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[00:03]
A
You're listening to Self Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, an Audible original podcast. Join me as we explore the cutting edge of health, wellness and personal growth with the world's leading experts and thinkers. From inspiring stories to actionable insights, our conversations aim to help you lead a healthier, happier and more productive life. Let's be real. We are living in the dark ages when it comes to understanding what smartphones are doing to our kids. We hand them these devices without guardrails and then wonder why they're anxious, lonely and struggling. They're growing up in a world where play, friendship, even sleep are being replaced by scrolling and it's making them sick in ways we're only just beginning to understand. That's why I'm so grateful to have Jonathan Haidt here today. He's the best selling author of the Anxious Generation, which shows how smartphones have rewired childhood and triggered an epidemic of mental illness. Jonathan's here to help us break it all down. How old should kids really be before they get a phone? What is social media doing to our daughters? And what can we actually do as parents to give our kids the chance to grow up healthy and whole? This is one of those conversations every parent needs to hear. Jonathan Haidt, welcome to Self Conscious. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here today. I was at your talk in Los Angeles. I thought it was so interesting because there were so many mega social, mega social media stars. The follower count for that room was in the. Honestly, the billions.
[01:43]
B
Yeah, that was crazy.
[01:45]
A
I'll start by basically just asking, do you believe that history is gonna look at us and wonder what the hell we were thinking giving our children these devices?
[01:57]
B
Oh, absolutely. 20 years from now, suppose someone were to say, people raising their kids in the 2000 and tens and 2000 and twenties, they had this special substance that they gave their kids. It made the kids sleep less, lie on their side, exercise less, not see their friends very much, not get much daylight. They stopped reading books, they stopped paying attention to people. And they were on these things for, you know, eight to ten hours a day. What do you think? Do you think that's going to be helpful for their development or harmful? I think what we've been doing is one of the biggest disruptions in history because it's global, people. It's not just in Erica, it's all over the Western world.
[02:36]
A
You call this era the great rewiring of childhood. What does that mean? And how is it different from the way we grew up?
[02:43]
B
So if you think of childhood as like a journey and on that journey, lots of stuff is coming into the kid and lots of stuff is going out and interpersonal relationships and play and touch and fighting and eating together with your. All these stuff that, the stuff that children do on a daily basis, all of that suddenly pretty suddenly gets changed, gets converted in a sense that inputs and outputs of childhood get rerouted, rewired, so that when I was a kid, people said we watched too much television. It was probably two or three hours a day. But you couldn't take your TV with you on the school bus, you couldn't take it into the bathroom, you couldn't take it into class but once. So the key period is 2010 to 2015. In 2010, teenagers have flip phones or basic phones. The iPhone came out in 2007, but very few teens have one in 2010. But in 2010, you get the front facing camera. Instagram is founded, but it only becomes popular in 2012. That's when Facebook buys it. You have high speed data coming in. You have unlimited texting. So in 2010, the millennials are communicating on flip phones and they come out fine. You're texting your friends and family, you're calling your friends and family. That's it. Now, you might remember, I hear there's a game called Snake that you millennials seem to seem to remember.
[04:04]
A
Nokia.
[04:05]
B
That was it.
[04:05]
A
5150.
[04:06]
B
Okay. Yeah, that's right. That's it. So that. So you had a communication device in your pocket that also had one video game. Now, what do kids have? They have a gambling casino, they have a movie theater, they have a porn studio, they have music, they have everything. And it's always effortless to use. Whereas talking to people is hard, sometimes awkward, Sometimes interacting with your phone is never awkward. And so if you think about all the ways that kids have to be engaged with people, with things, with the world, and then you give them all a smartphone, which they can take with them all the time. They can sleep with it, they can take it into the bathroom. Now, it's waterproof, so my students say some of them take it into the shower. So this is a complete rewiring of childhood, of what it is. And we get a rewiring of the brain because the brain is literally developing, wiring itself up during puberty in response to what the kid is doing with the world. And so now if they're not engaged with the world very much, we cut that by 50%. You replace it with a bunch of short videos. You're rewiring the brain and you're getting mental health problems. You're getting an inability to concentrate, inability to make long term plans and stick to them. So it's horrible what we've done to our kids and we have to stop.
[05:22]
A
One thing I've noticed about my son is that he is just a completely different human being after we ask him to shut off his iPad.
[05:33]
B
Wait, let me guess. Irritable, short tempered, has sort of difficulty existing. Is that what he's like?
[05:39]
A
Yes, yes. And I'm talking for hours. We end up having an incredibly. The day is four times as bad as it would have been if he weren't on his iPad.
[05:48]
B
So what you're describing is textbook examples of withdrawal, drug withdrawal. Because all drugs that feel good, all drugs that give us pleasure work through dopamine. Dopamine is, it's not exactly a reward. But dopamine is always there when we're doing something that is giving us pleasure and it makes us want to do it again. That's the key thing. Dopamine says, as every four year old says, again, again, do it again, do it again. That's dopamine. And the sign of an addiction is withdrawal. And so it'd be one thing if he was upset for three or four minutes and he moved on to something else that would tell me his brain wasn't in a state of altered dopamine dopamine neurons. But it sounds like he is addicted now. How old is he?
[06:32]
A
He is seven.
[06:34]
B
Oh, good. Okay, good. So change things now. Everything will be fine. Because the brain, the human brain, grows tremendously fast up until the age of six or so. And then it's not growing much after that. It's all just about laying down which neurons are going to stay, which connections are going to get reinforced and which ones are going to disappear because they're not used. And neuroscientists say neurons that fire together wire together. So whatever he's doing when he's playing video games or whatever, he's laying down those circuits. And if he does that all the way through age 16, then it probably will alter his brain permanently in ways that we really, I can't say, we don't really understand. But it's unlikely to be helpful. It's unlikely to make him more effective as a human being. But at 7, he hasn't even. He's years away from puberty. Puberty is such an important period because the brain is rewiring itself from the back to the front. So I would strongly urge you, I'm not gonna tell parents, don't let Your sons play video games. I'm not gonna say that, but I am gonna say, don't let them play every day. Don't let them play for two or three hours a day every day. That we don't know for sure, but that I suspect is going to lead to permanent changes which will not be good for your son. So, you know, something like two or three hours a week, but only on the weekends. I think that would be fine.
[07:53]
A
Withdrawal, by the way, is such a good way to put it, because I always used to be so amazed that the tantrums would happen because I'd be like, but we gave you that time on your iPad. You should be thankful and happy.
[08:03]
B
And he can't help it. It's not his fault. He can't help it.
[08:07]
A
I know, I know. And so now we've kind of. Cause that was like a little bit of a reward system for us, too.
[08:14]
B
So let me give you a couple of basic principles here that I hope will guide you and your friends in when and how you use screens. So first, let's be really clear that stories are good things. Human beings are storytelling animals. As long as humans have had language, we've told stories. That's part of how we raise our kids. We expose them to all kinds of patterns. And here's what the ancestors did, or the gods, and here's what a good person is. Stories are good. And screens are actually a pretty good way of presenting stories. Interacting with other people is really good. Sitting alone is not. So let's put this all together. The best kind of screen time. This is perfectly good. This is a positive thing, is you're watching a long story, preferably some sort of quality story. A movie with good moral values. Maybe it's 90 minutes long. Maybe you watch it over two days sitting, watching a TV with another person. That's good. That's very human. There's no dopamine. There's no stimulus, response, reward, stimulus, response, reward. So that's good. Well, here's the worst. The worst is you're busy. The kid wants something. You say, here, take my iPhone, or here, here's your iPad. This is the worst because now you've got the kid alone on a small screen, which is not telling stories. TikTok videos are not stories. It takes five, 10 minutes to get immersed in a story. Really, you know, half an hour until you're really immersed. So TikTok is a complete waste of time. TikTok is the worst thing you can do. If you give your kid a device, it's Always going to end up on short videos on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram Reels or whatever. So kids sitting alone with a touchscreen device, that's the worst thing you can do. Now, video games are a little more complicated. And a general rule I think would be if you have a friend over then and you're sitting next to each other. Yeah, you can play video games for a limited amount of time and not every day. But that's fine. You're together. It's the online multiplayer games that are so addictive. And even though the kids seem like they're connecting, my son used to play Fortnite. He'd be laughing his head off. It sounded good, but the research shows that the more you play those things, the fewer friends you have. You don't have time for people in the real world.
[10:36]
A
Thoughts on Roblox? Yeah, what is this world? Listen, I am a gamer. I grew up playing video games. I was very immersed in this world. Sims, Rollercoaster, Tycoon, all this. But my kids ask for Roblox. I don't get it. Cause I've tried to play it. What is it about Roblox that drags them in and keeps them in?
[11:01]
B
Roblox is a kind of a platform on which people create games. Well, that sounds great. That sounds creative. You then wander around in this virtual space and you enter people's games. Well, that also sounds kind of exciting. But let's keep in mind these people are from all over the world. They're completely unidentified. A number of them. I have no idea the percentage. But thousands or millions are pedophiles who are there to have sexual interactions with children. They make games that involve intercourse and degradation Nazis. So even though most kids experience, I hear is fine, most kids aren't seeing horrible things. But you should never let your child be on a platform talking with complete strangers on a platform that is monetizing their time and that has no real incentive to keep them safe. So that includes Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Roblox.
[12:02]
A
Every Wednesday for the past year, I've had to go in and delete friends that he adds. And he's not supposed to be able to.
[12:10]
B
That's right. So there should be a way. If there was a way where you could completely cut off all interaction with others, that would at least be a step in the right direction. But I was horrified and I urge your readers so I have a substack. It's a free blog newsletter. It's called After Babel B A B E L We have a post titled it's not just a game Anymore in which two of my lab members spent a lot of time with Roblox. And I'll just read you some of the images that they found. He found right away. I mean he found this was. He didn't have to go looking for these. There's a game, Hide the Body where you kill someone and you have to hide their body. There's a Nazi game. Here's one where a girl is performing oral sex on a guy. Here's one where teachers having anal sex with a student. Here's a shooter game, you're supposed to shoot up your school. So I'm not saying that these are typical. Obviously most of the games are perfectly innocent. But these are things that Bennett Sipple found with almost no look at, like they just came to him. This is just a sort of a thing about the Internet. There's even a word it's called in shitification. Everything on the Internet might start off lovely and fun and playful, but everything turns to shit because everything is open to everyone. And everyone always includes pedophiles and Nazis and just people with various bizarre interests and desires.
[13:26]
A
Yeah, going right from that. Girls and social media. With all the things that young girls are seeing now online, what do you think is the most dangerous for them to see? And at what age do we bring up this conversation with our daughters? Because a lot of parents that I know are not sure if it's too early to talk about this stuff. And I'm a believer and it's never too early.
[13:57]
B
