C (26:31)
Hey, how you doing? Welcome to the show. Glad you're here. Hope you had a good weekend. Jack is going to be away for just like an hour. He's got to deal with some family stuff and then we'll return in triumph. And this actually is a decent opportunity to do something kind of long for me that I've been wanting to do for a while. It works better as a monologue than a conversation, and it has to do with a piece Jonathan Haidt wrote. I don't know if you know Jonathan. He's a social psychologist, professor, conducts all sorts of research. He's been part of some great books and we'll post this piece if you can't listen to the whole thing or you just want access to it@armstrongandgetty.com, the link. I'm not sure if you'll get paywalled. It was published in the Free Press. I hope not. But anyway, there's an old saying that's got a lot of truth to it, that youth is wasted on the young and wisdom on the old. And one of the things I have figured out as my hair has grayed is that you're either going to be shaped in what you do and who you are and how you see yourself by principles and beliefs you have that are your bedrock, your foundation, or you will be shaped by the society around you, which is increasingly technology, you know, social media, you know, the media media, online relationships and that sort of thing. And you don't need to adopt religion as your bedrock of belief. But you know, most of the great philosophies and religions of the world have several things that are in comm. And they just keep people grounded. On the other hand, popular culture, maybe that's the best term to use for the other alternative. So much of popular culture is determined by people who are profiting from you engaging in a certain set of behaviors that are not at all good for you, whether it's what you're eating or watching or scrolling through or whatever. And I think a lot of people, particularly young people, who are not grounded in that sort of bedrock belief I was talking about, they tend to be extra influenceable and lurable by what they see all around them. And it's not an insane thing to think I'm going to look around me and figure out how to behave. I will get my Cues from the world and then I will know what to do and who to be. But the problem is again, those people putting out those signals that we all take in all around us. It's like we're surrounded 360 degrees or whatever a sphere is. We're completely surrounded by those influences that have. Not only do they not have our best interests in mind or at heart, they don't even think of them. What we eat, what we watch, what we do all day long. Did you decide that because of your carefully held principles or because that's what people around you are doing anyway, particularly with young people? I think it's kind of insidious in the world today because as I've said many times, it used to be human beings inputs, the things we saw, heard, felt, smelled, whatever were immediately around us. The people we interacted with were in the same room with us or grandma on the telephone or whatever. Occasionally you watch the evening news, blah blah blah. Now it's the entire world, all the evildoers and sickos and morons and good people from all over the earth have access to your brain and your eyes and ears and your mind and your heart and your kids too. And I just don't think that's. That's not something human beings are built to deal with. Which brings us back to Jonathan Haidt's work of art journalism, the Devil's plan to ruin the next generation. Jonathan became aware earlier this year that someone had started a viral trend of asking irony there Viral trend asking ChatGPT this question, if you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generation without them even knowing it? And some of the responses were profound and unsettling. Quote I wouldn't come with violence. I'd come with convenience. Or I'd keep them busy, always distracted. I'd watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently. And the best part is they'd never know it was me. They'd call it freedom. Getting back to height As a social psychologist who's been trying since 2015 to figure out what on earth was happening to Gen Z, I was stunned. Because what the AI proposed doing is pretty much what technology seems to be doing to children today. Seem to be saying if the devil wanted to destroy a generation, he could just give them all smartphones. Then he points out that his work over the last decade has centered on one question. Why did the mental health of Gen Z, which is roughly the folks born between 1996 and 2012, including my daughter, why did the their mental health plummet in so many countries Starting in the early 2010s, he writes, I first focused on the role of overprotection coddling, which is probably part of it. But since then there's been a growing body of evidence implicating technology, particularly smartphones and social media. So borrowing the from the cybersecurity concept of red teaming, where you practice bad guys to try to hack into your system, essentially, he writes, I decided to ask ChatGPT myself how its devil would stunt adolescent development in the digital age. Because what better way to stop the ongoing invisible corrosion of the human spirit than by getting in the devil's head to understand how he's doing it? And it actually began if I were to think this through as a thought experiment, imagining the devil in a metaphorical sense, the most effective way to destroy the next generation without them realizing it would be through slow invisible corrosions of the human spirit rather than obvious attacks. And then I think I can skip the next section in which Jonathan Haidt says some things similar to what I was just saying, how religion or spirituality or firm beliefs draw us upward. Our better angels, as Lincoln would put it, whereas our inner demons pull us downward where we're more selfish, easily tempted, cruel, that sort of thing. And in his book the Anxious Generation, which is terrific, I devoted a whole chapter to spiritual degradation and online life pulling people downward. But I'm going to skip ahead to oh, one statistic, then his list of how the Devil's gonna do what the devil wants to do. They have been polling young people 12th grade boys and girls on a variety of different questions since the 1990s and for a very, very, very long time. If you asked boys and girls 12th grade that you're high school seniors, how often do you do you agree with this statement? Life often feels meaningless? From the beginning of the poll to like 2012, the numbers were 15, 16, 17%. And then around 2010 it was actually down like 12, 13%. Pretty consistent though, would say life often feels meaningless. 