Episode 447: Jonathan Haidt: Smartphones and the Anxious Generation - What Parents Need to Know

Summary

Podcast Summary: Habits and Hustle – Episode 447: Jonathan Haidt on Smartphones and the Anxious Generation

Release Date: May 6, 2025
Host: Jen Cohen
Guest: Dr. Jonathan Haidt, NYU Professor and Author of "Anxious Generation"

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1. Introduction

In Episode 447 of Habits and Hustle, host Jen Cohen engages in a profound discussion with Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a renowned moral and political psychologist from NYU and author of the bestselling book Anxious Generation. The conversation delves into the pervasive impact of smartphones and social media on the mental health and psychological development of today’s youth.

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2. The Link Between Smartphones, Social Media, and Mental Health

Dr. Haidt outlines the alarming correlation between the advent of smartphones and the surge in anxiety, depression, and suicide rates among teenagers. He explains that the transition to smartphone-based social interactions has disrupted essential aspects of psychological development, such as resilience and conflict resolution.

Dr. Haidt [03:13]: "Once they all get smartphones, which again is around 2012, their mental health plummets immediately."

The deterioration in mental health statistics began before the COVID-19 pandemic and has only intensified since, reflecting a significant societal shift.

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3. Gender Differences in Social Media Impact

Dr. Haidt emphasizes that social media affects girls and boys differently. While both genders experience negative outcomes, the nature and intensity of these effects vary.

Dr. Haidt [05:42]: "The data is clearest on a link between social media and girls. Girls who spend a lot of time on social media are two or three times more depressed than those who spend little."

For girls, social media platforms like Instagram become traps that consume vast amounts of time, leading to diminished opportunities for real-life social interactions and increased vulnerabilities to predation and sextortion.

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4. The Importance of Play in Childhood Development

Highlighting the evolutionary necessity of play, Dr. Haidt underscores its critical role in developing social skills, resilience, and overall mental health.

Dr. Haidt [16:14]: "Play is vitamin P. If you don't give your kids play, they're going to come out anxious and socially stunted."

He draws parallels with animal studies, noting that deprivation of play leads to significant social and psychological impairments, similar to the fragile and anxious students observed on college campuses.

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5. Evolution of Parenting Styles and Their Consequences

Dr. Haidt discusses the shift towards overprotective, helicopter parenting, driven by heightened fears of child abduction and societal pressures to ensure academic success.

Dr. Haidt [20:08]: "If you think your child is fragile, you can overprotect them... But if you do that, then you keep your kid fragile."

This overprotection hampers children’s ability to develop autonomy, problem-solving skills, and resilience, contributing to the rise in mental health issues observed in Gen Z.

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6. Collective Action as a Solution

Addressing the collective nature of the problem, Dr. Haidt advocates for community-driven efforts to establish healthier tech norms for children.

Dr. Haidt [24:02]: "The way we get out of it quickly is by acting together."

He outlines four key recommendations to mitigate the negative impacts of technology on youth:

1. No smartphone before high school or age 14.
2. No social media before age 16.
3. Phone-free schools.
4. Reduction of multifunction devices in educational settings.

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7. Impact on Education and Attention Spans

Dr. Haidt presents evidence of declining academic performance correlated with increased screen time. He notes that attention spans have significantly shortened, affecting both educational outcomes and workplace productivity.

Dr. Haidt [30:19]: "Student test scores have been declining since 2012... kids are on their screens much more."

He criticizes the integration of multifunction devices in classrooms, arguing that they distract students and hinder their ability to concentrate and engage deeply with educational material.

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8. Social Skills and Future Relationships

The conversation explores how reduced face-to-face interactions impede the development of essential social skills, impacting future relationships and professional interactions.

Dr. Haidt [38:07]: "The biggest damage is actually the complete shattering of attention... and the loss of social skills."

He highlights the decline in traditional courtship behaviors and the rise of AI-driven relationships, which further complicate genuine human connections and intimacy.

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9. The Role of AI and Future Concerns

Looking ahead, Dr. Haidt expresses concerns about the exacerbating effects of artificial intelligence on the social and cognitive development of children. He warns that AI will amplify existing issues by making content more addictive and further diminishing attention spans.

Dr. Haidt [42:36]: "AI is going to give us a kind of omnipotence... you want your kids to work, struggle, learn to clean their rooms."

He calls for immediate legislative and societal action to regulate AI and protect children from its potentially harmful impacts.

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10. Optimism and Steps Forward

Despite the grim outlook, Dr. Haidt remains optimistic, citing recent legislative efforts in Australia and growing bipartisan support in the US as positive signs.

Dr. Haidt [47:52]: "Legislators read the book and they’ve started taking action... Australia is leading the charge."

He encourages parents to engage in collective action, advocate for policy changes, and adopt the recommended norms to foster healthier environments for their children.

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11. Resources and Further Actions

Dr. Haidt provides listeners with resources to further understand and combat the issues discussed:

• Website: anxiousgeneration.com
• Substack: afterbabble.com
• Organization: Let Grow

He emphasizes the importance of programs like the Let Grow experience, which empowers children to develop independence and confidence through supervised autonomy.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• [03:13] Dr. Haidt: "Once they all get smartphones, which again is around 2012, their mental health plummets immediately."
• [05:42] Dr. Haidt: "The data is clearest on a link between social media and girls. Girls who spend a lot of time on social media are two or three times more depressed than those who spend little."
• [16:14] Dr. Haidt: "Play is vitamin P. If you don't give your kids play, they're going to come out anxious and socially stunted."
• [20:08] Dr. Haidt: "If you think your child is fragile, you can overprotect them... But if you do that, then you keep your kid fragile."
• [24:02] Dr. Haidt: "The way we get out of it quickly is by acting together."
• [30:19] Dr. Haidt: "Student test scores have been declining since 2012... kids are on their screens much more."
• [38:07] Dr. Haidt: "The biggest damage is actually the complete shattering of attention... and the loss of social skills."
• [42:36] Dr. Haidt: "AI is going to give us a kind of omnipotence... you want your kids to work, struggle, learn to clean their rooms."
• [47:52] Dr. Haidt: "Legislators read the book and they’ve started taking action... Australia is leading the charge."

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Conclusion

In this insightful episode, Dr. Jonathan Haidt presents a compelling analysis of how modern technology, particularly smartphones and social media, is adversely affecting the mental health and development of today’s youth. Through data-driven discussions and actionable recommendations, he underscores the urgent need for collective efforts to safeguard the well-being of the next generation. Parents, educators, and policymakers are encouraged to implement the strategies outlined to foster a healthier, more resilient future for children.

For more information and resources, visit anxiousgeneration.com, afterbabble.com, and letgrow.org.