We all should probably be talking about this earlier and then delaying their entry into it. The way that I would think about this is let's think about what puberty is. So all around the world in traditional societies, they wrestle with the question, how do you turn a girl into a woman? How do you turn a boy into a man? And the answer almost all around the world is that it's not the parents job to do that it's done by other adults of that kid's gender. So when a girl menstruates, that's usually the signal to begin initiation rites. Other women will take her in and they'll teach her the secrets and they'll teach her what she needs to know about sex, about motherhood, about religion. And for boys, the initiation, if it's a warrior culture, the boys are taken away from the mother's world, the women's world, and they're put through trials and ordeals and they're toughened and they're told the secrets of the men. And so this is a human, almost a universal that we have to help our kids through puberty. We have to help them know, what is it to be a woman, what is it to be a man? And what do we do now? We say, you know what, I'm busy, I'm not going to tell you. Oh, and you don't really know other adults because we don't trust other adults. So why don't you just spend your puberty on Instagram and TikTok? And it's the equivalent of saying there's a bunch of weirdos who live in a van by the river. They do eccentric practices. We're just going to send you down there five hours a day. You go there five hours a day, let them socialize you and then come back home and I'll be surprised as to what you turn into. That's essentially what we're doing when we let our kids go through puberty on Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat. So what's the most dangerous stuff for girls to see? We want our daughters to develop into forces of nature. We want them to be happy and capable. We want them to be able to have a sustained relationship. We don't want them to turn into sex objects for men to find their value primarily as a sex object for men. We don't want them to think, I am my skin, I am my boobs, I am my hair. Girls have always been at risk of that happening to them and social media is really doing that to them. And that's why you have all these girls concerned. You have 10 year old girls using anti aging skin products. It's complete. Again, we're turning our kids over to the weirdos living in a van by the river. We've got to stop doing that. And that's why I say we need a national law and we need a global norm. No social media before 16. Social media is an intrinsically adult activity. Really. It should be 18, but, but I thought that would be too hard to get that as a global norm. So I said 16 should be the minimum. And then parents might want to wait till 18. Nobody should be on social media before they're 16. There's really no way to make it nice, constructive, positive. The algorithm is going to get to them quickly. If they're a girl, they're going to end up with beauty products. If they're a boy, they're going to end up with violence. Again, that's not 100%, but probably. So, yeah, that's what I'm concerned about for girls.
[17:03]
A
So boys disappear into a world of gaming and pornography. What are the risks there? And how does it compare to the harms that girls face?
[17:14]
B
Yeah, so when I started writing the book, I knew what the story was for girls. There's a lot of evidence that heavy social media use for girls, especially early in puberty, distorts their development, gives them eating disorders, insecurity, body focus, anxiety, depression, self harm. I didn't know what the story was for boys when I started writing the book, but over the course of writing the book and doing more research, we figured out what the story is and it is that boys are being pulled away from the real world where they need to develop into men. They're being pulled away into the virtual world, which is much more rewarding because the virtual world has figured out. These companies have figured out there are two deep drives that young men have, and those are war and sex. Those are very powerful drives in young men. And war is instantiated either through war games or through sports combat. Boys are all about testing themselves and watching other men test themselves. So sports is perfectly healthy. Watching sports is fine. And sex. To look at, beautiful women to look. When I was growing up, it was Playboy. It was about the most you could ever get your hands on. To look at a beautiful naked women is not going to damage a boy. It might warp his ideas of what girls are like, but it's not going to damage him. But that's not what kids are watching now. What everyone stumbles across is Pornhub at times. Pornhub didn't even ask if you were 18 and kids are curious. So you stumble onto this site and even if you're disgusted, some part of you wants to know, what else, what's next? What else? And so most of our kids will encounter pornography. That pornography is likely to involve mental health, dominating women and not necessarily being violent, although a lot of it is violent. Lots of kids are seen choking. And now we hear that teenagers are choking each other, mostly boys choking girls, because they think that's what they should do. It's seeing distorted bodies of women doing things that are degrading and violent and painful. And we wonder why are boys and girls having so much trouble hooking up? Why is there so much less dating? Why is there so much less sex? Why is there so much less love? There are a lot of reasons, but one is if I was a girl growing up today, I think I don't want to do that. That's disgusting. This is what sex is. I don't want that. So one of the points I'm trying to make is if you think about childhood development, the kids have to pass through so much, they have to do so much. They have to learn how to talk to people, how to be an attractive male or female, how, how to play social games. They have to learn all of this stuff on the way to adulthood. And if they grow up online, all of that gets distorted. Their sexual development, social development, cognitive development, all of it gets distorted. And again, we have to stop. We have to stop doing this.
[20:16]
A
What can a parent say to another parent that wants to maybe break the no phones contract because their son or daughter is feeling left out? Because I hear a lot of that right now.
[20:31]
B
The whole idea of the anxious generation is to show that we're all stuck in that very trap that you just said, we don't want to give our kid a smartphone and Instagram. But when she says, I'm the only one, I'm being left out. I don't know what's going on. It breaks our hearts. We've got to stop that situation from happening. So in the book, I propose four norms. They are no smartphone before high school. You can give your kid a flip phone or a basic phone, but do not give them a smartphone before high school. No social media before 16 phone free schools and far more free play, independence and responsibility in the real world. So if you're the only one doing these norms, then it's hard. As you say, there's a lot of pressure on you from your child. But if your kid comes to you and says, mom, half the kids in my class have a smartphone on Instagram and half of them don't. And I want a smartphone on Instagram now. It's really easy to say no. You say no. I've agreed with the mothers of Mary and Betty and Sally. We've all agreed that we're all gonna wait until high school for you to get a smartphone. And so, no, the main thing I would say to parents is I totally understand how hard it is when you're alone in this. And that's why the most important thing you can do is reach out to the parents of your kids friends and form common cause. And don't just take away the phones and the social media. Give them back an exciting childhood. My kids are 15 and 19. They grew up in New York City. You know, independence, things like, you know, I would take them and a friend to Coney island and then I would just sit on the bench and let them run around. It's super Exciting for them. And then when in high school, they actually can go out there by themselves. Super exciting. You know how you were waxing nostalgic about the fun you had in your childhood? Give that back to the kids. Now if they go to Coney island and they have a smartphone, they're gonna sit on the subway on the phone. Okay, they'll be on the rides. They're not gonna be on the phone on the rides. But you can give them a basic. You can keep in touch with them, you can let them text you, but they don't need a smartphone.
[22:31]
A
So what about the fourth norm? How does that work? How do you do it?
[22:34]
B
Yeah, so everyone focuses on the phones because that's the crisis we're all facing as parents. We are pulling our head. We don't know what to do. But the fourth norm is far more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. And the two, this all goes together because if you just take the phones away from the kids, what are they going to do? Just sit there looking at the wall? I mean, they might read books, that would be nice. But the goal here isn't to take away the phones. The goal is to give your kids a great childhood. And you do that by getting them to re engage with the world. And that means especially their friends, other young people in situations that are sometimes challenging for them, they might be a little afraid to go into it. They might be awkward, they might be embarrassed. They might say, no, I don't want to go to that event. I don't know anyone there. But they'll often find someone. They'll have fun. So the fourth norm is we have to give our kids back a play based childhood. Humans always had a play based childhood until the 1990s. We took that away gradually. We gave them a phone based childhood. It's working very badly. So we have to restore a play based childhood. I would urge anyone listening to this go to letgrow.org that's an organization that I co founded with Lenore Skenazy, a woman who wrote a book called Free Range Kids about How to Let yout Kids Out. How to Give Them a Free Range Childhood. Lenore really helped me and my wife raise our kids. She gave us the confidence to let them walk to school in New York City. We live in a very safe part of Manhattan and we had to just do it. And we were scared the first day and we trapped. I gave him an iPhone. Because I didn't know any better. I gave him my old iPhone. We tracked the little blue dot and we were really scared that first day. But he's a smart little kid. He was 8, 9. He was 9 years old when he first walked to school. Look, it used to be you walk to school at the age of six or seven. So an eight and a nine year old, they can do it. They can do it. But we parents, we have to get over our anxiety. And one thing we're anxious about is if other parents aren't letting them out. Am I gonna be judged? Is someone gonna call the police on me? And that could happen if you're the only one. But if you get kids going out in a neighborhood, if you get it to be normal again, for kids to walk to the store and come back with groc. Now the kid feels useful. A really important feature of the current catastrophe is that our kids feel useless. This number began going up in 2012. Before 2012, very few kids said they felt useless. But since 2012, it's more than doubled the percent who say, My life feels useless because they are useless. If all you're doing is consuming content, playing video games, you're useless. We have to let our kids matter. We have to give them things to do. We have to show them that we value the contribution to the family, give them chores, give them responsibilities. Mm.
[25:16]
A
I grew up in a town called Snohomish, Washington. It was about maybe 40 minutes north of Seattle. Very woodsy, very outdoorsy. Cute neighborhood. I rode my bike a lot. I rode it alone. I rode it to a store miles away. My trips to school were in these little bike gangs with all my friends. I was really out and about and super feral, and my parents were not worried at all. And I never lived in fear or anything. Do you think the reason why we are so overprotective of our children out in the real world now is because of the rise of true crime and true crime podcasts and television shows. Are we living in a more dangerous time, actually, or are we just hearing about it more?
[26:07]
B
Yeah. So first I want to point out that when you went through what your childhood was like, you did something that most people do when they recall their childhoods, which is it was clear that you were savoring, you were reliving these memories, and it brings joy, because those are the most exciting times in childhood. It's when you're out with your friends, you're trying something new. Maybe you get in trouble, you know, groups of guys. Sometimes you get in a conflict with another group of guys, and it's super exciting. And that's how you grow and we look back on those times and we savor them. Now imagine that you had none of them. Imagine that they were all just pulled for your memory and replaced by scrolling and TikTok and things like that. That would be tragic. And in fact that's what a lot of Gen Z feels like. They feel as though they had their childhoods taken from them. They've seen movies about childhood. But being a teenager in the 80s and 90s, they know that kids used to have a lot of fun, but they don't have fun. So why did this happen? So to get to your question, a free range childhood was very much the norm throughout the 20th century, all the way into the late 80s. And when I was a kid growing up in the 70s, there was a huge crime wave. There were drunk drivers and some of them were us. So life used to actually be dangerous, Kids used to actually die. And most of that is way, way down. Murder is way, way down, car accidents, disease, on almost every measure. Life is so much safer. But once you get cable TV in the 1980s, now you have these 24 hour news shows, now you do begin to get coverage of any kid who's kidnapped. Almost nobody is ever kidnapped in the United States. There are countries where kidnapping is a very real fear. Parents really have to guard their kids. America's not one of them. The FBI says there's something like 100 to 150 true kidnappings a year. Usually if a kid is taken, it's by the non custodial parent. There's a divorce struggle, one of the parents took the kid. But true kidnappings by strangers on the order of 100 year, which is in a country of 300 million, you're much more likely to be struck by lightning. So yeah, we freaked out in part because of news media, in part also because we started trusting our neighbors less. We were less likely to know our neighbors. We didn't sit on our porches because we had air conditioning and television and cable TV and computers. So it was in part the destruction of human trust and social capital in the United States which led us to stop trusting our neighbors and stop letting our kids out.
