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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:14]
B
Hey, everybody. Welcome to our preview version of the Anxious Generation book club where me, Diana, Jackie, and Alan all discuss a full length book. Unlike the regular episodes where we talk about a theme or a topic and related research articles, this is a whole book. And in this episode we discuss the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Hate. Now, if you are interested in hearing the discussion of this book right now, the full two hours, as well as potentially getting a ce, two CES for no additional charge, all you need to do is go to patreon.com abainsidetrack or click the link in your podcast player. It'll, it'll take you right there and subscribe at the $10 and up level. You'll get access to this book club podcast as well as all of our other book club podcasts and you'll get two CES for all of those. There's a discount code that you get just for being a patron is a big thanks for us. If you're saying, you know what, let me hear the preview. That sounds fun, I'll hear this at some point. Don't worry. Eventually this will come out on the free feed. But if you don't want to have fomo, which is a lot of what we talk about in this book club discussion, that's patreon.com ABA Inside Track. All right, here's a little snippet of what our full length discussion is. We go over a couple of our thoughts on the book, general thoughts on the book, but if you want to hear us discuss the whole thing again, you're going to have to subscribe at the $10 and up level. But for what we got today, please enjoy. Hey, everybody, welcome to ABA Inside Track, the podcast that's like reading in your car, but safer. I'm your host, Robert Perry Crews, and with me, as always, are my fabulous co hosts.
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A
Hi there, Rob. It's me, your friend, Jackie McDonald.
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C
And hi, it's me, Diana Perry Crews. I'm far away from the microphone.
- [02:00]
B
You should move in closer to the microphone. There you go.
- [02:07]
C
Is this better?
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B
Yeah,
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C
no, really close.
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B
Just do, just do your intro again.
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C
And hi, it's me, Diana Perry Cruz. What's that?
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D
And of course it's me, Book Club Guy, because it's a book club episode.
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B
Wait, what? Nobody knew that.
- [02:23]
C
What's your name? Book Club Guy.
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B
He told you?
- [02:26]
D
I tried to say it, but I got interrupted. So I'll say it again. This is. It's Book Club Guy because it's a book club episode. It's Alan Haberman.
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C
Good. That Was very smooth. And I don't think we need any notes on how to do our intros moving forward.
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B
Oh, well, yes, that's right. I was going to surprise everyone because Alan was here, and then everyone have to go, wait a minute. Is this a book club? And then, yes, it is a book club, but you probably saw the title in your podcast player book club. This is a book. Are you about to say something, Jackie? You just move around.
- [02:59]
A
I was going to say that Alan is on so many book clubs, I think almost all of them. And in our new website, we have to put his picture on each of the pages. And so I have Alan Haberman's picture on my desktop, in my gallery. I literally look like I'm stalking him because, like, you open up my, like, recently downloaded. It's like, Alan Haberman. Alan Haberman, Alan Haberman.
- [03:25]
C
So my computer does that. It'll be like, remember this day. And it'll try to, like, look back at an old day, and it's like a random picture of, like, Matt Tincani.
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A
I just love it.
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C
Like, that was a great day. Thanks, computer.
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D
I mean, there. There are worst faces I have to see every day, Jackie.
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A
I mean, I know I'm really excited about it. It's just so funny. I was like, I told Diana because I have everyone's picture, like, downloaded on my computer, if that's ever been on the show. And I. And I was like, I hope someone doesn't, like, think I'm coming to, like, plot their murders, because it's just, like,
- [04:02]
C
all these people's headshots. People get a hold of your computer someday.
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A
Yeah.
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B
No, you've had shots.
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C
That combined with your search history, Jackie. Yeah, I know. Highly questionable.
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B
You know, right?
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A
What kind of dog is the cutest?
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D
I was going to say severe obsession with, like. Like, problem behavior and aggression and, like, all this research.
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A
Nope, not that at all.
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D
Ah, well, I try to be funny.
- [04:32]
B
Anyway, this is our book club. It's our spring. Spring book club. I know. Spring book club. So if you're a patron at the $10 and up level, you're getting access to this in the spring of 2026, and you are not getting what you paid for so far. But don't worry, we got plenty of time to turn this. Turn this ship around.