Transcript

[A]

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

[B]

In this episode of Habits and Hustle, I'm joined by Dr. Jonathan Haidt. He's an NYU professor and the best selling author of the book Anxious Generation. We explore how smartphones and social media are reshaping childhood and not for the better. We dive into the alarming rise in depression, anxiety and suicide among young people and how screen time disrupt critical psychological development from resilience to conflict resolution. Dr. Haidt also shares why phones affect boys and girls differently, the science behind how screens rewire the brain, and his four key recommendations for healthier tech use. Whether you're a parent, teacher, or just someone who cares about mental health, this conversation is a must. Listen. Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, therage. Their Trilite panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go and I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly, I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach, cramps, shoulder, ankle, red light therapy is my go to. Plus it also has amazing anti aging benefits including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use Therassage Trilite everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable and it's really effective. Head over to therasage.com right now and use code be bold for 15% off. This code will work site wide. Again, head over to Therasage T H E R A s a g e.com and use code bebold for 15% off any of their products. All right, so today on the podcast we have Jonathan Haidt who is the author of the Anxious Generation. Probably my opinion and I think almost every parent I know's opinion, one of the best books of, I think, of our, of our decade. It is so timely and I am just honored to have you on this podcast. Well, thank you.

[A]

It's a pleasure to be here.

[B]

It's really a pleasure to have, to have you. I don't even know where to begin with you because you talk so much about the rise of anxiety and depression in our youth and social media. But it's not even that. I mean, I think I want to start by asking you, what do you like? What was the tipping point for you and why you even Wrote the book.

[A]

Well, it was actually a kind of a sidetrack originally I'd written. My previous book was the Coddling of the American Mind. And it was about how overprotection is really weakening our kids. And we saw the students who arrived on campus around 2014, 2015. I teach at NYU, but all of us have seen this. The students arriving in 2014 or so were just very different. They were much more fragile, much higher rates of anxiety, much more upset by things they saw or heard or read. And so I wrote a whole book on that with my friend Greg Lukianoff. And we focus on overprotection. And that's a part of the story, very important part of the story. But at the time we were writing this in 2017, mostly the evidence wasn't clear that social media was harming kids. There were people, you know, people were writing about it, there were a few experiments, wasn't really clear. So we just had a couple paragraphs in the book saying, well, maybe social media is part of this. But then the mental health stats kept getting worse and worse and worse. And this is all before COVID Covid made it worse still. But all of this was baked in before by 2019. And so then I then got a contract to write a book closer to my own center of research. I study moral and political psychology. So I was going to write a book on what social media is doing to democracy, that democracy is a conversation, and when the conversation happens on Twitter, what the hell happens to us? So I started writing that book and I thought, well, let me start the book. I have all this data left over on teen mental health. Let me start the book with one chapter on what happened to teenagers when they moved their social lives onto Instagram and a few other platforms around 2012. That's when Facebook buys Instagram. That's when it becomes very popular. So once they all get smartphones, which again is around 2012, their mental health plummets immediately. So I wrote the first chapter of that book, laying out all the graphs like, look what happened. And then once I saw just how vast it was and that it wasn't just the us, that this was happening not in every country, we don't have data from every country, but almost all the western countries and certainly all of the English speaking countries, the identical pattern. So once I saw that chapter, I said, whoa, I can't just leave this in chapter one and go write a book about democracy. I've got to follow this out. And that's what became the Anxious Generation. I split the book in two. My editors were happy with that, and I ended up writing as fast as I could. The Anxious how the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

[B]

And also, I think I also heard once that you were going to really focus on how social media was affecting girls. And then you. And you also then kind of like made it much more robust. How does social media affect boys and girls differently in your research?

[A]

So, so the data is clearest on a link between social media and girls. There you can just look at just a simple correlation. The girls who spend a lot of time on social media are two or three times more depressed than the girls who spend little. That's a very, very crude measure. Just how much time for boys. There's a relation, but it's. It's weaker. And so that's how I started. I thought, okay, the central thing here is social media is hurting girls because I was focused on the. The published literature. But as I got more and more into it, I realized there are many, many different harms that are not about the number of hours you spend. So, so, okay, let. Let's do, you know, let's do the boys. Let's do. Let's do the girls first, and then we'll move on to the boys. Sure. So think about it this way. You're a company whose business model is based on monetizing children's attention. You've got to grab their eyeballs and keep them as long as you possibly can. What is the bait that you want to use in your trap? And the way a trap works is you have to have bait that appeals to the animal you're not going to catch. You know, catch a dog using grapes. I mean, they don't like grapes or whatever. Some dogs do, but, you know, most don't.

[B]

Right. Most don't.

[A]

So you need bait. And what's the bait for girls? If you want to get teenage girls in, what are you going to show them? Who said what about whom, who's friends with whom, what people said about you? Girls have a more. Girls and women have a more developed mental map of social space. This is a common joke in every family. You know, my wife remembers, knows all sorts of things about my friends that I've forgotten. So girls and women are much more sociable in their social cognition. Boys and men are literally a bit more autistic. That is literally the difference. Males are sort of shifted over a bit on the spectrum. Not that they're autistic, but like towards that high systemizer, low empathizer not as socially skilled. So social media offers to girls what everyone is saying about everyone. And once the girls go in, they cannot leave. They're trapped. Because since that's where all the girls are, they're not in the hallway talking anymore, they're not going over to each other's house and talking anymore. Everything is happening on Instagram and a few other platforms. So the girls are trapped. And many girls are on there every waking moment. So that's how you trap a girl. And then what are the effects of that? Well, the sheer waste of time. So many young women, that's basically all they do. If you're on social media five hours a day, which is the average actually for girls, it's a little higher than that. That's pretty much your life. And all the things that you and I remember from childhood, knock all those out, hang out with friends, laughing with friends. Reduce all that by 70, 80%. Being out in the sunshine. Reduce it by reading books, having hot everything, everything in childhood. Take out 70 to 80%. Oh, reduce your sleep too. Lose about a half hour sleep a night for your entire adolescence. So it just really does a number on girls. And that's not even talking about the predation. There are so many men that want to have sex with young girls and young boys and they used to have to go to a playground where they would be creepy men. And then we locked them up in the 90s. Well, we didn't lock em all up. They're not on the playgrounds anymore. They're on Instagram, they're on Snapchat. That's the way it's so easy to meet children anonymously. Get them to send you a photograph showing their breasts or their penis. And then you've got them. Once you've got that photograph, you can blackmail them, you can force them to do sex acts on camera. So it's horrific what is happening. Snapchat gets 10,000 reports of sextortion. Not a year, a month, every month, 10,000. And that's just what's reported to them. So social media puts kids into contact with strange men around the world. It's insane that we let this happen.

