retreat on creativity in the sciences, and like you were
Speaker 1: in charge of it. What was the name of that
Speaker 1: project you.
Speaker 3: Were doing it? So I ran the imagination Institute with
Speaker 3: Martin Seligman. We did these imagination retreats and you were
Speaker 3: you were. We tapped you as one of the most
Speaker 3: imaginative psychologists on the punnet.
Speaker 1: So who can refuse that invitation?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you can't refuse such a thing. So how
Speaker 3: did you transition from the positive psychology world into kind
Speaker 3: of the world you're in now, which is not And
Speaker 3: we're going to get into this because there is a
Speaker 3: really deep integration of positive psychology with the work you're
Speaker 3: doing now that many people might not be aware of.
Speaker 3: But sort of when did you kind of shift your
Speaker 3: interests in researcher?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, so just the brief course, I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: I'm realizing now looking back, it actually all makes sense,
Speaker 1: even though it seems disjointed. So Ever, since my second
Speaker 1: year of grad school at Penn, I picked moral psychology,
Speaker 1: morality and the emotions and how morality varies across cultures.
Speaker 1: So that's what I've always done, and then over time
Speaker 1: I shifted that. Oh so the moral emotions. So when
Speaker 1: I moved to Uva after grad school. When I moved
Speaker 1: to Uva in nineteen ninety five, I was reading something
Speaker 1: from Thomas Jefferson about the emotions of reading great literature,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, he talks about how does
Speaker 1: it not you know, a great passage does not elevate
Speaker 1: the sentiments as much as any example from history can provide.
Speaker 1: And he talks about a feeling of opening in the chest.
Speaker 1: So I began studying I've been studying disgust in grad school,
Speaker 1: moral disgust, you know, violations of food and sex taboos
Speaker 1: and just horrible moral violations. And I decided to study
Speaker 1: the opposite of disgust, like because there's this emotion and
Speaker 1: Jefferson described it perfectly. So I said, wow, yeah, that
Speaker 1: really is something that should be studied. So I started
Speaker 1: study moral elevation. And that was like nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: which is right when Marty Seligman was president of the
Speaker 1: American Psychological Association, and that's when he started positive psychology
Speaker 1: and he invited a bunch of young scholars down to Accoma, Mexico.
Speaker 1: So originally I was, you know, I was really part
Speaker 1: of the positive psychology movement, focusing on sort of moral psychology,
Speaker 1: positive moral emotions. And then at UVA, I eventually started
Speaker 1: teaching a course called Flourishing, which is as Marty said,
Speaker 1: it's the most fun you'll ever have teaching, and it
Speaker 1: really is. So I taught that at UVA, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, positive psychology and moral psychology there was a
Speaker 1: lot of overlap. But then I started also looking at
Speaker 1: politics as culture because the cultural war was heating up
Speaker 1: beginning of the nineteen nineties but getting really bad in
Speaker 1: the two thousands. So I started looking at left and
Speaker 1: right as though they were different cultures, different moral cultures,
Speaker 1: and that kind of pulled me away from positive psychology
Speaker 1: into my long dark period because it's really great. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's happening to us as a country is really really grim, and.
Speaker 3: The op positive psychology.
Speaker 1: It really is. No, it really is. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too negative on this podcast,
Speaker 1: but you know, liberal democracy depends on certain founding assumptions
Speaker 1: and those assumptions might no longer hold. So I'm really
Speaker 1: concerned about that, and that sort of pulled me away
Speaker 1: from positive psychology into political psychology. And then I started
Speaker 1: looking at the role of social media in particular as
Speaker 1: causing political chaos, and then I started looking at what's
Speaker 1: it doing to kids? And when when I wrote The
Speaker 1: Calling of the American Mind with Greg Lukianov. We just
Speaker 1: had a speculation in the book that you know, it's
Speaker 1: mostly about overprotection. That's what the whole book is about, coddling,
Speaker 1: you know, stop over protecting. But you know, the timing
Speaker 1: fits with social media. You know, maybe social media something
Speaker 1: to do with it. In twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, we
Speaker 1: wrote that, but we didn't have the evidence. We didn't know,
Speaker 1: and now I believe we know, and that's what I'm
Speaker 1: assuming you and I will talk about a lot.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 1: There you go, thumbnail sketch from the nineties.
Speaker 3: Now now in Coddling the American Mind, which did excellent,
Speaker 3: you know, sold very well, But you didn't mention social
Speaker 3: media that much in that book. So that's interesting to me.
Speaker 3: At what point were you like, I really need to
Speaker 3: look at I need a double click on this.
Speaker 1: That book is set up to explain the mystery, which
Speaker 1: is what the hell happened in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: we experience what is essentially a cultural revolution on campus
Speaker 1: with intense moralism, hatred of the top, pulling people down,
Speaker 1: spinning on professors. I mean, it was like a hurricane
Speaker 1: from out of nowhere in twenty fifteen. So the book
Speaker 1: was about that. And there's like six different causes we
Speaker 1: analyze in the book. And there's rising political polarization, and
Speaker 1: there's the bureaucratization of the universe. There's all kinds of causes.
Speaker 1: One of them, though, was the rising anxiety, because by
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, when we were writing, it really became clear
Speaker 1: there is eighteen mental health crisis. Now we know it
Speaker 1: began around twenty thirteen, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen when things
Speaker 1: go up, but it takes a couple of years before
Speaker 1: the data kind of makes it, you know, from the
Speaker 1: time it's collected to the time we sort of are
Speaker 1: looking at it. A couple of years. So Gene Twangy
Speaker 1: called attention to this in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 1: so that's when I got more interested in it. After
Speaker 1: the coddling came out, some other researchers challenged me and said, oh,
Speaker 1: Heighte says that might be social media. Now he's completely wrong.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence. There's no evidence, and so I had
Speaker 1: a look, like, you know, this is I wasn't a
Speaker 1: social media researcher, This wasn't my feeling. Maybe I did
Speaker 1: get it run. So I started collecting because there's all
Speaker 1: these studies on both sides, I couldn't keep them all straight.
Speaker 1: So I started collecting all the studies on all sides
Speaker 1: about there's correlational studies, there are longitudinal studies, their experimental studies,
Speaker 1: and I organized them. If you go to Anxiousgeneration dot
Speaker 1: com slash reviews where I have a lot of Google
Speaker 1: docs created with my research partner, Zach Rausch, and one
Speaker 1: of them is social media and mental health. And so
Speaker 1: just engaging in that debate, especially engaging the debate with
Speaker 1: those other researchers, and like they'd publish a paper saying
Speaker 1: there's nothing going on, there's no correlation, and then I'd
Speaker 1: look at it and say, well, actually wait, you know,
Speaker 1: if you look in their own data, actually you do
Speaker 1: see it. So that's a normal academic debate. But so
Speaker 1: that really began an ernest in twenty nineteen and then
Speaker 1: it's just been ever since because I feel like we
Speaker 1: now have a global mystery. It's not just American college students.
Speaker 1: We have a global mystery. Why did teen mental health collapse?
Speaker 1: All around the world. We don't know about the developing world,
Speaker 1: but all around the Developed World East Age again we
Speaker 1: don't know. But Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Why did teen mental health collapse around twenty twelve? And
Speaker 1: it always always more so for girls? Why That's the mystery,
Speaker 1: and I think that deserves you know, I mean, like
Speaker 1: this is like, you know, in terms of the numbers affected,
Speaker 1: this is like as big as COVID. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you know there's a huge increase in suicide, but the
Speaker 1: death toll, well, the death toll overall is nothing compared
Speaker 1: to COVID, but the harm this is having on children
Speaker 1: is much greater than COVID. Very very few children died
Speaker 1: from COVID, but a lot or dies now from suicide.
Speaker 3: Okay, good, So I love how we're starting with this
Speaker 3: fact that there is this mental health crisis. And the
Speaker 3: interesting question is what are the factors that play a role,
Speaker 3: and then which ones should we prioritize amongst all this
Speaker 3: complex web of societal factors. And you double click on
Speaker 3: this one social media, can you weigh out as clearly
Speaker 3: as possible the argument, you know, just because I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people get confused with the argument, and
Speaker 3: I've seen people distort your argument and say that you're
Speaker 3: claiming that it's all the fault of social media, and
Speaker 3: I know that's not what you're saying, so I want
Speaker 3: to give you a chance to say as clearly as possible.
Speaker 1: Sure. So at first I thought that it was the
Speaker 1: story with social media because I was thinking girls. This
Speaker 1: is about girls. The increases their biggest, and the evidence
Speaker 1: is clearest. The correlations between ours of social media use
Speaker 1: and poor mental health are much larger, but two or
Speaker 1: three times larger for girls than they are for boys.
Speaker 1: So at first I was studying what social media doing
Speaker 1: to girls, and so we know that there's a direct
Speaker 1: relationship there, and there's experiments that we can get into
Speaker 1: as well, But it took me much longer to figure
Speaker 1: out the story for boys. And once Zach and I
Speaker 1: figured out the story for boys, it became clear this
Speaker 1: isn't just about social media. This is about the transformation
Speaker 1: of childhood, what we call the great rewiring of childhood,
Speaker 1: and so it's not just social media. So let me
Speaker 1: just lay it. It's simple to put it this way.