- [04:51]
A
I can. I can say that it is spring and it's going to snow 5 inches of snow tonight and then 7 to 9 on Sunday night. So it's really springy where we are.
- [05:00]
B
When you're listening to this, it's early spring, when we're recording it, it is still the, the tail end of winter.
- [05:08]
C
It's the spring semester the way that at Regis College, the spring semester starts in January.
- [05:13]
A
In January. January 2nd. We're like, we're in spring now.
- [05:17]
B
Yeah. So if you are hearing it in spring 2026, thank you for being a patron. Thank you so much for supporting the show. You're going to get access to this whole episode right now and you're going to get the two CES that come from listening to it for free. Hooray. If you are hearing just the preview, just this beginning part of it, you'll have to take our word for it that it gets way better after your preview or so. And we'll be releasing this on the free feed next year. Next year in the springtime. So if you can wait, I guess go for it. But in the meantime, we're talking about a book that's quite in the zeitgeist right now, the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, which is a book voted on by our patrons. The full title is the Anxious how the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. And it speaks to a lot of, I think the malaise over children being online that many folks kind of around our age have been either feeling, noticing, expressing, yelling at, clouds about, and is pretty relevant to a lot of upcoming legislation in a number of places around the world. Even just today or yesterday, the Wall Street Journal was posting about how a lot of countries in Europe are looking to make bans to social media use for children under anywhere from 14 to 16 years old. Australia recently passed a ban on social media use for children under 16. I know in Massachusetts, one of our houses, I believe the Massachusetts Senate passed a law. It's not a law. They passed the, the resolution because it hasn't been like approved and signed by the government, hasn't been approved by the House of Representatives, but to ban cell phone use or at least to somehow limit cell phone use into schools starting hopefully next year.
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C
Is that Ed Mackie?
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B
No, Ed Markey's a, he's a, he's a congressman, not a state rep. Oh, Diana. He'll come up, though.
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C
I just wanted to say that Ed
- [07:12]
B
M. Is in this, is in this book, our own. So by the time you get this, if you get this on the free feed, all these things might have changed. And this might be like, this is a stupid problem that last year's people had to deal with. Probably not, because problems aren't ever so easily solved.
- [07:30]
C
So yes, there will still be problems one year in the future.
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B
Not, maybe not about social media use in young children, but in any case, we are going to be talking about the anxious generation. We're going to be talking about social media use. We're going to be talking about child rearing habits and how they've shifted over the years, but specifically how the key years starting in about 2010 were so potentially, at least correlationally, possibly causally, related to many of the challenges that young people are seeing today in terms of increased rates of reported mental illness, like depression, anxiety, increased senses of isolation, possibly the whole, like, whatever's going on in the young online MAGA movement might be to blame by 2010. I'm going to say, look, Max looks maxing once. We're not saying it anymore. This episode. I used up our one time to
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C
say it, but what if we all wanted to talk about mogging?
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B
No, we're not doing it. That was it. We just did it. Get it out of your. Yeah, get out of your system now. I don't want to talk about it.
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A
I, I love that Alan doesn't want to talk about so much that he
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D
just went and I disappeared, apparently. No, see, I, I'll. I won't. I don't need to talk about looks, maxing or mogging. However, I reserve the right to five red pill references being red pilled in this podcast.
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C
All right.
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D
Because it's highly relevant.
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B
All right, let's keep. Keep track at home.
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C
Wait, so that's a DRH or a drl.
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D
What, you.
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B
You want to do more red pilling
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C
or at least five.
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D
No, I, I will. I will stay five or under.
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C
Okay. Okay. It's a drl.
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D
Yeah.
