Offline with Jon Favreau - Have Smartphones Created an Anxious Generation? with Jonathan Haidt

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

The kids are not alright, and the culprit is their phones. That’s the thesis of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation. He joins Offline to discuss why he thinks smartphones and social media are fueling a teen and adolescent mental health epidemic, the evidence behind his claims, and the criticism his anti-phone crusade has received. Then he and Jon dive into the four recommendations Haidt believes will lead us out of this crisis. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Suppose we suddenly change the Earth's atmosphere from 20% oxygen to 80% oxygen. Like, oh, wouldn't that be great? Like, you'd get so much oxygen so easily, we'd all feel good. Like, no, everything would burn. Any little spark, every electrical thing would explode. You know, 80% oxygen, everything is combustible. And similarly, what if we give everyone an outrage button where they can, the slightest thing, oh, something bothers you about what you saw on the street? Tweet it. Somebody did something obnoxious, take a photo, put it up, let people dox them.

This is what social media has done to us. It's an open question whether liberal democracy in the American form, it's an open question whether we can survive, whether our current institutions and structure is compatible with an 80% oxygen world. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. You just heard from today's guest, social psychologist and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt. So this is a conversation I've wanted to have for a long time. Haidt is the author of numerous bestsellers like The Happiness Hypothesis, The Coddling of the American Mind, and the number one New York Times bestseller that will join seemingly everyone else in talking about today, The Anxious Generation. Height's basic argument is one we've made many times on this show. The kids are not all right, and the culprit is their phones.

But Height takes it a step further. He offers extensive research to support his contention that smartphones and especially social media are fueling a teen and adolescent mental health epidemic here and in other countries. Haidt also offers a four-step plan to help us build what he calls a healthier childhood in the digital age. It's a compelling book and his recommendations make a lot of sense. But the anxious generation has also touched off a debate about whether Haidt has overstated the case against phones. And it raises questions about whether his proposed reforms, like banning phones in schools, have the support necessary to become reality. So I asked him. We talked about the evidence he cites, the criticisms he's received, how phones and social media have changed our relationships and our attention spans, and how they're making politics and democracy much harder. As a quick note, we had a lot to

get through, so today's interview will take up the full hour of the show. Here's Jonathan Haidt. Jonathan Haidt, welcome to Offline. Thank you, John. Pleasure to be here. So I've wanted to have you on for a long time because even before The Anxious Generation, a lot of your writing has focused on the central thesis of this podcast, which is that smartphones and social media are breaking our brains, making us miserable, and making democracy much more difficult. So you are talking to a host, and I think most listeners, who probably agree with your argument that smartphones and especially social media are bad for kids.

But since I see people still debating whether it's the phones that are causing the increase in mental health challenges among kids, could you start by talking about the most persuasive evidence you found? So there's a lot of scientific evidence. There's a lot of correlational studies. There are a lot of experiments. There are a lot of time lag, longitudinal studies. And one thing I've learned by engaging in this debate is that the scientific evidence is not nearly as cut and dry or persuasive as you would think.

My critics will put out a study and say, see, this proves that Haidt is wrong. And then I look, I say, wait a sec, no, actually, this proves that I'm right. So the scientific evidence is really debatable, and that's a whole process that has to come out. So to my mind, the most powerful evidence that I have seen on this is the fact that I cannot find anyone in Gen Z who says or has written that smartphones and social media were good for their generation. There are thousands of essays and videos by, especially Gen Z in their 20s, saying, wow, this messed us up. Wow, talking with naked men when I was 11 years old, like, this was terrible. You know, if there's been a crime and the crime victim keeps saying,

he did it, he did it, he's the one. And they all say that. I actually think that's pretty persuasive. And so the idea, you know, the main criticism against me is that I'm mistaking correlation for causation. That sure, you know, mental health plummeted all around the world, basically at the moment that kids moved their social lives onto Instagram and a few other platforms around 2012. But that could just be coincidence. It might have just been a big coincidence. It happened everywhere at the same time, but just a coincidence. But the fact that the kids themselves see it, the fact that the teachers see it, the principals see it, the parents see it. So I actually take that as the most persuasive. I mean, you know, because of course, I sometimes wonder, like, I'm going out on a limb here.

We don't have scientific consensus that smartphones and social media are what's causing the mental health crisis. And so, you know, am I fomenting a moral panic by saying, you know, look, we need to start acting now. We can't wait five years for the scientists to reach agreement. But the fact that I don't really find anyone who disagrees with me, other than within the scientific, you know, other than a few scientists who we argue over the size of the correlations. I was just talking yesterday with the commissioner of schools of New York City, and he said he was asking a bunch of principals, what should we do with the phones?

And they all said, take them away, take them away. It's making our jobs miserable. So I think that's pretty compelling. Yeah, well, I'll give you a few of the alternative theories I've heard or some of the criticisms I've heard. Sure, I love these alternative theories. Yeah, I figure. And I see these floating around online on social media. But one of them is what if more young people are self-reporting anxiety and depression because this is less stigmatized than it used to be?