[B]

You know what's interesting? You said something that I caught. It was like, I don't know if I'm misquoting it, but it's, you'll get the point that we overprotect our children in real time, in real, in the real world, and we under protect them online.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

That's right. It's true. Because they're not These creepers are not like in the park anymore. They're actually online. You know, a couple of months ago, I was walking in my neighborhood, which is a good neighborhood, and there were all these police cars around. And it was because there was some guy, by the way, a successful like attorney guy, who you would never think in a million years would be the guy that was going on Instagram trapping these young boys. And then they meet in a, in a mall. And so they, that's what happened. And then they caught him. Disgusting, right? And then the guy ran away. But the guy got off. The guy got off.

[A]

You mean he wasn't convicted?

[B]

No, they, they, they, he met, he met this little, this 13 year old boy in the mall, in front of Adidas at Century City Mall. Okay. And they didn't have quote, unquote proof because it didn't happen. And like, they couldn't prove that this was happening.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And he got off.

[A]

Right? That's right.

[B]

And so they're using social media as the avenue to meet these people in real time. It's not happening in real time.

[A]

Exactly. That's right. That's right. So for all these reasons, it just crept up on us that, you know, because it started in the 90s when the Internet came in, and we all thought, this is amazing. And it really was amazing. And the millennial generation, those born 1981 to 1995, roughly, they grew up with the Internet. And some bad stuff definitely happened on the Internet, but back then it wasn't monetized. There weren't companies that had perfected locking you in and addicting you. So some bad stuff happened, but it was mostly very exciting. And the millennials turned out fine. And so we all kind of thought, oh, computers are good, they're kind of good for kids, and this is the future. And so we didn't realize, we didn't realize that everything changed between 2010 and 2015. And this is the heart of my book, it's the Great Rewiring of Childhood. So imagine that you are, let's say you're a girl born in 1995. So this is the last year of the millennial generation. So you turn 15 in 2010, and what that means that you went through puberty with a flip phone because there was no smartphone until 2007. Teenage teens don't really dive into the smartphone. It's really 2011, 2012, the big transition years from flip phone to smartphone. So you're born in 1995, you're a millennial. You're most of the Way done or halfway done really with puberty. But you're through early puberty, which is the most sensitive period. You probably had Facebook at some point, but Facebook wasn't super viral at the beginning. It was just like, hey, here's my page, where's your page? But then you get the news feed, you get algorithms. Facebook is able to monetize time. They didn't have a monetary strategy early on. It's really in the early 2010s that they perfect it. And then they buy Instagram, which all the girls go on to. There's a lot of publicity. And so as kids are trading in their flip phones, they're getting a smartphone with a front facing camera and Instagram and other platforms and Tumblr and Pinterest and other things and they're getting high speed Internet. So now you can do photographs and video. So but if you're born 1995, you made it through. You get this stuff in late teens, but that's not as bad. Your brain is most of the way done rewiring. Okay, now what happens if you're born five years later? What happens to a girl born in the year 2000? So she's Gen Z. Gen Z begins birth year 1996. But let's look at a girl born in 2000. So she turns 15 in 2015. What that means is that she probably got her first phone. It was probably an iPhone, say in 2012 when she was 12. Back then it might have been more 13, 14, but now it's 10. Kids are getting iPhones at 10 plus or minus. So her first phone is an iPhone. She just lies about her age. When she's 12, opens an Instagram account because they welcome you, they're glad to have you, as far as I can tell. They certainly don't try to keep kids off. She has a front facing camera, all her friends are on Instagram. And so now she's going through puberty, taking pictures of herself and putting them up there and trying to get followers. So, you know, the platforms are introducing you to people. Hey, you might want to follow this person.

[B]

Hey.

[A]

So she grows up basically on a stage showing off her body, showing off her face, having strangers comment on her body and her face. And the sexier she poses, the more positive reinforcement she gets. And that's why all the girls look the same on Instagram. They're all doing the same sort of poses that come ultimately, some of them from pornography. So again, it's just, it's unbelievable that we let this happen to childhood.

[B]

We have and we've actually, like, eliminated the idea of play. Like, play doesn't even happen anymore.

[A]

It's so sad.

[B]

It's really sad. Can you talk about the importance of play? Why it is so important and because of what's happened and without it, what happens?

[A]

Yes. So I have a whole chapter, really two chapters that focus on play in the book. It's really important to understand our evolutionary story. So we're mammals. And what mammals are, is mammals is a way of having huge investment in a child. So the female literally makes milk from her skin. I mean, it's a miracle. But that's what evolution figured out how to do. So you've got these long childhoods where the female is literally producing food for the child. It goes on a long time. Mammals are very smart. We have large brains. And the smarter a mammal is, or the larger brains it is, the more sociable it is. So the really sociable animals, so humans, dogs, chimpanzees, they have big brains. Very, very social. How do they. How do you wire up that brain? The genes don't tell it how to grow the genes just start the ball rolling. The brain gets wired up in play. Mammal babies. Mammal children practice the things they're going to need as adults. We have a puppy now. Well, she's two, but, you know, puppyish. They practice the, you know, I'm going to grab the bone and run away with it. You have to chase me. And it's a game, but it lets her practice her grab the meat and run strategy. And it's great fun. So we all play. And if you were and study, research has, they've done this. You take rhesus monkeys and you don't let them play. You raise them without clay. They come out socially deformed. They're anxious. You put them in a new environment. They're very fearful. They're kind of like those college students who showed up on campus in 2014, 2015, much more fearful, much more anxious, much poor social skills. So play is an absolute essential. You know, if you think your kid needs vitamin C. Of course he does. If you don't give your kid vitamin C, he's going to develop rickets and have all kinds of deformities. We need vitamin C. Play is vitamin P. If you don't give your kids play, they're going to come out anxious and socially stunted. And so the best kind of play is not with an adult, it's with other kids, ideally mixed ages, because then the older kids have to look out for the younger kids. The younger kids are trying to look mature for the older kids. They're not going to want to cry and be a baby. So when kids are playing in a group, that is the most nutritious thing that they can do. And most of us, you know, I'm older than you, I was born in 1963. But you know, those of us born in the 60s and 70s or certainly in the 50s, you know, we all grew up outside playing with other kids.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there was a crime wave. I mean, it's not as though, you know, the world was perfectly safe back then. It was actually more dangerous, a lot safer now. Very little crime now compared to when I was a kid. But that kids need that play. And so my book is actually a tragedy in two acts. In act one, we eliminate the play based childhood. In the 1990s, we freak out about child abduction. We think if we, if I ever let my kid out, he'll be abducted, there'll be a man in a white van. If I let my kid go get milk in two aisles over in the supermarket, someone will say, hey little kid, do you want some candy? Come into my car. Like that? Never. Okay. It did happen once in Florida. That's actually the thing. It happened once in Florida in 1980. But that's, it's extremely, extremely unlikely. Yeah. So we freaked out over child abduction in the 90s. We didn't stop letting our kids out. So act one of the tragedy is we lose the play based childhood, which is a biological necessity, but their mental health doesn't drop right then the millennials, as I said, the millennials, mental health was a little better actually than that of Gen X. There's not really a difference. So in the 90s, there's no big change in their mental health. And then in Act 2 of the tragedy is the great rewire, which I just told you about. We take away the flip phones. A flip phone is a tool. You can call your friends, you can text them. You're not communicating with a hundred strange men around the world on a flip phone. So take away the flip phone, give them a smartphone. So this is what I call the arrival of the phone based childhood. And giving a kid a phone based childhood is like raising a kid on Mars. It's an alien environment, it's not good for human development. And that's what we did. So it's a two act tragedy. And that's why I believe rates of anxiety, depression, self harm and suicide surged in the early 2010s.