[28:32]
A
Are there any cities out there that have implemented phone free schools? And what would it take for the government to actually pass something like this?
[28:41]
B
This is the most exciting thing is that in the last year they are so of the four norms, remember it's no smartphone before high school. That is not gonna really be a law. No social media before 16 that we need a law for. And Australia actually passed such a law we'll see if they can get it to work. It's gonna spread globally. The third is phone free schools, and that is working spectacularly well because the teachers hate the phones. Teachers can't get through to their students. The students are watching TikTok. They're watching porn, they're playing video games. Test scores are dropping around the world. Human beings are getting stupider because they're not paying attention in school. They're watching TikTok in school. 17 states in the United States have now banned phones for the full day. That is from bell to bell. Phone free schools. New York State is starting up. My daughter starts school again after Labor Day, and the whole school system, the whole state, is phone free. And what we're finding is that it works spectacularly well. The kids actually aren't that upset at first. And then once they have experienced it for a couple weeks, the kids say, oh, actually it's kind of fun to be playing soccer or cards with our friends at lunch rather than everyone on their phone all the time. The teachers say they hear laughter in the hallways again, which they haven't heard in a long time because everyone's been on their phones. They say discipline problems are down. The drama is down. The fights in the bathroom that were staged in order to get a video, all that stuff goes away. So phone free schools is a spectacular success. And it's not just in the US it's happening around the world. So that I'm very excited about. That's the main thing that government can do easily, instantly, and largely for free. The next thing is going to be raising the age to 16, which is going to be very hard to do in the US Congress. But a number of states, including Florida. Florida dated a number of years ago. Of course, nada sues them. Everything is being held up in the court. So it hasn't been implemented yet. But we do need government help, however. I wrote the book assuming that we will never get government help. I wrote the book as an American thinking. We have a dysfunctional Congress we have to do. We're on our own. So we have to do this in groups of parents. We have to do this with parents, working with schools, and we can do most of it in that way.
[31:10]
A
And now for the Toolkit. Each episode, our guests distill their expertise into practical and actionable insights. Today, Jonathan takes us through key practices for mitigating smartphone damage to our kids.
[31:23]
B
Krista, what we're gonna do here is we're gonna do an audit of your evening and morning routines. What I discovered over the years is that almost all of my students, the first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is look at their phone. And the last thing they do before they close their eyes is look at their phone. So the phones make it possible for us to be consuming stuff all the time, and that's a big mistake. We're all taking in too much stuff. The phone makes it possible. They don't really have time to rech. So what I'd like you to do. Do you have a piece of paper handy? Can you. Can you do this?
[31:57]
A
I mean, you can always. You can just give me the lowest score that you have. It's not looking good for me so far.
[32:04]
B
So, Chrissy, in your notebook, on separate lines, I want you to Write the numbers 5. And below that, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then 0. And next to 0, write Fall Asleep.
[32:15]
A
Okay.
[32:17]
B
Okay. So now fill it in. What is one? What is the last thing you do before you fall asleep? Before you close, let's say close your eyes. Before you close your eyes for good, what is the last thing you do?
[32:30]
A
Take all my medications.
[32:33]
B
That's not the last thing you do. You're still not in bed yet. But fine, put that. You can put that somewhere. So we're going to do. Take medications. We're going to put that on there. What else do you do before you go to bed?
[32:41]
A
Look at my phone.
[32:43]
B
Okay. Is that after or before your medications or both?
[32:47]
A
It can be both.
[32:48]
B
Okay.
[32:49]
A
It's usually both.
[32:50]
B
Chrissy, you might need to go from 10 down to one and a half every other one. Be look at the phone. At what point do you go to the bathroom? What point do you brush your teeth? Do you take a warm bath, Have a cup of tea? Like, do your best to write down the five or seven things you do every night before you close your eyes. What I want you to do. And for those listening in, really think about what your actual routine is. The last five. Or maybe you want to do 10.
[33:14]
A
I don't have a routine in my mind. I want to journal, do all this. I don't have a routine.
[33:19]
B
Okay, so humans are creatures that thrive with predictability and order. We all see this in our kids. You know, when you have a toddler, they really want to kind of like, we do this and then this and then this. If you don't decide the order, then your phone is going to decide the order. Your phone is going to interrupt you. It's going to have all these temptations. So what I want to encourage you and all the other adults to do is have a routine yourself, because here's what you want to do. A lot of us are very busy during the day. We have a lot coming at us and then we have this period at night, anywhere from eight to 10 hours, typically where it's just me time, this is the time I rechart. So at night. And I like to start with the evening routine because there's a certain point which you're turning off from the other cares of the day. And now it's all about getting you relaxed, getting you ready for bed. Sleep is so important. I didn't realize this my whole life. When I was young, we didn't know how important sleep was. But for brain health, for fending off Alzheimer's, for all sorts of things, sleep is essential. So it's very important to get enough sleep. And then when you're waking up, your brain is in a very interesting state. You don't want to just stuff in the day as cares right away. So I want everyone to have a period. Maybe it's from 10 o' clock at night to 8 or 9 the next morning where you do all these things that are recharging that set you up for a great day. And then you can work really hard during the day, you can get a lot done. But if you blow it, if all you do is interact with your phone while doing other things and that's what you do most of the day and then you sleep six or seven hours, this is not a good foundation. So the next step is what do you want it to be? Why don't you give that a try right now? Make another countdown from 5 to 0 and then put in what you think would be a good routine.
[35:10]
A
I would love to journal, put that.
[35:12]
B
As number one or number two. Okay, if zero is close your eyes for sleep, maybe journaling is going to be one or two. And then what do you want to do before then? Do you want to take your meds before then? Do you want to wash your face in the bathroom?
[35:27]
A
Crazy variations would be probably, probably be a good ritual.
[35:32]
B
Put that in as number two. We all fall into these patterns for a variety of reasons and the phones make things worse. But you can take control of your life and it starts with taking control of your schedule for the period just before you go to bed and the period you wake up in the morning. Start with that and then the rest of the day is going to go better.
[35:54]
A
It must be so frustrating for you to listen to people like me though, because the answers are all there and you just see somebody that's just fighting against them, it must be really annoying.
[36:05]
B
We're all human and we do things for all kinds of reasons. And one thing I've learned from being involved in positive psychology is that there are some little things you can do that end up having a big payoff. You can improve your mental equanimity. You can improve your relationships. There are a lot that you can do to just make your life go better.
[36:26]
A
What advice would you give to adults so they can mirror something positive for their kids to see?
[36:32]
B
Here's two absolute rules. One is no phones at the table, ever. Even if you need one to settle a debate. Just like, no, we'll look it up after dinner. No phones at the table. And the other is no phones in the bedroom. This is the rule I wish to God I had implemented when my kids were young. No screens in the bedroom, ever. And what that means is you can have a TV in the living room. You can have a computer. Ideally a desktop computer would be the best. So the kids can have exposure or to the Internet. They can Google things, they can watch tv, sometimes they can watch movies. But we say no screens in the bedroom ever. And then on 6th, 7th, 8th grade, you might have to relax and say, okay, you can take your laptop in for two hours for homework, but then it goes back to where it lives in the kitchen or something like that.
[37:14]
A
How can you rectify rules that you've already implemented? Or how can you go back? How can you detox your kids?
[37:23]
B
Here's a couple of tips. One is if you can possibly send your kids to a summer camp, a sleepaway camp for a month with no devices, that's gonna clear out their brain, reset their dopamine systems. They're gonna have fun with other kids. And so a lot of parents say when they come back, their sweet, funny daughter that they last saw three years ago is back.
[37:44]
A
Yes.
[37:44]
B
But then she gets back on her phone and with two and two weeks, she's surly again. Summer camp is incredibly helpful for a reset. And the other principal is, don't be the only one. Do it with other families because your kid is afraid of being isolated. So do it with other families. Let me also share some insight from Dr. Becky. I'm sure some of your listeners will know Dr. Becky Kennedy. I've done a few events with her. I think she's great. But she gives this example. She says, you are the pilot of the plane. You are responsible for your kids safety. You make the decisions about safety for the family. And if the pilot of the plane gets new information, like, we're flying to Salt Lake City, but there's a snowstorm in Salt Lake City. So we're not going to land in Salt Lake City. We're going to land in Denver. And the passengers are all upset and like, no, I need to be in Salt Lake City. What's the pilot going to do? Say, oh, okay, let's go to Salt Lake City? No, you are the pilot of the plane, and if you get new information about dangers to your kids, it's your responsibility to act on them. So, again, I know it's really hard and I struggled with it, but we need to do this now. I'm not saying get your kids entire life of square. Please don't quote me as ever saying that, but do get them off of touchscreens as much as you can. It's really the touchscreens, especially private use of a touchscreen in the bedroom at night. That's where the worst stuff tends to happen. So I think you could start with no screens in the bedroom. Yes, you can still be on your phone, but you have to do it out in the living room. That itself is going to begin creating the idea that not every moment is with your phone.
[39:18]
A
When other families have different rules, how do you talk about that with the other family?
[39:22]
B
So a couple of points. One is, in general, it's good for our kids to see other families, to see how other people live, to be exposed to other adults. This is all generally a good thing. And if your kid goes over and there's a little bit of screen stuff, that's fine. We have to kind of loosen up now. You know what happens a lot of the time is your kid goes over and all the kids are just on their phone. They're each doing their separate thing, so there's no point in doing that. If it's a family where all the kids are screening addicted, then you probably don't want them going over. When you host, you should have a rule. There's a basket near the door. Welcome. But everyone has to put their phone in the basket. If you're here in our house, we've got a lot of things for you to do. Look down in the basement, in the backyard, lots of things for you to do. But we're not on phones in this house, so you can control what happens in your own house. The other thing is, the more you can get them to play outside, the better. Any way you can get them to play physical, Running around rough and tumble, taking small risks, all of that is really, really healthy and our kids are starved for it.
[40:33]
A
Jonathan, thank you for joining me. Today on Self Conscious, Jonathan Heights, the Anxious how the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Health. Mental Illness is available on Audible. Until then, tune in, turn on and feel better. This is Chrissy Teigen and you've been listening to Self Conscious, an Audible Original podcast. This has been an Audible original produced by Audible, Q Code and Huntley Productions, hosted by Chrissy Teigen written and executive produced by Jimmy Jelinek, executive producers for Q Code Shen Yanhu and Alexa Gabrielle Ramirez, executive producer for Huntley Productions Chrissy Teigen, executive producer for Audible Stacy Creamer Recorded and engineered by Ben Milchev Filmed by Bridger Clements Production Coordinator Brian Coulter Edited, mixed and mastered by Ben Milchev Head of Creative Development at Audible Kate Navin Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza Copyright 2024 by Audible Originals, Alex LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2025 by Audible Originals LL.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: Self-Conscious with Chrissy Teigen

