Did social media break a generation — or just change it?

Summary

TED Radio Hour: Did Social Media Break a Generation — or Just Change It?

Date: February 20, 2026
Host: Manoush Zomorodi (NPR)
Guests: Jonathan Haidt (social psychologist and author), Catherine Price (author), Maximilian Milovydov (Gen Z TikTok youth council)

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the urgent and controversial question: Has social media irreparably harmed the current generation, or simply transformed it? Host Manoush Zomorodi explores the ongoing legal, cultural, and psychological debates with prominent thinkers, including Jonathan Haidt, whose research and activism have galvanized global efforts to safeguard children from the harms of social media. The episode features varied perspectives, from Haidt’s advocacy for systemic restrictions to a Gen Z student’s pushback, and concludes with practical advice on fostering genuine fun and connection in a screen-saturated world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Legal and Political Reckoning for Social Media Giants

• Social media companies (Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube) are facing landmark lawsuits for allegedly fueling a youth mental health crisis and intentionally designing addictive platforms ([01:11]–[01:34]).
• Countries beyond the US, like Australia and France, are instituting bans on social media for users under 16, inspiring similar moves worldwide ([01:38]–[02:01]).
• Jonathan Haidt is credited as a key figure in igniting the global movement to regulate kids’ digital lives through his books The Anxious Generation and The Amazing Generation.

2. Jonathan Haidt’s “Anxious Generation” Hypothesis

• Haidt observed a dramatic increase in anxiety, fragility, and unrest among college students starting around 2014–2015 ([02:45]–[03:13]).
• He attributes this to the sudden, widespread adoption of smartphones and social media among preteens and teenagers. Kids spend 8-10 hours/day on screens, pushing out sleep, play, socialization, reading, and eye contact ([03:36]–[04:34]).
• He argues that this hyper-stimulation and lack of real-world engagement can "change brain development in ways that will make you less capable, confident, happy, and sociable as an adult." ([03:36])

Notable Quote

“If you spend those crucial years, you know, age 11 or 12 through 16, swiping five hours a day on highly stimulating videos... my claim is that will change brain development.”
— Jonathan Haidt [03:36]

3. Social, Physical, and Psychological Harms Outlined

• Direct impacts go beyond mental health: sleep deprivation, physical inactivity, and exposure to sexual predators via social media ([05:26]–[06:04]).
  • Social media “puts children into conversation with anonymous men” who may aim to exploit or harm.
  • Newer threats include sports betting and gambling gamified within platforms.
• Haidt warns against waiting for conclusive proof of harm: “Unless something is proven safe for kids, we probably should keep them away from it.” ([06:10])

4. Policy Solutions: The Four Norms

Haidt proposes four key strategies to roll back what he calls a “phone-based childhood” ([07:07]–[07:47]):

1. No smartphones before high school
2. No social media before age 16
3. Phone-free schools — not just in class, but for the entire school day
4. Restore independence and free play for kids

Notable Quote

“When a school goes phone free and it’s well enforced, you get magical results. The universal thing we hear is that teachers say, we hear laughter in the hallways again.”
— Jonathan Haidt [07:54]

5. Tracking Global Policy Progress

• Australia quickly enacted its under-16 social media ban, with politicians across the spectrum adopting Haidt’s proposals ([08:37]–[09:26]).
• Enforcement is achieved by shifting the burden onto tech companies, leveraging age-assurance technologies. However, some children circumvent bans via VPNs, though the additional friction discourages persistent use ([09:29]–[10:12]).

6. The Lawsuit Landscape and Platform Accountability

• US lawsuits allege platforms knowingly design harmful, addictive experiences for youth but are shielded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ([10:12]–[11:11]).
• Haidt calls for accountability that goes beyond financial settlements: he wants “a sea change in thinking” and systemic design changes to platforms (ending infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmic recommendations) ([11:42]–[12:31]).

7. Gen Z Counters the Narrative (Maximilian Milovydov Interview)

• Maximilian, a Gen Z member, acknowledges having struggled with compulsive phone use but pushes back on blanket generational labels ([15:57]–[16:17]):

  “When you label an entire generation as anxious, it kind of defines them. Gen Z is just going to think, well, we’re cursed...”
  — Maximilian Milovydov [15:57]

• He argues that the mental health crisis has multiple causes: economic precarity, college costs, climate anxiety, institutional distrust, the pandemic, and rising violence ([17:18]).

• Maximilian sees value in phone-free schools but warns outright bans will drive kids to less safe platforms and “won’t work at the population level.” Instead, he advocates for trust, family discussion, and teaching navigation skills ([18:36]–[20:16]).

