The Bossticks - Jonathan Haidt: How Phone Addiction & Social Media Are Making Us Anxious - And What To Do About It - Tools & Tactics

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

#890: Join us as we sit down with Jonathan Haidt – social psychologist at NYU Stern & bestselling author of The Anxious Generation – known for his research on morality, culture, politics & the impact of technology on society. In this episode, Jonathan  shares the reality of social media & the impacts on children and adults. We also discuss the negative effects of smartphone dependence and solutions for healthy childhood development as well as adult guard rails in the digital age. We end the episode with practical digital habits you can implement today!   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To connect with Jonathan Haidt click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   Head to our ShopMy page HERE and LTK page HERE to find all of the products mentioned in each episode.   Get your burning questions featured on the show! Leave the Him & Her Show a voicemail at [phone].   Visit http://istandwithmypack.org to support I Stand With My Pack's (ISWMP) mission by donating or adopting. Every contribution helps!   To learn more about Jonathan Haidt, his research, purchase The Anxious Generation, and pre-order The Amazing Generation visit https://www.anxiousgeneration.com.   This episode is sponsored by Wayfair Head to http://Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home.   This episode is sponsored by SOAAK Visit http://SOAAK.com/skinny and use code SKINNY at checkout to get your first month free   This episode is sponsored by Cotton Learn more at http://TheFabricOfOurLives.com.   This episode is sponsored by Momentous Check out The Women's Three™ at http://livemomentous.com and use code SKINNY for up to 35% off your first order.    This episode is sponsored by Bobbie Bobbie is offering an additional 10% off on your purchase with the code TSC. Visit http://hibobbie.com to find the Bobbie formula that fits your journey.   This episode is sponsored by Get Joy Shop http://getjoyfood.com/skinny to make your dog's food as intentional as yours.   This episode is sponsored by Good To Know Visit http://GoodToKnowFacts.com for more information.   Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the skinny confidential, him and her show. Today we're sitting with Dr. Jonathan Haidt. He is one of the most requested guests on this podcast. We've been wanting to do this with him for a while. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Dr. Jonathan Haidt, he is one of the world's most influential social psychologists and bestselling authors. Jonathan has spent decades researching morality, human behavior, and culture,

but his latest work zeroes in on something every parent, teacher, and young adult needs to hear. Hell, everyone needs to hear the profound impact of smartphones and social media on mental health. In his new book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan exposes how childhood was rewired, in just a single decade and why Gen Z is experiencing record levels of anxiety and depression. We also talk about what modern smartphone use and social media is doing to adults, anyone that is on these platforms, and how we can best guard ourselves against some of the pitfalls of using these platforms. This conversation is eye-opening, practical and necessary if you want to understand what's really happening to kids, teens, and adults, and even yourself in today's digital

world. With that, Jonathan Haidt, welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. All right, Jonathan, when you look at today's teenagers scrolling through their phones, what is the single most alarming change you see happening that is directly changing society and why should every parent teacher in adult care right now? The single biggest change is the loss of the ability to pay attention. And what's been happening since 2012 is that instead of kids going through childhood and puberty having interactions and conversations and watching TV programs that were 25 minutes or 90

minutes long. These are normal parts of development. Instead of that, our kids are spending half of their childhood. That's the average. Half of the time is spent going through short little bits of content that are designed to hook them. And so the biggest damage, I used to think it was the mental health, which is huge. But I now believe the biggest damage is the loss of the human ability to pay attention. And it's not just hitting kids, it's hitting us too. It's funny that you say that because the other day I put on Hulu and we have the commercials on it. And a commercial came on and you would have thought that the end of the world was happening in my house. My kids, they couldn't believe that there would be an interruption in their programming because they're so used to there being no commercials.

But when we were little, there was commercials all the time. Yeah. And so I get what you're saying. We put those on because we kind of, if our kids do watch anything, we try to put the old 90s cartoons that we grew up with. My son's super into Ninja Turtles, but the old 90s version of the Ninja Turtles. Yeah.

So, you know, a key thing, you know, parents hear me talk and they think I'm saying, no technology, you know, never let your kids see a screen. But the thing I really want to make clear to parents is that humans are storytelling animals. Humans have always raised their kids with stories. And a screen, a movie theater screen, a TV screen, is actually a pretty good way to present stories.

And so if you want to let your kid watch a movie, especially if it's like with a sibling or with you. So it's social. You're talking about. You're together. That's good. There's no problem watching movies. It's really the short stuff. And when you see what kids are doing, it almost always goes down to TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Instagram reels.

And then the video games and when they're older, the porn. And that's what our kids are being raised on. That's not stories. That's addiction material. That makes so much sense to me. I totally get what you're saying with that. How do you think that parents should position their children to be successful within social media? So you guys are really lucky because your kids are zero, three, and five.

So you get to plan ahead. Right. And to plan ahead what everyone has to understand. And we'll talk about teenagers later because I'm sure a lot of your audience has teenagers. But especially for those who have little kids, you need to plan ahead. because your kids are going down a path where hundreds of companies have perfected the art of grabbing your child's attention and selling it.

It's like you're sending Little Red Ridinghood down the path and there's all these wolves, okay? So you gotta prepare your kid. And so here's the most important thing you can do early on is start with this simple rule. No screens of any kind in the bedroom ever. This is the rule I wish to God I had done when my kids were little.

No screens of any kind in their bedrooms ever. You start with that. You can have a TV in the living room. They can watch TV sometimes. You can have a computer in the living room, your kitchen, or whatever. They can go online. They can Google things. But if you start with that policy, then screens are just things that they sometimes use. But as soon as you allow them in the bedroom, they become things that they have a relationship with and that they're on, many of them will be on almost all the time. So start with that. You've got to focus on the screens first. Okay. And then let's talk about social media. What is social media? Texting, WhatsApp, FaceTime, these are direct communication. And FaceTime and phone calls are great because it's synchronous. You're learning social skills. Those are great. Texting WhatsApp is not as good and it has some downsides, but it's not terrible. Social media is a way that giant companies connect you to strangers and they push you and push you and push you. Do not let your kids on Snapchat. It pushes you relentlessly to connect with people you don't know, some of whom are men who want sex with your child or to sell them drugs.

So it's insane that children are on Snapchat. Snapchat is an adult-only thing to send naked pictures of yourself. That's what it was made for. I have never got more penis pictures in my life than when I was on Snapchat. And it was like disgusting. It's disgusting. Like I never even seen penises like this. How are you doing on Snapchat?

Well, it's like what are these people sending? Because disappearing messages. That's what it was designed for. And because Snapchat. Yeah, because I remember, you'd send it to disappear, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. No truth.

And even Snapchat, they don't keep, they don't even keep copies. So that's why it's ideal for extortionists and drug dealers. Snapchat is ideal for people who want to break the law and want no record of it. It is not good for children. In 2022, so many kids are dead from this, from suicide, from drug overdoses, that a lot of them are suing Snapchat and meta and TikTok. And what comes out in the course of the trials, actually this is the state attorneys general are suing these companies. What comes out in the trials, the attorneys can do discovery, they get documents internal,

and then they quote from these in the briefs. And I have a substack after babble.com. We went through a bunch of these briefs. We took out some selected quotes. Here's what we know about Snapchat. In 2022, they were getting 10,000 reports of sex. Not a year, a month, every month. And that's just what was reported to them by their American users, which means we're talking about millions of kids getting sex started around the world every year.