Episode: Jonathan Haidt: Four Rules to Rescue Childhood

Date: November 20, 2025
Host: Chrissy Teigen
Guest: Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation

Overview

In this episode, Chrissy Teigen hosts acclaimed social psychologist Jonathan Haidt for an urgent conversation about the "great rewiring of childhood" caused by smartphones and social media—and the epidemic of youth anxiety and mental health issues that have followed. Drawing from his bestselling book, Haidt shares practical rules to help parents rescue childhood by re-establishing boundaries around technology, fostering free play, and building community consensus to push back against societal norms driving early smartphone and social media usage.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Great Rewiring of Childhood

Definition and Timeline:
Haidt explains how the rapid transition from basic phones to smartphones (2010-2015) fundamentally changed children's development:
- Old concerns about too much TV pale compared to omnipresent smartphones.
- Smartphones are "a gambling casino, a movie theater, a porn studio... everything. And it's always effortless to use." (Jonathan Haidt, 05:05)
Brain Development:
The ubiquity of portable screens means children’s brains are wiring around dopamine-driven content consumption rather than real-world engagement.

2. Dopamine, Withdrawal, and Addiction in Kids

Behavioral Signs:
Chrissy observes mood swings in her son after iPad use, to which Haidt directly attributes withdrawal and dopamine response:

"The sign of an addiction is withdrawal... [Dopamine] says, as every four year old says, again, again, do it again, do it again." (B, 05:48)
Vulnerabilities by Age:
Haidt stresses critical brain plasticity prior to puberty and cautions against habitual screen usage before adolescence (B, 06:33).

3. Guiding Principles for Screens and Play

Good vs. Bad Screen Time:
- "The best kind of screen time... a quality story, a movie with good moral values... sitting, watching a TV with another person."
- "The worst is... giving your kid an iPhone or iPad so they're alone on a small screen. TikTok videos are not stories..." (B, 08:13)
Video Games:
- Local multiplayer play with real friends is less concerning; online multiplayer is more isolating and can decrease real-life friendships (B, 09:29).

4. The Dangers of Unrestricted Platforms like Roblox

Haidt relays research from his team showing that predatory, graphic, and violent content is only ever a few clicks away in child-focused platforms.

"Everything on the Internet might start off lovely... but everything turns to shit because everything is open to everyone." (B, 12:16)

5. Social Media and Gender-Specific Harms

For Girls:
Social media fosters body obsession, early sexualization, eating disorders, and anxiety:

"It's the equivalent of... there's a bunch of weirdos who live in a van by the river... let them socialize you... that's essentially what we're doing when we let our kids go through puberty on Instagram and TikTok." (B, 14:31)
- Quote: "We want our daughters to develop into forces of nature... not to turn into sex objects for men." (B, 15:06)
For Boys:
Virtual worlds exploit boys’ drives for war and sex, distorting sexual and social development:

"War is instantiated either through war games or through sports combat... for sex, kids are not seeing Playboy, they're seeing dehumanizing porn." (B, 17:24)

6. Four Norms to Rescue Childhood

Recurring challenge: "My kid will be the only one without a phone!" Haidt responds with concrete norms:
1. No smartphones before high school.
2. No social media before 16.
3. Phone-free schools.
4. More free play, independence, and responsibility in the real world.
- Quote: "If your kid comes to you and says, half the kids in my class have smartphones... it's really easy to say no if you have a parent coalition." (B, 21:30)
Community is Key: Parents must act together so their children aren’t isolated.