10 years later that 13% of girls was 33% from 13 to 33, and the boys who bottomed out around 11% then were at 12 are up to 22% saying life often feels meaningless. What the hell? What happened? Well, that's what he's talking about, obviously. Here's his list he's reprinting Chat GPT's Seven Step Plan, followed by his own commentary. Step number one erode attention and presence. If young people can't focus deeply, they can't learn, create or love well, the subtle trap is to addict them to constant stimulation Endless scrolling notifications, micro bursts of dopamine. They'll feel busy, connected, even informed. While in reality their capacity for sustained thought and presence erodes. They won't know what they've lost. Meanwhile, on the devil's side, Zuckerberg and you know, everybody else, you know Your Googles, your YouTubes, everybody in tech is saying, yeah, but we made hundreds of billions of dollars doing that to the kids. And the kids do it because that's what they see happening around them. Then he throws out some his commentary about the incredible difficulty youngsters have reading books, sitting through a 75 minute class, doing their homework in a way that is completely different than just 15 years ago. It becomes very, very hard to engage in what some scientists call deep work and what the devil called sustained thought and presence. Not to mention he mentioned being a friend, a real friend, a romantic partner. You're less likely to be successful in love and in work, and that's been borne out. Number two, confuse identity and purpose. Oh, this one's, this one's chewy. If you blur the sources of meaning, which for all of human history have been family, community, nation, faith, your vocation, I'm a carpenter and a damn good one, that sort of thing, young people drift. They'll be encouraged to see identity as endlessly fluid and performative, constantly managed for external approvals, likes, followers, etc. Instead of rooted in enduring values or commitments that makes them malleable, easily manipulated, anxious and dependent on external validation. That is so good. Here the devil used the word that best explains why some kids have been pushed into a pit of despair while others have stood their ground. Rootedness. And Haidt mentions that he and his co author in the Anxious generation found that those who were rooted in binding moral communities had some protection from the negative mental health effects of the new phone based childhood. Oh, that's a weird, that's a sickening phrase, isn't it? Phone based childhood teens who said religion is important in my family suffered smaller decrease increases in anxiety and depression. So did self discrimination grab conservatives who generally live in a more constraining, binding moral matrix, while progressive moralities aim to grant people more freedom to choose their values and create their own identities. And so they, they graft it. And conservative religious important kids are at the same level of life is often meaningless. A few ups and downs, a few percentage points, they're still around 10%. Whereas conservative religion not important went as high as like 25% a couple of years ago. And interestingly, as more and more kids are unplugging and realizing what social media is, their numbers have come down substantially. They don't think life is meaningless and nearly as high numbers. It's higher than it used to be, but liberal. But religion is important. Went to like 26% and they've come down a little bit. Liberal religion, not important is at 33% and still rising. Life often feels meaningless. Holy cow, I want to get this all in. So I've got to forge ahead. And again, we'll post this link under hotlinks armstrongandgetty.com Step 3 Flood them with information. Starve them of wisdom. Make everything available instantly, but strip away guidance about how to weigh, sort and interpret. Give them infinite answers without teaching how to ask good questions. In that haze, truth and falsehood feel equally slippery, so cynicism becomes natural. A generation that doubts everything believes nothing. And Haidt's first book was called the Happiness Hypothesis. I actually read that years ago and I met him and shook his hand. And it's funny, I hadn't thought of it until now, but I read all the wisdom literature I could find, he writes. East and West. I extracted 10 common psychological claims, then evaluated the them from the lens of modern psychology. The ancient insights into social relationships and consciousness were timeless and precious. It's not that people in ancient Rome, et cetera, were smarter and wiser than us. It's that we have the benefit of reading only the books and ideas that our ancestors thought to be worth preserving across hundreds of generations. So you don't read the crap from the Roman Empire because it all got thrown away anyway. He points out that all those ancient bits of wisdom lead you to the same place, which is the stuff we've been talking about. Uh, here's step number four in in ruining the kids souls. Then we'll have to take a break. Replace relationship with simulacra. That's phonies substitutes. Encourage digital substitutes for friendship, love, and intimacy. You know, I'm not I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I've been saying since nearly the dawn of Facebook, I'm sickened by the term friends. For people you barely know and barely interact with and you put a heart on their post or whatever on Facebook. That's not a friend. A friend is something incredibly important to the human soul, and that ain't it. Anyway, back to height. Here's how you ruin kids souls. Encourage digital substitutes for friendship, love and intimacy. People will accumulate connections while feeling lonelier than ever. Superficial bonds are easier to monetize and manipulate than the deep ties of family, friendship and community. The tragedy is that they may not realize what real connection feels like. The Devil targets real relationships because research consistently shows that having close relationships is one of the best predictors of happiness for the young and old alike. Not fake shallow online relationships. Real relationships. The evil Zuckerberg replies in the rest of the list coming up.