Millions. And if you can imagine, it's especially teenage boys, because who else would be stupid enough to believe that some beautiful stranger wants to trade naked pictures with you, especially when teenage boys do it? And then the person reveals like, you know, give me 500. dollars, I'm sending this picture of you and your penis to your parents, to your friends, to everyone in your school. What do they do? I guarantee you they're almost all considering suicide because you're trapped, you're completely trapped, and suicide is going to occur to you. Now, most don't kill themselves. Very few do, but it's, we know four, there are 42, like, we know exactly that this boy killed himself because he was sex stored at that day. So it's probably hundreds

or thousands who are dead because of this. So again, all the platforms are terrible, but Snapchat is uniquely terrible for connecting your kids to strangers. What about TikTok? Tick-Tock is if you want to destroy your child's ability to pay attention and lower their IQ, Tick-Tock is the way to go. It is the best program ever devised to disrupt the normal development of what we call executive function. What about for adults, too. Oh, yeah. So it's terrible for everybody. But here's the thing I really want to get across. The human brain is this incredible organ that it grows very, very fast early on. So by age six, it's almost full size. It's like 90% of full size by age six, okay?

The rest of growth isn't growth. The rest of it is, okay, you got all these neurons. Which ones are you gonna keep? Because a lot of them are gonna die off. A lot of connections are gonna die off, others are gonna be made. That's all guided by experience. Which neurons are we gonna keep because they're useful?

And so if your kid is playing with blocks and then climbing and then playing with kids and then flirting and then, you know, doing all the norm, progression then those neural circuits are the ones that will stay but if your kid goes through puberty this is the main period we're talking about if your kid goes through puberty swiping swiping posting feeling shame because people didn't like their picture if they go through this way then different neurons are the ones that are

going to stay and TikTok is ideal for teaching the kids brain that as soon as something isn't super interesting I've been on this video for seven seconds already doesn't look very promising swipe. Oh yeah, oh wow, this is really funny. So that's what we call a variable ratio reinforcement schedule. TikTok is a slot machine. Your kids are on it. You know, they pull the lever. You know, not so interesting, not so interesting. Oh my God, that's disgusting, which is actually pretty cool for them, especially the boys. TikTok, there's no reason for anyone to be on TikTok. TikTok, adult child, TikTok is horrible. And it is literally run by the Chinese Communist Party who is kind of at war with.

us. It's really interesting that you say that because when I got pregnant, I was like going on TikTok and I started to feel not good. I don't, I don't even know how to explain it. Maybe just melancholy about it. How about degraded? Did you feel degraded? I just didn't feel good. I don't know. The frequency was low vibration. Why do you use the word degraded? Because what happens on a lot of these. Okay, there's a, there's an interesting word, and shittificate. which means everything goes to shit. And so what happens is these platforms come out, TikTok, it's creative dances,

it's kids doing synchronized dances, it's kind of fun, okay? But because there are no guards on this, because anyone can go on anonymously, predators, assholes, trolls, anybody can go on. So all of these platforms start off nice and then they become hellholes. Now it's not to say that most of the content is hellish,

But what happens over and over again is you get on, and parents try this. If you're thinking of letting your kid on TikTok, create an account for yourself. Say that you're a, you know, say that you're a 14-year-old girl and see what happens to you. See what you get. It's a lot of sex content, sexiness. The girls are being prematurely sexualized. They're learning, basically moves from porn. And the boys end up with a lot of violence in their feed because the algorithm can tell quickly, what do you linger on?

What are you interested in? And girls are not interested in seeing people run over by cars or shot, but boys are. And so the boys end up with a lot of violence in their feed. This is degrading. This is dehumanizing. This teaches them. This is just, you know, I mean, like, well, the horrible video of Charlie Kirk being assassinated. Boys are going to be seeing this over and over and over from an early age.

The problem was something like that too is, like this is terrible what happened, but I was on yesterday, as many people were. And I wasn't expecting to see that. Right? Like it wasn't a video, but it was, you press play and all of a sudden you see that. And it's something you cannot now unseen. Can I give you a little pushback, Michael? You're the perfect person. That is why I don't go on X because you see stuff, wait, let me finish, that you're not expecting to see. And in my opinion, I think as an adult, you have to be accountable for yourself and how you're accountable. in my opinion is I've deleted that app so I don't have that in my ether and I won't have to see that you're essentially in my opinion

watching the news all day long when you're consuming X. It's essentially like having the news on in the background all day long so you can't be mad at the platform for serving that. You have to take accountability and think I'm the one that's the consumer on the platform. One of us was receiving endless dick picks on Snapchat and it wasn't me.

And I was going to get it. But here's here and I was sick of the dick picks and the vainy dicks. So I got off. And with TikTok, when I got pregnant and I didn't, I felt it was low vibration. I haven't been on for 10 months and I feel great. So you, I think, we have, we can't just blame the platform, the platform, the platform. You have to get off, but as children, it's different. I think what's so interesting about this for you is, and the reason I ask that you're going to change the subject. No, because I will say something. I think that this is an issue for all of society to combat. Yes. Right. And we're all

guilty of it and I would say we are one of the first generations to ever live with this kind of technology in our navigating. We were talking about people that are maybe a little older than us with kids that are a little bit older. Gen Z was the first young generation to go. We, you know, Lauren and I did not get this kind of technology until after you graduated. You guys are millennials and that's why you're okay. The millennials were the last generation to go through puberty with a normal childhood. Yeah, like we used to have the landlines and the pagers and the dial-up motives. That's right. So I guess my question is how much, when it comes to adults, how much

is in their own hands. So let me say something which will be a partial defense of Michael, which is this. Well, okay, it goes like this. The reason why this has sucked in all of society, the reason why we're all getting stupider, new data has come out in last year or two. IQs were rising for 50 years, 70 years, up until 2010. And then they begin dropping ever since. We can't blame this on individuals. the reason this is happening is that the companies have put us all into a series of collective action problems. So collective action problems, a common term in the social sciences. It's where I want to do something, but I can't do it because of what everybody else is doing. I don't get to make the choice for myself. And so, for example, I would like to wait until my daughter is 18 to give her a

smartphone. But everybody else has done it in fifth grade. And so my daughter's now left out. And now if I do the right thing, I'm hurting my daughter. Now, in the long run, it's good for her, but she's going to be suffering. We're going to fight. And so most people give in because the collective action pressure is really, really strong. And so for both, I think, X and Instagram, a lot of adults have to be on it for professional reasons. I assume, you know, you guys are running a company. Like, you can't just like not use these platforms at all. Imagine doing this show and then just saying, like, where does this live and how do you just put it up on YouTube and hope for the best and not doing anything? That's right. So we're stuck

in a system in which everybody expects everybody else to be on. They expect people to respond quickly to texts. And we have to get back to a system in which people sort of guard their own consciousness, their own attention, and we don't expect everybody to be on all the time. It's just so bad for us. When did you personally get so focused on this topic and this subject and this area of life? So I'm a social psychologist. It means I study human social nature.