7. Fostering Free Range and Play-Based Childhoods

Haidt advocates giving kids independence for their well-being. Chrissy reminisces about her own “feral” childhood, biking far from home—a joy she worries her kids may never know (A, 25:15).
On modern parental fear:

"Life used to actually be dangerous. Kids used to die. Most of that is way, way down... but we freaked out in part because of news media..." (B, 26:50)

8. The Spread and Benefits of Phone-Free Schools

17 states and major cities including New York have adopted all-day bans, reporting improved focus, behavior, and hallway interactions (B, 28:41).
- Quote: "Teachers say they hear laughter in the hallways again, which they haven't heard in a long time because everyone's been on their phones." (B, 29:40)

9. Toolkit & Actionable Practices

Evening/Morning Routine Audit (Toolkit Segment, 31:10):
Haidt walks Chrissy through a reflection exercise, encouraging predictable, phone-free evening and morning rituals for better mental health and sleep.
- Quote: "If you don't decide the order [of your evening], your phone is going to decide the order." (B, 33:19)
Rules for Parents:
1. No phones at the table—ever.
2. No screens in bedrooms, ever. (B, 36:31)
- Detox tip: Send kids to a device-free sleepaway camp for a month; do phone resets as a community, not alone (B, 37:22).
- Dr. Becky Kennedy’s metaphor: "You are the pilot of the plane... If you get new information about dangers to your kids, it's your responsibility to act." (B, 37:44)
Handling Households With Different Rules:
If hosting, enforce "phones in the basket" at the door. Encourage physical, rough and tumble play wherever possible (B, 39:18).

Notable Quotes

On the scale of disruption:

"What we've been doing is one of the biggest disruptions in history because it's global, people. It's not just in America, it's all over the Western world." (Jonathan Haidt, 01:57)
On social media’s effect on girls:

"Again, we're turning our kids over to the weirdos living in a van by the river. We've got to stop doing that." (Jonathan Haidt, 15:06)
On why parental community matters:

"The most important thing you can do is reach out to the parents of your kid's friends and form common cause... Give them back an exciting childhood." (Jonathan Haidt, 21:30)
On the impact of phone-free schools:

"The teachers say they hear laughter in the hallways again... discipline problems are down. The drama is down. The fights in the bathroom that were staged in order to get a video, all that goes away." (Jonathan Haidt, 29:40)
On adult modeling:

"No phones at the table, ever... No screens in the bedroom, ever. This is the rule I wish to God I had implemented when my kids were young." (Jonathan Haidt, 36:31)
On the pilot metaphor in parenting:

"You are the pilot of the plane, and if you get new information about dangers to your kids, it's your responsibility to act on them." (Jonathan Haidt, 37:44)

Timestamps for Important Segments

The “Great Rewiring” explained: 02:36-05:21
iPad withdrawal in children: 05:21-07:53
Good vs. bad screen time: 08:13-10:36
Roblox and online risk: 11:00-13:25
Social media’s dangers for girls: 13:56-17:03
Harms for boys: 17:14-20:15
Four new norms for parents: 20:15-22:30
Restoring play-based childhood: 22:33-25:15
Parental anxiety and real-world risk: 26:07-28:32
Phone-free schools movement: 28:41-31:10
Toolkit: family routines audit: 31:10-36:05
Household tech rules & detox: 36:26-39:18
Visiting other families: 39:18-40:32

Tone & Takeaways

The episode is candid, urgent, and practical, balancing alarming research with hope and concrete solutions. Haidt’s tone is compassionate but clear about the unprecedented risks and responsibilities facing today’s parents. Chrissy’s self-deprecating humor and openness create a relatable and encouraging atmosphere for parents grappling with these challenges.

For listeners, this episode offers a road map for protecting childhood, restoring mental health, and forming lasting, community-based solutions to the digital crisis.