Right. So that's perfectly plausible. And if that was the case, then what we would see is gradually rising rates from the 1980s through the present, because there used to be a stigma. When I was a kid, my mother sent me to a psychiatrist when I was 10 or 11 years old. I had some nervous tics that were kind of strange, and she sent me just, that was very shameful. Like, I didn't want anybody to know, but now here, you know, it's 2024 and I'm perfectly happy to say, you know, I, I, I see a therapist every other week I have for a couple of years. So the stigma has been vanishing since the eighties. So if it was the stigma that it was just, you know, it's an illusion. It's just like, yeah,

it looks like there's high rates, but that's just because there's, then what we would see is a gradual rise from the eighties to the present, but that's not what we see. What we see is actually a slight fall from the 90s through 2010, 2011. The millennials, their mental health was a little bit better actually than Gen X. So we see the numbers, the actual rates, self-report rates of anxiety and depression going slightly down during the 2000s while stigma is dropping and dropping and dropping. And then all of a sudden, 2012, it goes way up, way up in America. And it goes up all around, certainly around the English speaking world. So you want to tell me that the stigma didn't change at all from the 90s through 2011. And then suddenly in 2012, 2013, suddenly the whole world decided, hey, mental illness is cool. I don't mind saying that I'm anxious. It just,

it doesn't make any sense. The other one I hear a lot, especially on the left and from some young people is, you know, what if it's the impending climate disaster and, you know, massive inequality brought about by late stage capitalism? Yeah. So there's a thing called the pundit, what's it called? The pundit illusion, where whatever happens, so it used to be like, you know, right wing pundits, whatever happens, this shows the need to lower taxes or whatever. And so if people were focused on climate change or who hate capitalism, sure, everything's going to be evidence of that. But let's look at the timing and let's look historically. So what we see, the sharpest increases are for the preteen girls.

In 2012, their rates double and triple. For self-harm, they triple. So did something happen in 2012 that the young girls were really clued into? Is that when they got active about climate change? Now, Greta Thunberg, I think was about 2018 when she addressed the UN. Now, Greta was, you know, that would make sense. Greta was incredibly inspiring, especially to young, to girls and young women. So if this whole thing, it was like, no change, no change, no change. And then suddenly Greta Thunberg. And then, you know, then I would say, yeah, actually, maybe it was Greta. But that's not what happened.

What happened was things, mental health was fine during the Bush administration in the United States, George W. Bush. And then it was fine during Obama's first term, which means it was fine during the global financial crisis. Because financial crises don't affect teenagers very much. You don't see a national drop among 12-year-old girls and boys just because the economy is bad. And then all of a sudden, in Obama's second term, when our first African-American president is re-elected, gay marriage is declared law of the land a year or two later. This was a progressive utopia, really, the early

2010s. And that's when girls, and especially progressive girls, suddenly get so upset about the state of the world. Because I should point out that there are three big demographic differences. The biggest one is gender. So girls go up much, well, not always. Girls go up more than boys in absolute terms always, except for suicide. Boys go up more. Boys have higher rates of suicide. But on anxiety, depression, self-harm, girls start higher and then they go way, way up. So gender is the biggest one. After that comes politics and religion. So it's girls on the left especially, and it's also kids in secular households. These are the kids who had a lot of freedom.

They were not firmly anchored in binding communities. You know, if you're a religious conservative, your life is full of restrictions. You have to go to church. You have to see your grandmother. You have to say your prayers. You have to do the dishes. I mean, religious conservatives, they really, you know, hem their kids in with obligations. Now, according to many sociologists, my favorite one, Emile Durkheim, this is actually a good thing. Like, many of us wouldn't choose it,

but it ends up actually being conducive to happiness. And so, what I think happened is, it's the kids who were least bound in, which seems especially secular liberals, they're the ones who suddenly got washed away in 2012, whereas the religious conservative kids, their feet were firmly planted in real communities. They didn't get washed away. They're worse off, but it's only a little. So again, the activism, you know, the world is terrible, and we didn't know it until 2013,

but suddenly we discovered that the world is terrible. Like, no, that just doesn't fit. And in all these countries. Yeah, one thing I've wondered is, is social media could be responsible in a different way here, which is social media is sort of like a fire hose of bad news aimed directly at our brains.

And so that the horrors of the world become more visible to kids through social media, probably in outsized ways that are not, you know, they might not actually match the reality of the horrors, but like all media, like all news, you're only going to get the bad news and the worst headlines. So, I was wondering if that had an effect. Well, yes, but I would approach it a bit differently.