And my own research is on morality, moral judgment, how it morality varies across nations originally, then how it varies across left-right, like the American culture wars, like two different cultures. So I've been studying political polarization for a long time. My second book, The Righteous Mind, is about political polarization. Now, this came out in 2012. And so, you know, Facebook was new. It wasn't particularly toxic. There wasn't really any news feed when I was writing the book. And so I was interested in, so I didn't really think of it as a villain. And it wasn't that bad in its early days. And that's the thing. You millennials, you remember when it came out and you made the most of But what I observed, things changed right around 2014.

It was as though there was a disturbance in the matrix. And things got weird. And they got weird on campus. And I was teaching at the University of Virginia most of my career. And then I moved to NYU in 2011. And we began to see students freaking out about little things. And speakers come to campus. This is going to kill people.

We have to shut it down. I'm like, what? Just don't go to the talk. And so I wrote an essay with my friend Greg Lukianoff called The Coddling of the American Mind. Like, because... It's a great essay, by the way. Well, thank you. Because in 2014, the students coming out to campus were not millennials.

We didn't know. We thought they were. But they were suddenly different. And they would freak out some of them. They would freak out if someone said a word that they didn't like or assigned a book in class that had a scene that they thought was traumatized. Like, what, Shakespeare? I can't assign Shakespeare? You need a trigger warning?

So... Disney got a trigger warning. too. Yeah, that's right. Everybody went in for it because not because they wanted to, but because they felt if they didn't, they'd be attacked. So that weirdness all broke out around 2014. It wasn't like this in 2012. What caused it? Okay, so at the time I didn't know. At the time we thought, well, we've over-protecting our kids, you know, maybe social media because the timing is right, but we don't know. Now we know. Social media originally, it was just like a glorified address book. Here's my page. Oh, let me go to your page. That's fine. But then you get the news feed.

We're at 2007, 2007, 2008. And then you get the iPhone, which is okay at first. But then you get the App Store and push notifications. And so we go from 2006, 2007, it's not a very toxic tech environment. By 2012, 2013, it's push notifications about things in the news feed, about the horrible thing that those people did. And what's your opinion of it? And you better condemn it. Otherwise, we'll condemn you for not condemning it.

And so everything gets frenetic. Everything gets public display. Also, meta said meta, because meta's job has always been, they literally incentivized their engineers by saying if you can increase the time people spend on Instagram or Facebook, we give you a raise. And so meta engineers realize, hey, let's let's let people fight in the comments. Before 2014, you know, if Barack Obama said something, you'd have comments that were full of hate, but that was it like some guy said some terrible thing. That's it. But after 2014, some guy says a terrible thing. And then other people fight with him and before you know it, it's just a slug fest in the comments.

Now imagine that our public life, imagine that our democracy. Democracy is a conversation. Imagine what the conversation was like when it took place either in person or through letters to the editor in the newspaper, so that it's slow and thoughtful. And then it turns into a free-for-all on Twitter a thousand times a day. And so I began to realize, oh my God, how is our democracy going to make it through this? So I got into this focused both on the students who were suddenly much more fragile. and on the politics, which was something much more explosive.

And so those were my two interests. And I started writing a book, the title was going to, I got a contract for it. I still have the contract called Life After Babel, adapting to a world we may never again share. It was going to be a politics. Like what's happening to our country? And I wrote the first chapter, which was because I had all this leftover data on teenagers. I wrote the first chapter to say, look what happened to Gen Z, the first generation, to move their social life on to.

Instagram and social media and smartphones, they immediately became depressed and anxious, like within a year. It starts 2013, the increases. So I was going to start with one chapter on what happened to teens, and then I was going to say, now let's look at our country, and we instantly went crazy too. But once I wrote that first chapter, which became chapter one of the anxious generation, and I saw the graphs. Here, I'll draw all the, which camera, is this camera? I'll draw all the graphs in the book. They all go like this, too, you know, from like 1998, whatever you're measuring, which is bad, It's sort of steady, you know, in the late 90s, into the 2000s, 2010, 2011, no sign of a change, maybe up and down a little bit. You hit 2012, elbow, hockey stick.

Like, it goes up and up and up. Whether we're talking about hospitalization for self-harm, whether we're talking about feelings of uselessness and pointlessness. Wow. Whether we're talking about depression, anxiety. They all go shooting up around 2012, 2013 for Genzi, which is kids born 1996 through about 2010, 2011. They went through it. It severely damaged their childhoods. It deranged social life. And once I saw these graphs and that it wasn't just us, that's what blew my mind. When I said the same thing happened in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia. It was a worldwide thing. Something, right. So like either, you know, there was some additive in the food everywhere in the world, you know, or there was some cosmic radio. Like, what could cause this? Oh, that's the year. 2012 is literally the year that we went from most people having flip phones or basic phones. You know, the iPhone came out in 2007, but it's really 2012 is the pivotal year when everything flips now.

Everyone's getting an iPhone with social media on it. So really interesting, by the way, what you said about if someone condemns something, they want you to condemn it. And if you don't condemn it, they're going to condemn it. It's very interesting what you said about that. But what is the fix to the problem? So we have to distinguish between children and adults because in America we have a generally libertarian attitude which you expressed, which is adults are responsible for themselves. We generally don't like it when the government tells adults what they have to do.

There better be a darn good reason. And so what is the fix to change adults' behavior? That's very hard. There are some design fixes. People assume that regulation means content moderation. Like the government is going to say, you can't post that. And then you end up in just, that's a terrible way to go and it doesn't work. Okay.

But there are design changes you can make. And so, for example, the real problem is caused by the virality, the virality and the algorithm. So people have a right to put up content promoting suicide. That's, you know, if you're an adult and you want to put up a video, promoting suicide as a way out, you know, your First Amendment right, you can't be forced to not put that up on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. But for God's sakes, why do the algorithms keep pushing that to your child? Like, how does it happen? And so the toxicity isn't just the stuff posted. The toxicity is that the algorithms amplify whatever gets the most clicks, whatever seems to be the most engaging.

They're not trying to hurt kids, although given TikTok, we don't know. But I don't think Instagram is trying to hurt kids. But they don't seem to care that kids are getting hurt. And so there are all kinds of design changes that would make things less five. The biggest change of all would be if platforms had what we call know your customer laws. So you can't just open a bank account without telling them who you are. You can't just money launder. Your bank has to know who you are.