Speaker 1: It's a tragedy in two acts. First act. The first
Speaker 1: act is the loss of the play based childhood in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, we stopped letting our kids out. But
Speaker 1: the millennials who were teenagers then, they actually didn't get
Speaker 1: more depressed. Mental health was fine. It was a little
Speaker 1: better than gen X. The early intenet was actually pretty great.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that exploitative. So Act one, we're taking away
Speaker 1: childhood freedom, independence from kids, but the millennial mental health
Speaker 1: doesn't drop in the nineties and two thousands. Then Act
Speaker 1: too is the arrival of the phone based childhood. And
Speaker 1: this was incredibly rapid. So the way to think about
Speaker 1: it is twenty ten. You know, most all teens have
Speaker 1: a phone, but it's a flip phone or a brick phone.
Speaker 1: There's no internet browser, there's no such thing as Instagram.
Speaker 1: There's most people, very few people have high speed internet,
Speaker 1: so everything is slow. You can't do video on your phone.
Speaker 1: Your phone was for communication. The millennials use their phones
Speaker 1: to communicate with each other, to talk or to text.
Speaker 1: That was basically it, and so they were fine. But
Speaker 1: if you were born in the late nineties, then you
Speaker 1: went through puberty. During the Great Rewiring between twenty ten
Speaker 1: and twenty fifteen, what happens, so first social media begins
Speaker 1: to get super viral beginning two thousand and nine. Actually
Speaker 1: the like button, the retweet button. It's not about connecting now,
Speaker 1: it's much more about news feed outrage content being delivered
Speaker 1: to So social media changes. Instagram is founded in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't get popular till twenty twelve when Facebook
Speaker 1: buys it. Front facing camera comes out on the iPhone
Speaker 1: and on the Samsung in twenty ten. High speed internet
Speaker 1: goes to you know, almost everybody has it by twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: So if you're going through puberty in twenty fifteen, if
Speaker 1: you let's say you're a twelve year old girl in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, your brain is rewiring rapidly. That's what puberty
Speaker 1: is all about. It's sort of converting from the child
Speaker 1: form of the brain to the adult form of the brain.
Speaker 1: And you're being guided not by the elders in your culture,
Speaker 1: not by books and literature. You're being guided by just random,
Speaker 1: weird stuff that you're watching on the Internet that was
Speaker 1: selected by algorithms. You're in this tornado of crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: including a lot of pornography and violence and short videos
Speaker 1: of people getting run over by cars and just all
Speaker 1: kinds of horrible stuff, especially for boys. So my argument
Speaker 1: is it's not just about social media. It's a there's
Speaker 1: a human form of childhood which involves a lot of
Speaker 1: play in independence, and then you gradually learn to be independent.
Speaker 1: And then there's an inhuman form, which is where we
Speaker 1: give our kids a touchscreen, whether it's an eye phone
Speaker 1: or a tablet. By the age of eight or nine,
Speaker 1: most kids have their own touch screen. By then we
Speaker 1: give it to them, and then that moves to the
Speaker 1: center of their life and it'll be there. It's going
Speaker 1: to be there at the center of their life for
Speaker 1: the rest of their life. I mean, it's never going
Speaker 1: to go away until Elon Musk puts it on a
Speaker 1: chip and then it'll be planted directly into our brains.
Speaker 1: But so that's what I think happened, the complete rewiring
Speaker 1: of childhood. It's not just social media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw you say somewhere That gave me a chuckle.
Speaker 3: You said, look, you know, we we have a disappearance
Speaker 3: of a play based childhood that lasted from about two
Speaker 3: hundred million BC to nineteen ninety six if you take
Speaker 3: a long period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I took a rough guess as to when mammals
Speaker 1: began because the whole thing about being a mammal is
Speaker 1: you have a long childhood, and so mammals are really playful.
Speaker 1: You know, my daughter had got it. We got a leopard,
Speaker 1: get go for her, but he doesn't play with her.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not plateful. And now we got a
Speaker 1: puppy a year and a half ago, and she wants
Speaker 1: to play all day long like puppies have to play
Speaker 1: so to children.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So let's let's go through at a little greater
Speaker 3: granularity some of the evidence that you present in the book.
Speaker 3: So obviously you know, correlation is not causation, and I
Speaker 3: think that's a that's a big a lot of your
Speaker 3: critics they seem to keep saying that over as a
Speaker 3: like you don't know that you don't know the correlation
Speaker 3: of nico cultation. But I want to give a specific
Speaker 3: one there read because it's in Nature. Nature is very
Speaker 3: well respected journal by a well respected We start Candice
Speaker 3: ours Oddires, and you know, she really says that we
Speaker 3: have looked at the evidence over and over and over
Speaker 3: again and we just do not see this causation that
Speaker 3: you claim is there. They see it more of it,
Speaker 3: She sees it more of as an issue of well
Speaker 3: depressed people are more attracted to certain content on social media.
Speaker 3: That's why there's a correlation there.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. If A is
Speaker 1: correlated with B, it might be that A causes B.
Speaker 1: It might be the B causes or might be that
Speaker 1: C causes AMB. Perfectly reasonable starting point. And Adres has
Speaker 1: done some comprehensive review studies, but they're all of the
Speaker 1: correlational studies. I don't know that she's done one of
Speaker 1: the experiments. So let's go into first, what's the correlational data,
Speaker 1: then we'll do the experiments. The correlational studies use very
Speaker 1: crude measures self report generally self report of how many
Speaker 1: hours a day are you spending zero, one to two,
Speaker 1: three to five, So you have basically have like a
Speaker 1: number from one to five. That's your data on social media.
Speaker 1: Then you have a self report, maybe it's a single
Speaker 1: light and maybe it's three items. How's your mental health
Speaker 1: or anxiety? So you have like a one to five there. Now,
Speaker 1: how much of the real of the real experience of
Speaker 1: a child. How much is can you capture in that
Speaker 1: one to five variable? Very very little of their mental health?
Speaker 1: How much can you capture how accurate is it on
Speaker 1: the output side on the dependent variable side, very very little.
Speaker 1: So you would never expect these two numbers to correlate
Speaker 1: point five. As you know, almost nothing in the behavioral
Speaker 1: sciences correlates that are equals point five. Epidemiological work using
Speaker 1: crude measures, correlations are almost all between point one and
Speaker 1: point three. That's basically the ballpark that we're playing in.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: If you could have perfect measurement, you could get above
Speaker 1: point three. But we don't. We have very crude mission.
Speaker 1: And what I think a lot of my critics do
Speaker 1: is they I believe that they are confusing the variants
Speaker 1: explained in a data set with the variants explained in life.
Speaker 1: So so. Andrew Shabilski is another one of the main critics.
Speaker 1: Shabilsky and Dodgers, I think are the two most most
Speaker 1: outspoken people who doubt me, which is great, I mean
Speaker 1: it really is. Chris ferget Oh, yes, yeah, Chris Ferguson definitely,
Speaker 1: although Chris yeah, things are very collegial with Chris we
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it's so yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Chris health.
Speaker 3: Things are more awkward with the other two.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a normal academic debate. But there's not
Speaker 1: like a friendship there with with with Chris, with Chris
Speaker 1: and with Jeff Hancock, I think there is. I'm just
Speaker 1: on better with them personally in any case. So there's
Speaker 1: a thing in psychology and stats, as you know, if
Speaker 1: you take the correlation coefficient and you square it, that
Speaker 1: tells you the percent of variants explain just an abstract
Speaker 1: concept that very few people understand. So if the correlation,
Speaker 1: if the correlation is generally around zero point one to
Speaker 1: point one five, we're actually all coming to agree that's
Speaker 1: the correlations point one to point one five, but for
Speaker 1: girls it's higher. So for girls it's actually point one
Speaker 1: five to point two. So what Andrew Shabilski did and
Speaker 1: Amy Orbit, they got three huge data sets, they ran
Speaker 1: complex statistics on it, and they reported that the correlation
Speaker 1: was equivalent to around er point oh four in that ballpark,
Speaker 1: which really is trivial. And Andrew Schabilski has said ninety
Speaker 1: nine point seventy five percent of the variance in your
Speaker 1: happiness has nothing to do with social media. Now that
Speaker 1: is not a correct statement if he'd said in this
Speaker 1: data set, according to our analyzes, ninety nine point seventy
Speaker 1: five are the variants in this output variable had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with this. But to say that, to say
Speaker 1: that socialism nothing to do I mean, most young people
Speaker 1: seem to think it's really messing them up. Most school
Speaker 1: principles see that it's messing up the kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody is wrong. Everybody's imagining this. But anyway, back to
Speaker 1: the debate. So we debate how big the correlation is,
Speaker 1: and many of the critics say, well, even if it's
Speaker 1: a correlation of point one five, that's too small to explain.