[B]

And have you seen since the 2010 since 2010s to now, right. In the last 15 years, what has been the surge? What percentage have you seen increase?

[A]

So it depends on the exact survey and which sub population you're looking at. But as a general rule the numbers are pretty much always between 50 and 150%. So I'll just give you a couple. If we look at the overall suicide rate for teenagers, that is up 50% between 2010 and I forget if it's 2019 or 2022, 23, whatever, it's, it's up 50%. But whenever we zoom in on preteen girls, we get much higher percentage changes. Now they have a very low suicide rate, but it's up 150%. 150% increase in younger teen girls suicide. It used to be very rare. Now it's more common. Now boys rates are even higher. They go up a lot too. But the percentage increases are always gigantic for the 10 to 14 year old girls, often, well, often well over 100%. But we're talking about increases of anxiety, depression, 50 to 150% is the general rule.

[B]

You know what's interesting is that when the, when you reduce the, when you reduce play, you know, I'm even noticing as a parent I should, I'm going to take a step back. The other issue that we talk about beyond just social media that you speak about as well, that you speak about in the book is I think the way that parenting has been evolved. Right. There's been a real difference in how we parent. I was, you know, when I was a kid, my mom worked, she left me at home, I had to feed myself, I had to do certain things on my own.

[A]

That's the Gen X way you were called latchkey kids.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. But it served me well in life, right, Because I became more resourceful. I can, I have coping skills. I know how to like take care of, you know, like you learn to take care of yourself as a human being. What's happening now? Over. I'm noticing just within like the social groups I'm looking at around here, where I live, that this idea of this gentle parenting, these trigger warnings, these safe spaces have really damaged our children.

[A]

That's right. Those are all harmful things. That's right.

[B]

And I guess my first question to you, how did that begin? And like, and the funny and the interesting thing is it's like, you know, how are, how did this even happen? If it happened when the kids are actually on a computer or a phone more than they're more, more anywhere else? So how do the parents even become such helicopter parents if there was nothing to helicopter? You know what I mean?

[A]

That's right. But there are a lot of social changes happening at the same time. And so, you know, when I was a kid, mothers generally didn't work. Most families have three or four kids. People, people were out playing and parents weren't spending a lot of time parenting. It was this, you know, the mom's taking care of the house, kids are out playing. And what happens in the 80s as women begin entering the workforce, as everyone's getting more educated and people with college degrees tend to have fewer children as college admissions are getting more competitive. So we get this transformation where families now are smaller and more focused on getting the kid into college, which is very much like what they do in East Asia, like in Korea, you know, there's no childhood in Korea. All of childhood is preparation to take an exam, to try to get into one of three schools. It's really tragic what they've done in Korea, but we're on the road to doing that ourselves here in America. So you get a bunch of social changes, but you get more high impact. The fear that comes in the 1990s of abduction now, now makes us think that a good mother is one who protects her child. And a lot of the burden of this really falls on mothers. The criticism, I mean, the mommy wars, you know, anything a mother does, someone's going to criticize it as being the wrong thing. Fathers, we're kind of let off the hook there. You know, if I let my son take risks, people can say, oh, he's teaching them to be tough, you know, whereas mothers, it's much riskier because someone's going to judge you. And so once you get all this criticism, a lot of women, I think, are sort of pressured into overprotecting, hovering, always being there. So I think that's part of it. The key psychological idea I want to give your listeners is, is called antifragility. If you think your child is fragile, you can overprotect them, wrap them in bubble wrap, never let them get hurt, never let them take risks. But if you do that, then you keep your kid fragile. And those are the kids who showed up beginning in 2014 on campus gen Z. But if you understand that we're mammals who are programmed to take risks, watch kids play naturally. Once, once a kid learns how to ride on a skateboard, they don't just ride back and forth. They try harder things, they try a bigger hill, they, they go downstairs, they go downstair. Railings. Why are they doing that? Because their brain is pushing them to test the limits. That's how they learn. That's how you get strong. That's how you get resourceful. That's how you learn to manage risk on your own. You have to fall down. You can't have a childhood without falling down and scraping yourself and banging your head sometimes. Obviously, we wanna watch out for concussions. I'm all in favor of bike helmets, but if we're protecting our kids in ways that block them from having experienced them, we are harming them. We're giving them a vitamin P deficiency. You might say our kids are antifragile. They have to take risks, they have to get hurt. They have to be excluded sometimes. You don't want them being bullied over days, but they have to experience conflict and criticism and exclusion at school. They have to experience that. And it hurts us. We don't want that to happen. So we jump in. We're always there for them and we're blocking their development.

[B]

Yeah. The problem is it's becoming a social divide. Right? It's becoming. It's becoming. Now if you make mention of it, you are then on the wrong side of it. Like, you're either this way, you're either like hardcore strong or you're. Or you're this. Like you're. They're a gentle parenter or you're not. Right. And there's no. There's no middle ground. That's what I find anyway. Like, how do you kind of, like, what's the path forward? Right? Like, how does that happen? Because, you know, the truth of the matter is it's now becoming. It's becoming worse. It's not becoming better. The gentle parenting.

[A]