Loading summary

Transcript67 lines

[00:03]
A
You're listening to Self Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, an Audible original podcast. Join me as we explore the cutting edge of health, wellness and personal growth with the world's leading experts and thinkers. From inspiring stories to actionable insights, our conversations aim to help you lead a healthier, happier and more productive life. Let's be real. We are living in the dark ages when it comes to understanding what smartphones are doing to our kids. We hand them these devices without guardrails and then wonder why they're anxious, lonely and struggling. They're growing up in a world where play, friendship, even sleep are being replaced by scrolling and it's making them sick in ways we're only just beginning to understand. That's why I'm so grateful to have Jonathan Haidt here today. He's the best selling author of the Anxious Generation, which shows how smartphones have rewired childhood and triggered an epidemic of mental illness. Jonathan's here to help us break it all down. How old should kids really be before they get a phone? What is social media doing to our daughters? And what can we actually do as parents to give our kids the chance to grow up healthy and whole? This is one of those conversations every parent needs to hear. Jonathan Haidt, welcome to Self Conscious. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here today. I was at your talk in Los Angeles. I thought it was so interesting because there were so many mega social, mega social media stars. The follower count for that room was in the. Honestly, the billions.
[01:43]
B
Yeah, that was crazy.
[01:45]
A
I'll start by basically just asking, do you believe that history is gonna look at us and wonder what the hell we were thinking giving our children these devices?
[01:57]
B
Oh, absolutely. 20 years from now, suppose someone were to say, people raising their kids in the 2000 and tens and 2000 and twenties, they had this special substance that they gave their kids. It made the kids sleep less, lie on their side, exercise less, not see their friends very much, not get much daylight. They stopped reading books, they stopped paying attention to people. And they were on these things for, you know, eight to ten hours a day. What do you think? Do you think that's going to be helpful for their development or harmful? I think what we've been doing is one of the biggest disruptions in history because it's global, people. It's not just in Erica, it's all over the Western world.
[02:36]
A
You call this era the great rewiring of childhood. What does that mean? And how is it different from the way we grew up?
[02:43]
B
So if you think of childhood as like a journey and on that journey, lots of stuff is coming into the kid and lots of stuff is going out and interpersonal relationships and play and touch and fighting and eating together with your. All these stuff that, the stuff that children do on a daily basis, all of that suddenly pretty suddenly gets changed, gets converted in a sense that inputs and outputs of childhood get rerouted, rewired, so that when I was a kid, people said we watched too much television. It was probably two or three hours a day. But you couldn't take your TV with you on the school bus, you couldn't take it into the bathroom, you couldn't take it into class but once. So the key period is 2010 to 2015. In 2010, teenagers have flip phones or basic phones. The iPhone came out in 2007, but very few teens have one in 2010. But in 2010, you get the front facing camera. Instagram is founded, but it only becomes popular in 2012. That's when Facebook buys it. You have high speed data coming in. You have unlimited texting. So in 2010, the millennials are communicating on flip phones and they come out fine. You're texting your friends and family, you're calling your friends and family. That's it. Now, you might remember, I hear there's a game called Snake that you millennials seem to seem to remember.
[04:04]
A
Nokia.
[04:05]
B
That was it.
[04:05]
A
5150.
[04:06]
B
Okay. Yeah, that's right. That's it. So that. So you had a communication device in your pocket that also had one video game. Now, what do kids have? They have a gambling casino, they have a movie theater, they have a porn studio, they have music, they have everything. And it's always effortless to use. Whereas talking to people is hard, sometimes awkward, Sometimes interacting with your phone is never awkward. And so if you think about all the ways that kids have to be engaged with people, with things, with the world, and then you give them all a smartphone, which they can take with them all the time. They can sleep with it, they can take it into the bathroom. Now, it's waterproof, so my students say some of them take it into the shower. So this is a complete rewiring of childhood, of what it is. And we get a rewiring of the brain because the brain is literally developing, wiring itself up during puberty in response to what the kid is doing with the world. And so now if they're not engaged with the world very much, we cut that by 50%. You replace it with a bunch of short videos. You're rewiring the brain and you're getting mental health problems. You're getting an inability to concentrate, inability to make long term plans and stick to them. So it's horrible what we've done to our kids and we have to stop.
[05:22]
A
One thing I've noticed about my son is that he is just a completely different human being after we ask him to shut off his iPad.
[05:33]
B
Wait, let me guess. Irritable, short tempered, has sort of difficulty existing. Is that what he's like?
[05:39]
A
Yes, yes. And I'm talking for hours. We end up having an incredibly. The day is four times as bad as it would have been if he weren't on his iPad.
[05:48]
B
So what you're describing is textbook examples of withdrawal, drug withdrawal. Because all drugs that feel good, all drugs that give us pleasure work through dopamine. Dopamine is, it's not exactly a reward. But dopamine is always there when we're doing something that is giving us pleasure and it makes us want to do it again. That's the key thing. Dopamine says, as every four year old says, again, again, do it again, do it again. That's dopamine. And the sign of an addiction is withdrawal. And so it'd be one thing if he was upset for three or four minutes and he moved on to something else that would tell me his brain wasn't in a state of altered dopamine dopamine neurons. But it sounds like he is addicted now. How old is he?
[06:32]
A
He is seven.
[06:34]
B
Oh, good. Okay, good. So change things now. Everything will be fine. Because the brain, the human brain, grows tremendously fast up until the age of six or so. And then it's not growing much after that. It's all just about laying down which neurons are going to stay, which connections are going to get reinforced and which ones are going to disappear because they're not used. And neuroscientists say neurons that fire together wire together. So whatever he's doing when he's playing video games or whatever, he's laying down those circuits. And if he does that all the way through age 16, then it probably will alter his brain permanently in ways that we really, I can't say, we don't really understand. But it's unlikely to be helpful. It's unlikely to make him more effective as a human being. But at 7, he hasn't even. He's years away from puberty. Puberty is such an important period because the brain is rewiring itself from the back to the front. So I would strongly urge you, I'm not gonna tell parents, don't let Your sons play video games. I'm not gonna say that, but I am gonna say, don't let them play every day. Don't let them play for two or three hours a day every day. That we don't know for sure, but that I suspect is going to lead to permanent changes which will not be good for your son. So, you know, something like two or three hours a week, but only on the weekends. I think that would be fine.
[07:53]
A
Withdrawal, by the way, is such a good way to put it, because I always used to be so amazed that the tantrums would happen because I'd be like, but we gave you that time on your iPad. You should be thankful and happy.
[08:03]
B
And he can't help it. It's not his fault. He can't help it.
[08:07]
A
I know, I know. And so now we've kind of. Cause that was like a little bit of a reward system for us, too.
[08:14]
B
So let me give you a couple of basic principles here that I hope will guide you and your friends in when and how you use screens. So first, let's be really clear that stories are good things. Human beings are storytelling animals. As long as humans have had language, we've told stories. That's part of how we raise our kids. We expose them to all kinds of patterns. And here's what the ancestors did, or the gods, and here's what a good person is. Stories are good. And screens are actually a pretty good way of presenting stories. Interacting with other people is really good. Sitting alone is not. So let's put this all together. The best kind of screen time. This is perfectly good. This is a positive thing, is you're watching a long story, preferably some sort of quality story. A movie with good moral values. Maybe it's 90 minutes long. Maybe you watch it over two days sitting, watching a TV with another person. That's good. That's very human. There's no dopamine. There's no stimulus, response, reward, stimulus, response, reward. So that's good. Well, here's the worst. The worst is you're busy. The kid wants something. You say, here, take my iPhone, or here, here's your iPad. This is the worst because now you've got the kid alone on a small screen, which is not telling stories. TikTok videos are not stories. It takes five, 10 minutes to get immersed in a story. Really, you know, half an hour until you're really immersed. So TikTok is a complete waste of time. TikTok is the worst thing you can do. If you give your kid a device, it's Always going to end up on short videos on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram Reels or whatever. So kids sitting alone with a touchscreen device, that's the worst thing you can do. Now, video games are a little more complicated. And a general rule I think would be if you have a friend over then and you're sitting next to each other. Yeah, you can play video games for a limited amount of time and not every day. But that's fine. You're together. It's the online multiplayer games that are so addictive. And even though the kids seem like they're connecting, my son used to play Fortnite. He'd be laughing his head off. It sounded good, but the research shows that the more you play those things, the fewer friends you have. You don't have time for people in the real world.
[10:36]
A
Thoughts on Roblox? Yeah, what is this world? Listen, I am a gamer. I grew up playing video games. I was very immersed in this world. Sims, Rollercoaster, Tycoon, all this. But my kids ask for Roblox. I don't get it. Cause I've tried to play it. What is it about Roblox that drags them in and keeps them in?
[11:01]
B
Roblox is a kind of a platform on which people create games. Well, that sounds great. That sounds creative. You then wander around in this virtual space and you enter people's games. Well, that also sounds kind of exciting. But let's keep in mind these people are from all over the world. They're completely unidentified. A number of them. I have no idea the percentage. But thousands or millions are pedophiles who are there to have sexual interactions with children. They make games that involve intercourse and degradation Nazis. So even though most kids experience, I hear is fine, most kids aren't seeing horrible things. But you should never let your child be on a platform talking with complete strangers on a platform that is monetizing their time and that has no real incentive to keep them safe. So that includes Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Roblox.
[12:02]
A
Every Wednesday for the past year, I've had to go in and delete friends that he adds. And he's not supposed to be able to.
[12:10]
B
That's right. So there should be a way. If there was a way where you could completely cut off all interaction with others, that would at least be a step in the right direction. But I was horrified and I urge your readers so I have a substack. It's a free blog newsletter. It's called After Babel B A B E L We have a post titled it's not just a game Anymore in which two of my lab members spent a lot of time with Roblox. And I'll just read you some of the images that they found. He found right away. I mean he found this was. He didn't have to go looking for these. There's a game, Hide the Body where you kill someone and you have to hide their body. There's a Nazi game. Here's one where a girl is performing oral sex on a guy. Here's one where teachers having anal sex with a student. Here's a shooter game, you're supposed to shoot up your school. So I'm not saying that these are typical. Obviously most of the games are perfectly innocent. But these are things that Bennett Sipple found with almost no look at, like they just came to him. This is just a sort of a thing about the Internet. There's even a word it's called in shitification. Everything on the Internet might start off lovely and fun and playful, but everything turns to shit because everything is open to everyone. And everyone always includes pedophiles and Nazis and just people with various bizarre interests and desires.
[13:26]
A
Yeah, going right from that. Girls and social media. With all the things that young girls are seeing now online, what do you think is the most dangerous for them to see? And at what age do we bring up this conversation with our daughters? Because a lot of parents that I know are not sure if it's too early to talk about this stuff. And I'm a believer and it's never too early.
[13:57]
B