Speaker 1: But that's not true a correlation of point one five.
Speaker 1: So put it this way, if would you let your child,
Speaker 1: if you had a twelve year old girl, would you
Speaker 1: let her do something was correlated with depression and anxiety
Speaker 1: at our equals point one five. Because the other way
Speaker 1: to look at it is the odds ratio. The odds
Speaker 1: ratio is let's just compare. We have imperfect measurement all around,
Speaker 1: so we're never going to get high correlations. But here's
Speaker 1: a trick that we can do to tease out the
Speaker 1: signal and the data, which is, let's look at the
Speaker 1: correlation for the heavy users as a function or compared
Speaker 1: to the correlation for the light users, and if those
Speaker 1: are the same correlation, well then there's no dose response.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a bad sign. But if the heavy
Speaker 1: users are two or three times the correlation then the
Speaker 1: light users, that means the odds ratio is two or three,
Speaker 1: which is huge if something doubles your risk. So if
Speaker 1: triples actually for girls, would you let your daughter go
Speaker 1: on Instagram at the age of twelve if you knew
Speaker 1: that it's going to triple her risk of depression and anxiety?
Speaker 1: So so that's what's going on the correlational data. We
Speaker 1: disagree on that. We actually agree on the side of
Speaker 1: the correlation, but we disagree on the meaning of it.
Speaker 1: Is that clear? Anything you want to click on?
Speaker 3: It is? Yeah, there are a bunch of things I
Speaker 3: want to double clicking that that is clear. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for elucidating that. You know, what if we
Speaker 3: looked at what if we zoomed out and we saw
Speaker 3: a bigger picture where in the whole priority of things
Speaker 3: there we identify things that are more in the point
Speaker 3: four range, point six range, you know, and then we
Speaker 3: have limited resources and what we should be double clicking
Speaker 3: on or what we should be given resource to is
Speaker 3: could someone make the argument that there are other systemic
Speaker 3: problems upon which the social media issue is just an
Speaker 3: outgrowth of that, and therefore we should be folks and
Speaker 3: the ones with the larger effect sizes? What would you say?
Speaker 3: This is that?
Speaker 1: Well the perfectly reasonable approach. So let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: What are these other what don't you know? Who is
Speaker 1: the true killer here?
Speaker 3: That's the million dollar that's the million dollar questions. And
Speaker 3: I and that question right there, I will actually want
Speaker 3: to double click on because I think it's such an
Speaker 3: important question who's the real killer? Because it leads me
Speaker 3: to believe that we could do so much better with
Speaker 3: the quality of these studies in terms of the precision
Speaker 3: we get in understanding what's going on. So to me,
Speaker 3: just time on task seems not nearly as satisfying as
Speaker 3: if we could actually do content analysis, if we could
Speaker 3: actually start to pinpoint. To me, it's just like, how
Speaker 3: informative is that just saying to me, that's just saying
Speaker 3: if you're compulsive on something, you know it might not
Speaker 3: even be social media. We might find the same people
Speaker 3: who spend more time on social media spend more time
Speaker 3: not doing their homework. Spend more time, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, They just it could be a general factor of.
Speaker 1: Right, and that's key, that's crucial that if you were
Speaker 1: to crucial that, if you were to have that, I
Speaker 1: totally agree. If you were to map out what activities
Speaker 1: are causing what harms supuzz you drew this all out,
Speaker 1: there'd be like twenty different activities that kids are doing.
Speaker 1: There's video games, there's violent video games, there's porn, there's
Speaker 1: there's so many things they are doing, and then there's
Speaker 1: so many different outcomes. And so let's just take the
Speaker 1: case of let's take the case of sex stortion. So
Speaker 1: large numbers of boys are now being sex storted love
Speaker 1: that so that's where a boy is like a girl
Speaker 1: sends him notes and begins flirting with him on Snapchat
Speaker 1: or Instagram. It's pretty much never the case that an
Speaker 1: unknown sexy girl wants to have sex with you. That
Speaker 1: just is not the way the world works. But teenage
Speaker 1: boys don't know that, and so this really sexy girl
Speaker 1: is flirting with them and friending them, and then you know,
Speaker 1: the relationship progresses and she says, well, you know, let's
Speaker 1: send each other nudes, and you know, then she sends
Speaker 1: a nude and it's really sexy, and then he sends
Speaker 1: a nude. As soon as he sends that nude, she said,
Speaker 1: as now I have everything I need to ruin your life.
Speaker 1: Oh now I've got you. I know all your contacts
Speaker 1: because I'm a friend of yours on Instagram and Snapchat.
Speaker 1: So unless you send me five hundred dollars in the
Speaker 1: next hour, I'm going to send this photo of you
Speaker 1: and your penis to everyone. You know. Now, this is
Speaker 1: not just happening to a few dozen kids the FBI.
Speaker 1: Last year, the FBI found twelve documented cases of suicide
Speaker 1: because of this, the number of boys. It's now getting
Speaker 1: so easy to do this. There's a Nigerian ring called
Speaker 1: the Yahoo Boys. They've automated it with AI. It's good.
Speaker 1: You know, anyone will be able to do it to
Speaker 1: millions of boys every day. So boys are getting this request.
Speaker 1: It's not that most are getting it. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you have thousands and thousands of boys being sex storted,
Speaker 1: and let's say only one percent of them commit suicide,
Speaker 1: this is a gigantic harm. This does not show up
Speaker 1: in that point one correlation, and that's just one causal
Speaker 1: path that's just one.
Speaker 3: I wholeheartedly agree that. I just think that the methods,
Speaker 3: you know, there'd be so much richer information we'd get
Speaker 3: if we could do that kind of analysis. We start
Speaker 3: to look more at the specific causal outcomes of specific
Speaker 3: kinds of content.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's right, And that points to a real
Speaker 1: problem in the social psychology mindset or the social science mindset,
Speaker 1: which is we're dealing with really complex causal situations. We're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what causes what.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes like people say, like, oh, it's not rocket sciences.
Speaker 1: The rocket science is hard, But rocket science is actually
Speaker 1: easy because if you know the math, you can predict
Speaker 1: exactly exactly what's going to happen. Whereas with the social
Speaker 1: sciences you can. It's really hard. And so what we
Speaker 1: do is we grab onto certainty. We say, okay, we
Speaker 1: we have data on this. We can use this as
Speaker 1: our as our independent varial. We have data on this
Speaker 1: a one to five scale of mental health. So let's
Speaker 1: let's we're going to draw a circle around these two
Speaker 1: and we're going to limit our analysis to these and
Speaker 1: then we're going to argue for ten years. Ten years,
Speaker 1: we're going to argue over whether is the correlation point
Speaker 1: oh five? Is it point one five?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 1: Now? This is one of thirty different causal pathways of harm,
Speaker 1: And so I believe that the skeptics have misconceptualized, if
Speaker 1: they've misconceptualized the situation. Now it's called operationalization. We have
Speaker 1: to operationalize a question in order to get quantitative answers. So, so, yes,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the correlations. But then let's also talk
Speaker 1: about the testimony. I mean, most kids, most older kids,
Speaker 1: say this messed me up, this is bad. That's evidence
Speaker 1: a lot of kids have committed suicide. Now that's not
Speaker 1: a correlation, that's a causation. I mean, the skeptical view
Speaker 1: would have to be, yeah, this boy killed himself, but
Speaker 1: that's just a you know, the day he killed himself,
Speaker 1: the day after he was six storted, But that's just
Speaker 1: a coral He would have killed himself anyway. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: that's absurd. I don't mean to imply that they think that.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is there are so many documented harms,
Speaker 1: and so to pin everything on saying, well, the correlationals
Speaker 1: says aren't large enough. There was a snapchat put out
Speaker 1: some astonishing number. I mean, it was something like forty
Speaker 1: or fifty percent of boys have had something like this.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe. But if that's the case, you know,
Speaker 1: if even one percent of them fall for it, it's
Speaker 1: probably more than one percent. You know, if half of
Speaker 1: all boys are being contacted and a small percentage fall
Speaker 1: for it, we're talking about millions of boys around the
Speaker 1: world whose lives are getting ruined. And you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: So you know Andrew Schbilski's claim that ninety nine point
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of your happiness has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with social media, I don't think it holds up.
Speaker 3: Hey, hey, John, this is so rich that I really
Speaker 3: want to ask some nuanced questions here. So without that
Speaker 3: full mapping of the specific content, I wonder how much
Speaker 3: of your arguments are are you projecting your own morality
Speaker 3: onto the situation versus actually going by the data, since
Speaker 3: we do lack so much of the data on the
Speaker 3: specific content. Ord Now, the example you give, I hope
Speaker 3: we can all agree from a moral perspective is not good.
Speaker 3: But there are other areas where, you know, even like pornography.