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B
So this book is one that actually I first read about a year ago in my. My day job. We read it as kind of a group of teachers, administrators, just, Just because it had recently come out. And so when it came time to put it in the book club, I said, I really want to throw this out there, see if people are interested in hearing us talk about it, having more people read it. Not because I'd already read the book, and that meant I didn't have to do my homework because I read this book a second time and then a third time, 25 pages of notes by reading a third time. So don't worry, I didn't do less work because I'd already read this book. And it, for me was just a really great scientific review of a lot of information that's out there that I think spoke to just the Kind of general feeling I was increasingly having of this is all bad, right? This stuff's all bad for kids, right? This is all leading to bad problems, right? But it's very hard because I remember being a child in the 80s who loved his Nintendo Entertainment System and wanted to watch TV all the time and people saying how bad that was for me and how unhealthy it was for me. And I've grown to be a functioning adult that does lots of things, not all of them in front of a screen. So there is always that fear of. Is my concern that all of the social media and kids constantly on phones is that just me being an old person and technology is just sped up to the point that even though I'm not that old, I'm acting old. And maybe this is a me problem and not a child problem. This book would tell you that, no, the children, it is the children who are wrong and the adults that allowed them to be wrong that is the problem. Therefore, I also then had double doubts because wait a minute, do I just like this book because it's scientifically telling me that I'm not an old man and I'm totally with it and cool and hip and my thoughts are right. Am I just becoming, becoming my parents? Becoming the boomer generation? I'm going to try to be skeptical, though. There's very little in this book other than like a few points that I have any huge, you know, negative statements to say about because a lot of it really speaks to concerns that I've had I see regularly at work. And I really would like to see change in the future. So. Loved it. Two thumbs up. Read it three times.
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C
Are we doing reviews?
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B
Let's do reviews.
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A
That's what we're doing. You, it's your turn, Diana.
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C
Okay. Well, I don't want to say that I liked this book because it was kind of a drag to read because it's a lot of sad news about the state of our world and of our children. And I get the feeling from the authority that he didn't really want to write a book that was as alarmist as this book is, but as he did his research, it was just overwhelming the amount of data that was there to suggest that this modern Internet based environment that we're putting our kids into is really detrimental for them. And so the book ended up being rather alarmist in spite of maybe the tone that he wanted to take with it, which again, like, it's a good book to have read, but it's not that fun to read.
- [12:44]
A
Next I. I loved the book. I loved the book in the way that I loved reading it. I. When Rob suggested this book, I was very excited about it because I actually had it on my. On my nonfiction book, Less to read. And I had just finished Atomic Habits and I was like, oh, look, I just have this book sitting on my nonfiction thing. So I was like, yes. And so I just started it for my morning read and I found out that I could not read it in the morning like I normally read my nonfiction books because it produced a substantial amount of anxiety.
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C
Durations worth. Really.
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A
Right. A generation's worth. That actually lasted throughout much of my day. So I had to pick small. This book took me longer to read than other books because I had to chunk it into smaller pieces so that my anxiety about how I'm parenting and. And how things are going wouldn't constantly
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B
put a screen in front of your kid and saying, I don't have time for you iPad.
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A
I don't do that. We don't even have an iPad. But we can talk about more of that later. But I also found the outcomes. So I particularly loved the end of the book when they talked about the strategies that people can do. Right. How school administrators can do it, how parents can do it. I particularly loved that part of the book because it was a little more. I felt a little more optimistic. Right. There's something we can do. And so that actually took me less time to read. And I also found that the things that he was saying deeply resonated with me in my social media use, in my phone use. And so it has been a really great book to read paired with Atomic Habits because I was able to decrease my phone usage using the principles that I learned from Atomic Comics and what I learned about the, you know, the consequences of social media not only for teens, but offer from also for myself to make some changes in my own life. According to Long Winded. So sorry.
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B
According to this book, social media is like evil atomic habits.
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C
Yeah, right.
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B
Computers. All right, Alan, what do you.
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D
What do you.
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B
What do you think? What are your.
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D
So I think he does a great job of defining the problem. I don't fully agree or think he takes the right tack with talking solutions or at least he's not comprehensive enough. I think that a lot of the solutions offered are one very Anglo American centric, which is fine. Like that's gonna. Who's reading the audience. But there's not a hint of like saying there are multiple ways to solve this because we are not the only. Like, not only is The UK and the US having these issues. Like a lot of the research in psychology and psychiatry journals on teenage or adolescent mental health is from China, is from Africa, is from Korea, is from. Like this is a, a global conversation that's being hap. That's happening. I also think that his suggestions, while what schools or administrators or parents could do is great, it kind of misses the point, doesn't ask the question of why aren't these things happening anymore? And it's not because of technology. Technology did not become the problem because it was the easier option. It kind of became a problem because sometimes it was the only option. Like they're like after school programs. And some of the things he suggests, like, great, we know about those things in the 60s and 70s. Why don't we have them anymore?