So, as a social psychologist, my job is to take whatever you say and make it more social. You know, because, you know, there's a saying in social psychology, cognitive psychology is social psychology with all of the interesting variables set to zero. So you proposed a cognitive psychology explanation. Maybe it's that social media is bringing bad news and people are thinking, wow, the world is in bad shape. That's very plausible. But you know what's much more influential, especially on teenagers? It's not that there's a war in Ukraine or somewhere else. It's that half of the people in my feed are freaking out. Kids are very subject to emotional contagion, especially girls. Girls are more open to social influence. They feel others' emotions more. And so this is one explanation

for why. So the curves, you know, like everybody's sort of flat and then everybody goes up in the early 2010s. Girls is super sharp. Girls, it really is like a hockey stick. The boys' curves are more gradual. It's not like, you know, they begin going up in 2009, 2010, then they keep going up. But so I think suddenly,

especially when you look at middle school kids, middle school kids are not supposed to be worrying about the war in Ukraine or inflation or anything else. They're supposed to be playing. Now, by the time you're a senior in high school, okay, you're reading the newspaper, maybe you're getting politically active, but it's completely inappropriate

for 10, 11, and 12-year-olds to have like, you know how foie gras is made? You know, I don't know exactly, but you know, they put a tube down a goose's, you know, throat and they stuff it full of fat. It's not pretty. So that's what we're doing to our middle school kids. They're suddenly immersed. And then they're supposed to go to these protests. My daughter's middle school, they canceled school to go to a gun control, a gun pro. I mean, really? Middle

school? Please just lay off the middle school kids. Let them start puberty in a normal, healthy way. Got any more? Please, give me more. I love this. For people who haven't read the book, could you explain a little bit about why you think it rose so sharply for girls and explain the gender difference, actually? Sure. Okay. So the basic story of the book is a tragedy in two acts, although there's a third we can talk about, which is community. In act one, we take away the play-based childhood. Kids always used to be out playing. And even during the crime wave when I was growing up. So we take away, beginning in the 90s, we stopped letting kids out. We're very afraid they'll be kidnapped or hit by a car.

So we block them from the kinds of experiences that they need to overcome their anxieties, to become more confident and capable. So that's act one from like 1990 to 2010. But in 2010, kids are still using their phones. They have flip phones. They're still using their phones to communicate with other kids. They text them, they call them, they meet up after school. And then everything changes. Act two of the tragedy is the inrushing of the phone-based childhood. And that means that kids go from having a flip phone that they use to painfully text each other.

It's very hard to text on a flip phone. To suddenly having everyone's got an iPhone with a front-facing camera, they've got Instagram, they've got high-speed internet, and at that point, everybody's on their phone. Now, the girls choose, so everyone's on their phones, but they choose different things. The girls, actually think about it this way. If you want to trap an animal, what you have to do is find bait that the animal likes, and then the animal's attracted, and then you have to find a way that once the animal takes the bait, they can't escape. So if you want to trap girls, what you do is you say, hey, do you want to find out what everyone's saying about everyone?

And for girls, that's really appealing, especially, do you want to find out what everyone's saying about you? Now, that's more interesting to girls than it is to boys. For boys, if you want to trap a boy, you say, hey, do you want to look at pictures of naked women or men, whatever you're attracted to? Do you want to look at high quality images of people having sex? That's a lot more interesting to boys than to girls. Or you say to boys, hey, do you want to join teams and fight war? You won't get physically hurt, but really graphic, amazing graphics. It's very exciting. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Sign me up for that three or four

hours a day. So girls and boys go into, they get very, very deeply immersed in different kinds of activities, all of which have quick dopamine loops, all of which are very rewarding on a variable ratio schedule. So they're very addictive both ways. But the boys are actually having fun. Now, over time, I think they're really harming themselves. If you keep giving yourself quick dopamine for five or 10 years every day, you're going to change the reinforcement systems in your brain and possibly permanently. So the boys actually are getting quite damaged, I believe. But if you look at kids who are 14, the boys are actually having some fun. Now, they're lonely as hell, but they are having fun when they're playing video games. Now, the girls, on the other hand,

they're not having fun. When you're just swiping on social media, you're looking at other photos of beautiful girls and their perfect lives, that's not fun. You're commenting on what people said. That's not fun. This is more work. So, this is why I think we see both boys and girls are addicted. They spend massive amounts of time, about five hours a day, just on social media. This pushes out everything else. So they're not reading books. They're not having hobbies. They're not seeing their friends. This is happening to both sexes. the video games and porn, they don't seem as destructive to the boys at the age of 14. Now, if we look at these kids when they're 30 and 40, I think what we're going to find is that the girls are somewhat functional. They'll be more anxious than average, but they'll have jobs and they finish college. Whereas a lot of the boys are going to still be dependent. They're not going to have developed skills to hold a job or court a woman for the heterosexual boys. So that's what I think is the nature of the sex difference. The girls went especially for Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr.

Those were three of the biggest platforms early on, whereas the boys went much more for video games and YouTube. And that's why I think, one of the reasons they have very different outcomes. Yeah. I mean, it seems for girls that there are just like larger societal pressures that have existed for decades, right? Where they're going to naturally feel the pressure to compare and look at other, and there's sort of these unfair beauty standards that girls feel pressure to conform to that boys maybe do not as much.