Now it's not public. You don't, you know, people don't know that I even accounted this particular bank, but the bank knows who I am. TikTok met, these companies, they have no idea who they are. And a lot of the people are Russian agents, Chinese agents, drug dealers. They have no idea. This is a wildly inappropriate place to have a nice country. conversation or for your child to be. So what I'm hoping is that somebody will create a platform

that has no your customer laws, rules. That is, everyone on the platform was verified by the company as a real human being. And if that person extorts kids or sells drugs, they actually get kicked off. And there could even be criminal penalties if they do criminal things. Did that try to do this or are they doing it? No, no, there's, oh, I'm sorry, there is the authentication. There is the blue check mark stuff. So actually, but that's right. So imagine a platform that said everybody has to be verified. I would much rather be on that. Or even imagine a platform that said anybody who is not verified could like maybe not be a real person or could be somebody. Like I think, you know, to your point, it's with the problem with a lot of these platforms, and I don't know how much truth there is to this, but you'll hear people say like, you know, I'll use the China example.

Our countries that maybe don't have our best interests are, is it true that potentially they could have these bots that are. trying to show division. We know they're doing that. The Chinese and the Russians, we know they're doing that. So the question is, is you could be arguing with a bot that is the entire intention is to make you upset and angry. And they know that one of the main cleavage points is racism, sexism, anti-sempt, they're trying to enrage us.

This is our weak spot. You know, we're like, what is it? Samson, you know, the biblical figure of Samson, you know, or Achilles. You know, our Achilles heel is that we're easily, we're easily divide. We're a powerful country where we're easily devised. it against ourselves. The holidays are coming, and I have a place for you to go get all your holiday decor. I love decorating my home for all holidays, and a place that I always go to is Wayfair.

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from the muscle. I really like to habit stack it. So what I'll do is I'll take a cup before a workout and I'll do some aminos and add my scoop of creatine and froth it up with ice and enjoy it while I'm working out. The creatine that I love, the powdered creatine, is by Momentus. I like this brand because Momentus is the gold standard in creatine. They source their creatine and it's the purest, most effective creatine available. It's single sourced from Germany, so it's not cut with fillers or junk, but most importantly, they have these little travel packets. So they're new lemon travel packets. And you can just take them on the go. So I'll put them in my purse. I'll add them to my travel carry on. I will bring them to the gym. Like I said, sometimes they don't have time to make my drink

before the gym, so I'll just throw them in my car, and they're effortless. They're naturally flavored. I love lemon. Lemon is my favorites. And they're perfectly portioned so you can just pour them in your water and take them on the go. Creatine isn't just for muscle. It's an essential daily fuel for your brain, your body, and your long-term performance. And I can tell you, we've interviewed so many experts, and all of them recommend creatine for men and women. Check them out. Head to LiveMomenus.com and use code Skinny for up to 35% off your first order. That's Skinny at LiveMomenus.com.

I'm of the mindset that I wish these platforms would do all these things, but it's not going to happen for us to snap our finger. So I guess my question for you is as parents, let's say the platforms stay the same. What can we do to support our children in the best way? Yeah, good. So let's move back to the kids. kids because what I'm saying was we look at the adult situation. It's very hard. I don't really know what to do. If we look at the kid's situation, it's actually pretty easy and I know

exactly what to do. Because we're stuck in a set of collective action problems, we all feel we have to let our kid on because everyone else is on. Everyone's talking on Snapchat, I'm excluded. And I keep getting the question, well, how can we make it safer, nicer? You can't. You cannot make talking with strangers on these platforms nice. So how about just no? How about we do this? Four norms, we roll back the phone-based childhood. So here they are. No smartphone until high school. Just, you know, what's happening is really exciting.

Parents are actually buying their kids landlines. There's a tin can is this wonderful, simple landline. And if in your neighborhood, if a bunch of the kids all get landlines, they can call each other, just like you did in the 90s on a phone. No problem with that. They're giving their kids basic phones that just text and call. That's what I want to do. In Texas, they're passing laws to ban them in the schools.

I just say give the kid a smartphone in high school, that to me even feels like, like, I almost, I don't know. That feels like a lot for a high school or two. No, you're right. So what I did in writing The Anxious Generation was I didn't try to say, what's the best age? What I did is I said, we're all stuck. We're trapped. Okay. Nobody, you know, we have to pick a target age as a floor and say, how about we all just hold, just clear this out of middle school, let kids get through middle school without this crazyness.

So let's just say nobody get your kid a smartphone before ninth grade in America ninth grade in Europe let's say age 14 or so. How about that? How about we just agree on a norm? Now a lot of parents, because you're going to get such good results with this and your kids are going to be normal and happy and they're going to go outside and play. So a lot of parents might wait later, but let's just set that nothing before high school. And that also includes unfortunately an iPad because almost everything you do on a smartphone you can do on an iPad. So don't give your kid their own personal iPad that they can keep in the room and use. I'm not saying they can't use an iPad at home sometimes, but just don't give them their own.

That's norm number one. Norm number two, no social media before 16. This is an inherently adult activity. Agreed. Looking at dickpicks from strangers. So really it should be 18 or 21. But my goal wasn't to say what's optimal. It's what could we get?

What's optimal? If you could re-raise your children right now in your perfect world, what are you doing? Oh, well, first of all, I would say as a country and as a planet, we should recognize, we should have recognized long ago. Social media, it's like gambling in porn. Right. If adults want to do it, they can do it. But this is just not appropriate for children. So it should be 18.

Legally 18, that's what it should have been. I agree with you. And so the no smartphone before high school, I would have made that a norm, not a law, but a norm that we don't give even smartphones until I would say 16. I think that would be a better age. So smartphone at 16, social media, 18,

I think would have made a lot more sense. But just to finish with the forenoms that I did propose, So we've got no smartphone before high school, no social media before 16. The third is phone-free schools. And this is where it's been absolutely spectacular. 39 states have passed legislation in the past year or so to get phones at least out of class, which helps. But then they're all on it during lunch and recess.

So the states that just did in class are not getting that much benefit. But 19 states passed something like our model law. At anxious generation, we have advice for legislators. We have model laws, which is bell to bell. You come in, in the day, you put your phone in a yonder pouch or in a phone locker or an envelope, something, and then you get it back at the end of the day. I love that idea. And it's amazing what happens. There was a viral video of a teacher in Alabama on the third day of phone free school.

He put up on TikTok and Instagram. He said, today, 100% of my students, 100% paid attention in class. did the in-class assignment, turned it in, then when they were done, they talked to each other. Like I'm trying to convey his amazement at what happened. And then he says, was it this easy of a solution all along? Is this really all we had to do?

So teachers have hated the phones. I mean, how can you teach when your kids are watching TikTok and porn and video games? So teachers have been put in an impossible situation. Phone free schools works like magic. And so the 19 states, including New York State, that did it this year or last year, are getting spectacular results. What we hear, the main phrase we hear is, one, we hear laughter in the hallways again, because it used to be a zombie apocalypse. Everyone's checking their, you know, checking their Instagram in between classes. Now they're talking and laughing.