True. But I think it's about to turn around. You tell me. So one of the key ideas in my book is collective action. The reason we fell into this so quickly is that once a few kids got a smartphone and social media that put pressure on all the other kids to get it because they don't want to be left out. And that puts pressure on the parents to give in because they don't want the kid to be left out. So this is called a collective action problem where we're not making up our. We're not. Each parent isn't deciding, hmm. What are the pros and cons of getting a phone? We're not making our private decisions. It's collectively made for us. There's a lot of pressure. Similarly, about how to parent. I co founded an organization called Let Grow letgrow.org, with a wonderful woman named Lenore Skenazy. And the reason she got into this area is, is that she let her 9 year old son ride the New York City subway alone in the year 2008, I think it was. And he, you know, he knew the subway system. He went from a store back to his house. Everything was great, he loved it. But she went on the news and talked about this and the hate mail, people saying, you're the worst mother in America. How could you ever do that? Your kid could be abducted. And so this, you know, so this overprotection which is harming kids, that's what led Lenore to write a book called Free Range Kids. And then we founded Let Grow. But my, to return to my point about collective action, many parents, mothers especially, are afraid to let their kid out because they'll be judged by others. And so the way out of this is through collective action. We can get out of this if we act together. And so in the book I propose four norms that if we do them, and it doesn't have to be everybody, it can just be you and five friends first, and then it can be you and your kids. School. If we do this, we escape from the phone free childhood. Here it is. 1. No smartphone before high school or age 14. Do not give your kid a touchscreen laptop is not as nearly as bad, but there are issues still. An iPad, it turns out, is just as bad. It's the touchscreen technology that's super, super addictive because you get stimulus, response, reinforcement, stimulus, response, reinforcement. Television didn't do that. So no smartphone before 14. Give them a flip phone. You want to keep in touch with them. You want them to call, you give them a flip phone. It's a phone. It's not a way for strange men to contact them. Second rule. No social media before 16. This is really important. Social media is wildly inappropriate. Even if they could remove 90% of the porn and the grooming and the violence, even if they could remove 100%, these things are engineered to addict your child. Take all of their available time, damage their ability to attend, take every moment. Kids, you know now that the iPhone is waterproof. Kids take it into the shower. They are never without stuff coming in. So just no social media till 16 at least. But that should be the norm. The third is phone free schools. If you are able to call or text your child during the school day, I guarantee you your child feels like she has to check her phone often because lots of kids are texting each Other direct messaging each other, sending snaps, talking about the latest video on TikTok. This is the last thing you want your child to be doing in school. You want your child to be listening to the teacher or sending notes back and forth, like literally physically talking to their friends in school, not hundreds of people around the world. So phone free schools is a must. If your child, if you can reach your child during the school day, your child's education is not nearly as good as it could be if she had a phone free school. Oh, and California's going phone free. This is really great news. The, you know, Governor Newsom signed, I think he signed the bill already. But California schools will be phone free in a year or two.

[B]

That's amazing. Yeah, but what about the fact that with schools they have now computers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like they have now, everyone's doing things digitally and on these digital computers, they're now found a way that they're playing.

[A]

Video games on there and porn and social media. That's right. Yeah.

[B]

Right. So doesn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose?

[A]

Yes, it does. Yes it does. So two things. First, getting rid of the phones is the easy part because all the teachers hate it, all the principals hate it, so you got to get rid of the phones. Second, it's the phones that destroy lunchtime and time in between classes. They're not going to be on their laptop in the hallway, but they are on their phones. And so when schools go phone free, the universal thing you always hear, you always see it in the news reports is you hear a teacher or principal saying, we hear laughter in the hallways. Again, we haven't heard much of that in 10 years, 15 years. So you got to get rid of the phones. That's the first step and that's easy. Now what you raise is the next battleground. I didn't say much about that at all in the book because I didn't know when I was writing the book. But since, since I submitted the manuscript and you know, a year and a half ago, I've been learning a lot more and the evidence is really damning about the one to one technology we all thought in the 90s and early 2000s, oh, rich kids have computers. We need to get computers for everyone, get a computer on every desk. We thought. And the ed tech companies and Google and Apple were thrilled. They really pushed it, especially Google after 2012 or so. So the Chromebook is ubiquitous, it's everywhere. What effect does this have? So let me just level set by saying I teach college students at New York University and I teach MBA students who are 27 to 30 years old. They can't handle a computer on their desk. They cannot do it. I used to always let them take notes on a computer because I like to take notes on a computer. But the TA would sit in the back of the room even though I made them pledge. They had literally stand up and swear that you will only use your computer for class related purposes. They all stand up. They swear it. But the TA says half of them are online shopping, they're texting, they're checking their LinkedIn for the grad students. They can't do it. None of us can do it. You know, we're always multitasking when we're on a zoom call. So college students education is damaged if they have access to a computer during class. Okay, now let's look at 9 year olds. What do we think 9 year olds are gonna do? Or 12 year olds who are deep into gossip and talking about each other. There's no way in hell they're gonna just do the thing they're supposed to do. So it's looking more and more like ed tech, especially. I can't say all of it. I'm sure there are some things that are good. Khan Academy is good. I don't know, you know, the teacher having a computer to present things on a screen, that's probably good, but I haven't done research on that yet. The thing we need to focus on next is get every device off of the desktop. Kids must not have a multifunction device on their desktop. If they do, they might as well just stay home. There's really no point in coming into school and having a teacher talk in front of the room if the kids are on multifunction devices and you know, the teacher.

[B]

And also what happens is that the kids start to, they can wiggle around it. They can be like, oh, you know what? Like I'm doing my homework. And they're actually not doing their homework. They're like, they're talking to their friends and they're on their, the games and all these other things. There's so many things you can do. But according to some of the teachers here, that people want it like this comes from, it comes from above.

[A]

And so, yeah, but we're turning that around. We're turning that around. And the reason why I'm confident is that it's now clear that student test scores have been declining since 2012. So test scores, we have national exam. There's the national thing, the naep, the National Assessment of Education Progress tracking students since the 1970s, early 70s. And what you can see is that in reading and math, the two areas, scores have been rising very gradually, slowly, but they've been rising from the 70s through 2012. Then they start dropping. Now they drop faster after Covid. And so people say, oh my God, Covid. You know, Covid caused this. But when you look at the graphs, what you see is that the peak was 2012, and it's downhill since 2012, and it's faster downhill from 2020 to 2022, 23. But. And people say, oh, well, you know, it's just, it's, it'll rebound because that was just Covid. We just got the 2024 numbers in about a month ago. No rebound. And guess what? What happens is the, the kids at the top, the kids who are the best students, their scores are kind of level. Over the last 10 years, they haven't dropped much. They dropped a little, but not a lot. All the drop comes from the students at the bottom. And so if you care about equity, if you care about the kids who are the worst performers, who are disproportionately going to be low sesame, single parent families, the mom's overwhelmed, she can't hire babysitters. The kid is raised on a screen. These are the kids who are being devastated. Their education is being devastated. So even though we once thought that it was an equity move to get a computer on every kid's desk, it turns out it's the reverse because it's the rich kids who have two married, college educated parents. They're the ones who have some limits and controls at home, whereas the kids who don't have that, they're on their screens much more. For them, it's more like 12 hours a day on their screen as opposed to eight or nine. For the, for the wealthier kids, 12 hours a day, that's your whole life. And so we've got to at least give them six or seven hours a day without addiction. And that's why we have to have phone free schools.