• He critiques top-down, “nostalgic” approaches and asserts: “control doesn’t teach resilience, conversation does.” ([21:13])

Notable Quote

“We need to teach children how to navigate the world that’s existing now... not trying to idealize a world that is no longer here.”
— Maximilian Milovydov [20:52]

8. The Next Frontier: AI and Algorithmic Companions

• Maximilian discusses widespread adoption of AI chatbots and warns against repeating old mistakes of unregulated innovation ([22:07]–[23:57]).
• Both guests agree that, moving forward, openness, trust, and parent-kid dialogue about new technologies (AI, social platforms included) will be crucial.

9. Jonathan Haidt Responds to Critiques and Lays Out Evidence

• Haidt stresses that although not all kids are harmed, clear generational-level changes have been documented. He points to both user self-reports (“30% of girls say this is harming my mental health”) and internal platform research ([26:21]–[28:18]).
• Dissenting researchers, like Candice Odgers, believe the harms are being oversold; Haidt maintains the “magnitude and velocity” of the shift is what is significant ([28:45]–[29:29]).
• He underscores systemic/structural challenges for families (expensive childcare, diminished after-school options) while holding that removing devices from schools and addictive features is the most equitable answer ([30:50]–[31:38]).

10. Media & Digital Literacy — Sufficient?

• Haidt is skeptical about “digital literacy” as the primary solution (“How has that gone?”), characterizing the platforms’ addictiveness as a collective action problem, not just an education issue ([32:44]–[33:23], [36:18]–[36:38]).
• He distinguishes between “good” tech use in schools (long-form, educational videos) and the harm from short-form content like TikTok and Reels (“the short-form videos seem to be the most devastating…” [37:16]).

11. AI “Attachment Hacking”: A Dangerous New Phase

• Haidt frames the emergence of AI companions as an existential threat potentially “10 times more harmful” than social media ([38:35]–[41:19]):

  “What’s about to happen... is now they're hacking attachment. Kids are lonely. We're mammals who are seeking connection... All of that is now at risk.”
  — Jonathan Haidt [39:45]

• He floats a fifth “norm”: no AI companions for minors.

12. Vision for Change and Hope

• Legal, parental, and school action is working; policy is shifting around the world, and “digital tech is deforming children” is becoming accepted wisdom ([41:32]).
• Haidt concludes: “What we’re discovering is... we actually can push back. We can get laws enacted, and there is a chance that we can get some balance back into our lives.” ([42:51])

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Catherine Price — The “Amazing Generation” and Finding Real Fun

13. Reimagining Childhood: The Fight for Fun

• Price and Haidt’s new book targets younger readers, depicting children as heroes in a battle against “tech wizards” who control their attention with “magical stones” (phones) ([43:38]).

• Instead of just telling kids to put down their phones, the book offers concrete alternatives rooted in Price’s research on “true fun” ([45:04]):

  • True fun is a mix of playfulness, connection, and flow (a state of total engagement) ([46:22]).
  • “Fake fun” is engagement that lacks these ingredients—often what’s found mindlessly scrolling.

Notable Quote

"Fake fun is the term I came up with to refer to the feeling we get from these other activities... Marketed to us as fun, but [they don’t] produce playful, connected flow."
— Catherine Price [48:03]

14. Practical Strategies for Parents and Kids

• Encourage spontaneous opportunities for connection (e.g., catching falling leaves in a park).
• “Engineer” fun by identifying your personal “fun magnets” (people, places, and activities that reliably spark joy and connection) and prioritizing them ([50:24]–[51:46]).
• The shift away from screens isn’t about deprivation, but about rediscovering joy, freedom, and community.

Notable Quote

“You can use your fun magnets to carve out time and be a little bit more specific about how you are spending your limited leisure time in hopes that it will lead to true fun.”
— Catherine Price [52:39]

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• [03:36] — Haidt on the developmental costs of excessive social media use
• [07:07] — Haidt’s “four norms” for healthy childhoods
• [08:37] — How age-bans are rapidly spreading globally
• [10:12] — US lawsuits, Section 230, and tech company accountability
• [15:57] — Maximilian Milovydov counters the “anxious generation” label
• [18:36] — Why bans and blanket restrictions may backfire
• [26:21] — Haidt and Price on parsing causality, direct vs. correlational evidence
• [32:44] — Discussion of digital literacy and its limits
• [38:35] — The coming risks of AI “attachment hacking”
• [43:38] — Reframing screen time as a “battle for attention” in the children’s book
• [46:22] — Defining and pursuing “true fun”
• [52:39] — Practical tips for engineering more fun and meaningful experiences