That's right, absolutely. It's always been clear to me that middle school is harder for girls. I mean, I hated middle school, but it's harder for girls than it is for boys, on average, harder for girls than boys. And then social media says, let's take the 10 worst parts

about middle school for a girl and let's crank them up to 10. Let's just make it all a lot worse. The thing that really drove home the problems for me is sort of, you write about the differences between relationships in the real world and relationships in the virtual world. Can you talk about the difference? Yeah. So there's a huge difference between connecting and performing. So Richard Reeves has this great book called Of Boys and Men. He points out girls tend to interact face to face. Boys tend to interact shoulder to shoulder.

They like to do things together. And that's even true for men. When I get together with my buddies, we're more likely, we do talk, but we're more like we want to do something together. So when technology helps us to connect in the way that we want, the gender specific ways, when it helps boys to do things together, when it helps girls to talk. So of course, girls would use the telephone to talk for hours and hours. And so is that bad? No, I would say talking on the telephone with one person is good.

So that's connecting. But what if it wasn't a one-way call? What if it was a 30-way call? What if there's 30 people on the phone? Now, there's a lot of performance. And if you say something that other people dislike or criticize, they might laugh at you and then they build on that and then they talk about how stupid you are. So it's high stakes. When you get 30 people on a phone call, which you never did, but if you had 30 people on a phone call,

it would be high stakes. It's not really connecting. But a lot of kids have these giant group chats and they're always chiming in and they're getting hundreds of notifications a day. That's not connecting them. That is performative, performance. And this, I think, is one of the big reasons why

as soon as the boys move on to video games and porn, even though they're connecting on the video games, their level of loneliness goes up. And when the girls move on to Instagram, even though they're interacting, their level of loneliness goes up. The more you have virtual world interactions. Virtual world interactions may not, many of them are not intrinsically bad. Some are. But when you're having five or 10 hours a day of virtual interactions, and you have to sleep, and you have to go to school, like, there really isn't any time to see your friends. And that's what we see. It's so sad. I have graphs in the book about time with friends. Before 2012, kids used to spend a lot of time with their friends. Now they don't. They don't see them very much. There's just no

time in the day. Yeah. And you talked about it in terms of communities and how, I think you said that virtual communities have sort of a low bar for entry and that offline communities have a higher bar for entry. Can you talk a little bit about the difference there? Because I think that's pretty cool. Childhood, yeah. Childhood needs to be full of hard things. I mean, you know, I'd ask any parent here, if you could remove all the obstacles from your child's life,

would you do so? Of course not. You know, your kid needs to learn to struggle. They need to learn to climb, you know, high walls. They need to learn to overcome failure. And so same thing in social life. If you could set it so that whenever your kid made a mistake or people were laughing at him, your kid could just press a button and eject. Like, that's it. I'm done with them. Let me go

on to another community. That would be a terrible way to raise a kid. What has always happened for millions of years, certainly since we've had language in the last million years, we've always lived in relatively small groups, a few dozen typically. And fitting in with that community is life or death. You have to learn how to fit in. And it can be painful. And some kids are excluded. But this is the gym, the social, the gym where you work out how to do this. You learn these skills.

Whereas when everything moves into virtual communities, a huge number of apps and new apps every year, you can try out different communities. And if you make a mistake, if you don't like it, you don't have to fix yourself. You don't have to make up with the people. You just quit. And so when everything becomes cheap, disposable, and easy, children don't have a chance to grow up. Kids need to do hard things. And when they have a phone, so let's just take awkward silences. You know, as soon as you get in an elevator, all the phones come out. It's awkward to stand there for 30 seconds. My students at NYU tell me that sometimes when they're at the lunch table, they're sitting at lunch and talking. But there's a moment of silence.

You know, there's a lull. Someone pulls out their phone because most of them are addicted. They have to see what's been coming in. And once one person pulls out their phone, the others pull out their phones. So I think what we're seeing is our kids are so lonely. And what they really need is each other. But as long as they all have phones, they don't get each other. Yeah, when you said that, I think two things.

One, which is we're all like that now, right? Not just kids. And two, have you seen any evidence that sort of the transience of these virtual world relationships are actually affecting real world relationships. The behaviors that are encouraged and rewarded in these virtual world relationships start spilling over now, and this is how people are with each other. Yes. Now here, I don't know of any scientific studies.

This is a subtle question about behavior. But, you know, so I teach in a business school. I speak with a lot of people in the corporate world and they, you know, they almost uniformly see real difficulties in incorporating their Gen Z employees. It's just much harder. And again, there's no blame here. I mean, this, this generation, you know, we stuck them on social media and smartphones at the beginning of puberty. And, you know, they went through COVID, they, they, they all lost, you know, my, my kids lost their first year of middle school and high school to COVID. A lot of kids lost their first years on the job market.