And the other thing we hear is discipline problems go way down. Because why would you lure a kid into the bathroom to beat the hell out of him if no one's taking a thing? video to put up on social media. There's not much reason for violence if you can't take a video of it. So violence drops. Disciplinary problems drop. Is Texas one of the states? I don't know what Texas did. I don't know. We got to get Texas on board. I think Texas is. I have a question for the, for the benefit of the parents. Say you have children and you're looking to do as you say. How do you communicate with your children and start setting those boundaries without blowing up the family and having a constant fight? If they feel, hey, everybody,

else has Snapchat or everybody else has Instagram or whatever. Like, what's the conversation that takes place and how do you hold that boundary? Sure. So if your kids are young as yours are, you have a lot of control to frame it. And we have a kids version of the anxious generation coming out in December for kids age 8 to 12 called the amazing generation. And it has a great graphic novel and it really tells the story of what's happening to you, what happens to your brain. So if you can control the environment for your kids early on, you're going to have a lot more success and it's not going to be a blow up. But if your kids are already in that, they're already on devices, it is much harder.

That's true. But here's what you need to do. Kids are terrified not of being separated from their device, but of being left out. And so if you go to the parents of your kids' friends, because most, if you're feeling this way, I guarantee you a lot of the other families, we're all going through the same thing. All over the world, we're going through the same thing. So if you talk to the parents of your kids' friends and you say, you know, say your kids are 14, 15, they've been on for years. And you say, we've got to do something about this. Are you in?

And if you can get three or four kids' families to say yes, now you can say, I'm not going to make you delete your Instagram, but we're going to put some real restrictions that it doesn't take over your life. So we're all doing the same thing, which is all screens out of the bedroom at 930 or 10 o'clock at night. Like everything, you know, it lives on the kitchen counter. It doesn't go in your bedroom. So we're going to put limits on where that you're not going to be left out. else is doing it. Video games, you're playing three hours a day. We're going to go to two hours a day on Saturday and Sunday only. You don't do any video games during the week, but don't worry, your best friends are doing the same thing. But guess what? When I get together with them? Great.

You know, we're all, you know, if you can ride a bicycle down to a pizza shop and get, great, do it. Here's money. Go, go, go, go. And so the fourth norm, after phone free school is the fourth norm is far more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world. We have to give our kids in 80s or 90s childhood where they're out on their bicycles. By the age of eight, kids can have a lot of independence. Not in every single neighborhood. Sometimes you have automobile risks, you have crime risks. I'm not saying it can work everywhere. But you can begin giving your kids some independence, even just you go to a supermarket and you say, honey, can you go get a quart of milk? It's an aisle seven. And your seven-year-old can do that. And when they come back with the milk,

they're going to be so excited. They did it. So we can begin giving our kids independence from the age of really seven. What are the effects of a relationship with the phone? Meaning like, say you have a partner that's always on their phone. What is the effect of that? One thing we know is that we are in a sex recession. There's a lot less sex going on. And it began in the early 2010s. It began as soon as we went from a flip phone, which is tedious to text on, once everybody had a distraction device in their pocket calling out to them to be to check up on three or five different platforms plus text plus email sex began to drop and the clearest indication is when you look at married couples because dating is complicated the apps seem to make it easy to have sex but actually the kids on the

apps are having less sex than ever but the amazing thing is that married couples who traditionally have had the most sex because you know you're right there like you're together every night married couples used to have regular sex that's declining because everyone has to check at night and then you're tired or you're distracted, you're just not in the mood. So it is damaging marriages, it is damaging childhood, it is damaging our democracy, it is damaging the workplace. Young people are so used to having multiple screens, what I hear from employers is that

they don't seem to understand that when they're talking to someone, they shouldn't be checking their notifications. When they're at their desk working, they shouldn't have their phone in front of their computers that they can be constantly task switching. It feels dismissive. When you're sitting with someone and they're on their phone, it feels dismissive. And listen, I'm on, my phone is like how I make a living. So I'm not like trying to be self-righteous at all. I'm just saying it feels dismissive. What is the effect of when the parent is on the phone in front of the child all the time? Yes. So we have to break it up by age. The most serious damage, I believe, is done when parents are on their phones with their

infants or toddlers because the infant comes into the world they can't control their muscles they're trying to make sense of the world and the first thing they do is lock eyes that they get right away they're not in the first couple of days but you know a couple weeks in they begin to lock eyes and then they begin to smile and then that's when it really gets magical and what they're looking for is the back and forth the psychologists call it serve and volley or serve in response like Like you do something, you go, and then the kid goes, ha, ha, ha. And then you do it again. And the kid goes, you know, so, but you get that back and forth.

That's really important. That synchronous interaction. But what happens? You know, both parents are working. Everyone's busy. You got a ton of email coming and you have to make dinner. You're with your one year old. You're with your six month old.

What do you do? You're like, you know, like, you know, here, here's a block to, here's a little puppet to play with. And you're on your phone. And your kid is trying to say, you know, trying to get your attention. You're like, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, adorable. Yeah, yeah. This, what this does, the child is developing what we call an internal working model that is a mental model of how, how things go, and what mom is like and what dad is like. And if mom is always giving off, like, I can't get the servant volley going with mom because she's always on her phone.

Oh, but dad, he's the fun one. Like, oh, yeah, dad is great. It's going to damage the internal working model of the mother. And so it's really important when the kids are little, When you're present, be present. When you're engaging with them, be fully engaged. Okay, so let's start with that with the infants. As they go on later, it's not quite as damaging, but you are showing them this is normal. Like we're at dinner and something comes up and oh, I got a notification, so I'm going to check out of dinner that you're teaching this is normal.

So the kids are going to copy our example. The key idea is that when we're present, we need to be present. And when we're working, we need to be working. And it's what's called continuous partial attention. That's a phrase that parents often find useful. Most of us are stuck paying continuous partial attention to our kids. And that is right. It's dismissive.

It's saying you don't matter. I mean, they see the back of your phone all day long. And it's tough because they can't communicate the same way an adult. Like if Lauren and I were at dinner and every time she was talking, I was kind of going and out like, I'll hear from it right away. She will say, get off your phone. I will literally pinch him with my toe. Under the table.

Good. But with your kids, they don't have the ability to communicate in that way. Well, that's right. So you get away with it longer. That's right. Yeah, you're right. You're right. So as a parent, you have to commit to raising your kid as distraction-free as possible, at least up until high school. I mean, you get them through puberty. So 15-16 is when sort of the main part of puberty ends. You really, you know, beyond that, you have a lot less control. Once they're older, you have a lot less control. Ed Milet came on this podcast and he gave me such a good tip that I've tried to do every time. And he said that when he had his kids, he used to walk into the house. like on his phone, like finishing up some emails. And he realized the connection was off. And so he started keeping his phone in the car when he would walk in.

And the walk in was actually intentional. And so it's a big deal. And they come running to him, right? You got to, like, I honestly am to the point where I'm, what I'm hearing from you for my own self is like, I almost want to just put my phone on airplane mode somewhere else when my kids are around because it just doesn't sound. like there's a lot of pros.

I think this is an important part of the conversation and where adults can learn more is like, we live now in a time because of this device that people feel they need to respond instantly to everything and that they also need to comment instantly on any world. Like, okay, doing what we do for as long as we've done it with a public platform, anytime any event happens in the world, there's a segment of people that rise up and say, you need to say something. Now. Now, don't give you one second to even think about what you think.