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Memorable Quotes

(with speaker and timestamp as above)

• “If you spend those crucial years... swiping five hours a day... that will change brain development.” — Jonathan Haidt [03:36]
• “When a school goes phone free and it’s well enforced... we hear laughter in the hallways again.” — Jonathan Haidt [07:54]
• “When you label an entire generation as anxious, it kind of defines them. Gen Z is just going to think, well, we’re cursed...” — Maximilian Milovydov [15:57]
• “Control doesn’t teach resilience, conversation does.” — Maximilian Milovydov [21:13]
• “What’s about to happen... is now they're hacking attachment... All of that is now at risk.” — Jonathan Haidt [39:45]
• “Fake fun is the term I came up with to refer to... activities... Marketed to us as fun, but [they don’t] produce playful, connected flow.” — Catherine Price [48:03]

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Social media’s effects are complex, with passionate debate over whether harm is causal, population-wide, or amplified by other societal factors.
• Policy is rapidly shifting worldwide, with school phone bans and age limits enacted in numerous countries.
• Critics, especially young people, warn that top-down solutions may backfire without buy-in, trust, and nuance.
• New threats loom as AI shifts from attention to “attachment hacking.”
• Lasting solutions require conversation, structural change, and a rediscovery of fun, community, and analogue connection.

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This episode provides a multifaceted lens on the digital childhood debate—part warning, part call to action, and part practical guide to reclaiming fun in the age of the endless scroll.

Transcript

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[Jonathan Haidt]

Our job now is to dream big.

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From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

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I literally feel like I'm a different person.

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Yes.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading From TED and npr. I'm Anoosh Zumarodi. Most of us accept that social media has a dark side. But are these platforms finally facing a legal reckoning? A warning. This episode contains mentions of sexual abuse of minors and school shootings.

[Catherine Price]

For the very first time, the world's most powerful social media giants are standing trial.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

A landmark case could change how your

[Catherine Price]

child consumes social media.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

A series of trials have begun against Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, marking the first time these big tech companies have actually been tested in court, facing claims that they have harmed kids, fueling a

[Jonathan Haidt]

youth mental crisis intentionally designed to be addictive.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And they are rewiring the way that children think, behave and learn. And it's not just in the US Australia recently became the first country to ban social media for users under 16 years old.

[Jonathan Haidt]

Australia is launching a massive nationwide experiment.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

French lawmakers have passed a similar ban

[Catherine Price]

to shield underage people from cyber harassment, harmful and inappropriate content.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

With other countries lining up. Brit, Ireland, Malaysia and some Indian states among those considering age limits on children. And some say the person who ignited this global movement to rise up against the harms of social media on young people is this man, Jonathan Haidt.

[Jonathan Haidt]

I am a social psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business, and I'm the author of the Anxious Generation and the co author with Katherine Price of the Amazing Generation.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Before this, John was well known for his work studying the evolution of morality. But then about a decade ago, he started noticing something in his classroom.

[Jonathan Haidt]

So I've been a professor since 1995. I love being a professor. I love teaching, I love students, I love universities. And all of a sudden, in 2014 and then especially 2015, everything changed. Students were much more anxious, much more fragile. There was a lot of unrest and accusation and instability on campus. And it wasn't like this in 2012. And the fact that all our mental health centers were filled at universities across the country was a big mystery. What is happening?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

The answer is compiled in the Anxious Generation, which is full of charts and graphs backing up his thesis that technology, particularly social media, has created a warped new kind of childhood. More recently, his book the Amazing Generation brings a more positive message to kids that they have better things to do with their time than scroll.

[Jonathan Haidt]

By the age of 11, 12, 13, the kids are on social media in America and Britain. They're on about five hours a day, just on social media. And if you add in the rest of the stuff they do on their phone, you're up to eight to 10 hours a day, not counting school, not counting screens in school. And so what does that push out? Everything. It compresses everything. That means you get less sleep, less play, less sunshine. You don't read books anymore. You don't look into people's eyes very much anymore. You don't spend time with your friends anymore. And so if you spend those crucial years, you know, age 11 or 12 through 16, if you spend those swiping five hours a day on, you know, highly stimulating videos that are not stories, they're not literature, they're just little bits of, you know, silliness. Yes. My claim is that will change brain development in ways that will make you less capable, confident, happy, and sociable as an adult.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

The conversation about kids and their technology has reached full volume. How much screen time is too much? Is it on parents to set stricter rules at home? Or should schools and governments step in? Should social media be off limits altogether today on the show, the movement to change culture and laws. Why? Not everyone agrees.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

I think we've taken this kind of authoritarian approach. We need to teach children how to navigate the world that's existing now.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And an antidote that maybe we can all get behind.