Speaker 3: You know, like some people listening to this podcast may
Speaker 3: have no moral qualms with pornography, right, So, like, you know,
Speaker 3: you make some arguments. I'm wondering how you separate your
Speaker 3: own sort of like, oh, that content is bad for everyone,
Speaker 3: we need to ban it, versus that's based on the
Speaker 3: data versus your own morality. Does that make sense? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But you know so, I think there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things going on here. One is I make an enormous
Speaker 1: distinction between minders and adults. I don't want to tell
Speaker 1: adults what to do. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: don't want companies dropping hooks in the water to catch
Speaker 1: my son and addict him to pornography, to gambling, to
Speaker 1: video games without my knowledge, no consent. So the book
Speaker 1: isn't entirely except for chapter eight, which we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: The book is entirely about what's happened to young people.
Speaker 1: And there is a broad consensus in the United States
Speaker 1: that we do have laws to protect children. And I've
Speaker 1: even won arguments with libertarians, Libertarians who are opposed almost
Speaker 1: all regulation. I've won arguments with them when I say
Speaker 1: we're only talking about children. Do you agree that we
Speaker 1: need something to protect children from addictive substances, from hardcore
Speaker 1: pornography and from horrible graphic violence like beheading videos, and
Speaker 1: then they'll say, well, yeah, okay, I can see that.
Speaker 1: So once we agree that children are vulnerable and that
Speaker 1: companies can't treat children the same as they do adults,
Speaker 1: now we're in a very different ballgame. And right now,
Speaker 1: as long as you're old enough to lie about your age,
Speaker 1: if you are nine years old and you're old enough
Speaker 1: to say that you're thirteen, you can open an account
Speaker 1: anywhere you want except porn Hub for their whatever you know.
Speaker 1: To porn site, you have to say that you're eighteen.
Speaker 1: That's it. There's no verification. So as soon as you
Speaker 1: give your kid the Internet in their pocket, they it's
Speaker 1: not just that they can reach everything, including the horrible stuff.
Speaker 1: It's that everyone in the world can reach them, including sextortionists.
Speaker 1: And so far as far as I know, the sextortionists
Speaker 1: are actual people on the other end of the of
Speaker 1: the keyboard somewhere, not usually in America. They're probably somewhere
Speaker 1: else in the world. But that's not going to be
Speaker 1: true for very long because AI is so good at this.
Speaker 1: AI is now so conversation. Within a year, I think
Speaker 1: sextortion is going to be mostly AI, and then it's
Speaker 1: going to be you know, tenfold, one hundredfold, because anybody
Speaker 1: can open a sextortion business and they can sex stort
Speaker 1: a million boys in a day. So I think this
Speaker 1: is going to get a lot worse. So my point
Speaker 1: is we have to establish the principle that children are different,
Speaker 1: whereas the US Congress unfortunately established the principle that children
Speaker 1: have no protections whatsoever.
Speaker 3: None.
Speaker 1: Companies is going to do whatever they want to them
Speaker 1: because the law is you have to say that you're
Speaker 1: thirteen in order to give away your data without your parents'
Speaker 1: knowledge or consent. But the law's written such that companies
Speaker 1: have to have affirmative evidence that you're underage. So if
Speaker 1: they have proof that you're under thirteen, then they're responsible.
Speaker 1: They're not supposed to open an account for you. But as
Speaker 1: long as they don't know it's not yours, it's not
Speaker 1: their fault. They have no obligation. And so that's why
Speaker 1: our children are everywhere on the internet. And that's why
Speaker 1: my basic argument in the book is we have overprotected
Speaker 1: our children in the real world, which has gotten increasingly
Speaker 1: safe since the nineties, and we have underprotected our children
Speaker 1: online which has gotten increasingly dangerous since the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm so glad as well that I'm giving
Speaker 3: you this opportunity to quarify, because I hear exaggerations of
Speaker 3: your own argument from various people. So you're not against
Speaker 3: fun and entertainment of fun. I know, I know, but
Speaker 3: I see almost as separate. I see like the darker issues,
Speaker 3: and then I also see an issue with the developing
Speaker 3: dopaminergic brain of teenagers where I can say that I
Speaker 3: get it, because that's why I deleted TikTok from my account.
Speaker 3: I used to do hip hop dancing on TikTok. I
Speaker 3: have a whole account of people want to see me
Speaker 3: do dancing on TikTok. I have a whole acount where
Speaker 3: you can see me do hip hop dancing. But on TikTok,
Speaker 3: I was starting to find myself spending too much time
Speaker 3: watching harmless entertaining like Old Granny's dancing. Know, like it's
Speaker 3: captivating to me, But so there, I feel like there's
Speaker 3: a separate issue here that's not as dark as the
Speaker 3: other examples you're talking about, but are still a waste
Speaker 3: of our lives, and we could be using our time
Speaker 3: usually more and more productive ways.
Speaker 1: But it's much more than the waste of time. So
Speaker 1: I just I just talked with Andrew Huberman last week
Speaker 1: and he really helped me work through the dopamine issues.
Speaker 1: And I read analem Ke's book Dopamine Nation last year
Speaker 1: while I was writing the book. And so the key
Speaker 1: to keep in mind is, look, if you're a grown
Speaker 1: up and you want to get yourself addicted to TikTok
Speaker 1: or slot machine gambling, it's sad. There should be some protections,
Speaker 1: but you're an adult. If you want to throw at
Speaker 1: your life, you can do that. But we don't want
Speaker 1: companies to addict our kids without our knowledge or consent.
Speaker 1: And the key to keep your the key thing to
Speaker 1: focus on is is it easy dopamine or is it
Speaker 1: hard dopamine? And so dopamine is not, you know, as
Speaker 1: Ubren explained as I say in the book, but he
Speaker 1: really goes into a detail. Dopamine is not a real
Speaker 1: ward chemical. It's not like you do the thing and
Speaker 1: then you get the reward, because if so, you'd be okay,
Speaker 1: I can stop, I got the reward. Dopamine is a
Speaker 1: reinforcement chemical that says keep going do more of this,
Speaker 1: do more of this, do more of this. And so
Speaker 1: let's imagine the case of a fifteen year old boy
Speaker 1: who has a sex drive, wants a girlfriend that you know,
Speaker 1: most boys want a girlfriend. Of the heterosexual boys, you know,
Speaker 1: many of them are lonely. And there's two paths that
Speaker 1: this boy can take. One is he can satisfy his
Speaker 1: sexual urges on a porn site and that's very quick,
Speaker 1: easy dopamine. And what Huberman pointed out to me is
Speaker 1: that after orgasm, the male brain is flooded with prolactin,
Speaker 1: which kind of shuts off the dopamine but encourages bonding.
Speaker 1: So you're lying there with a woman you've just made
Speaker 1: love or you just you know, and and it really
Speaker 1: strengthens the pair bond and that's how you fall in love.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine a boy on porn hub, he's
Speaker 1: getting quick and easy dopamine and there's nobody there for
Speaker 1: him to bond with except for computer. Now, instead, imagine
Speaker 1: you know what it was like for me, and I
Speaker 1: suppose for you there was some pornography, but it was
Speaker 1: like playboy and a couple other things. You know, I
Speaker 1: really wanted a girlfriend and I worked at it for
Speaker 1: years and you know, tried to get one. I finally
Speaker 1: did get a girlfriend my senior year of high school,
Speaker 1: and you know, I took her out on dates and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget the day we first held hands and
Speaker 1: then there's the first kiss, and you work up gradually.
Speaker 1: That was hard dopamine. Like, I really worked for that,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the best things in my
Speaker 1: early life. And so I would ask anyone watching this think,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a parent, what do you want for
Speaker 1: your kid. Do you want your child to spend ages
Speaker 1: eleven through twenty one getting buckets of cheap quick dopamine
Speaker 1: with no work, no work, you just you know, you
Speaker 1: go to a site, you get the dope. Or do
Speaker 1: you want your child to work at things, develop skills,
Speaker 1: develop social skills, learn how to flirt, learn how to court,
Speaker 1: learn how to fall in love, learn how to have
Speaker 1: sex so that they get harder and dopamine. And it's
Speaker 1: the same in school, it's the same in work. Whereas
Speaker 1: porn and video games. Now, the video games are so amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was a kid, Pong came out.
Speaker 1: It was like a tennis you know, It's like it
Speaker 1: was like ping pong. Remember it was fun. It was fun,
Speaker 1: but it was not like super addictive. It was just like,
Speaker 1: oh this is you know, this is interesting.
Speaker 3: Actually I found it pretty addictive.
Speaker 1: Did you really punk?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, yeah I did? Okay, well then in general.
Speaker 1: Okay, So anyway, the point is it's not just that
Speaker 1: TikTok is wasting your life. Yeah, it's that keep your
Speaker 1: eye on whether there's a feedback loop between a behavior
Speaker 1: and reinforcement. So television, you know, it said that we
Speaker 1: waste a lot of time on television. That's true. I
Speaker 1: showed I Dream of Genie to my kids and they said,
Speaker 1: this is really stupid, and I said, you know, you're right,
Speaker 1: this was a stupid show. But when you're watching TV,
Speaker 1: there's not a feedback loop between behavior and response. You
Speaker 1: can turn the volume up or down, and you can't
Speaker 1: change the channel, but that's it. That's it. You sit
Speaker 1: there with your sister or your friend, you watch it together.