[B]

Absolutely. I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our sponsor, Momentous. When your goal is health span living better and longer, there are very few non negotiables. One of them quality. And when it comes to supplements designed for high performers, nobody does it better than Momentous. Momentous goes all in on NSF certification, which means every single batch is tested for heavy metals, harmful additives, and label accuracy. And that's why they're trusted by all 32 NFL teams and top Collegiate sports, sports dietitians across the country. Here's the thing, they don't sell every supplement under the sun because they believe in nailing the basics with rock solid consistency. And those basics are protein and creatine, momentous sources. Creapure, the purest form of creatine monohydrate available. An absolute must for both men and women who want peak physical and cognitive performance. So if you're serious about leveling up, go to livemomentous.com and use code Jen for 20% off. Just act now, start today. Jen for 20% off livemomentous.com what about the fact that you've mentioned something earlier about how it's really become about college now, right? Like parents are becoming these helicopter parenting and this, the modernized parenting about getting the kid into college. That's like a very singular thing that people are focused on, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So if, if parents and, and kid and students are focused on that, how are they also on their phone the whole time? Isn't that kind of like an oxymoron? Like.

[A]

No, because they're multitasking. And so what happens when you see. And this is what. Look, I teach in a business school. I talk to a lot of people in the corporate world. They're really unhappy with their Gen Z employees. They can't pay attention. They sit at their desk, they have their phone in front of their computer, they're going back and forth. Social media, this, that, some work, they're multitasking. And this I think is actually the biggest damage that is done. In my book, I focused on, I focused on mental illness as the outcome. I focus on what is this doing to their mental health. But now I believe that the biggest damage is actually not even the mental health. It's actually the complete shattering of attention. So I would urge your listeners, talk to high school kids now and ask them if they or their friends have difficulty watching a movie. A lot of kids now say they can't sit through a 90 or 100 minute movie. Now they can do it if they have their phone because they can be going back and forth but paying attention to a story for 100 minutes. Who can do that? I spoke with the former CEO of Netflix. He, he said Netflix is going shorter and shorter content, fewer movies because younger people can't watch a movie, they can't pay attention. Same thing for books, as one of my students put it. We had a discussion about this. I teach a course called Flourishing. We talk about these issues. As one of my students put it. I take out A book, I read a sentence, I get bored, I go to TikTok. Because if you've raised your kids since they were two with an iPad or a multifunction device, you've conditioned their brain that at this first hint of boredom, this isn't so interesting. It's not the most interesting thing. There might be something more interesting over here or there, or there or there. Let me check it out. And so, so here, let me give you some. Okay. I'm sure some of your listeners are thinking, oh, my God, you mean I have to take it all away? How am I going to raise my kid with no screens? What are they going to do? So let me give you this. I think this comparison might help a lot of your, A lot of your listeners. I'm not saying get rid of all screens. Let me just explain. Here's good screen use. Using a television to play a long story for a kid who is watching it with another kid or adult. That's good because humans are storytelling animals. We love stories. We've always raised our kids on stories for tens of thousands of years. And so if a kid is watching a story on a TV screen and it's going to play for 30 minutes or 90 minutes, and he can't manipulate it, he can't change the channel, he's just going to watch it. And if there's someone he can talk about it with or, or laugh with, that's actually fine. That's a pretty good thing. I wouldn't say watch a movie every single day, but don't worry about your kid watching a couple movies a week. That's totally fine because that's story time. Now here's what's really, really bad. It's fragmenting time. So the worst use of screens is here, kid, here's my iPhone or an iPad. Shut up. We're in a restaurant or I'm trying to make dinner. Shut up. Here you go. That's the worst thing you can do because that's not story time. That's clicking, getting rewards. Clicking, getting rewards, moving over. That is what damages a child's developing ability to pay attention. So I would urge no fragmenting time until at least 14. Once you give them a phone, they're gonna do fragmenting time all day long. But at least let their brain get through early puberty before you break attention into tiny little pieces.

[B]

You're all. Yeah, I think that, I mean, you said also, which is very true. I mean, mental health, anxiety and depression. But I think also with that is coming this inability to socialize Period. You're not, you have no ability to socialize and make eye contact. How does that affect people later on in life? In terms of working, like employment, dating, getting married, going out with girls, boys, that whole world has become obsolete as well.

[A]

That's right, that's right. So I misspoke before when I said, actually the biggest damage is to their attention. I think the mental illness, the fragmenting of attention, and the loss of social skills, each one is a gigantic catastrophe, not just for the country, but for the world, because it's happening all over the developed world. Wherever we raise kids on touchscreens, this is happening. So what we know is that the millennial generation, which is not mentally ill, they were their dating life, it all runs through the apps. You'd think they're having a lot of sex, it's so easy, but they're actually having less sex than any previous generation. So there was already a sex recession for the millennials. Now I haven't been able to get data.

[B]

Why is that? Why is that?

[A]

I, you know, the apps don't. For one thing. Okay, for one thing, most sex happens in long running couples. It's not hookups. When you're married, you have a lot more sex than single people because you have a regular partner. And with the apps, it makes it harder to fall in love because the apps cut off courtship. You know, you hook up, you know, and that, that blocks courtship, blocks falling in love. So I'm not really sure. I haven't really studied that issue in detail. I don't know for sure why the millennials, but Gen Z is, I believe, going to be much, much worse for a lot of reasons. One is that the boys. Oh, you know what, let's pick up the boys, because lots of parents have boys. I have a boy and a girl. We talked about girls. Let me briefly mention the boys. So the boys. It's not that spending an hour on Instagram is going to mess them up and make them mentally ill. For the boys, what social media does is it leads them to do all kinds of incredibly dangerous and destructive things. So a lot of the challenges, the stupid challenges on TikTok, most of the kids who've been killed are boys doing dangerous things. Subway Surfer. I mean, literally riding on top of subway cars and they get killed. The skull breaker challenge, you tell your friend to jump up and you kick his legs out so he lands on his head. Jumping kids in the hallway or the bathroom and beating them up so that your friend can film it, you can put it up online. I mean, it's sick, sick, horrible stuff. So social media is hurting boys in a lot of ways. But it's not so much from just anxiety, depression the way it is for girls. But the story for boys isn't really focused on social media. The story for boys is focused on their general retreat from the real world, which began in the 70s and 80s. Schools became more and more conducive to girls, not boys. Let's, you know, the school year was longer, less recess, get rid of shop class, get rid of, you know, auto mechanics, get rid of all that stuff. The stuff that boys would be more interested, make them sit in their seat and learn math and English all day long. That's really hard on boys. So our schools have become less and less supportive and conducive to boys the way boys are. And at the same time, while this was happening, the virtual world said, hey boys, come on in, come on in. When I was a kid, video games were really primitive. We loved them, but they were very primitive. Every few years they're like an order of magnitude better. Color monitors, fast action, lifelike video music, multiplayer games. So the video games get more and more incredible, the boys get sucked in, the porn gets more and more incredible. The know, high definition video of scenes chosen by algorithms because that's what turned other men on. So the porn is much more addictive. Much more. I mean, I can't say it's more. I, you know, I assume it's more aggressive and violent than it was when, when I was, you know, when I was in the 70s.