[Catherine Price]

What I call true fun is this confluence of these three states, playfulness, connection, and flow. It's also something that phones block.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So back to John Haidt's Anxious Generation. The book has been on the bestseller list since it debuted in 2024 and chronicles the harms of social media on young people.

[Jonathan Haidt]

So in addition to the mental health harms, obviously, sleep deprivation has all kinds of effects on kids. The loss of exercise, the immobility has all kinds of health effects. But there are really serious direct harms that come mostly from the way that social media platforms put children into conversation with anonymous men. And it's always mental. And so the major areas are that these men want either money or sex from the children. So kids are. Sex started every year and each one is traumatized. These are not correlations, these are direct harms.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And then there's the new thing which is gaming and sports betting. Porn, of course, not so new.

[Jonathan Haidt]

That's right now you know, gambling. I mean slot machines are literally the inspiration for some of these platforms. They studied Las Vegas, they studied behaviorism. If you ever wondered why you pull down on your phone, you pull down to get a fresh set of emails or texts or whatever that was literally copied from slot machine design. So these are addictive platforms and apps and addiction is a very serious thing to do to a child. So we've got to stop, we've got to just stop this. And the idea that, well, we have to wait until we're sure. We have to do more research. I think we need to be a little more careful here and say unless something is proven safe for kids, we probably should keep them away from it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So let's start with schools. 35 states now have phone free school laws or executive orders. Did this happen easily? Tell us about that process.

[Jonathan Haidt]

Oh my God. It was the easiest social change ever undertaken by humanity. So here's what happened. So in the anxious generation, I realized, you know what, there's four steps that solve collective action problems. If we do these, we roll back the phone based childhood. Number one, no smartphone before high school. Number two, no social media before 16. Number three, phone free schools. It's completely insane that children can basically, you know, watch television and play video games and watch porn and do everything while sitting at their desks in class. That's just that never should have happened. And the fourth is far more independence, free play and responsibility. In the real world we have give kids back a childhood worth having. So those are the four norms. And the amazing thing that happened was because pretty much every teacher in the country and in the world was pulling their hair out. Every teacher in the world had to be more interesting than TikTok and none of us can be. My book came out and most politicians are parents and so so many governors, red state and blue state reached out to me, reached out to my team and we helped them. We made it clear do not just ban it during class time. And 20 states actually did it right, which is phone free for the whole school day because that's where you get the social benefits. If you just do it in class time, then what do you think kids are doing between classes? What do you think kids are doing at lunch? They're all on their phone all the time. When a school goes phone free and it's well enforced, you get magical results. And the universal thing we hear is that teachers say, we hear laughter in the hallways. Again,

[Minouche Zamorodi]

thanks to your work, a lot of governments are looking at putting age limits on social media. We saw Australia's under 16 social media ban go into effect in December 2025. How did that unfold? It seemed to happen kind of fast.

[Jonathan Haidt]

Yes, this is all happening very fast because once everybody sees the problem, they start acting. So what happened was the premier of South Australia, one of the Australian states, his wife was reading the Anxious Generation in bed and she turns to him and says, peter, you've got to read this book and then you've got to do something about it. And he did. He commissioned a report from Supreme Court justice about how it could be done. And then he did it in South Australia and then the premier of New South Wales, who's from the other, the opposite party. So in every country it's totally bipartisan because, you know, conservatives have kids, liberals have kids. If you have kids, you've seen this problem.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