Speaker 1: You're entertained. Contrast that with watching TikTok videos or YouTube
Speaker 1: shorts or Instagram reels, and there you're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of tapping. You tap and then you get something. You
Speaker 1: tap and you get something. That's the way you train
Speaker 1: a rap that's the way train a dog. That's the
Speaker 1: way you train a child. If you can get that
Speaker 1: rapid feedback loop, you can train them. You know, the
Speaker 1: way Bef Skinner could train pigeons to play ping pong.
Speaker 1: He could train to do anything by give them that
Speaker 1: rapid reinforcement. So, and that rapid reinforcement is a little
Speaker 1: hitt dopamine. So this is why I'm really coming to
Speaker 1: see that in all of social media, the short videos
Speaker 1: are the worst of the worst. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: should let their kid watch TikTok or YouTube shorts or
Speaker 1: Instagram reels, at least until eighteen. I think we really
Speaker 1: you know, again, I can't I can't prove that these
Speaker 1: are worse. I don't have the data show that this
Speaker 1: is worse than other things. But from everything I'm learning
Speaker 1: about dopamine, from my conversation with Huberman, this is the
Speaker 1: you know, this is about as bad as it gets.
Speaker 1: Now there's porn also, I can't equate, you know, hardcore porn,
Speaker 1: massive high definition hardcore porn available on demand. But but
Speaker 1: those those are two that are clearly messing up the
Speaker 1: development of the dopamine reinforcement system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, from what I understand of a dopamine as well,
Speaker 3: that's uh yeah, that's a that's a real serious issue.
Speaker 3: And just with the whole expectation of reward and when
Speaker 3: you no longer receive it, you know, the wanting versus
Speaker 3: liking systems there it seems like, yeah, it's like the
Speaker 3: wanting system is what the social media keeps us going perpetually.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay, so can we talk about the experiments,
Speaker 1: because often I go into the correlational studies and then
Speaker 1: somebody I never get to the experiments. Yes, please, all right,
Speaker 1: So you asked before, how do we know that this
Speaker 1: is causation not just correlation. So there's a whole class
Speaker 1: of studies called longitudinal studies where you look at whether
Speaker 1: an increase a time one predicts an increase in something
Speaker 1: else at time too. And uh, I just points out
Speaker 1: that there are some studies that find reverse correlation. There
Speaker 1: are some studies that show that when you get an
Speaker 1: increase in depression at time one, you know later on
Speaker 1: you get increase in social media use. Okay, there are
Speaker 1: some studies, but most of the studies find straightforward correlation.
Speaker 1: Most of the studies find in effect of if you
Speaker 1: use more social media at time one, you're more depressed
Speaker 1: and exious at time too. Now it's not proof of causality,
Speaker 1: but it's just more evidence that this causal story is
Speaker 1: more likely than the reverse. And we have this, all
Speaker 1: of this, we have this all laid out, all the
Speaker 1: studies on all sides at Anxious Generation dot com, slash reviews.
Speaker 1: And when you take out the studies that just use
Speaker 1: a one day interval, because some studies track kids like
Speaker 1: a day at a time, When you take out the
Speaker 1: short term intervals, those don't necessarily show the results I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. But when you go to a month or longer,
Speaker 1: then you get the result. And this is important because
Speaker 1: we're going to see the same pattern of the experiments.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the experiments. That's really the
Speaker 1: gold standard for testing causality now. So the main kind
Speaker 1: of experiment that's been done is you take college students
Speaker 1: because it's hard to do experiments on high school kids.
Speaker 1: You don't have permission, so it's mostly done with college
Speaker 1: students are young adults, and you pay them or you
Speaker 1: give them credit, and you ask you randomly assign half
Speaker 1: of them to reduce their social media consumption to like
Speaker 1: an hour a day, you know, from three or four
Speaker 1: hours a day down to an hour a day, or
Speaker 1: down to fifteen minutes a day, or in some studies
Speaker 1: you ask them to get off entirely, and then the
Speaker 1: question is does this make them happier? And Chris Ferguson
Speaker 1: just published a meta analysis of these studies and his
Speaker 1: claim was, on average, no, on average, there's no effect.
Speaker 1: But are There are a couple of problems with Chris's
Speaker 1: meta analysis. You know, again, I like Chris a lot.
Speaker 1: I respect them, but a couple of problems. One is
Speaker 1: Chris included all of the studies, even the short interval ones.
Speaker 1: If you ask people to go out for a day
Speaker 1: or two, is that going to make them happier? All
Speaker 1: of the effects are mostly effects are driven by the
Speaker 1: heavy users. They're the addicts. They're the ones who are
Speaker 1: really being harmed, the ten fifteen percent or heavy users.
Speaker 1: If you're a heavy user, if you're addicted to getting
Speaker 1: that dopamine hit, did people like my video? You know,
Speaker 1: what do they say about me? If you're addicted to
Speaker 1: that and you take part in the study where you
Speaker 1: have to get off social media for twenty four hours
Speaker 1: or forty eight hours, Are you gonna be happy? Hell no,
Speaker 1: you're in withdrawal. So what we're finding, So we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a response to Ferguson's met anoulynce. I mean again,
Speaker 1: this is this is the way the debate works. It's great,
Speaker 1: it's constructive. We're gonna have response soon showing that when
Speaker 1: you set if you sort all the experiments, and there's
Speaker 1: I can't remember, like fifteen or twenty or twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. There's a certain number in this set,
Speaker 1: and almost all the ones that use a day or
Speaker 1: two show negative effects, people are less happy, But all
Speaker 1: the ones that use a month or longer show almost
Speaker 1: all show a positive effect. And so that is random
Speaker 1: assignment RCT studies, which find that if you go off
Speaker 1: social media, it hurts it first, but then you're happier.
Speaker 1: And let me point out the way this is operationalized.
Speaker 1: You know, my critics act like this is the experiment
Speaker 1: that tests whether it's good or bad. But threat this
Speaker 1: whole debate, most people have missed the collective action aspect
Speaker 1: of this. So if you say to a college student,
Speaker 1: why why don't you stop using Instagram for a month.
Speaker 1: Now they're going to be cut off. They're cut off
Speaker 1: from their friends. Everyone's on all their friends are on Instagram.
Speaker 1: So now they're separated. So that's going to push against
Speaker 1: their happiness. But even still, even still on average, they're
Speaker 1: happier by a month later. What if we did the
Speaker 1: real experiment should be you take friend groups or sports
Speaker 1: teams or classrooms and you randomly assigned let's sake, let's
Speaker 1: bose we had an eighth grade classroom or a ninth
Speaker 1: grade classroom, and we randomly assigned half of you know,
Speaker 1: half of the classes to all get off for a month,
Speaker 1: and the other half is business as usual. Well, now
Speaker 1: it's not just you're not taking in the social media.
Speaker 1: Now it's like, hey, what are you doing after school?
Speaker 1: You want to hang out, Hey, let's go play basketball,
Speaker 1: Let's go get pizza. Like now you have the restoration
Speaker 1: of normal childhood relationships. So I think we need to
Speaker 1: look at multiple kinds of experiments. My argument is that
Speaker 1: when you look at the central class of experiments, the
Speaker 1: get off social media experiments, they do actually show a
Speaker 1: causal effect. So the claim that I have no evidence
Speaker 1: of causation, the claim that I have mistake and correlation
Speaker 1: for causation. You know, I believe that I can show
Speaker 1: that that is not true if listeners will go to
Speaker 1: Afterbabbel dot com. That's my sub stack and Zach Rausch
Speaker 1: and I have we put all our studies there, we
Speaker 1: put all our data. We've got a lot of interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: We're beginning to have voices of gen Z. We're having
Speaker 1: young people write for us SO and we're looking for
Speaker 1: contrary voices. We put a call out, can we find
Speaker 1: a member of gen Z who will write in defense
Speaker 1: of the phone based childhood? I have not found one.
Speaker 1: I can't find one on this planet. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: talk to people in their early twenties, they generally say, wow,
Speaker 1: this did a number on me. You know, I was
Speaker 1: talking with naked ten when I was ten. There was
Speaker 1: used to be think called omegle. It was a herreadimly
Speaker 1: meet stranger's video and a lot of them have been
Speaker 1: masturbating and so, you know, ten year old girls like
Speaker 1: it was a funny thing to do, Like you'd be
Speaker 1: with your girlfriends, like let's go on, omego, let's let's
Speaker 1: you know, see, let's look at naked men like but
Speaker 1: they're actually communicating with with sexual abusers, they're actually communicating
Speaker 1: with men who I mean anyway, My point is, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah. So so the fact that gen
Speaker 1: Z generally says this was really bad for us and
Speaker 1: we should change I think that also counts as evidence
Speaker 1: of causality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for talking about that. So just two
Speaker 3: areas I think are right for more research. One is
Speaker 3: what are the individual difference factors that are protective factors?