So there's no blame here. But what employers are noticing is that members of Gen Z are much more passive. If something goes wrong, they don't take the initiative to solve it. They might ask, you know, what should I do? But they just seem to have less of sort of internal locus of control, less of a sense of like I can make things happen. They expect more accommodation. So, you know, in the work world, if there's a deadline, if we have a client who's expecting this report on Monday morning,

a lot of us are going to be working over the weekend. I mean, that's just the way it's going to be. But a lot of Gen Z is like, I'm sorry, you know, I have anxiety and so I'm not going to. Like they just expect accommodation because that's what we've given them from the time they were little. And another is the ghosting. It's awkward to say you won't do something. It's awkward to break up with someone it's you know it's so the idea that you shouldn't have to experience anything uncomfortable so if

someone's expecting something from you and you don't want to do it just just don't show up just don't do it so i hear a lot about that so again this is just these are more just from anecdotes that i hear yeah it stands to reason that if you didn't have a normal childhood full of face-to-face with millions of face-to-face interactions, some of which were awkward, if you take out, let's say 70% of those and you swap in these weird virtual stuff, stands to reason that if you're a 24-year-old, you're not going to be behaving in the expected way in the office. Yeah. And I was just thinking about like, even just in my own life since, since doing this show and, and, you know, I was thinking about it again, reading your book is like, you're, you're just around a bunch of friends. And if you're all

on your phone, uh, or if there is this moment of silence, you don't often, sometimes you just grab the phone and look at the phone instead of just thinking of like, Oh, what's the next thing I'm going to say? What's the next topic of conversation I'm going to have? And that's sort of all generations really. That's right. So people do talk about them having poor conversational skills and for the boys especially, difficulty making eye contact. I'd love to see data on this, but I hear this a lot. In fact, I'll just share a funny story. So when The Coddling the American Mind came out in 2018, I was on Bill Maher. And the first guest was Stormy Daniels. And so she went out, she had a book out and Bill interviews her. And then I come out, I talk about what's happening to kids. And

afterwards, there's like a little party for everybody who's involved, all the production crew and the guests. So I'm talking with her and she says, oh, you know, I saw your segment and wow, yeah, you know, I really, I've really seen that, that Gen Z is just really different. And she said, you know, I've worked with men of all ages ever since I was 17. You know, she's been, you know, in strip clubs and dancing. She said she's always worked with men of all ages and she likes to flirt with them and talk with them. And she's noticed in the last few years, the young men can't look her in the eye. So again, it's just an anecdote, but I'm hearing this a lot about eye contact. Boys have trouble making eye contact. So you recommend four major reforms. No smartphones before high school, no social media before 16 phone free schools and more

unsupervised play can you talk about some of the obstacles to getting these done and and what seem to be some of the more common sources of resistance sure so let's take the easiest one the one that we can do this year the one that is happening this year which is phone free schools it is terrible to have the greatest distraction device ever made in your pocket. And that's what we've allowed kids to do. If you can imagine a teacher trying to teach a class where every kid has on their desk, you know, a TV set and a guitar and a walkie-talkie and a phonograph, you know, from back in the old days, like that's absurd. Like why would we do that? But that's what we do. Having phones in school is completely insane. And so most schools have a rule.

You can't take out your phone during class. You have to wait until class is over, which does two things. One, all the kids, especially in the back row, they're just, you hide it behind a book and you're on your phone. I mean, you have to be on your phone because everyone else is. If people are texting, you have to check. Otherwise, you're left out. Some teachers have told me kids go to the bathroom a lot more often nowadays than they used to because they have to see their phone. They can't go 40 minutes without checking it. So anyway, phones in schools, it's a complete insanity. This one is easy. This one is happening. If you're listening to this conversation and you have kids and your kids

go to a school where they allow the kids to use their phones between classes or lunch, please talk to the principal and beg them. Say, please, I want my child to listen to the teacher during class and to talk with other kids between classes. But if they have phones, they're not doing either of those. So phone phone free schools is easy it's not controversial it's just there's some implementation questions but there's really no counter argument i've not yet seen a counter argument to taking the phones in the morning and giving them back in the evening i guess it's i guess it's so you hear some parents say well i need to be able to to contact my kids right like i need to be able to, but which, which is a very like recent thing.

Cause I remember like, you know, when I was in school, if your parents really needed you, that someone would come into the class and say, Hey, your parents called. If it's an emergency, if it's an emergency, you can still reach your kid. But if every parent is texting their children multiple times during the day to check up on things and, Oh, I'm scheduling your dentist appointment. Are you free then? Or, Oh, can you do this on your way home? Like, you know, this is during class. Like this never could have been done until, you know, 2010 or something. And now it's routine. So we have to stop. We have to stop it. So phone-free schools, there's really no debate. I mean, that's just a no-brainer. The first two are the ones where

there's not a lot of opposition, but there is some debate. So the first rule is no smartphone till high school, just give them a flip phone or a phone watch. And the second rule is no social media till 16. And, um, you know, a lot of the pushback is people think no smartphone till high school. How will I get in touch with my child with a flip phone or a brick phone or a phone watch. That works fine. Do you need your child to have complete access to everything on the internet 24 hours a day? How about they just can get it on their computer at home? Do you need everyone in the world to be able to reach your child to try to sextort them, flirt with them,

get them to send photos of themselves? No, no, you don't need that. No child needs that. So I'm not saying you can't communicate with your child. You can text them. And I'm not saying keep them off the internet. They can go on the internet, but it should be ideally on a desktop computer, especially if you're like,