How do they enforce these bans? Like, how does it work?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Oh, it's easy. You put the responsibility on the companies that are making a defective consumer product. And so there are dozens and dozens of companies that do age assurance using a variety of technologies and they. Julie Imin Grant, the Esafety Commissioner, put out a press release a month ago with updates. All 10 platforms complied and they closed down 5 million accounts for the 2.5 million Australian children in that age range. And yes, there was a surge of VPN usage. Kids figure out how to get around it. But then the surge went down because, you know, the kids check their, they check their social media 30 times a day and if they have to boot up a VPN every time, that's a little bit of friction.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And then meanwhile, we have these lawsuits and trials that are arguing, at least here in the US that platforms knowingly designed experiences that harmed kids. I mean, John, I've been reporting on this topic for over a decade and I think this is the first time that we're seeing big tech truly be tested in court. And can you explain what is different this time? Why does this have legs?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Yeah, so we have a dangerous consumer product. We have a lot of internal documents showing that they, they know this. They, they write about addiction, they write about variable ratio reinforcement schedules. And the reason why these companies have never faced liability, they have never been held responsible because section 230 of the Communications Decency act has been interpret very broadly by the courts to say no one can hold them responsible for what they see. No one can hold the platforms responsible for content that they didn't make.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Okay, I want to make sure we include the tech companies perspective. A Meta spokesperson has said they disagree with the allegations. They are confident that there's evidence that they support young people, that they actually try to be as safe as possible, but also censor as little as possible. YouTube says the allegations are simply not true. So keeping that in mind, what does accountability look like to you? I mean, financial settlements are one thing, but what else are you hoping for?

[Jonathan Haidt]

So if listeners go to metasinternalresearch.org My team gathered 31 accounts of studies that Meta did and a lot of them show direct harm. Meta even did an rct. They even did a reduction experiment. And they found that when Facebook and Instagram users stop using their product for a week, they get less depressed. So these companies, most of them again, especially Meta, TikTok and Snap, there are design changes that they could easily make that would solve many of these problems. Now, yes, they say, oh, we put on better parental controls, we put on a timer, we nudge you. So it's not that they've done nothing, but they haven't done anything that would bite into their bottom and that would actually reduce addiction or engagement.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Meaning, like stopping, like Infinite scroll or Autoplay or algorithmic recommendations, those sorts of things.

[Jonathan Haidt]

Yeah, that's right. All those sorts of things. So what success looks like for me is that we have a sea change in our thinking about these platforms, that they don't have a magical get out of jail card where you know, any other, every other consumer product, if they kill kids, they're held responsible. And so that's going to end and the whole industry is going to see, you know what, if you do things that are hurting kids, you actually need to be held responsible.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

In a minute. Why some young people aren't buying John Heights description of their generation.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

When you label an entire generation as anxious, it kind of takes away our agency in a way.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

On the show today, kids, screens and social media. I'm Minouche Zamarodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. We'll be right back.

[Jonathan Haidt]

Foreign.

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zamorodi. On the show today, kids and social media and the movement spearheaded by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to try to save what he calls the anxious generation. He's found plenty of disciples among concerned parents and politicians, and we'll hear more from him in a minute. But what do some members of Gen Z think about his ideas? Are you an anxious generation, Maximilian?

[Maximilian Milovydov]

No, I'm not an anxious generation. When you label an entire generation as anxious, it kind of defines them. Gen Z is just going to think, well, we're cursed. You know, there's nothing we can really do about it. Just by labeling us, that takes away our agency in a way.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This is Maximilian Milovydov. In some ways he is your average 19 year old.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

I think I was born when the iPhone was created, so I didn't know a world without it. I had initially struggled with my own compulsive social media use where you really can't stop and this harms your sleep, your school, your relationships.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So Maximilian saw himself and his friends struggling. But he also saw his mom, who's an advisor to tech companies and parents, trying to help make the Internet safer for young people. And so rather than delete his accounts, he joined TikTok's youth advisory council.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

I like to joke to my friends that when you see that video as you're about to go to sleep and it's telling you, go to sleep, on TikTok, we helped implement those features.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I want to ask you, you know, despite the fact that you recognized your own compulsive, as you called it, behavior when you were using social media, you wrote a op ed pushing back on Jonathan Haidt's book. Tell me what your problem was with the book and why you decided to write it.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

Let me start off with what I agree with him on. I'm gonna give him credit because I think that he has brought awareness to a real problem with teen mental health. And I think that's the first step. 40% of US high school students report persistent sadness and hopelessness. But in my opinion, the cause is misdiagnosed. We have economic precarity. College costs have gone up 169% since the 1980s, adjusted for inflation. We have the climate crisis. We. We have record levels of institutional distrust. UNICEF has said that basically half of children don't trust adults and world leaders to make good decisions for them. We had the pandemic, we had a rise in school shootings, and we had a rise in wars that we haven't seen since 1946. So I think it's not as simple as just saying that social media is the problem. We recognize that there are real harms for all users of social media. Eating disorder, content violence, sexual harassment, sextortion. So I'm not at all dismissing those harms, but there are plenty of other alternative explanations for this.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

What do you think about Haidt's approach in terms of the four core norms that he suggests? So no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16 phone free schools, and then the last one is more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