Speaker 3: I think that would be a very interesting line of research,
Speaker 3: you know, because not I think there are individual differences
Speaker 3: and who is more susceptible to certain content than other case?
Speaker 3: And the other the second thing unless you want did
Speaker 3: you want a double cluty?
Speaker 1: No, no, give me the second one.
Speaker 3: We'll see if we do it. The second one, which
Speaker 3: is one that I know that you've brought up and
Speaker 3: I'm right there with you, is less, uh not less,
Speaker 3: but more group based research because a lot of what
Speaker 3: you're describing as the effects of individuals, but it would
Speaker 3: be very interesting to see if certain you know, how
Speaker 3: certain populations are more susceptinable to particular content than other populations.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So let me answer the second one first, because it'll
Speaker 1: lead to the first one. So the key to the
Speaker 1: whole book is to see everything as a collective action problem.
Speaker 1: Social media is socially addictive. Cigarettes are biologically addictive. Social
Speaker 1: media is socially addictive. Everyone has to be on because
Speaker 1: everyone else is on. And once you see that, then
Speaker 1: you can understand why we shouldn't be studying it by
Speaker 1: taking one person off. We should be studying by taking
Speaker 1: the whole group off. Those are the experiments that need
Speaker 1: to be done, and so phone free schools are a
Speaker 1: great example. Every school that goes phone free reports fantastic results.
Speaker 1: I've put calls out on Twitter. Can anyone find a
Speaker 1: story about a school that went phone free, meaning you
Speaker 1: lock the phones up in the morning, you give them
Speaker 1: back at the end of the day. Can anyone even
Speaker 1: find a news story? And nobody can. There was one
Speaker 1: story in Florida. We had a lot of enforcement problems
Speaker 1: and they gave up. But almost every step, almost every
Speaker 1: school that does it, the teachers and administrators report they
Speaker 1: hear laughter in between classes now, whereas it used to
Speaker 1: be everyone was silent because everyone was on their phone.
Speaker 1: Every school that does it has a fantastic result. So
Speaker 1: it's very important to look at groups, and we want
Speaker 1: to restore group dynamics for children. We don't want them
Speaker 1: on their individual phones throughout puberty. All right, So now
Speaker 1: back to your question of individual differences. So Gene Twangy
Speaker 1: is the master of those studies. She's looked at all
Speaker 1: kinds of demographic differences, and what she reports is that
Speaker 1: it's up for pretty much everybody. It's up, you know,
Speaker 1: for black and white, about the same, rich and poor
Speaker 1: about the same. There's some small differences, but most of
Speaker 1: the demographic variables that we would think of don't seem
Speaker 1: to matter. This was a change in childhood globally across
Speaker 1: the Developer. There are two or three big ones. The
Speaker 1: biggest is gender, so women girls go up much more,
Speaker 1: their mental health deteriorate's much more, much faster. There's another
Speaker 1: and a little smaller. But there's another one, which is politics.
Speaker 1: So this is actually very revealing and important. Conservative kids
Speaker 1: are up a little. Liberal kids or kids from liberal
Speaker 1: fans are up a lot. Now let me add in
Speaker 1: then religion. As you'd think, kids who are religious are
Speaker 1: up a little. Kids who are from secutive families are
Speaker 1: up a lot. And so what Zach and I think
Speaker 1: is going on. We have some essays on this on
Speaker 1: our substack is that human beings need to be rooted
Speaker 1: in community. There have to be adults around, there have
Speaker 1: to be constraints, there has to be a moral order,
Speaker 1: there has to be punishment for bad behavior. There have
Speaker 1: to be stories being told by the adults. You know,
Speaker 1: kids need the help of a community to turn into
Speaker 1: an adult. But we stopped all that. And in secular
Speaker 1: liberal families, especially the kids have a lot of freedom.
Speaker 1: And freedom used to be good for kids. But what
Speaker 1: we think is happening is the kids who are not
Speaker 1: rooted in community. When the title wave came in around
Speaker 1: twenty eleven to twenty twelve, they're the ones who got
Speaker 1: washed out. To see and Gene Twankie has shown that
Speaker 1: it's liberal girls use social media much more than everyone else. Plus,
Speaker 1: liberal girls are marinating in the three great untruths that
Speaker 1: I talked about with you when we talked, I think
Speaker 1: we talked about the cognitive American mindus that the last
Speaker 1: time you had me on. Yeah. So so there are
Speaker 1: some you know, these cognitive distortions that Greg Lukianov product.
Speaker 1: So for a variety of reasons, liberal girls get washed
Speaker 1: away more, their mental health is horrible, whereas religious conservative
Speaker 1: boys are barely up at all. For example, in Orthodox
Speaker 1: Jewish households, everyone has to go phoneless for twenty five
Speaker 1: hours a week, like they all have practice. And what
Speaker 1: are they doing? Are they sitting having withdrawal symptoms? Now
Speaker 1: they're playing with each other? So structure, order and community
Speaker 1: is really really protective, that's the main thing.
Speaker 3: Well, this is a great segue into spiritual elevation and degradation.
Speaker 3: So how can we morally well, how can we spiritually
Speaker 3: uplift people? And can social media? Does social media have
Speaker 3: any potential? Are you throwing the baby away from the
Speaker 3: with the bath water completely in your in any of
Speaker 3: your policy thing? Is there anything that can be saved here?
Speaker 1: For kids in middle school? I see no redeeming features.
Speaker 1: If we want to talk about eighteen year olds or
Speaker 1: even sixteen year olds, look, I recommend you know we
Speaker 1: need to have four norms, one of which is no
Speaker 1: social media till sixteen. I can see that there are
Speaker 1: some things that a sixteen year old can do with
Speaker 1: social media. Now key is to say everybody seems to think, well,
Speaker 1: if they don't have social media, how can they find information,
Speaker 1: how could they connect with someone? Really, in the nineties
Speaker 1: and late nineties early two thousands, before social media, nobody
Speaker 1: could find information, nobody could connect with each other. So
Speaker 1: people think that I'm saying keep kids away from the
Speaker 1: entire internet, lock them up, and don't let them see
Speaker 1: a computer. No, they can. You know, families, I think
Speaker 1: it's good to have a computer in the kitchen or
Speaker 1: the living room, even when your kids are in second, third,
Speaker 1: fourth grade. There's a lot of good stuff they can do
Speaker 1: on a computer. As for hooking them up to talk
Speaker 1: with strangers all around the world, again, I can see
Speaker 1: how a sixteen year old engaged in some social change
Speaker 1: project wants to be networking with strangers. I can see that.
Speaker 1: I think it's still really bad for them, but I
Speaker 1: can see some benefits. If we're talking about twelve year olds. No, no,
Speaker 1: I see zero benefits to having my twelve year old
Speaker 1: daughter she's now fourteen, but I see zero benefits to
Speaker 1: having her spend her entire life talking with people straight
Speaker 1: posting photos, comments, likes getting approached by men who want
Speaker 1: to see a photo of her in her bathing suit
Speaker 1: or stuff like that. Like, no, yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: throw the baby out with the bathwater for middle school.
Speaker 1: And right now there's no restriction. Right now, you can
Speaker 1: be seven and open as many accounts as you want,
Speaker 1: and that has to stop.
Speaker 3: It seems like algorithms matter so much in this discussion,
Speaker 3: Like my Instagram feed is one example of moral elevation
Speaker 3: after another. I don't see that as a way like
Speaker 3: I'm bragging. I'm just saying the way for whatever kind
Speaker 3: of algorithm that I've gotten into. In my Instagram, I
Speaker 3: have a lot of inspirational videos going through, and I
Speaker 3: am actually seeing lots of examples of moral elevation.
Speaker 1: No, that's right, that's right because you because that's what
Speaker 1: you click on. But if you ask young boys, this
Speaker 1: is what I suggest. If you talk to twelve, thirteen,
Speaker 1: fourteen year old boys and girls, ask them what their
Speaker 1: TikTok feed is, Ask them how much violence there is.
Speaker 1: Ask them if they see people getting run over by
Speaker 1: cars or getting punched in the face, or videos of
Speaker 1: school yard fights. The girls are generally not seeing that
Speaker 1: because they don't click on that, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the boys are. They see a lot of people getting killed.
Speaker 1: And this is horrible, this is degrading, you know, It's
Speaker 1: one thing. When I was young, there was violence in movies.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget some scenes from the Godfather. But that's fiction,
Speaker 1: and we process it as fiction. There's a kind of
Speaker 1: a second order emotion with fiction. But I remember the
Speaker 1: very few times I saw a video of a person
Speaker 1: getting their arm chopped off or they're head chopped off,
Speaker 1: like cause write my disgust research Paul Rosin and I
Speaker 1: watched a video called Faces of Death. This was like
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two. Faces of Death. It was a compilation
Speaker 1: of videos of people and animals being dismembered, murdered. It
Speaker 1: was horrible and it really affected me. And I was
Speaker 1: twenty eight. Imagine being twelve and you're getting this again.