Think about it. And then there's a segment of people that if you do say something are upset that you said something. And I'm not saying one's good. But the pressure from society and the pressure in the workplace is that you act now and respond now instantly. Don't think about it. Get on it. Get engaged. And so I think that these conversations are really important because we've been trained to go through and just be active all the time. Absolutely right. So let me give you two tips or two things I hope will be helpful to help people disenged. help adults disengage. The first is you're absolutely right that we went through a period from around 2014-2015 through 2024-25 where it was like that. And this has been called the Great Awakening, this has been called call-out culture, and everybody hates it. And finally, everybody's seen like, this is horrible. And I think in some sense, it's on the decline now. So I think what you said a year ago would have been, yep, we're stuck in that. But I think it's changing. So now, So if you don't opine on the latest thing, not much is going to happen to you.

It's much less than it would have been a year ago. So we can all step back. The second thing I want to say is that I understand your impulse to just put it on airplane mode, but I have a better solution for you, which is turn your phone from a slot machine into a Swiss Army knife. How do you do that? So when the iPhone came out, all it was was a browser, a phone. a music player. So it had a few functions. And then there was also, there was maps and there was a flashlight. And that was really cool. I loved my iPhone. And it wasn't addictive. When you needed a tool, you pulled it out. Like a Swiss Army knife. Like a Swiss Army knife. The Swiss Army knife was not designed to keep you using the Swiss Army knife. There was no blade on the Swiss Army knife that makes you keep using it. Once you get the app store and push notifications, everything changes. And now all these apps are trying to get to you, trying to get you, trying to get, you. you to come back. And the ones that reinforce you on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule,

the ones that give you little bits of pleasure but at a random, random distribution, those are the addictive ones. That's the slot machine. So what I'm saying is this, how many platforms are you on, first of all? I turned all my notifications off and if the whole family was murdered at night, I wouldn't know because the phone's off. I have to create these boundaries or you're just screwed. You have to have boundaries around it. That's right. That's right. So, But here's what I would suggest that everyone do. And I teach a course called flourishing at New York University. I work with college students and MBA students.

They make a huge amount of progress when they get this under control. Step number one, get all these things off your phone. I'm not saying you have to quit Instagram and TikTok. Just get it off your phone and you can still have it on your computer. And maybe you'll get to the point where you just check TikTok on weekends on your computer. Meaning like you have X or Instagram, which is only on the desktop or on the laptop. the computer, right, because the thing is, that way you're not going to it all the time. So because I never really was on social media, other than Twitter and X, I've used that,

but only on my computer. So I have, I still have no problem with my phone. My phone has never been addictive for me. So you don't have an Instagram account? No, I don't. I mean, well, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. I have one professionally, which me and, you know, my team manages. So I am on Instagram, but I'm not able to like to run it all. But in terms of my daily habits, my daily habits, I do check X probably every day, but because I never do it on my phone. So if I'm waiting in line somewhere, it's not like the slot machines, hey, come back and play slots. You never know what you'll find. I'm going to try that.

So that's what I urge you to do. Can you swear? Hold on. Hold on. Okay, let's get the commitment on screen. This is like a vow of merit. What are you going to do? Say it on in front of everything.

For sure, I'm going to just put X on the, especially after yesterday. I'm going to put X on the computer. I don't really even do Instagram outside of memes. And other people help us with that. No, no, no, no, I've never done. Be honest. No, no, I don't, I don't. I don't do the posting. Taylor, how many memes has he sent you in the last? You're such a liar. You're not listening to what I'm saying. I don't post myself a lot of stuff. Okay, but you're on Instagram. But I'm saying I don't need to be on there to checking all the time. Yeah, like somebody else can post. Taylor's literally looking at your meme that you just sent him an hour ago right now. You're not listening to what I'm saying. I'm saying I don't post like the, I don't need, I have people that can help me post content. So I don't really actually. What are you going to put on your computer? I'm going to put the apps on the computer. And I don't we just go to the website. Yeah, I don't use TikTok at all. And I. And I don't use TikTok at all. And I. And I.

stop sending dickpicks like 10 years ago. Lauren, what are you going to do? What are you going to commit to? I don't go on TikTok, so that's already good. That's great. You're a step ahead of everyone else. I don't go on X. But I do go on Instagram a lot.

Do you endorse it? Like, do you feel that this is good use of your time? You're perfectly happy with your Instagram habits on your phone? No, I think I could get better. I think I can get better. What I would like to do, what can I do with Instagram? I don't know that I could put it on a computer because of my work. What do you mean?

Why can't you just check it on your? computer. Just go to Instagram.com. How do you post stories? You do it on the computer. You load the file on a computer. Yeah. Can you actually do that? Almost every, anything you can do on a phone, pretty much you can do on a computer. Okay. They're all desktop based. I mean, I don't even, okay. They're all web-based applications. Yeah. You can do the font and the colors and all the stuff. On Instagram stories? Can someone confirm this? Okay. Look, and or look, if you want to have an iPad that you keep at home. If you prefer to use the app interface, maybe if you have it have it on an iPad that you keep at home, the thing is, do not have a slot machine in your pocket. So Instagram's a slot

machine. But it's also like a little bit of that hand to mouth function too, right? They're all, the what? They're like hand to mouth function of the picking it up all the time. It's like a cigarette. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And people use it as a crutch, you know, as soon as everybody walks in the elevator, everybody pulls out their phone. You know, you walk around New York City, It's like everyone's on the front I saw a cartoon the other day It was a everybody on their phone With a blind person's cane tapping

Because none of us are looking where we're going I will commit this and I will commit this on the podcast Hopefully you'll commit it too It's kind of like a wedding vow I will commit to not being To putting my phone away When I'm around my children in front of them Yeah we need to stop

No I think like these conversations are very I tell people all the time doing this show It's not only for the benefit of the audience. It's like we directly learn ourselves. I mean, a lot of the growth over the years is being able to speak to people like yourself that have these perspectives and expertise so that we can try to improve ourselves. We're not perfect at all. I have a question. I have a bone to pick about text message, though. What do you do with that? Because the text message kills me. I sometimes don't respond to text messages for two months because it's so overwhelming that I don't

even know where to start. How do you mitigate that and manage it? Now, text is the hardest thing. When I work with my students, you know, they understand they need to get the social media platforms up, but what do you do about texting? That's really, really hard. And especially, a lot of young, I know your audience is mostly, especially young people, people in your 20s, you know, my MBA students, they say, well, you know, yeah, I want to block off time and do deep work and not answer my text for three hours, but my boss expects me to respond within five minutes. What do I do? And so, this, too, is a collective action problem. If everybody thinks that everybody is online all the time, then everybody can expect quick answers. And so what you can do is with your friends,

with your family, you can say, we're all overwhelmed. I'm going to try, I'm going to try to block my day. I'm going to try to batch my day. And I'll, I will, you know, I'll have several blocks where I'm responding, but it might take an hour or two for me to get back to you. Don't expect me to respond within five minutes, and I won't expect it of you, because we're all suffering from this. In the workplace, it's harder, but what I'm hopeful is that a lot of people will read, I always to sign Cal Newport's book Deep Work. I love that book. It's amazing. And once you understand, like, oh yeah, if we're always responding, then we're always doing shallow work. We never get to think. And so we can't be, we can't be so responsive to our text. We have to break away from

the idea that everybody can reach everybody at any moment and respect to response. All right. Let's talk about formula. So Bobby, it's not just another formula. It's a movement. This is a really, really cool company. It's the world's first USDA organic whole milk infant formula, and it's manufactured right here in the United States. So I had the opportunity of interviewing the founder of Bobby, and that industry is just wild. You really have to do your research. Bobby is Clean Label Certified, and it's trusted by 500,000 parents nationwide. I personally think that when you are picking a formula, it's important to look into it.