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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B
I mean, you're, you're really, you're really hitting on something there, Alan, that I think we could all agree with. It does start getting into one of those challenges I think we see in, in books of. At some point you probably have to just be like, I'm just gonna write a sentence about this. Like, I think he kind of, you know, waves away sort of the idea of like, here's some ideas and I got a sub stack where there'll be more because some of these probably are terrible, but I gotta write this book. So here it is. And you're right, it's very, it's very focused on like, what can we do here in America? And some of those solutions probably would make sense across lot of cultural divides, but not all of them would. You know, the legal system certainly even just like what should the government do is going to be very different depending on where you're, where you're living. I mean, I don't think our government could pass anything of value at all forever maybe again. So I highly doubt this collective action problem will get resolved by, by anyone in our generation. I'll be shocked. It does feel like it's going to come down to like maybe state legislatures maybe, and almost maybe I don't care. Because you know what, if Massachusetts passes a law saying no one under the age of 18 can have a social media account, probably many of the companies would say, fine, that we're just not going to sell our product in your state. To which I would say, good, I don't want your dumb product. Mark Zuckerberg can go to hell.
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D
Yeah. But we also know that if, when, when action like that is, is taken to, to reign in technology companies, suddenly the problems go away and they magically solve them. You know, I think about an unrelated problem to this or well, somewhat unrelated. The like the problem of like Apple having an entirely different charging system. It took Europe saying no, you're not going to you if you're going to sell things here, you're going to have this use the usbc. Suddenly we all have, that's, we all have it and it's not a problem anymore and the interoperability is there and it's like the profit motive can't drive every single decision. And those just, those issues aren't addressed in the book and I understand why, but it's also just frustrating to again read like consumer side solutions to societal wide problems.
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B
Something I wasn't sure if you were going to bring up. Alex. I know, I was thinking about it. When we start talking about, you know, all the ills of social media, there's a little bit on well, are there some positives to social media? And the book gets a little bit into a lot of the research saying that there are positives to it really seem to lump the idea of the Internet with the idea of social media, which I agree, I think hate agrees. I don't know. I would assume we all agree that there's a lot of things you can do on the Internet and not all of them are social media. So there are definite benefits to being able to communicate online. Is social media one of them? Would getting rid of social media cut out the ability of marginalized groups to more easily find each other to communicate? Which you know, then sort of points to. I want to say no social media, it's a waste of time. But if I don't have a better solution of like, well, how do groups that have historically not been able to or even you know, some cases historically weren't able to. No. Yeah, but, but how do we, how do we fix that societal problem so that when we're like we're turning off social media, everyone says we don't care. We have plenty of friends and we have plenty of outlets and we have plenty like we got to make sure we're doing that work too. If we just say hooray, social media is dead, ding dong, the witch is dead. It may not resolve all of these challenges or it may for like a majority. And is that good enough? Not really because you know, historically just looking at majority benefiting isn't a long term solution and it is not supporting society wide. So that, that was one thing I, I know I, I was sort of thinking about, of you know, what about groups that use These tools, it could be that many of them were adults.
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C
I don't know arguing against that. Right. Like you're just about to say Rob, like there are benefits and adults are more easily able to, I think, you know, weigh what those are versus what harm may be caused. But his, I mean the largest issue in this book is that young kids are getting access to these types of environments where it's, it's not a true relationship that's being established. It's very one sided and it's all like a merit, I don't know what's the word? Like, it's not a meritocracy, not, not merit based.
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B
It's like, have you seen what's on the Internet?
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C
It's like popularity based system. Right. That's just really, really bad for development as a teenager. And it's hard to, for us as adults who grew up without this to make judgments on what this is really like for kids who are experiencing it during this formative time period. Because we can come in and say, oh well, it's, you know, we see all these benefits of what it's like to find these groups as adults, but we, there's absolutely no comparison for us to what it would have been like to experience this. No, during that time period it didn't exist.
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B
We grew up when the Internet was cool.
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D
Well, and I think so. I, I, I definitely did think about that and I reflected on, because I'm just, just old enough that I would have been in my like mid-20s when he's talking about this like shift starts.
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C
Right.