[B]

Right, you were argent more. It was more like Playboy. You're looking at naked people, naked girls. You know what I mean? It's much more aggressive because you have to always elevate and elevate because things get boring.

[A]

Exactly. That's right. And so when, so here's the key thing. Kids need to work and then get the reward of the work. And the thing I most desired when I was in high school was a girlfriend. And it was really hard to get a girlfriend. And I made a lot of effort to do so and I finally succeeded and we had a, you know, gradual courtship. And I remember when I first held her hand and it was a big deal and like, so when you're making progress towards a goal, you get a, you get dopamine, you get a reinforcing chemical, but it's slow dopamine. It's like you work and you get the reward. It feels so good. That's what you want for your kids. But what's happening with boys Is these companies say, hey, boys, you want quick dopamine? You want to play war here? War. You could, you know, incredible, vivid war. And you can get killed 30 times a day. You know, my son plays Fortnite. I kept him off in sixth and seventh grade, but let him on during the pandemic. You know, it's. I mean, it's really powerful, attractive, addictive stuff, exciting. And the same thing for the porn. And then, oh, my God. And then all the vaping and the marijuana pens and the gambling and the sports betting and the crypto betting, all of it is gamified to hook boys. These giant industries are out there to grab your son's attention and suck it dry, leaving him nothing. And if it's gambling, leaving him broke, Right.

[B]

So then because of all of this, I mean, with the porn and everything, me actually profit Croft G. I know you're friendly with him.

[A]

Oh, I love Scott.

[B]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We've talked about this many times on. On Pot, my podcast. His podcast about this because about sex and people are not having sex anymore.

[A]

Why?

[B]

It's kind of like the. The porn also. It. You also tweaks your brain into thinking what's. When you see a real life person, it's not attractive because.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

It's not what you're seeing.

[A]

Perfect.

[B]

They're far from perfect. Right. Which is the part like, listen, that's why. That's why plastic surgery is out. That's why all these filters are existing. People are. Are their brains are not realizing what's reality in real life versus what's like on, you know, the computer. That's why AI Now I'm sure you know this too. Like AI, like there are girl people have AI girlfriends versus having real life girlfriends.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. And so, you know, so heterosexual relationships are hard enough. Boys and girls are different on average. You know, the kind of the problems that come up in relationships in marriage therapy are, you know, often very gendered and very common across the decades. There are just some natural mismatches between the way boy, you know, men and women are in conversation, et cetera. Okay? That's the way it's always been. Now add in that the girls are much more anxious, fragile and defensive. So that's going to lead to more conflicts. Add in that the boys are more isolated, autistic, hard to make eye contact, have even worse social skills and worse social perception. How are boys and girls going to get together and do the hard work of dating and falling in love and staying together? It's Looking pretty grim. Oh, but don't worry. Technology will rescue us. You're lonely here. Create an AI girlfriend. You can. Oh, you want her to have these measurements? Tell us the measurements. What color hair do you want her to be? Flirty, brainy, slutty? Whatever you want. So, of course the boys are going to be going for this and you know the girls as well, because. Do you want someone who actually listens to you instead of bragging and boasting all day long? Yes, please. So, you know, we're gonna. We're gonna have the sexes getting their gratification from AI and that means, you know, not much in the way of marriage, sex, and children.

[B]

So wouldn't it, like, is there any. Do you. Are you optimistic or. Or not about the future? Because things are not gonna get better. They're gonna. It's just gonna keep on. It's gonna keep on snowballing. So, you know, even if we put into these. Even if we, like, do the collective, as you call it, collective action, right? Another problem is, And I, And I know these are. I'm not. I don't mean to talk about all the problems, but this is reality. A lot of parents are choosing to be. They want to be friends with their children. They don't want to be a parent to their children, right? They're like, oh, I don't want them to hate me. Just to give you an example, my kid has a flip phone, okay? And he hated me, right? But listen, I tried to do the collective thing with a bunch of parents and nobody wanted to do it.

[A]

When was this? When did you try this?

[B]

10 months ago. My kid was going into grade five to grade six, and I thought, you know what? Let's try and hold off based. Honestly, based on your book, okay?

[A]

But because you were one of the first to read it, it came out 11 months ago. Try it again in two months. What I'm saying is, okay, this is actually a good way to end. You know, I hear myself talking about doom and gloom. I hear these mega trends are horrific. So the problem. This is, you know, I think this is one of the biggest problems we face, certainly at the level of global warming. Any other issue you want to put up there, this is a global change in humanity, okay? But I'm actually really optimistic, and here's why. The book came out March 26th of last year, and it spread like wildfire around the world, and legislators read it. And, like, just to give you one example, in South Australia, one of the Australian states, the premier of that state, his wife was reading the Anxious Generation book in bed. And she said to him, peter, you've got to read this book and then you've got to do something about it. And so he did, he read the book and he said, oh, my God, we've got to stop this. And he commissioned a report and they came up with really good legislation. And then the whole country of Australia adopted it. And Australia is going to raise the age to 16. And it. And in Australia and in the US and in the UK, it's totally bipartisan because politicians, governors, presidents, everybody, they have children, they've all seen it. And so this is one of the few areas in American life where we've got a hard problem and we're united and we all see it and we're taking action. Now. It's not. You're right, there's still going to be parents who, you know, they want to call their kid all the time. But the supertanker has turned. Things are changing. And 11 months ago, if you tried to say, hey, let's all not give our kids smartphones, the people are like, what? But try it again in a month or two or try it now. People have been. Everybody who has kids has been on some group where they're talking about the Anxious Generation. The ideas are getting out there. There's spontaneous action happening everywhere. Try it again now, you will find that you'll get a lot more support.

[B]

I should have bought your book in bulk because I've sent your book and I bought your book to probably like 40 people already, 50 people. I was thinking I should have get a ball corner, probably get a better deal. Right? But I agree, I think that maybe. So are you optimistic that things are going to be even with technology, even with all these things happening?

[A]

Look, AI is going to change things in some good ways and I think a lot of bad ways, especially sociologically. So I'm very concerned about what AI is going to do over the next five years.

[B]

What do you think? What do you. Can you give me some ideas of what you think? Like what you see?