The least problematic one of those, I think, is the phone free schools. Research has proven that attention goes up, but kids will always find a way to get around it. We hide phones in pencil cases, we go to the bathroom. We even went out on an expedition. They told us to hand in our phones and everyone brought their old iPhone5s and handed those in and used their phones the whole time without the teachers knowing. So we're really creative and we will find ways around it. But when everyone's off their phone in school, there's already no fomo. And it's also temporary and bounded. So I think that's not a terrible take. But after bans in Australia and the UK and France following, we've taken extreme measures for something that isn't proven to cause harm at the population level. Researchers recently interviewed 25,000 teenagers over three years in Manchester, I believe, and they found that there were no effects at the population level for worse mental health outcomes. So I think when we have these knee jerk reactions, the wrong fixes could backfire and worsen the problem. Kids will be able to access it if they're creative enough. They may even access platforms that are worse. In Australia, researchers have been concerned that children will migrate to more dangerous platforms that are less regulated and that they also won't come to their parents for help because they'll be scared and they'll think that they're breaking the law. And we never want to put kids in a situation where they feel like they have to be secretive about what they're doing online, giving these arbitrary numbers, the no phones until 14 and then no social media until 16. There are plenty of exceptions to that and it really depends on the family and on the individual maturity of children. Right. Parents know best what their children are going to be doing. So I think it's a case by case basis.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I don't think parenting works the same way it did for when Height and I were growing up. There was a real sort of patriarchal, top down, do what you're told, authoritative way of parenting. And only now are we trying to listen and understand and talk things out. And I wonder if that is some of what you are calling out as well, that they're not asking kids what do you think they're not talking about each family working it out together if they can. Obviously it's difficult for some families.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

Yeah, no, I think we've taken this kind of authoritarian approach and I think most of that stems from nostalgia, especially for Jonathan Haidt. I'm sure he can't fathom what it must be like to grow up with phones and social media. But I think a lot of his advice ignores the reality. We need to teach children how to navigate the world that's existing now and not trying to idealize a world that is no longer here.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yeah. As you say in the article you wrote, control doesn't teach resilience, conversation does. So how do you suggest parents go about that conversation? What do you think kids really want to hear from their parents?

[Maximilian Milovydov]

I Think the biggest is curiosity and understanding. A lot of parents approach what we're doing on social media or with online gaming as stupid, or they dismiss it. They love to blame the phones for anything. You know, if you say you have a back problem or if you say your leg's hurting, they're like, it's the phone. And so I think realizing that the world is changing so fast with the rapid evolution of these technologies, just trying to understand what the environment your child is growing up in and guiding them through that, if you're able to maintain that conversation with your child, then they're more likely to come to you whenever there's a problem because they trust you. Studies have shown that when you have that authoritarian parenting style, children are more likely to rebel.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I have talked to people in the tech world who are like, God, this whole social media debate is kind of passe. What about AI? Social media is going to go to the wayside anyway. What do you think about that?

[Maximilian Milovydov]

I think it's unfortunate that we're moving on from social media so quickly. Clearly we haven't resolved it, but it's true that already we've seen between 60 and 70% of young people use AI chatbots or companions. We can draw a parallel to social media where what you're doing on that chatbot is more important than how many hours you're spending on it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Are you using them? Do you use ChatGPT or Claude or any of those?

[Maximilian Milovydov]

I do, yeah. My last semester, I took part in an AI writing class. So it was an AI first class.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Wait, how did it work? What did you guys do?

[Maximilian Milovydov]

We were required to use AI in all of our assignments. The first day of class, the professor had asked how many of us had used ChatGPT, and everyone raised their hands in the room. And then he asked, how many of you are allowed to use it in your other classes? Or how many of you tell your professors you use it? And there were no hands up. The problem, once again, is not having that trust between adults and children. Building a space where we're allowed to be open and transparent about how we're using technologies like AI or social media. And not being shamed for it will lead to much more productive conversations. Because in that class we learned when to accept AI's feedback, how to use it in a moderate way. Some studies have shown that using AI for note taking could increase engagement better than not using it at all and using it too much. It would actually reinforce your learning.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

What I love about that is it's saying, yeah, use it and then you're required to come in and talk about it and think about it and reflect on it, rather than sitting and scrolling mindlessly or chatting mindlessly, like you say, creating friction and having sort of a critical analysis of it. That seems really smart. Maybe that's what we should have done with social media.