we're talking like eight, nine, 10-year-old kids. Have a desktop computer in your kitchen, in your living room, family room. Have a computer that the kids can use. If it desktop computer in your kitchen, in your living room, family room. Have a computer that the kids can use. If it's out in a public place, they're much less likely to get into porn, to start talking with strange men. It's just a lot of the bad stuff happens when they have the phone in private at night. So put that, you know, delay that as long as you can. So, and then social media, no social media until 16. Social media is so completely inappropriate for children. We have a general consensus in our society that we do pass laws to restrict kids with regard to sex, like explicit hardcore sex, violence, like really graphic violence, and addiction. We think that a nine-year-old can't,

we don't let nine-year-olds into casinos to gamble. They'll be too easily taken advantage of. Now, what happens when your kid goes on social media and smartphones in general? So you've got huge amounts of really graphic sex, including a lot of violent sex and choking and things like that. And you have a huge amount of violence.

Depends on what you, you know, whatever you click on, on TikTok or Instagram reels. But a lot of the boys end up seeing, you know, car crashes, people getting punched in the face, people falling to their death. I mean, they end up seeing horrible, horrible stuff. You know, drug gangs, dismembering live people. I mean, horrible things. And there was, oh, addiction. Because social media is addictive to about 10% of kids have what's called problematic use, which is essentially addiction. And because, especially for the boys, we then hook them on gambling. Now, that sometimes has to wait until they're 18, but there is some gambling, there's some stuff that they're able to get the kids on earlier. My point is we've

worked for a hundred years to make the real world a place where we can live with young people and young people can walk around and we can buy liquor and they can't, and we can buy cigarettes and they can't, and we can go to strip clubs and casinos and they can't. That's the real world. And all of a sudden, we develop this virtual world. We say, how about no restrictions? You know, it would be too hard. Like, are we going to ask everyone to identify themselves?

Are we going to ask everyone to show ID? We can't do that. So how about no restrictions? How about every child can have as much hardcore porn as they want? That's what we've decided as a planet. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you've seen this, the National Academy of Sciences report that found social media encourages a lot of these harmful behaviors.

They also found that, you know, for some kids in marginalized communities, especially LGBTQ kids, you know, the internet and social media especially can be like a lifeline that, you know, connects them to communities of people like them that, depending on where they live, they may not come in contact with offline. So one thing, you know, I hear from people who are resistant to this is like, look, obviously there's a lot of trouble kids can get into, but for some kids who do feel excluded in real life, this is the way that they connect with other people. This is the way that they find these communities and those communities are important to them.

Yes. So that makes some sense on its face, but there's a couple of problems with that. The first is that it confuses social media with the internet. So, the internet that came out in the 90s was amazing. And suddenly, you know, LGBTQ kids, they could find discussion groups, they could find other kids. So, the internet largely solved that problem in the 90s. Also, information. You could find anything about your interest. You could find anything about your group. So the internet solved that problem in the 1990s. Now then in the 2010s, in the 2000s, we get Facebook, which originally was just about connecting people. But then once it becomes more about the newsfeed curated by algorithms, so this is what really happens in the 2010s. So do LGBTQ people need a newsfeed curated by algorithms that are pushing them to interact with strangers

all over the world and feeding them content. Is this good for them or bad for them? Yes, the internet is great. I fully support the benefits of the internet for kids from especially sexual minorities. So that's great, but they don't need Instagram or TikTok or anything like that. Second, Common Sense Media, they do a lot of surveys of families and kids. They found that LGBTQ adolescents were more likely than their non-LGBTQ peers to believe that their lives would be better without each platform that they use. And that LGBTQ girls were more than twice as likely as non-LGBTQ girls to encounter harmful content related to suicide and eating disorders. So, you know, yes, that argument makes sense on its face. And I know it's one that Meta keeps pushing.

Meta keeps trying to say, oh, we can't regulate because that'll be bad for LGBTQ kids. But it's just not true. Meta does more harm to LGBTQ kids than to others. And if you look at it this way, something's really weird here. There has never been a decade in which LGBTQ was destigmatized faster than the one we just went through. You know, in 2010, you know, there was still a big stigma and Obama was opposed to gay marriage. I mean, it was a different world in 2010. If this was primarily a question about stigma, then we would

expect that this should be the decade when LGBTQ kids got the healthiest. We would expect them to be happier, but they're the least happy. So whatever this world is, it's really, really harsh on LGBTQ kids, more so than non-LGBTQ kids. So I just, I don't buy it. That's my point. I don't buy this idea that, oh, Instagram is so good for LGBTQ kids. No, I mean, point taken that if you're looking for communities of like-minded people, you can find them without social media and you could in the 90s and the early 2000s as well. And you can, if you need mental health help, if you need to research that, you can do that as well on the internet. You said something else that was interesting though, that when, in that survey from Common Sense Media that LGBTQ kids said they could do without these platforms, right? They'd be happy