This formula has had three years of research. It has had testing, retesting, and it's led by a mom who really, really cares. So if you're looking for a brand that's by a mom who wanted something better for her babies and yours, you've got to check this out. Their ingredients meet the strictest organic standards in the world. everyone is talking about this company too behind the scenes like i hear i hear about it from everyone i personally like that their manufacturing facility is in ohio you know where it's coming from and it's really a premium recipe if you're looking for a formula you have to check out bobby they really support the whole feeding journey they even have dh a to support brain development which is crucial in the first year of life And they gave you a code exclusively for him and her listeners.

Bobby is offering an additional 10% off on your purchase with Code Skinny. Visit hi-bobby.com for more details. That's hibobb-B-B-B-I-E.com. People are loving dried raw dog food right now. And there is this brand called GetJoy's and it's freeze-dried raw dog food. It's made with real whole ingredients like 100% USDA-sourced meats pumpkin for digestion, salmon oil for skin and coat health, and no seed oils or anything artificial. They also have this thing in it, which is really interesting, called belly biotics.

And it's a proprietary blend of pre, pro, and postbiotics to support digestion, reduce inflammation and build a strong, healthy gut because joy starts from within. So the meat is raw, and then it's freeze dried to retain 97% of nutrients. They never use high heat or high pressure processing, which allows them to maintain such a high nutritional value and maintain the flavor. So if you're serious about what your dogs are eating and you want to support their gut, I think this is a really good one. A couple things to note, there's no thawing, no mess. It's shelf stable for easy storage, and it's scoop and serve convenience, which is really nice and saves you time. I know I am very specific about what I feed my dogs, and if you want something that's developed by veterinary nutritionist with P.A.

You have to check them out. You should also know it's third-party tested, get-joy, freeze-dried, raw dog food really thought of everything. As a listener of the him and her show, you'll get 30% off your first purchase of GetJoy's freeze-dried raw dog food plus two exclusive gifts,

a free scoop, and a four-ounce bag of treats. Shop getjoyfood.com slash skinny to make your dog's food as intentional as yours. Again, that's getjoyfood.com slash skinny. Quick break to talk about goodtto-know.org. Org, want clear, transparent information about your favorite beverages? We do, too. That's why today's sponsor American Beverage Launch Good to Know, a new platform with tons of

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So if you want to know more than what's on the label of your favorite drink, good to knowfacts.org is a great place to start. So check them out, visit www. www.guttonofacts.org for more information. Again, that's good to know facts.org for more information. Let's talk about my favorite female run nonprofit. I'm so passionate about the charity I stand with my pack. It's dedicated to saving animals and preventing cruelty locally and globally.

So I was introduced to this. charity by a friend of mine, Lucy, probably about five years ago. And she was really passionate about how much that I stand with my pack helps dogs. So what they do is they rescue dogs from high kill shelters in Southern California. And they help them find loving foster homes or forever homes. There is an urgent need right now for donations and fosters. So even if you can donate a dollar, every dollar counts. This goes to help. being to cover medical care, food, transportation for rescue dogs. You can donate or sign up to foster at Istandwithmypack.org. That's I standwithmypack.org. I also sometimes will just

Venmo them. It makes it really simple. More information at I standwithmypack.org. Something that's really helped me with my mental health is that I bookend my day. Good. Good. So I... What do you do? What's your morning and evening routine? I don't touch my phone until, like to look at my phone, it's probably about 930, which I wake up at seven. So that's two and a half hours without the phone. This has been, I don't want to act like I'm perfect because this has been many years of figuring it out. And then before I go to bed, around probably like 8.30, my phone goes on airplane mode in the other room. Great. Tell me what you do after 830. What do you do between 830 in bed? I read my Kindle. Okay. That's fine. Yeah. But I'm still even wondering my, I read my Kindle in front of my

children. I don't know that they know the difference between that I'm reading. And I try to explain it. I'm reading my book to better my mind, not scrolling my phone. I don't know that they can understand the difference. Yeah. They recently switched to physical books with an Amazon, like, it's a little red light, book light. Like it's all red.

Michael's reading by candlelight. Okay. I'm just kidding. Yeah, right. The little, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That sounds great. So let me tell, because here are the, here are like the top tips I can bring your audience from my

flourishing class. You know, I tell them if you get nothing else from this. course. If you do these two things, your life is going to go better. One is take charge of your morning and evening routines because that's going to set you up for a good night of sleep, a restorative period. And so from, I have them lay out, what are the 10 things you do before you close your eyes? Okay. And like the last one tends to be check their messages, their text, their Instagram, everything. Most of them do this. It's either the second to last or last thing they do before they literally close their eyes. And what's the first thing you do when you wait?

What are the first 10 things you do? And again, it's like, open your eyes, grab your phone. So, okay, let's look at this. Do you like living this way? No, they don't. And so what I encourage them to do is see that period from about 10 at night or whatever until eight or nine the next morning. This is your retry.

This is for you. This is a time when you're not doing every, you're not responding to everybody else. And if you do that, you're going to sleep better. You're going to start your day in control. Because what happens, if you don't do that, the phone guides every moment that you're awake. Yep. And that means you're not living your life. I mean, I am someone that has gone through every different kind of relationship with my phone because of my career.

And so I have seen the impact of too much phone in your face. I have felt it as an adult, which is why I'm so passionate about this subject for children. Because I've felt it myself. And if you don't have parameters and boundaries around your phone, it will take over. It will take over. Okay, so you're doing pretty well. How about you, Michael? What's your evening and morning routine?

Well, Lauren's going to do this thing where she... I'm not saying anything. Where's her high horse? I think it's waiting outside in the hallway. Now, actually, you know what? I do pretty well in the evenings now because I get off and I put it on a charger away from the bed. And now I switch to hard books. So I've improved over the last year.

I think I got grilled on a, you know, maybe 30 episodes back so I've been switching. And now in the morning I get up really early because my daughter is going to school early. And I wait at least an hour before I touch the phone. So that's where I'm at. Good. You also read the newspaper. I read a physical newspaper now. That's great. That's great.