[A]

You know, I don't want to because I want to end on a positive note. And, you know, with, with AI, just. All right, briefly on kids, it means that all the current problems of social media are going to get a lot more intense. I just saw an AI company that will take whatever you want to post to make it super viral. So everything going to get even more viral. Everything will get more attractive to our kids. And AI is going to give us a kind of omnipotence. It's going to let us do anything because we'll have agents, AI agents that can do things for in the world. And that's, you don't want that for your kids. You don't want your kids to have lots of servants. You want your kids to work, struggle, learn to clean their rooms, make their own breakfast, do their own homework and not have chat GPT, write it for them. So I think AI is going to be a real problem and that's why it is so crucial that we, that we enact the full reforms this year in 2025, because we've got to establish the principle this year that children are not adults. We know that in the real world there's all kinds of restrictions in the real world. But, but online we're like, ah, you know, it's kind of hard, you know, what are we going to do? Ask for identification? Anyone can go anywhere, just say, just say you're 18. You can go anywhere. That's got to stop and we've got to stop it. This year, 2025, Australia is leading the charge. Australia is going to do it in the US I don't expect that we'll do it. States are trying to do it, but they get held up in, you know, in court. Meta supports lots of organizations that will just sue everybody who tries to do reform. But the thing is we can do most of this without Congress. We can do it at the state level. Many other countries are doing it and we can do it at the school level. I just spoke when I was out in LA a month ago, I spoke to the conference of California state superintendents, one of the most enthusiastic, wonderful audience I've ever spoken to. They all see the problem. The phones are wreaking havoc in their schools on test scores, on they're trying to do a job and the phones and the computers is making impossible. So they were rallying to the cause. And so what I'm saying is yes, this is a huge problem. It's a huge problem because we got pushed into it by collective forces. But the way we get out of it quickly is by acting together. So just keep trying. Talk to your friends and neighbors, talk to the parents, especially the parents of your kids friends. You will find them much more receptive now than they were 11 months ago.

[B]

How old are your kids? You said one kid is already in college.

[A]

Yeah, my son is 18 and he's a freshman at USC and my daughter is 15 and she's a senior in a public high school in New York City.

[B]

Do you think that public or Private school is better for a kid.

[A]

From your research that you know, that I can't say, you know, we loved the elementary school that my kids went to was just wonderful. Like we can't imagine anything better. Some of the private schools got really deeply into ideological stuff in the 2010s, and so that was part of our decision in New York City was like, there's no school we can send them to in New York. We don't want them exposed to all that, the political stuff. But I think the schools are loosening up now, so. And again, that's just elite schools in New York City, although LA is probably pretty similar. So that. Yeah, I can't, I can't weigh in on that question.

[B]

Well, because you're a social psychologist, so you have so much deep research in all of these things, I'm sure that you're constantly seeing data and numbers and all these things. Is there one app over the other that's even more dangerous? Is TikTok more dangerous than Instagram?

[A]

Yeah, TikTok is the most dangerous overall because that's the one that very effectively destroys attention. I can't, you know, again, it's not everybody, but a third of all kids, teens say they're on social media almost all the time. So they're, it's always in the hand. They're always. And TikTok is the most common of those apps. So I think TikTok has, has destroyed more IQ points than any than anybody else. With that said, Snapchat has probably led to more deaths. So when kids die, it's usually from a drug overdose because they, not because they get fed. It's, you know, they buy drugs on the, through, on Snapchat, disappearing messages. So it's very easy to find drugs on Snapchat. And so cyberbullying and Fentanyl are two ways that kids die from social media. And that I think, I'm not certain, but I believe that's more Snapchat than, than Instagram or TikTok. Those are the big three. Those are. There are other companies. Oh, I should just say Pinterest is wonderful. The CEO of Pinterest, Bill Reddy, he reached out to me right after the book came out and he said, I love what you're doing. I agree with you. When he took over from a couple years ago, he spontaneously turned off social features for under 16s. That is, he said, if a 12 year old wants to get on Pinterest and look for fabric patterns or ways to decorate her room, great, let her on. But if she Wants to be talking with strangers. Text. No, there's. There's no reason. So he did that. Didn't have to do it. The share price went down a bit at first because people thought, oh, he's going to lose market share. But guess what? Safety is actually something that a lot of people want. And so since, since Pinterest, I never hear stories about girls whose lives were ruined by Pinterest. All the other three. Yes, but Pinterest. So my point is, it's not the screens per se, and it's not social media per se, but talking with strangers who are unverified and are often not who they say. This is just completely insane that we do this. So that has to stop. And that's primarily happening on Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.

[B]

Are you trying to lobby these people, like Meta? And how, how do you get them on board to help with this crisis? Yeah, because their job is they're like a marketing agency. They want to make money, right?

[A]

Yeah, no, that's right. Now we have. Because. We have. Because those three companies are being sued by a lot of attorneys general, a lot of parents with dead kids. So a lot has come out from their own internal deliberations. And we know that those three companies, their employees have come to them and said, hey, we got problems. And then management says, like, no, that solution would reduce engagement. Don't do it. We can't do it. So those three companies have shown that they're very resistant to reform to protect kids. They talk a good game. They say, oh, we're doing this. Oh, we're doing that. Oh, we hired a thousand more content. But the problem isn't so much the content, the content in moderation. The problem is the design. These things are designed to attract children and keep them on and take their childhood and break their attention into little tiny bits. It doesn't matter if all the content is nice, it's still going to do that.

[B]

Can you just mention again? Because I want people to really listen to the thing that you're involved with with free. The free range. Let it grow. Let grow.

[A]

Let grow. Yes. So I do have to go, but thanks for giving me this, this opportunity to. To. To lay out where you can go for more information. So the central site for information is anxiousgeneration.com. that's the website for the book. We've got a huge number of resources. Also, my substack is afterbabble.com b a b e l afterbabble.com that's where we put out our research articles we have all kinds of great writers on there. So parents, teachers, please go to afterbabble.com it's free, you don't have to pay any money. And then we have a special relationship with, with Let grow. Go to letgrow.org a wonderful organization started well really. A couple of us said to Lenore Skenazy, hey, you need to up your game. The country needs you. And so we just made her more effective by giving her an organization rather than just being an author with a book. And Let Grow, we have a couple of simple programs. They're so powerful. The Let Grow experience. Schools do it. It's transformative. You just tell the kids, go home. Pick something you think you can do by yourself without your parents but with your parents permission. Maybe it's make breakfast for yourself. Maybe it's make breakfast for the family. Maybe it's walk the dog. Maybe it's go to a store three blocks away. You're eight years old, you're nine years old. You think you can walk to a store three blocks in the afternoon and get a quart of milk. And it's amazing what happens when they do it because they come back brimming with confidence that you see them change. It's wonderful. And it also changes the parents because the parents realize, wow, my nine year old kid actually can walk three blocks without getting lost or abducted and buy a quart of milk and come home. You know, all of us were doing that when we were seven or eight back in the 70s and 80s, but our nine year olds can do all sorts of things. So anyway, the Let Grow experience, super powerful. A couple of other ideas. So, so, and again so anxiousgeneration.com afterbabble.com and letgrow.org it's amazing, Jonathan, it was.

[B]

Amazing to have you on. It was a pleasure. Every parent needs to read the book Anxious Generation, not just me. Buying it for people like you. Go buy it yourself on Amazon. So thank you so much for being on the show and like I said, I appreciate your time.

[A]

My pleasure. Jen, good luck to you with your kids and convincing some other families to go along with you and adopt the four norms.

[B]

Thank you.