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D
But then thinking about what my life was like in the 10 years prior to that, like the Internet was definitely a part of my like mental wellness in that I had access to media and some social forums and some sort of like slow social media where it wasn't like this reactive live chat. Yeah, it was a niche community. There were, that was sort of self policing. That was a small scale and if something unpleasant happened I could leave it and probably find, navigate my way into another version of it. But that was because the Internet was so, it wasn't the conglomerate of like, you know, we chat on Snapchat, we chat on it. Like we, you could go online and go to a, any forum about something and interact with somebody. So it's, you know, a different landscape than it was. But I definitely did benefit from having access. And so if, when we talk about social media, I do think that things that like form and interest groups would get lumped into that because it does involve social interaction. And so yeah, if we have that conversation and we do start doing those things, it'd be important, kind of define what is accessible, because I think what you're sort of hinting at, either intentionally or accidentally, a lot of his suggestions in here, from my perspective, are like, well, these are the same tools that you could use to really, like, impact and try to sort of wash away marginalized groups from the Internet, which is not what we want.
- [24:02]
B
No, because I was looking into that, because some of the suggestions later on, you know, one of them being like, what about age verification? Could we do more age verification work? Which sounds like such a. Yeah, that sounds easy. Let's do that. And if you look into it for more than a minute, there are so many pros and cons to it. And some of them are ones where it's like, oh, well, social media. Or like, the tech companies say it's a bad idea. And I'm like, I don't trust you. But there are lots of people who aren't, as far as I can tell, in bed with the tech company that do have what appear to me to be legitimate concerns. And how could this be used? How could this be weaponized? And we're definitely living in a time where things that sound like great ideas could turn into weaponized attacks on groups that the people who have power don't like. So it does feel like we're in a really rough era for kind of cutting through certain questions, like knowing what are the questions to ask, what are the things that matter? And then coming up with not a consensus, but like a compromise that everyone is happy to live in. That doesn't sound like a compromise. Like the original kind of, you know, the original act of, like, I don't know, 13. That's the. That's the age, you know, that really is focused on what information has been collected rather than what information. Certain people in power or with money want you to come to another book, Alan, if you're interested, a little bit more. And it's still kind of the consumer side of things. But there was another book that I read after I finished this one by Cory Doctorow called In Shidification.
- [25:36]
D
Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with.
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B
Yeah, okay. It's like he wrote a whole book about it now. And it was. They felt like they really dovetailed together, those two. Just the idea of, like, why did everything get so bad on the Internet? And really looking at the structures of power that are trying to suck all of the fun out of everything that we have online in the interest of making everyone's life lives miserable so they can make more money.
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D
Well and well, it's the, it's the classic problem of a, of when a product or a service is new, it needs to be streamlined, high service, accessible. You want to attract people. But then when it becomes the norm and you can't grow anymore, it's like you need people to kind of slog through it and not have as good of an experience because that's going to, you're going to find ways to like monetize that. It's the forever light bulbs. When light bulbs first get invented to. There's light bulbs everywhere. How do we have them burn out after 200 hours?
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B
Yeah. So it's been a problem a lot into the idea that a lot of at least kind of late stage capitalism would love to insertify every product and how there's something about technology like there are things endemic to how technology rolls out that makes it a lot easier for companies to do that. Whereas you can't do that quite as easily with like I don't know, these cups break after 20 uses. Guess you need to buy new cup because you could just go to another. There's like another company making cups. You'll always go buy other cups from the company that doesn't break after 20 uses. Was technology cup monopoly not a cup monopoly? No. Apparently apps have their own legal protection. I don't know. I don't want to get too far. There's a lot, I mean it's, it's semi related, but not exactly anyway.
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C
Well, let's just the feeling that like everything feels so stacked against the individual consumer right now. So they, they definitely dovetail.
- [27:31]
B
Yes.
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C
In that way. And then you know, obviously this book is, is most focused on kids and how are we going to protect kids. And it is as a parent of teenagers, it's very frustrating that all of the, you know, things that are in these varied apps are designed in a way to trap your kids and also make it impossible for parents to figure out how to block or limit even limit access to a lot of this stuff. It's designed that way intentionally and it's infuriating.