without this. And I also saw these studies, I think you cited them in the past as well, that even if kids resist phone-free schools at first or resist getting off social media, the kids where there are the schools that have banned the phones, the kids are happier afterwards. That's right. Within two or three weeks. Yeah. And we've seen these studies where kids are like, would you give up social media if everyone else was still on it? No. But if everyone could give up social media and everyone could give up the platforms, would you do it? And then people want to do it. So it really is this sort of fear of missing out that's driving a lot of this as well. That's right. That's the key to the whole thing is to recognize that this is a collective action

problem and social media is socially addictive. So cigarettes are biologically addictive. And when I was in high school, there were some kids who smoked and you could buy cigarettes from a vending machine back then um in the peak year of smoking was 1997 and 37 percent of american high school students smoked which means that two-thirds didn't but social media is much much more addictive because you can't have a school where only 37 percent of the kids are on social media. It's going to be either zero or 95 or whatever. So social media puts a lot of pressure on other kids to join, whereas smoking cigarettes didn't do that. So once you understand that this is a trap, then what we see is something very interesting. The young kids, like 10-year-olds, they're desperate to get a phone, an Instagram account, TikTok,

because that's what the older kids are doing. They're desperate for it. But I was talking with a German interviewer for a German newspaper, and she said some German TV program had done, they did interviews with the 10-year-olds, and they were all, I want TikTok, I want Instagram, I want everything. And then they interviewed either 18-year-olds or 20-year-olds, and they were all, I want TikTok, I want Instagram, I want a smart, you know, I want everything. And then they interviewed either 18-year-olds or 20-year-olds, and they were all like, wow, this really messed us up. I wish we didn't have this. So again,

what we see is that Gen Z themselves do not defend this. Gen Z is not saying, don't take our phones, we love our phones. They're saying, we're trapped. We're trapped. Help us find a way out. So first time I wanted to have you on was in April of 2022, after you wrote a piece in the Atlantic called Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. And you basically lay a lot of the blame for political polarization and institutional distrust on the rise of social media, which really is the initial reason I became interested in doing this podcast. I've learned a lot about what being too online is doing to our mental health. I've also been worried, though, for a long time that the behavior social media encourages and the way it shapes our thinking about the world is antithetical to what liberal democracy requires of us. What have you discovered

on that topic? Oh, absolutely. So my main research has always been on moral psychology. And I used to look at how morality varies by culture. And then in the late 90s, early 2000s, as the culture was heating up, I began looking at liberal conservative as though they were different cultures with different moralities. So I've been studying this since the 90s. And I began to get very alarmed about political polarization. And this is before social media. And I was writing essays. There's like 10 reasons we're getting more polarized. You know, the loss of the greatest generation, the Cold War ending, more education because the more educated people do more culture war stuff. Working class people don't care as much about culture war stuff. They want bread and butter issues. So I don't want to

say that our polarization is just because of social media. I can't even say that that's the primary cause. But I think it is a huge amplifier. Because what happens is, so I have two Atlantic articles. The one that you read is the one really trying to lay out the whole story. But my first one was, my first pass at this was in 2019. I was trying to say, why did everything go crazy around 2014, 2015? It really felt like there was a change in this fabric of the universe. And we saw this on campus. You know, in 2013, things were normal,

and college students were what you think of college students. And by 2015, they were protesting against microaggressions and asking for safe spaces. Again, this wasn't the majority of them, but it was happening all over the country, especially at elite schools. So something weird happened on college campuses. And then it turned out it wasn't a majority of them, but it was happening all over the country, especially at elite schools. So something weird happened on college campuses. And then it turned out it wasn't just college campuses.

It was spread much more widely in our society. And it just seemed like everything is now explosive. If anyone says anything, it can get blown up into a whole big thing, and they can be fired within 24 hours. Like, really? This is the world we live in? We all have to walk on eggshells? So, I think social media really changed the basic fabric of everything. Now, if you go back to Federalist 10, and I think I quote Madison in Federalist 10, he talks about how we are something like, you know, we are so prone to vex and oppress each other that if no substantive cause for disagreement can be found, the most trivial little thing can become, you know, a reason for outrage, something like that.

So the founding fathers were very aware that people are argumentative and they easily get in fights and they easily get upset. And so the idea was, you know, how do we create a system that kind of slows things down? How do we have legislators? Because remember, we do not create a system that kind of slows things down? How do we have legislators? Because remember, we do not have a democracy. They did not want direct democracy because the people are passionate. The people are prone to demagogues. They wanted a system where the legislators have sufficient independence to do what they think is best. But it's crucial that the people can kick them out if they're not happy. That's the key. What happens now?