Speaker 1: Not all kids are getting this, but a lot of
Speaker 1: our boys are so spiritually degrade. Let's stick with the
Speaker 1: elevation degradation thing. So this chapter is my favorite chapter
Speaker 1: in the book. Chapter eight I was my favorite chapter
Speaker 1: as well as it should be. You are mister humanistic psychology,
Speaker 1: the voice of Maslow. So actually, you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: lay some stuff out and then I want you to
Speaker 1: give me a Meslovian interpretation of how phone based childhood
Speaker 1: is affecting flourishing and development. So my first book was
Speaker 1: called The Happiness Hypothesis, Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.
Speaker 1: I read the wisdom literature of every culture I could find,
Speaker 1: east and West from thousands of years ago, and there's
Speaker 1: ten chapters with a bunch of like So. One of
Speaker 1: them is there's nothing good or bad, but think makes
Speaker 1: it so. It's the principle of appraisal. Another is what
Speaker 1: doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Another is judge not
Speaker 1: lest you be judged. So the ancients generally tell us
Speaker 1: to be more forgiving, not less, to be slower, to judge,
Speaker 1: not faster. They tell us to sit quietly and calm
Speaker 1: our minds. That the ancients knew nothing about chemistry and physics,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the cultures, especially in the East,
Speaker 1: were incredible experts on consciousness, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: them focus on meditation, because it's only when you quiet
Speaker 1: the jumping monkey of your mind that you can open
Speaker 1: your heart, be it to God or nature or other people.
Speaker 1: Something happens when you meditate, when you slow yourself down.
Speaker 1: And so what I realized when I was almost done
Speaker 1: with the book is that I'd written a whole book
Speaker 1: about children and I hadn't really said how this is
Speaker 1: affecting adults, and when it made a list of how
Speaker 1: this is affecting us all I realized, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it says though. You know it says though. The social
Speaker 1: media companies read the happiness hypothesis red agent wisdom and said,
Speaker 1: what can we do to push people exactly in the
Speaker 1: opposite way of what agent wisdom recommends. Let's encourage them
Speaker 1: to judge immediately, constantly, no context, no forgiveness, no compassion.
Speaker 1: Let's fill their eyes and ears with stuff, always stuff,
Speaker 1: never a moment of silence. If they're in the elevator,
Speaker 1: they'll be scrolling on Instagram. We don't want them to
Speaker 1: be in an elevator for you know, forty seconds with
Speaker 1: no stimulation. So in so many ways, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: your feed can be elevating. And I used to do
Speaker 1: research at UVA on moral elevation. We'd show them videos, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see elevating videos. There could be a role
Speaker 1: for that. But if you give your twelve year old
Speaker 1: a phone, yeah they might watch a few elevating videos,
Speaker 1: but they're going to give up almost everything else. They're
Speaker 1: going to be on for five to seven hours well,
Speaker 1: middle school five to seven hours a day, high school
Speaker 1: more like seven to nine, and it's going to push
Speaker 1: out everything else. So that's my basic argument that the
Speaker 1: online life with extraordinary amounts of stimulation and social media, oh,
Speaker 1: another one another. You know, you can summarize a lot
Speaker 1: of ancient wisdom by stop this is not all about you.
Speaker 1: Stop thinking entirely about yourself. Suppress your self, your ego,
Speaker 1: put others first. But a social media platform says, we're
Speaker 1: going to give you a platform. You can dance on
Speaker 1: the platform, but your real motivation is to get people
Speaker 1: to like what you did. We're going to hook people
Speaker 1: to this kind of feedback and then if you're successful,
Speaker 1: you're an influencer. So over and over again, what we
Speaker 1: find is that the phone based life, not just for children,
Speaker 1: the phone based adulthood pushes us towards spiritual degradation, not
Speaker 1: spiritual elevation. Yes there's you know, I love insight, timer
Speaker 1: I meditate sometimes, so yes, there are some good things
Speaker 1: for spiritual progress. So that's my very negative view. Scott,
Speaker 1: what's yours? What would you say?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What would what would Maslow say about what's happened to us? Then?
Speaker 1: What do you say about what's happened to us.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and then and then I have a specific criticism
Speaker 3: of your transcending the Self section. Okay, good, Okay, So
Speaker 3: from a nauslow perspective of it, you know, we think
Speaker 3: of it at prepotency of needs. We think of the
Speaker 3: needs for self esteem. We need to think of the
Speaker 3: need for connection, for safety as more in taking more prepotency,
Speaker 3: all the algorithms basically are designed to fulfill those needs,
Speaker 3: you know, or to keep us perpetually perpetually trying to
Speaker 3: fulfill those needs, you know, like we're lonely, so we
Speaker 3: think our don't mean expects, you know, the reward even
Speaker 3: if we don't get it of connection, self esteem, you know,
Speaker 3: oh I don't you know, safety, so we we try
Speaker 3: to get with our tribe or or are you know,
Speaker 3: to complain about how and safe we feel and everything.
Speaker 3: So the self transcendent needs, the self actualization needs kind
Speaker 3: of take a back seat. So that's how I see
Speaker 3: it from a mass of perspective.
Speaker 1: Okay, I should have put that in the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very good. Okay, Now how about you, what else
Speaker 1: can you add?
Speaker 3: Well? So the transcending the Self section of the book
Speaker 3: I'm right there with you with your argument about the
Speaker 3: importance of transcending this self, but you the neuroscience of it.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's quite right.
Speaker 1: So you tell you because amazing.
Speaker 3: So you pick on the default mode network there, even
Speaker 3: calling it the profane mode network. Now I actually call
Speaker 3: it the imagination brain network. And and and Mary Helen
Speaker 3: and Emmerdino Yang and I have written arguing articles arguing specifically
Speaker 3: that the problem with social media is it's not allowing
Speaker 3: kids to engage in their default mode network. So the
Speaker 3: exact opposite argument, so we would actually argue that the
Speaker 3: default mode network, it's so in this I think actually
Speaker 3: dovetails the argument about play is that social media is
Speaker 3: actually engaging our executive attention network so much on the
Speaker 3: wrong things that we're not able to have internal constructive reflection.
Speaker 3: We're not able to make meaning out of our experiences
Speaker 3: in a personally meaningful way that are productive. We're not
Speaker 3: imagining our future and our own personal futures. It's actually
Speaker 3: taking us away from our imagination networkA.
Speaker 1: Waits, let me understand this. Are you saying or are
Speaker 1: you and Mary Mary Helen? Are you saying?
Speaker 3: I take you a paper I could say no, please.
Speaker 1: Do Yeah, are you saying that if you take a kid,
Speaker 1: you take a teenager and you have them stare at
Speaker 1: a wall no stimulation coming in, that's going to increase
Speaker 1: activation of the default mode network because now they're just
Speaker 1: they're thinking, they're reflecting. Would that be true?
Speaker 3: So it's all it's I mean with neurosciences, soalvvery contextual.
Speaker 3: So the best use of the default mode network is
Speaker 3: to engage people in stories that are uplifting and give
Speaker 3: us a sense of perspective taking and capassion. So a
Speaker 3: lot of Mary Helen's studies have shown that the extent
Speaker 3: which people activate the default mode network and considering the
Speaker 3: suffering of another person actually increases their capacity to have
Speaker 3: compassion for that person. Okay, so we require those braid
Speaker 3: networks to have perspective taking in a compassion because it
Speaker 3: allows us to imagine and perspect and take the perspective
Speaker 3: and project of what someone else might be feeling. And
Speaker 3: the social media actually takes us away, takes us away
Speaker 3: from those cognitive there's important cognitive capacities. Of course, they
Speaker 3: are examples where the default network we get stuck neurotically
Speaker 3: in our own stories and we ruminate and that could
Speaker 3: lead to depression. But I see a lot of this
Speaker 3: narrative going around. The default will network is universally bad,
Speaker 3: and you know, I see it in the psilocybin research,
Speaker 3: and I've been criticizing that. I've been criticizing that. I know,
Speaker 3: and I write, I write, I write quite a bit
Speaker 3: about how we need it's so simplistic, you know that, like, oh,
Speaker 3: if we get rid of the default No, actually, the
Speaker 3: default MOE network is where we are human. You know,
Speaker 3: that's where we construct our own sense of who we
Speaker 3: are and our sense of who we could be in
Speaker 3: the future. You take that out, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So two questions. One, if a person becomes an
Speaker 1: accomplished meditator and they're in a trance state, what happens
Speaker 1: to default mode network?