- [28:07]
B
If you've ever posted online when a parent has said like I don't know how to get my kids off phone, I don't know how to lock this stuff. And you ever posted anything like of you got to read the instructions or you got to learn how to use parental controls. I want you to go to a mirror right now, I want you to stare at yourself in the mirror and I want you to say, I have been so hurtful and mean to poor parents. If you have kids and you figured it all out, then I want you to go look in the mirror and say, I need to publish my findings so I can tell other parents how to do this. If you don't have kids and you're saying this, you go to your mirror and you look at it and you say, I am so sorry.
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C
Try to do it. Try to do it on your own phone.
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B
So you can't do it. It's impossible. There's no.
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C
I read you can add apps to the. Part of the settings on the iPhone where it has a time limit and that part has a passcode so that kids cannot go in there and change the time limit. But the part where it says always allow that part does not have a passcode. And so the kids can just add apps to that section free. And you have to keep going in to find anything that they've added and move it constantly.
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B
Policing these things is not a solution.
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C
Yeah. And then any of those apps, I mean, any of those limits on the phone as well. Both Snapchat and TikTok just override. They do not go by the rules of the iPhone. They just said, no, thank you. And so they cannot be limited. Yeah,
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B
yeah. So a little bit of background on the book.
- [29:35]
C
We're talking about a book.
- [29:36]
B
We're talking about it. I know. I feel like this just is. We're just airing grievances. Well, it's a little bit of what this book is, you know, with graphs.
- [29:44]
C
It's a really well written book. It is, yeah.
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B
I mean, it's.
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C
The guy there's an emotional valence for business school.
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B
He's a social psychologist.
- [29:52]
C
Oh, sorry.
- [29:53]
B
Yeah.
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C
He's at a Stern Business School.
- [29:54]
B
Yes. But he's a social psychologist who teaches at NYU Stern School of Business. He had been studying happiness trends in different cultures and was seeing rise of anxiety in lots of different cultures and device addiction and had started writing books about communities. And then he wanted to write a. We did write a piece of. In the Atlantic, actually. You can go read. A lot of his stuff is. Is in the Atlantic, which is a very nice publication if you. If you're not reading it in 2015 with Greg Lukianoff called the Coddling of the American Mind. And the point of that was really going to be looking at the idea of, as a society, we are just too nice to young people, and they're all growing up unable to handle anything. And while there are facets of that in this book, I think that's really more for the older parents, you know, the parents of kids in the late 70s, throughout the 80s and the 90s, that was sort of how they messed up as parents. But he realized that the issue was not as easy as. And we just have had this like, slide over time because all of a sudden in the 2010-2015 sort of band of time, all of these measures just got almost exponentially worse. All of the ratings of internalizing behavior, all of the reports of I have no friends just really shot up and it.
- [31:16]
C
Or down.
- [31:16]
B
Or down. Yeah, Depending on if you wanted it to be good, it went down. If you wanted it to be down, it went up.
- [31:22]
C
Ski slope graph.
- [31:24]
B
Yeah.
- [31:24]
C
For everything. Just getting whichever direction is worse. That was the direction.
- [31:28]
B
Yeah. But what happened was he realized that there was more to it than just these kind of societal parenting trends, that there had to be something very specific. And then in looking at, well, what are the things that changed? It really had to do a lot with the advent of high speed, high speed Internet and specifically the use of or the ubiquity of phones and specifically then how people used phones to be on social media. And while this book does focus mainly in the correlational state of things, he does have a few arguments that some of that data is. Is closer to a causal link than just correlational link. But again, it'll be up to you to sort of decide that as you listen to his talk and as you, you know, if you decide to read the book yourself. And that's the birth of the anxious generation. And man, he really came out at a time. And I think a lot of parents were feeling that we lost. We lost the battle of the screens. Our children just have to be on their phones all the time. There's nothing we can do. I don't know. Has anyone been in a high school in the past few years?
- [32:34]
C
It's no.
- [32:35]
B
It is that out terrible. Just how much kids just get on devices. Some of them are school sanctioned devices, some of them are their personal devices. They always have a reason to be on their devices. No one can get them off their devices if they don't want to be off their devices. They can be subtle about it, they can be loud about it, but everyone just sort of responds with like, well, I hope someday my lesson's fun enough that you pay attention. And I had a period of time where I was like, you got to make your lessons more interactive. You got to do things that are more fun. You got to engage the kids with A why? And at some point I realized this is a stupid suggestion that I am giving people because there's nothing you as a human being could probably do to get 100% of your kids to look up from a device and pay attention to whatever you are teaching. Some of it is because our educational system is kind of broken and what we teach is sort of dumb. But most of it is that you just can't compete as a human being with just the amount of input young children are getting and have been getting for the years up to it. You can't win.