We all should probably be talking about this earlier and then delaying their entry into it. The way that I would think about this is let's think about what puberty is. So all around the world in traditional societies, they wrestle with the question, how do you turn a girl into a woman? How do you turn a boy into a man? And the answer almost all around the world is that it's not the parents job to do that it's done by other adults of that kid's gender. So when a girl menstruates, that's usually the signal to begin initiation rites. Other women will take her in and they'll teach her the secrets and they'll teach her what she needs to know about sex, about motherhood, about religion. And for boys, the initiation, if it's a warrior culture, the boys are taken away from the mother's world, the women's world, and they're put through trials and ordeals and they're toughened and they're told the secrets of the men. And so this is a human, almost a universal that we have to help our kids through puberty. We have to help them know, what is it to be a woman, what is it to be a man? And what do we do now? We say, you know what, I'm busy, I'm not going to tell you. Oh, and you don't really know other adults because we don't trust other adults. So why don't you just spend your puberty on Instagram and TikTok? And it's the equivalent of saying there's a bunch of weirdos who live in a van by the river. They do eccentric practices. We're just going to send you down there five hours a day. You go there five hours a day, let them socialize you and then come back home and I'll be surprised as to what you turn into. That's essentially what we're doing when we let our kids go through puberty on Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat. So what's the most dangerous stuff for girls to see? We want our daughters to develop into forces of nature. We want them to be happy and capable. We want them to be able to have a sustained relationship. We don't want them to turn into sex objects for men to find their value primarily as a sex object for men. We don't want them to think, I am my skin, I am my boobs, I am my hair. Girls have always been at risk of that happening to them and social media is really doing that to them. And that's why you have all these girls concerned. You have 10 year old girls using anti aging skin products. It's complete. Again, we're turning our kids over to the weirdos living in a van by the river. We've got to stop doing that. And that's why I say we need a national law and we need a global norm. No social media before 16. Social media is an intrinsically adult activity. Really. It should be 18, but, but I thought that would be too hard to get that as a global norm. So I said 16 should be the minimum. And then parents might want to wait till 18. Nobody should be on social media before they're 16. There's really no way to make it nice, constructive, positive. The algorithm is going to get to them quickly. If they're a girl, they're going to end up with beauty products. If they're a boy, they're going to end up with violence. Again, that's not 100%, but probably. So, yeah, that's what I'm concerned about for girls.
[17:03]
A
So boys disappear into a world of gaming and pornography. What are the risks there? And how does it compare to the harms that girls face?
[17:14]
B
Yeah, so when I started writing the book, I knew what the story was for girls. There's a lot of evidence that heavy social media use for girls, especially early in puberty, distorts their development, gives them eating disorders, insecurity, body focus, anxiety, depression, self harm. I didn't know what the story was for boys when I started writing the book, but over the course of writing the book and doing more research, we figured out what the story is and it is that boys are being pulled away from the real world where they need to develop into men. They're being pulled away into the virtual world, which is much more rewarding because the virtual world has figured out. These companies have figured out there are two deep drives that young men have, and those are war and sex. Those are very powerful drives in young men. And war is instantiated either through war games or through sports combat. Boys are all about testing themselves and watching other men test themselves. So sports is perfectly healthy. Watching sports is fine. And sex. To look at, beautiful women to look. When I was growing up, it was Playboy. It was about the most you could ever get your hands on. To look at a beautiful naked women is not going to damage a boy. It might warp his ideas of what girls are like, but it's not going to damage him. But that's not what kids are watching now. What everyone stumbles across is Pornhub at times. Pornhub didn't even ask if you were 18 and kids are curious. So you stumble onto this site and even if you're disgusted, some part of you wants to know, what else, what's next? What else? And so most of our kids will encounter pornography. That pornography is likely to involve mental health, dominating women and not necessarily being violent, although a lot of it is violent. Lots of kids are seen choking. And now we hear that teenagers are choking each other, mostly boys choking girls, because they think that's what they should do. It's seeing distorted bodies of women doing things that are degrading and violent and painful. And we wonder why are boys and girls having so much trouble hooking up? Why is there so much less dating? Why is there so much less sex? Why is there so much less love? There are a lot of reasons, but one is if I was a girl growing up today, I think I don't want to do that. That's disgusting. This is what sex is. I don't want that. So one of the points I'm trying to make is if you think about childhood development, the kids have to pass through so much, they have to do so much. They have to learn how to talk to people, how to be an attractive male or female, how, how to play social games. They have to learn all of this stuff on the way to adulthood. And if they grow up online, all of that gets distorted. Their sexual development, social development, cognitive development, all of it gets distorted. And again, we have to stop. We have to stop doing this.
[20:16]
A
What can a parent say to another parent that wants to maybe break the no phones contract because their son or daughter is feeling left out? Because I hear a lot of that right now.
[20:31]
B
The whole idea of the anxious generation is to show that we're all stuck in that very trap that you just said, we don't want to give our kid a smartphone and Instagram. But when she says, I'm the only one, I'm being left out. I don't know what's going on. It breaks our hearts. We've got to stop that situation from happening. So in the book, I propose four norms. They are no smartphone before high school. You can give your kid a flip phone or a basic phone, but do not give them a smartphone before high school. No social media before 16 phone free schools and far more free play, independence and responsibility in the real world. So if you're the only one doing these norms, then it's hard. As you say, there's a lot of pressure on you from your child. But if your kid comes to you and says, mom, half the kids in my class have a smartphone on Instagram and half of them don't. And I want a smartphone on Instagram now. It's really easy to say no. You say no. I've agreed with the mothers of Mary and Betty and Sally. We've all agreed that we're all gonna wait until high school for you to get a smartphone. And so, no, the main thing I would say to parents is I totally understand how hard it is when you're alone in this. And that's why the most important thing you can do is reach out to the parents of your kids friends and form common cause. And don't just take away the phones and the social media. Give them back an exciting childhood. My kids are 15 and 19. They grew up in New York City. You know, independence, things like, you know, I would take them and a friend to Coney island and then I would just sit on the bench and let them run around. It's super Exciting for them. And then when in high school, they actually can go out there by themselves. Super exciting. You know how you were waxing nostalgic about the fun you had in your childhood? Give that back to the kids. Now if they go to Coney island and they have a smartphone, they're gonna sit on the subway on the phone. Okay, they'll be on the rides. They're not gonna be on the phone on the rides. But you can give them a basic. You can keep in touch with them, you can let them text you, but they don't need a smartphone.
[22:31]
A
So what about the fourth norm? How does that work? How do you do it?
[22:34]
B
Yeah, so everyone focuses on the phones because that's the crisis we're all facing as parents. We are pulling our head. We don't know what to do. But the fourth norm is far more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. And the two, this all goes together because if you just take the phones away from the kids, what are they going to do? Just sit there looking at the wall? I mean, they might read books, that would be nice. But the goal here isn't to take away the phones. The goal is to give your kids a great childhood. And you do that by getting them to re engage with the world. And that means especially their friends, other young people in situations that are sometimes challenging for them, they might be a little afraid to go into it. They might be awkward, they might be embarrassed. They might say, no, I don't want to go to that event. I don't know anyone there. But they'll often find someone. They'll have fun. So the fourth norm is we have to give our kids back a play based childhood. Humans always had a play based childhood until the 1990s. We took that away gradually. We gave them a phone based childhood. It's working very badly. So we have to restore a play based childhood. I would urge anyone listening to this go to letgrow.org that's an organization that I co founded with Lenore Skenazy, a woman who wrote a book called Free Range Kids about How to Let yout Kids Out. How to Give Them a Free Range Childhood. Lenore really helped me and my wife raise our kids. She gave us the confidence to let them walk to school in New York City. We live in a very safe part of Manhattan and we had to just do it. And we were scared the first day and we trapped. I gave him an iPhone. Because I didn't know any better. I gave him my old iPhone. We tracked the little blue dot and we were really scared that first day. But he's a smart little kid. He was 8, 9. He was 9 years old when he first walked to school. Look, it used to be you walk to school at the age of six or seven. So an eight and a nine year old, they can do it. They can do it. But we parents, we have to get over our anxiety. And one thing we're anxious about is if other parents aren't letting them out. Am I gonna be judged? Is someone gonna call the police on me? And that could happen if you're the only one. But if you get kids going out in a neighborhood, if you get it to be normal again, for kids to walk to the store and come back with groc. Now the kid feels useful. A really important feature of the current catastrophe is that our kids feel useless. This number began going up in 2012. Before 2012, very few kids said they felt useless. But since 2012, it's more than doubled the percent who say, My life feels useless because they are useless. If all you're doing is consuming content, playing video games, you're useless. We have to let our kids matter. We have to give them things to do. We have to show them that we value the contribution to the family, give them chores, give them responsibilities. Mm.
[25:16]
A
I grew up in a town called Snohomish, Washington. It was about maybe 40 minutes north of Seattle. Very woodsy, very outdoorsy. Cute neighborhood. I rode my bike a lot. I rode it alone. I rode it to a store miles away. My trips to school were in these little bike gangs with all my friends. I was really out and about and super feral, and my parents were not worried at all. And I never lived in fear or anything. Do you think the reason why we are so overprotective of our children out in the real world now is because of the rise of true crime and true crime podcasts and television shows. Are we living in a more dangerous time, actually, or are we just hearing about it more?
[26:07]
B
Yeah. So first I want to point out that when you went through what your childhood was like, you did something that most people do when they recall their childhoods, which is it was clear that you were savoring, you were reliving these memories, and it brings joy, because those are the most exciting times in childhood. It's when you're out with your friends, you're trying something new. Maybe you get in trouble, you know, groups of guys. Sometimes you get in a conflict with another group of guys, and it's super exciting. And that's how you grow and we look back on those times and we savor them. Now imagine that you had none of them. Imagine that they were all just pulled for your memory and replaced by scrolling and TikTok and things like that. That would be tragic. And in fact that's what a lot of Gen Z feels like. They feel as though they had their childhoods taken from them. They've seen movies about childhood. But being a teenager in the 80s and 90s, they know that kids used to have a lot of fun, but they don't have fun. So why did this happen? So to get to your question, a free range childhood was very much the norm throughout the 20th century, all the way into the late 80s. And when I was a kid growing up in the 70s, there was a huge crime wave. There were drunk drivers and some of them were us. So life used to actually be dangerous, Kids used to actually die. And most of that is way, way down. Murder is way, way down, car accidents, disease, on almost every measure. Life is so much safer. But once you get cable TV in the 1980s, now you have these 24 hour news shows, now you do begin to get coverage of any kid who's kidnapped. Almost nobody is ever kidnapped in the United States. There are countries where kidnapping is a very real fear. Parents really have to guard their kids. America's not one of them. The FBI says there's something like 100 to 150 true kidnappings a year. Usually if a kid is taken, it's by the non custodial parent. There's a divorce struggle, one of the parents took the kid. But true kidnappings by strangers on the order of 100 year, which is in a country of 300 million, you're much more likely to be struck by lightning. So yeah, we freaked out in part because of news media, in part also because we started trusting our neighbors less. We were less likely to know our neighbors. We didn't sit on our porches because we had air conditioning and television and cable TV and computers. So it was in part the destruction of human trust and social capital in the United States which led us to stop trusting our neighbors and stop letting our kids out.