Speaker 3: This is this is great. So what happens in the
Speaker 3: research I've reviewed is not that they show less activation
Speaker 3: the default mode network, but they show a different connection
Speaker 3: to their executive attention network. So it's all about the
Speaker 3: rearrangement of how these things, how the different brain networks
Speaker 3: communicate with each other. You actually see greater communication among
Speaker 3: different networks, which a lot greater flexibility of attention. The
Speaker 3: goal should be flexibility of attention, not getting rid of
Speaker 3: your default moll. It's in my argument. That's been my argument.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, no, thank you. I mean I was drawing
Speaker 1: on my friend, you know, Dakra Keltner has this great
Speaker 1: book on AWE. I know, and so I quote Daker
Speaker 1: as a lot of people vanishes. Other studies have shown
Speaker 1: all shifts us from a competitive doggy dog mindset to
Speaker 1: perceive that we are part of networks of more independent,
Speaker 1: collaborating individuals. Anyway, so I don't I don't write a
Speaker 1: lot about the brain because I know it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's complicated and it's not like a one to one
Speaker 1: correspondence of anything. So I could well be wrong about
Speaker 1: about that speculation of the diffault.
Speaker 3: What's interesting is that the default will network seems to
Speaker 3: be highlink to the flow state of creativity, so you
Speaker 3: can imagine being in the all state.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: For instance, they put rappers, Nathei, Mari machine poets, they
Speaker 3: find much higher default mode network activity and reduced executive
Speaker 3: attention critical activity to really suggest they're getting in the
Speaker 3: flow of what they're doing now the ways that they
Speaker 3: really enjoy.
Speaker 1: So what's your best. If you could summarize why do
Speaker 1: we have a default mode network? What is its function?
Speaker 1: Is the why?
Speaker 3: Sense of it does? It does give us a sense
Speaker 3: of self that is true, and that's why that's why
Speaker 3: a lot of the Buddhists related people hate it. But
Speaker 3: I would say, let's not throw the baby out with
Speaker 3: the bath water there, because so much of creativity is
Speaker 3: self expression, and so much of creativity really is tapping
Speaker 3: into the deepest recesses of your soul and creating meaning
Speaker 3: from that and and conveying that meaning to the world.
Speaker 3: So I do think that from a consciousness perspective, the
Speaker 3: default network is a really important part of the evolution
Speaker 3: of human consciousness because it allowed us to actually, when
Speaker 3: it's properly or healthily connected to the other brain networks,
Speaker 3: allows us to do self reflection in a compassionate and
Speaker 3: uh and take perspectives of others. So it has a
Speaker 3: real useful function. But you do see it, you can
Speaker 3: go haywire when it's disconnected from the rest of our
Speaker 3: brain network.
Speaker 1: Scott, you are a man of many towns. I had
Speaker 1: no idea that you knew so much about neuroscience, and
Speaker 1: I just I just looked on your WESBS.
Speaker 3: I've got my degree in neuroscience. That's neuroscience of intelligence.
Speaker 3: That's what I studied.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know you did intelligence creativity. And I just
Speaker 1: saw you've written ten books. I was just on your website.
Speaker 1: Ten books. You've been in this game half as long
Speaker 1: as I have, and I've got four. So you write
Speaker 1: like a book every other year.
Speaker 3: Pretty much every two years. I have a new one
Speaker 3: coming out next year. I can't wait to share with
Speaker 3: you because we're gonna, okay, we're gonna We're gonna really
Speaker 3: have a lot of mutual interest in that.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, what's the title?
Speaker 3: I haven't I haven't announced that to the world yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, so can you tell me what it's going to
Speaker 1: be about?
Speaker 3: More or less, it's about how to overcome a victim mindset?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, yes, we talked about this.
Speaker 3: Yes, empower yourself?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god? Is that necessary?
Speaker 3: Is young?
Speaker 1: Many young people need that? I hope that would be
Speaker 1: mandatory reading for all incoming freshmen at every university in
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 3: I hope so as well. So let's end this and
Speaker 3: thank you for saying that. Let's end this interview by
Speaker 3: you know, really emphasizing our shared view on this because
Speaker 3: all the neuroscience nerdiness I just said, outside, the concept
Speaker 3: remains that there's so much more we could be doing
Speaker 3: to spiritually uplift and transcend young people. You know, all
Speaker 3: the neuroscience stuff that's just like nerdy stuff, right, But
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, this is a really
Speaker 3: important message. You have anything else you want to say
Speaker 3: in terms of getting kids more nature, having them done
Speaker 3: more to the all states? The all state is great, a
Speaker 3: paper a doctor about.
Speaker 1: This, Yes, No, I definitely want to say something else,
Speaker 1: which is, let me say it. So the four norms
Speaker 1: that I recommend are to change childhood and restore the
Speaker 1: play based childhood. So the four norms are no smartphone
Speaker 1: before high school or age fourteen, roughly, no social media
Speaker 1: before sixteen, phone free schools, and far more independence, free play,
Speaker 1: and responsibility in the real world. So my key piece
Speaker 1: of advice to anybody listening who has children is, if
Speaker 1: you try to do this by yourself, you just say no,
Speaker 1: you're not getting a phone till you're fourteen, You're not
Speaker 1: getting Snapchat till you're sixteen. You're gonna be cut cutting
Speaker 1: off your child. But if you if you just communicate
Speaker 1: with the parents of your kids' friends. Let's suppose your
Speaker 1: kids in fourth grade, you surely are on a text
Speaker 1: thread with because you had to arrange pick up at
Speaker 1: a birthday party. Whatever. You know who the parents are.
Speaker 1: And if you say, hey, you know, I read this
Speaker 1: book about what social media do into our kids, and
Speaker 1: you know, do you share this concern? How about how
Speaker 1: about if we all get together and say we're going
Speaker 1: to get you know, in fifth grade, you're going to
Speaker 1: get a flip phone or a phone watch actually Apple watch.
Speaker 1: Parents are having good luck with watches.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Next year, we're going to be sending you out. You
Speaker 1: guys are going to be playing a lot more outside.
Speaker 1: We want you to have the kind of fun childhood
Speaker 1: that we had and that your grandparents had. So we're
Speaker 1: going to be sending you out. But we're not going
Speaker 1: to give you a smartphone until you're in high school.
Speaker 1: And we're not going to let you have Snapchat or
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok an account at least until you're sixteen. Now,
Speaker 1: if you do it as a group, now you're solving
Speaker 1: the collective action problem. You're not putting your kid at
Speaker 1: a disadvantage. Very quickly. In every school, it's going to
Speaker 1: be the cool kids are getting together after school and
Speaker 1: doing stuff. They're going places, whereas the losers are going home,
Speaker 1: sitting on their bed, flicking through Instagram. And for the boys,
Speaker 1: they're just playing video games all afternoon and porn. So
Speaker 1: I think we can change this, but it has to
Speaker 1: be a collective action. So I would urge anyone, whether
Speaker 1: you're a parent or a teacher, or if you just
Speaker 1: care about kids, please go to Anxious generation dot com.
Speaker 1: We have a huge We have a great website with
Speaker 1: a huge amount of information, a lot of suggestions for
Speaker 1: parents and teachers, a lot of resources. Parents are rising
Speaker 1: up all over the world. That's happening all over the
Speaker 1: world in the last few months because everyone's sick of it.
Speaker 1: And so don't be resigned. Don't say, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: know it's everywhere. This is the future. What are you
Speaker 1: going to do? Say? We gave away children's childhood. We
Speaker 1: gave it over to a few giant companies that hook
Speaker 1: them and keep them on for years and years. How
Speaker 1: about we stop doing that, and how about we do
Speaker 1: it together. If we do it together, we can do it.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I love it. John I'm so honored that
Speaker 3: you came on podcasting. You were you're like super of
Speaker 3: course famous right now you have a number one New
Speaker 3: York Times best selling but we're just when we finished
Speaker 3: bragging about you for a second, you've literally your book
Speaker 3: shot to number one in New York Times bestsellersts. You
Speaker 3: were starting a whole movement. You know, You've always been
Speaker 3: a rock star in psychology, but now you're like an
Speaker 3: actual rock star in the world. I'm so honored that
Speaker 3: you came on my show today, and I'm really rooting
Speaker 3: for you in this movement that you're doing well.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Scott. I mean, first of all, you and
Speaker 1: I have been friends for a while. I love your podcast,
Speaker 1: I love your work, so I'm very very happy to
Speaker 1: come on. And I think the part of the reason
Speaker 1: that my book has been so successful is that the
Speaker 1: timing could not have been better. We were all confused
Speaker 1: during COVID. We thought, oh, kids need social media to communicate,
Speaker 1: which they did, but we thought so, and now that
Speaker 1: COVID is receding, we're seeing the wreckage all around the world.
Speaker 1: So I think my timing. I mean, you know, as
Speaker 1: you know, with the book, you sign a contract, you
Speaker 1: agree on a pubdet. You have no idea what's going
Speaker 1: to be happening on the pub date. But twenty four
Speaker 1: parents all over the world are so sick of this
Speaker 1: and they want to change, and it's happening all over
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the collective action is happening and you're you're
Speaker 3: really contribute to it in a big way. So thank
Speaker 3: you Jonathan for being on the Psychology Podcast again.
Speaker 1: Thank you Scott for having me. I look forward to
Speaker 1: our next talk me too.