- [33:37]
C
But in our, in our school, in our particular district, did not, did they not make it so you couldn't have your phone in the classroom?
- [33:46]
B
Yes, they changed that this past year. You have to have phones. But. But how many kids go to the bathroom and guess what? They brought with them? Their phone? How many kids just say, I won't put my phone in that thing? Leaving teachers to then say, am I going to make a big issue of this? Because the kids who will say I am actively going to avoid this are probably kids who have either internalizing or externalizing problem behaviors already, or challenges, I should say already. And is it worth the teacher's time to like make a big scene and like point out the child's failure to follow an instruction? It's not going to end well and many teachers don't feel comfortable doing it. Or you're going to have a parent say, how dare you try to take my child's phone. I might need to reach them. And you, then you say, oh, well, that's silly. You can just call the school. But many parents are actually scared that their children will get shot at school, which is its own other problem. Like, what the hell's going on with our country? Right, that's, that's the concern. I want to make sure I can call my child in case it's the last time I ever get to speak to them. Or like, what the hell? What a terrible hellscape this is.
- [34:53]
D
Well, and I think he does again, focus. And I think he is right. There is a causal connection between technology use and the anxiety increase and the poor mental health outcomes. But we don't get as much discussion about, well, what made the technology use. It wasn't, was it just availability or were there other societal changes in that time that made the technology use what it is? So, and if you. Yeah, I remember being in my first round of graduate school at the time, even in the like late 2000s, and it was like the loss of the third space like it was becoming increasingly unlikely that people had places other than home or school slash work to exist that did not cost extravagant amount of money to access. And so it's like, well then, yeah, if you don't. Childcare became exorbitantly expensive. Yeah, we didn't have nuclear fan. Like, you know, nuclear family has always been a cornerstone of the American model of like living and success. It's like, well, who's going to watch my kids? Why I have to work.
- [36:14]
C
Our library had to disallow all children middle school age or younger to come in without an adult because they were so badly behaved that they couldn't be in the library, which should be, should function like a third space like that.
- [36:29]
D
Yeah, yeah. And so it's a, it's a definitely a problem. Now. His analysis of what the contributing problems are is very useful, I think, for us. Certainly something that I, with adolescent clients have to really coach and navigate because especially when clients are that like older adolescent age where I'm like, this might work for a couple years, but when you're in control of your own life, you're just gonna resent anything much more extreme than this. So let's try to get you to be willing to put down the device. But it's hard because it's like literally been there since like the four years old. Like, you learn to eat and you learn to have the iPad or the phone or whatever.
- [37:20]
C
Well, you gotta have it on y
- [37:21]
D
e too, of course.
- [37:24]
C
I mean, we're kind of guilty of that in our house. It was, well, not always, but it
- [37:30]
D
was the TV for the generations before it was there.
- [37:32]
C
Right. I mean, we're 80s kids. We are not you, Alan.
- [37:35]
B
Yeah, but you would just watch, you all watch the same thing. You know, we're going to watch this. I think some of it too, in the book. I don't think the book covers this quite as much, but there, there is a real purposelessness that a lot of kind of modern technologies have allowed to just cut down the response that like, it's not about I'm going to do this task or I'm going to do this activity for this purpose. Whether it's enjoyment, whether it's just to, to have something. I want to watch them while I fold laundry and then I will stop and I will do the next thing. A lot of it is, well, I have to because it's constantly yelling at me to pay attention to it. And now I'm sucked in. Like, I, I've started reading like more substacks from you know political things. And it is really easy to see how even as an adult who has very clear, like this is how I'm going to use my time for the next hour. Oh, but there's article I should probably read that real quick. That'll be fun. Oh, you know, like if I don't tell myself no, I have to read a chapter of whatever I'm reading, then I can check that one thing, then I have to go back. It's like this, this battle and I'm an adult.
- [38:45]
C
Yeah.
- [38:46]
B
To just not constantly be like let me look at this. And then that'll make me look at this and then that'll make me look at that and just you lose yourself, you lose that time.