Most of our congresspeople are on Twitter. There was a famous scene where Ted Cruz gave this big speech in the Senate. And then he sits down and pulls out his phone. And one of the journalists behind him takes a photograph. He's checking what people are saying on Twitter. This is exactly the opposite of what the founding fathers wanted. And this is one reason why Congress is breaking down. Our Congress is dysfunctional. Now, there are many reasons for that. But, you know, but if it was an ailing institution in the 90s and early 2000s, you know, this is just like, you know, I mean, a metaphor that I use is suppose, you know i mean a metaphor that i i metaphor that i use is suppose you know suppose we suddenly

change the earth's atmosphere from 20 oxygen to 80 oxygen like oh wouldn't that be great like you'd get so much oxygen so easily we'd all feel good like no everything would burn any little spark every electrical thing would explode you know 80 oxygen everything is combustible and similarly what if we give everyone an outrage button where they can, the slightest thing, oh, something bothers you about what you saw on the street, tweet it. Somebody did something obnoxious, take a photo, put it up, let people dox them. This is what social media has done to us. It's hyper viral social media. Original Facebook wasn't like this in 2004. But once you get the newsfeed and algorithms and outrage cycles,

you know, it's an open question whether liberal democracy in the American form, it's an open question whether we can survive, whether our current institutions and structure is compatible with an 80% oxygen world. Yeah, and not just here, but you're seeing the stress on liberal democracies all over the world. I also think to your earlier point when we were talking about virtual relationships versus sort of offline relationships, there is something about virtual relationships. And the more time we spend online, the more difficult it is to disagree in a way where you need to disagree in democracies, right, and debate in that way, because everything is black and white, good or evil. And I look at these polls of Gen Z potentially shifting to the right or at least disengaging from politics altogether.

And I do wonder if it's driven by some of the same social media dynamics that are fueling some of these broader mental health challenges. That's right. One of the main things that my fellow professors say about their students, so let's be clear, most students are not radicals. Most students are not asking for

trigger warnings. Most students want to learn. But what my fellow professors say, the most common thing I hear is that I can't get them to disagree with each other. I can't get a debate going. They're so afraid of disagreeing with each other. Now, if you grew up your entire life in a minefield and any little thing you do can blow off a finger or a toe, you'd be really careful about where you walked. Now, when you grow up with small groups of friends, you say something stupid, you make a joke that's not funny. Someone says, that wasn't funny, that was stupid. You say, oh yeah, sorry. And then you move on. But if you grow up in a world where if you say something, it can get screenshotted and passed around, it might even become a national sensation. Sometimes things that kids say in middle school or high school

become a, you know, Fox News will pick it up or left-wing media will pick it up. So if we raise our kids in minefields, we shouldn't be surprised that they're not really in an exploratory frame of mind. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Last question. You gave an interview in 2020 about some of these divisions where you said that it was your understanding that the religious wars ended in Europe, not because Europeans reached some profoundly enlightened view. They just got exhausted and realized we've got to stop this.

Four years after that interview, it's clear we have not come to that realization yet. Have you seen anything that gives you hope that might change? Let me think hard about this because I don't want to give my first answer, which is no. So let me think about this. I do think there's a greater recognition of the problem, and that has to come first. I do think that we're going to make huge progress on the children's front. So, so far the Kids Online Safety Act. That actually could conceivably pass this year. So what I'm saying is we went a long time where things got worse and worse and worse. And there was really no immune system. There was no, you know, the tech companies, these are some of the richest companies in the world. They faced no real opposition. They had their way with our kids. They took over our kids' childhoods. They took over our democratic discussion. They took over the public square. They had no liability. We can't

sue them because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The situation is untenable and is, if left unchecked, I think will lead to the political collapse of the United States. I mean, I think it will at least become ungovernable. If we keep going the way we're going, we will become ungovernable within five or 10 years. However, things don't just keep going the way they're going. And I think we are beginning to see a recognition that these companies are messing us up. And it's going to start with the children. It's going to start with the recognition that our kids are in horrible shape.

And if we can get some legislation passed, and if we can get norms changed to protect Gen Alpha, the generation after Gen Z, that would be an extremely hopeful sign. Now, what regulations, what laws would improve democratic debate? That's much harder. I don't want to get into content moderation because content moderation always is going to be

one side saying the other side's speech is harmful, as we saw with the Twitter files. But there are many architectural features, like things that just enhance the virality. This was one of Francis Haugen's main points, the Facebook whistleblower. Facebook could have done all kinds of things that were content neutral, not about content moderation. It was just changing parameters within the system

that would make it much less explosive. Let's take the atmosphere from 80% oxygen down to 50% oxygen. That would be a lot better. So I think we're going to face tremendous challenges in American democracy. And as you say, others too, although not all. I don't know about all, but we're not the only ones going through this, but not all

democracies are. But the American form, which we don't have shared blood, we don't have shared enemies, we don't have shared gods, we don't have a lot holding us together. I think we are a large and diverse country without a lot holding us together. I think we are a large and diverse country without a lot holding it together. So we are at higher risk of splitting in some way than say Iceland or New Zealand. I'm very concerned about what's coming,

but I do see hope in that people are waking up to the dangers of social media for society. All right, well, we will leave it there. Jonathan Haidt, the book is The Anxious Generation. Thank you so much for joining Offline. What a pleasure talking with you, John. I hope your listeners will go to anxiousgeneration.com. We have a lot of resources there. And my sub stack, afterbabble.com, we put out all kinds of research and supplements there. So it's a pleasure talking with you. Thank you. Before we go, some quick housekeeping. Our first ever book, Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps, is out next week,

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