I don't like to, for some reason, I've never been able to get onto the, you know, the iPad. Where do you think you have room for improvement? Because I was honest. No, I think that like when I hear you talking about the, what did you call it the past, not passive, when you have the phone in front of your kid and you're kind of like your. Oh, the continuous partial attention? Yes, continuous partial attention. I can definitely improve on that. And it's a good reinforcement to hear you talk about it because every parent sitting there, and I don't say, you know, a lot of parents are probably doing.

that, right? Yeah. The majority. That's right. But the problem is what he said earlier is that every parent is thinking, oh, every parent's doing this, so it's okay. What did you call that? Well, it's a collective action problem. Yes. Right. We also look, everyone else is letting their kid on the iPad all day along. It must be okay, but it wasn't okay. We didn't know. We didn't know. Parents shouldn't blame themselves. Like five, 10 years, we didn't know. Now we're all sitting there scrolling and we're like, oh, every other parent's doing it, so it's okay. Yeah, that's right. I said there's two big things I want to convey. The first was get control your morning and be routine. Take charge your day.

I recommend with my students they do the five-minute journal, just anything where you lay out, what would make today a great day or what do I want to accomplish today? Do that before you jump into the river of craziness. That's the first thing. The second thing, which if my students get nothing else other than this, their life is going to go better, which is take back your attention. And the way you do that is, number one, get all the slot machine apps off your phone. We already talked about that.

Put them on the computer. and then quit a couple of them entirely, especially TikTok, just totally, you know, totally quit TikTok. And then the second thing is get charge your notifications. Every app wants to send you notifications. And when you look through, you can go to the notifications, find out, look at the ones that are sending the most notifications and turn them off. You do not need a notification from any newspaper. Breaking news. You do not need that.

Check it once a day. If there's a nuclear attack, I guarantee you, everyone around you is going to be freaking out. And you'll know, oh, maybe I should check my phone. You don't need to know when there was a shooting someplace else, when some couple in Hollywood is getting a divorce. Like, you don't need to know that at the moment. So if you can shut off most notifications other than like Uber or things where you really, yes, I want this company to interrupt me.

Everything else shut off. If you can regain your attention and get a better night's sleep, you're going to be a lot happier and more in control. One of my best friends is here. And like the way we text is like, it's, there's no pressure on the text. It's like sometimes she texts me on a Friday and I don't text her back until Monday. Sometimes she texts me on a Tuesday.

I'll text her on a Tuesday and like we text in a way that's like get to it when you can get to it. I feel like there needs to be that sort of unspoken rule with friendships. It can't be like just because someone texts you like you said, you get an instant response. That's such an interesting phrase. An unspoken rule. Unspoken means we kind of assume people think it. But what I'm going to suggest here is that we make this a spoken rule. That is because it turns out we're all suffering.

Yes. We're all suffering from this. And so if you say it, your friends aren't going to be offended. They're going to be like, yes, I'm feeling it too. So I think we should also, what we should do with your friends is have them watch this episode and say, you know, we're all going to try to have better relationships because what we want is not the quantity of check-ins. It's the quality of sometimes really being together.

And so if you have a texting relationship with people, what you might say is, How about we stop texting? How about we talk on the phone once a week or once a month? It's so much more satisfying. Yeah, I also, like a lot of time I think that because of social media in the way people present and you see all these people, you lose a little bit of connection. You're like, I don't need to check in on how they are because I can see how they are. I saw them on that vacation, so it must have been good.

No reason to talk about it anymore, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Social media allows us to display anything that's one to many where you're putting up something so that lots of people see it, that's not communication, that's display. Whereas a telephone call or a FaceTime call, that's one-on-one. That's good. I love what you're doing. I think it's amazing and so important. Michael, you want to do some rapid-fire questions? All right, let's go. Rapid fire, quick ones. Biggest misconception about Gen Z.

Biggest misconception about Gen Z is that they are lazy. They are not lazy. They work very hard, but they are just so overwhelmed with stuff, they're not able to do a lot of other stuff. So they're overstimulated? They're overstimulated and distracted. Yeah. Oh, I'm saying one other, one other. Genzi is that Genzi loves their phones. They don't.

They see how much it's hurting them. They just feel trapped. What surprised you the most when writing the anxious generation? What surprised me the most when writing it was the boy's story. I knew that the girl's story was when social media came in, they instantly got anxious and depressed. I didn't know what the boy's story was. And it turns out it's not video games per se. It's all the stuff that is distracting them and addicting them.

The boys' story is about companies that are addicting boys and basically sapping their motivation to do anything, which is why our boys are dropping out. In the long run, actually, this whole phone-based childhood is actually hurting the boys more than the girls, I believe. Most underrated skill kids today need. Starting conversations in real life, and that includes on the telephone. They don't, it's awkward. It's awkward to call someone up. When we were young, you had a call and you say, oh, hello, Mrs. Smith. Is Billy home?

And sometimes you had to make a little conversation with Mrs. Smith. And now a lot of kids, you know, when the phone rings, they don't even say anything. They just wait for the other person to talk. So, you know, we need basic communications. Michael used to page me every single morning, one, four, three, one, which would say, I love you on the pager. That's sweet. That's a true story. It was for the booty call.

You did it every morning. It was like a Monday. We were going to school. I'll take a Monday. One sentence about how parents can raise resilient kids in a digital world. The best way to prepare your children for life in the digital world is to protect them from it until their brain is largely developed. Do not let the digital world scramble their neural development. keep them off of smartphones till 14 and social media till 16 and they're going to be much more prepared for life in the digital world.

Jonathan, like I said, I love what you're doing. Where can everyone pick up your latest book? What are you working on? Tell us all the things. So the main website for the movement, because it's not just a book. It really is a movement and it's driven especially by mothers around the world. The website is anxious generation.com. So start there. And of course, by the book, Anxious Generation. But we have, as I said, on December 30th, we are publishing the amazing generation. Your guide to fun and freedom in a screen-filled world. It is ideal for kids 8 to 12. It's really fun.

It came out beautifully. You can pre-order that now anywhere. So what we're doing, we began trying to help parents set norms, follow the four norms. That was the beginning of the movement. And now we're expanding to understand AI. Oh, parents, do not buy your child. This holiday season, do not buy your child any toy with AI. It's insane. It's insane.

I feel like that's a whole other podcast. I just think like no AI. Which, by the way, open invite anytime. Okay. I'll come back next year when everyone's got AI friends and chatbots and girlfriends and boyfriends. That's a whole rabbit hole. You know, it might be fun to have a boyfriend that's AI.

Just program what you want. Thank you for coming on. I will tell you on air and off air that I, anything that I can do to help you with what you're doing besides the show, if there's anything I can talk on, I'm really passionate about this, and I'm trying to set it up for my own kids, and it's not easy. So if there's anything Michael and I can do because of what we do, we would love to help. Well, thank you. Just helping me to reach your large and general young audience is great. I hope everyone will go to afterbabel.com. That's my substack. It's free.

We put out research. We put out advice for parents. And yet, be wonderful for me to come back or for other members of the team to come back, we have different parts of the story. And to really, especially promote the idea that we have overprotected our children in the real world. We have underprotected our children online. We've got to reverse those. We've got to give our kids back a play-based child. That's the main message I want to convey here. You'll have to give my friend advice here. He watches porn about 15 times a day, so maybe you have some tips from him. Not me. I think he's watching it right now. He's over there. Thank you. Black-haired gray jacket. Taylor,

Ryan's the Taylor Oshmoner. Thank you, Jonathan. You're the best. Appreciate you. Open invite anytime. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Lauren.