[Maximilian Milovydov]

Yeah. And I think with AI we really have to learn from our mistakes. With social media. Right. This is a new technology. We can still get on top of this. I guess my message to like, policymakers would be to not wait to regulate. With social media, we saw innovation as an excuse to like, ignore harm. Section 230 of the Communications Decency act basically exempted tech companies from taking responsibility for what others post on their platforms. And we've seen laws being passed or being debated about exempting AI from regulation and things like that. And so I think we need to get on top of this. I would also advise parents to look around and to play with it because once parents get on it and they realize that it's not as dangerous as it's made out to be, they can really approach that with a bit more clarity and be more open minded about what their children are doing online. If you're the parent and you introduce your kid to AI in obviously an age appropriate way, kids are more likely to come to you when they encounter some weird content about AI. Forming that trust relationship with your child, I think is really one of the most important things you can do, whether it's AI or social media.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was Maximilian Milovydov. He's a freshman at Columbia University and a member of TikTok's youth council. So I wanted to know what Jonathan Haidt made of Maximilian's critique of the Anxious Generation.

[Jonathan Haidt]

So first of all, I've been a College professor since 1995 and I've been talking with young adults often. And what are they advocating for? They're advocating for design changes and they're advocating for protecting the kids from these dangers. So we are trying to listen to Gen Z. Now, what Maximilian is right about is when I wrote the Anxious Generation, I was trying to decide, am I going to try to reach teens and adults? And, and I decided, you know what? No, we need legislative and policy change immediately. So I wrote the Anxious Generation for adults and that seems to be getting through to adults.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I think I also, you know, get confused by, but also intrigued by some of the controversy around your original research.

[Jonathan Haidt]

You know, oh, let's go, please, let's do it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yeah, let's do it. So there are some researchers who say, you know, sure, there are links between social media and rising rates of anxiety and depression in young people, but we prove that social media caused it. So where are you in terms of evidence that you're putting forward now?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Okay, you know, in, in the social sciences, you have to operationalize a problem before you can solve. You have to structure it and say, here's what we mean. And now let's look at the evidence. And somehow the problem got operationalized around two bodies of academic work. One is the correlational studies where we all agree there are correlations. Heavy users are doing worse. But we fight over is the correlation big enough to matter? And the other is these experiments, they're little toy models. You get college students to quit social media for a week. For a week?

[Catherine Price]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Haidt]

And you see, like, do they get less depressed when they quit for a week or two? And the answer is yes, but it's a small effect. And then we fight over whether it's big enough. But what Zach Rauch and I have done, we have this major review paper that will be in the world Happiness report. What we did is we said, look, let's look at all the evidence, not just these two little things. And here's the way to think about it. Who really knows what's going on? Who has the best seat in the house, who can see what's happening? There's only two groups. One is the kids themselves. They are in it all the time. They know what they've seen, they know how it makes them feel. And when we survey them, we find that a quarter of like, oh, it's 30% or so of the girls say this has harmed my mental health. The kids themselves are reporting this is harming my mental health. This is reducing my sleep. This is harming my self confidence. Now that's not a correlation. Direct reports, 10,000amonth on Snapchat alone are getting sextorted every year, at least in 2022, we know that that's what the number was. So the kids themselves, they have the best seat in the house and they're saying that this is hurting us. There's only one other group that knows what's going on and that is Meta and the platforms, they do a lot of research and they think they're harming kids. They don't say it publicly, but all the documents that have come out, all the leaks. So, you know, if you want to put all your faith in experiments, I mean, Meta is the only one who actually has all the data. They have what's called, they know exactly what was seen. So those are the two with the best view. And they say this is hurting kids.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, I guess it's interesting because I've talked to researchers like Candice Odgers. She's a psychologist who studies adolescent mental health, and she actually, you know, looks at data gathered from teens actual phones, and she agrees with so much of what you've said. But she also argues that the scary story, the anxiety, is being oversold and that teens are actually more resilient than we are giving them credit for. What do you think about that?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Well, of course, that's always true. And, you know, Candace will sometimes say, well, it's not affecting everyone or it's not causing massive changes in the brain. So, sure, if you want to treat it as though it's going to harm everyone, like, no, it's not going to harm everyone. But again, I'm a social scientist. I see a giant change at a mass level that began in 2012. It began in multiple countries at the same time. We have not just correlational evidence, but experimental evidence that when people get off social media, they get happier, especially if they're adolescents and especially if they're girls. So, you know, it's. Candace and I look at the same data and we disagree about the interpretation. And there are methodological reasons why we differ.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I'm concerned that we're ignoring some of the very important reasons why this has also happened when it comes to finding the solutions. Like, so, for example, I think a lot of parents, you know, they want to follow these rules that you have, but they childcare is incredibly expensive after school programs have been cut. They live far away from their family, Work is more demanding than ever. How do we support parents and kids so that they can do all the other things you want them to do when they're not on their phones?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Yeah. So I think part of what you're getting at is, is that we've all discovered that a touchscreen device is an incredible pacifier. If you just give them the phone, everyone's happy. But here's the thing that people need to understand. If the child does not learn to be bored, boredom is a stimulus to go find something to do. But once you hand a touchscreen device, the touchscreen device gives quick dopamine. And once the kid is accustomed to quick dopamine, then you have to keep doing it. Otherwise they'll throw a tantrum.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Okay, but I have been in the supermarket with a screaming toddler and given the kid the phone and not felt great about it and definitely gotten side Eye from other people. I think there is something where parents would say, but the whole structural system is broken. There is no support. What do you want me to do exactly?