- [38:53]
C
We as behavior analysts should have a very strong understanding of what is happening here. Right. Because these types of bottomless feeds are automatically reinforcing to just keep reading and keep reading and keep reading. And even if you're not, you know, clicking on things or liking things, depending on what platform you're on, anything that you're spending more time on looking at, it's logging that and it's recognizing that some component of this is, is reinforcing for you. So it's, you know, designing your own specific algorithm to feed you more and more things that you find automatically reinforcing to look at while also promoting anything that has additional discussion on it or additional like confrontation components related to it. So you're fed things that are interesting to you, that promote discord on the platform, et cetera, until you end up in a corner that is, you know, highly polarized and very specific to, to you and the things that you might want to look at, which just is a self fulfilling prophecy. So you know, we can understand how that is highly reinforcing and creates, you know, really strong habits and reinforcement patterns of behavior. It's also the easiest thing to do. Pick up your phone and start scrolling through something. Right. And that is, you know, least response effort with really high reinforcing value. Of course we're going to allocate our time towards that. It's, it's easy and we're adults and people who understand reinforcement and we still find ourselves in those types of traps. So just imagine if you're a kid with limited self control and without that understanding and with a highly vulnerable, you know, system that's still in the making. It's a recipe for disaster and potentially
- [40:39]
B
all you've known since you were, you know, one.
- [40:42]
C
Well, hopefully you're not on social media at one.
- [40:45]
B
Well that this screen will Provide you something you can pay attention to at all times. You never have to be bored again. Any other, any other final kind of like big, big picture thoughts, takeaways on the book before we, we do our dive in.
- [41:04]
D
It just made me sad.
- [41:05]
B
Yeah, I know. But the nice thing, if you're interested in reading the book and you're not joining us to the other side quite yet of, of the, of the episode. No, I don't mean that spiritually, that, you know, I think this book does cover a lot of ground, a lot of questions about how did we get here. It doesn't answer all of them and it doesn't focus on every aspect of how we sort of came to be in the state we're in right now, these challenges. But it really does make a case that there is at least a tentative causal link of these changes in how phones and, you know, mobile technology has been used to cause harm to children. And some suggestions that while not the be all, end all or at least a starting point, I think if you're sort of wondering, well, what do I do about this? There's at least a few that you're going to say, oh, I could do that, or ooh, that one sounds hard. You know, it can at least help you sort of decide what you want to do next with this information. And there was a follow up book. I did not, did not read it, but it was a book for teens called the Amazing Generation by Jonathan Haidt and by a co author Katherine Price. That's like a comic book slash information book that covers a lot of the material in here with a real focus on speaking to what a lot of teens are saying and that I don't want to just be looking at my phone all the time. I am realizing that this is not my best life and what do I do? Because I think they have a lot of questions and it would be nice if we had more answers for them as adults.
- [42:43]
C
Oh, that's better than me threatening to make my kids read this book.
- [42:47]
B
Oh yeah, that was Diana's suggestion this morning of if I ever catch you on your phone, when I said you can't be on your phone, I will make you read a chapter of Jonathan Hates the Anxious Generation every time. Because when Diana punishes the children, all right, it's totally, totally good. I try to do it. It's bad parenting.
- [43:04]
C
I was kidding.
- [43:05]
B
Not what you said.
- [43:07]
C
So that we can close this part out. If you are a parent, you should read this book even if you aren't sure you want to buy my book.
- [43:17]
B
We don't get any money if you read this book Dynamites. We got kicked back. All right. So let's take a little break and when we come back, let's dive into the Anxious Generation. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to our preview of our Anxious Generation Book Club by Jonathan Haidt. As you could hear in the intro, I think we were all pretty positive on this book. But if you'd like to read it and then see if your thoughts are the same as ours, you're going to want to get the whole episode, which you can get right now@patreon.com abainsidetrack and subscribe at the $10 and up level. Remember, that's two free CES and access to all of our book clubs from this year, previous years. Whenever you want a book club. And the future ones, we'll have another one coming out in the summer. We'll be reading Merrill Winston's Adventures in Special Education, so hopefully we'll see you there on the Patreon. Otherwise, we'll see you on our next episode. But until then, keep responding by.