[28:32]
A
Are there any cities out there that have implemented phone free schools? And what would it take for the government to actually pass something like this?
[28:41]
B
This is the most exciting thing is that in the last year they are so of the four norms, remember it's no smartphone before high school. That is not gonna really be a law. No social media before 16 that we need a law for. And Australia actually passed such a law we'll see if they can get it to work. It's gonna spread globally. The third is phone free schools, and that is working spectacularly well because the teachers hate the phones. Teachers can't get through to their students. The students are watching TikTok. They're watching porn, they're playing video games. Test scores are dropping around the world. Human beings are getting stupider because they're not paying attention in school. They're watching TikTok in school. 17 states in the United States have now banned phones for the full day. That is from bell to bell. Phone free schools. New York State is starting up. My daughter starts school again after Labor Day, and the whole school system, the whole state, is phone free. And what we're finding is that it works spectacularly well. The kids actually aren't that upset at first. And then once they have experienced it for a couple weeks, the kids say, oh, actually it's kind of fun to be playing soccer or cards with our friends at lunch rather than everyone on their phone all the time. The teachers say they hear laughter in the hallways again, which they haven't heard in a long time because everyone's been on their phones. They say discipline problems are down. The drama is down. The fights in the bathroom that were staged in order to get a video, all that stuff goes away. So phone free schools is a spectacular success. And it's not just in the US it's happening around the world. So that I'm very excited about. That's the main thing that government can do easily, instantly, and largely for free. The next thing is going to be raising the age to 16, which is going to be very hard to do in the US Congress. But a number of states, including Florida. Florida dated a number of years ago. Of course, nada sues them. Everything is being held up in the court. So it hasn't been implemented yet. But we do need government help, however. I wrote the book assuming that we will never get government help. I wrote the book as an American thinking. We have a dysfunctional Congress we have to do. We're on our own. So we have to do this in groups of parents. We have to do this with parents, working with schools, and we can do most of it in that way.
[31:10]
A
And now for the Toolkit. Each episode, our guests distill their expertise into practical and actionable insights. Today, Jonathan takes us through key practices for mitigating smartphone damage to our kids.
[31:23]
B
Krista, what we're gonna do here is we're gonna do an audit of your evening and morning routines. What I discovered over the years is that almost all of my students, the first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is look at their phone. And the last thing they do before they close their eyes is look at their phone. So the phones make it possible for us to be consuming stuff all the time, and that's a big mistake. We're all taking in too much stuff. The phone makes it possible. They don't really have time to rech. So what I'd like you to do. Do you have a piece of paper handy? Can you. Can you do this?
[31:57]
A
I mean, you can always. You can just give me the lowest score that you have. It's not looking good for me so far.
[32:04]
B
So, Chrissy, in your notebook, on separate lines, I want you to Write the numbers 5. And below that, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then 0. And next to 0, write Fall Asleep.
[32:15]
A
Okay.
[32:17]
B
Okay. So now fill it in. What is one? What is the last thing you do before you fall asleep? Before you close, let's say close your eyes. Before you close your eyes for good, what is the last thing you do?
[32:30]
A
Take all my medications.
[32:33]
B
That's not the last thing you do. You're still not in bed yet. But fine, put that. You can put that somewhere. So we're going to do. Take medications. We're going to put that on there. What else do you do before you go to bed?
[32:41]
A
Look at my phone.
[32:43]
B
Okay. Is that after or before your medications or both?
[32:47]
A
It can be both.
[32:48]
B
Okay.
[32:49]
A
It's usually both.
[32:50]
B
Chrissy, you might need to go from 10 down to one and a half every other one. Be look at the phone. At what point do you go to the bathroom? What point do you brush your teeth? Do you take a warm bath, Have a cup of tea? Like, do your best to write down the five or seven things you do every night before you close your eyes. What I want you to do. And for those listening in, really think about what your actual routine is. The last five. Or maybe you want to do 10.
[33:14]
A
I don't have a routine in my mind. I want to journal, do all this. I don't have a routine.
[33:19]
B
Okay, so humans are creatures that thrive with predictability and order. We all see this in our kids. You know, when you have a toddler, they really want to kind of like, we do this and then this and then this. If you don't decide the order, then your phone is going to decide the order. Your phone is going to interrupt you. It's going to have all these temptations. So what I want to encourage you and all the other adults to do is have a routine yourself, because here's what you want to do. A lot of us are very busy during the day. We have a lot coming at us and then we have this period at night, anywhere from eight to 10 hours, typically where it's just me time, this is the time I rechart. So at night. And I like to start with the evening routine because there's a certain point which you're turning off from the other cares of the day. And now it's all about getting you relaxed, getting you ready for bed. Sleep is so important. I didn't realize this my whole life. When I was young, we didn't know how important sleep was. But for brain health, for fending off Alzheimer's, for all sorts of things, sleep is essential. So it's very important to get enough sleep. And then when you're waking up, your brain is in a very interesting state. You don't want to just stuff in the day as cares right away. So I want everyone to have a period. Maybe it's from 10 o' clock at night to 8 or 9 the next morning where you do all these things that are recharging that set you up for a great day. And then you can work really hard during the day, you can get a lot done. But if you blow it, if all you do is interact with your phone while doing other things and that's what you do most of the day and then you sleep six or seven hours, this is not a good foundation. So the next step is what do you want it to be? Why don't you give that a try right now? Make another countdown from 5 to 0 and then put in what you think would be a good routine.
[35:10]
A
I would love to journal, put that.
[35:12]
B
As number one or number two. Okay, if zero is close your eyes for sleep, maybe journaling is going to be one or two. And then what do you want to do before then? Do you want to take your meds before then? Do you want to wash your face in the bathroom?
[35:27]
A
Crazy variations would be probably, probably be a good ritual.
[35:32]
B
Put that in as number two. We all fall into these patterns for a variety of reasons and the phones make things worse. But you can take control of your life and it starts with taking control of your schedule for the period just before you go to bed and the period you wake up in the morning. Start with that and then the rest of the day is going to go better.
[35:54]
A
It must be so frustrating for you to listen to people like me though, because the answers are all there and you just see somebody that's just fighting against them, it must be really annoying.
[36:05]
B
We're all human and we do things for all kinds of reasons. And one thing I've learned from being involved in positive psychology is that there are some little things you can do that end up having a big payoff. You can improve your mental equanimity. You can improve your relationships. There are a lot that you can do to just make your life go better.
[36:26]
A
What advice would you give to adults so they can mirror something positive for their kids to see?
[36:32]
B
Here's two absolute rules. One is no phones at the table, ever. Even if you need one to settle a debate. Just like, no, we'll look it up after dinner. No phones at the table. And the other is no phones in the bedroom. This is the rule I wish to God I had implemented when my kids were young. No screens in the bedroom, ever. And what that means is you can have a TV in the living room. You can have a computer. Ideally a desktop computer would be the best. So the kids can have exposure or to the Internet. They can Google things, they can watch tv, sometimes they can watch movies. But we say no screens in the bedroom ever. And then on 6th, 7th, 8th grade, you might have to relax and say, okay, you can take your laptop in for two hours for homework, but then it goes back to where it lives in the kitchen or something like that.
[37:14]
A
How can you rectify rules that you've already implemented? Or how can you go back? How can you detox your kids?
[37:23]
B
Here's a couple of tips. One is if you can possibly send your kids to a summer camp, a sleepaway camp for a month with no devices, that's gonna clear out their brain, reset their dopamine systems. They're gonna have fun with other kids. And so a lot of parents say when they come back, their sweet, funny daughter that they last saw three years ago is back.
[37:44]
A
Yes.
[37:44]
B
But then she gets back on her phone and with two and two weeks, she's surly again. Summer camp is incredibly helpful for a reset. And the other principal is, don't be the only one. Do it with other families because your kid is afraid of being isolated. So do it with other families. Let me also share some insight from Dr. Becky. I'm sure some of your listeners will know Dr. Becky Kennedy. I've done a few events with her. I think she's great. But she gives this example. She says, you are the pilot of the plane. You are responsible for your kids safety. You make the decisions about safety for the family. And if the pilot of the plane gets new information, like, we're flying to Salt Lake City, but there's a snowstorm in Salt Lake City. So we're not going to land in Salt Lake City. We're going to land in Denver. And the passengers are all upset and like, no, I need to be in Salt Lake City. What's the pilot going to do? Say, oh, okay, let's go to Salt Lake City? No, you are the pilot of the plane, and if you get new information about dangers to your kids, it's your responsibility to act on them. So, again, I know it's really hard and I struggled with it, but we need to do this now. I'm not saying get your kids entire life of square. Please don't quote me as ever saying that, but do get them off of touchscreens as much as you can. It's really the touchscreens, especially private use of a touchscreen in the bedroom at night. That's where the worst stuff tends to happen. So I think you could start with no screens in the bedroom. Yes, you can still be on your phone, but you have to do it out in the living room. That itself is going to begin creating the idea that not every moment is with your phone.
[39:18]
A
When other families have different rules, how do you talk about that with the other family?
[39:22]
B
So a couple of points. One is, in general, it's good for our kids to see other families, to see how other people live, to be exposed to other adults. This is all generally a good thing. And if your kid goes over and there's a little bit of screen stuff, that's fine. We have to kind of loosen up now. You know what happens a lot of the time is your kid goes over and all the kids are just on their phone. They're each doing their separate thing, so there's no point in doing that. If it's a family where all the kids are screening addicted, then you probably don't want them going over. When you host, you should have a rule. There's a basket near the door. Welcome. But everyone has to put their phone in the basket. If you're here in our house, we've got a lot of things for you to do. Look down in the basement, in the backyard, lots of things for you to do. But we're not on phones in this house, so you can control what happens in your own house. The other thing is, the more you can get them to play outside, the better. Any way you can get them to play physical, Running around rough and tumble, taking small risks, all of that is really, really healthy and our kids are starved for it.
[40:33]
A
Jonathan, thank you for joining me. Today on Self Conscious, Jonathan Heights, the Anxious how the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Health. Mental Illness is available on Audible. Until then, tune in, turn on and feel better. This is Chrissy Teigen and you've been listening to Self Conscious, an Audible Original podcast. This has been an Audible original produced by Audible, Q Code and Huntley Productions, hosted by Chrissy Teigen written and executive produced by Jimmy Jelinek, executive producers for Q Code Shen Yanhu and Alexa Gabrielle Ramirez, executive producer for Huntley Productions Chrissy Teigen, executive producer for Audible Stacy Creamer Recorded and engineered by Ben Milchev Filmed by Bridger Clements Production Coordinator Brian Coulter Edited, mixed and mastered by Ben Milchev Head of Creative Development at Audible Kate Navin Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza Copyright 2024 by Audible Originals, Alex LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2025 by Audible Originals LL.