[Jonathan Haidt]

That's what I was trying to do with the anxious generation was to say, it's not your fault if, you know, if one person is doing something bad, that person might be a bad person. But a basic lesson in social psychology is that if everyone is doing something bad in a situation, it's a bad situation. And that's what we have. And that's because these devices have been stuffed down our throats, pushed into schools. Even if you keep your kid off at home, they're spending the whole day on a goddamn iPad or Chromebook. So the biggest structural thing we can do, and this has a huge equity effect, is phone free schools. And then device free schools get rid of all of the one to one devices. The rich kids generally have more controls on them at home, whereas the poor kids generally don't. Poor kids, low sesame. They're on about two hours a day more than the wealthier kids.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, I've also been the parent who's gotten the alert that once again, my child's school is in lockdown or that kids are locked out of the building because they think there's an active shooter inside. And I'm glad my kid has a phone. I would. I mean, how do we get as much attention on all the ancillary social issues that come along with the phone? Issues that are making kids extremely anxious for many reasons beyond their social media.

[Jonathan Haidt]

Yep. Well, so first of all, all of the parental concerns would be satisfied by a flip phone or a basic phone, and that has fewer of the problems. It's not as addictive. You could still reach your kid if they had a flip phone as opposed to a smartphone. But here's the thing about that concern. If there is a school shooter, the last thing you want is every kid pulling out their phone, calling home, crying, you know, or filming. What you want is for the kids to do what they drilled to do, to be quiet, to follow directions, to be alert if the situation changes. So the experts say smartphones make things worse, not better.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So where does media literacy fit into this? Digital literacy? I mean, kids don't learn to use tech well by never touching it. So how should we teach competence, not just avoidance?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Well, first, digital literacy is generally the thing put forward by the tech companies as the alternative to regulation. They say, no, no, you know, that's too hardcore to ban. No, teach kids to use it better. Well, how's that going? I can't say that none of these programs work, but we have a highly addictive substance here. It's addictive in the literal dopamine sense for many kids, but it's addictive in a unique way, which is socially for almost all the kids.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

In a minute, Jonathan Haidt weighs in on where things are headed when it comes to kids, screens and AI. Plus a conversation with Katherine Price, his co author of a new book called the Amazing Generation, which is all about getting kids to have more fun. On the show today, kids and screens. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. We'll be right back.

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

it's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Minouche Zamorodi. Today on the show kids and screens and social media, and we were just talking to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who thinks we need to keep kids off social media entirely, at least until the age of 16. For him, there is no middle ground on that rule. Even in the classroom, the effort to

[Jonathan Haidt]

teach kids to properly use addictive substances, I don't know how well that's going to work and I don't see much evidence of it working. If you can show me a school where kids had a digital literacy or digital citizenship course and then everything went pretty well, then I will change my tune. But I don't think that's possible and I've never heard of it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Well, I have definitely heard from teachers who have said, you know, they use all sorts of, of funny TikTok videos or Instagram videos. Like there's so many amazing things on these platforms, whether that's nature or science experiments. There's also a real movement to get teachers using AI as a helper and not as a companion. I think, you know, we see this school by school, teacher by teacher, classroom by classroom. But I would also, and love to see a sort of more codified way of, here's how we know these tech tools can actually be used as tools rather than taskmasters.

[Jonathan Haidt]

Of course they can be used as tools and we've been sold that promise for 20 or 30 years now. And occasionally it's been true. I think Khan Academy is great, but most of the time I think it has not panned out the way that they said because anything that's delivered on a multi function entertainment device is going to mostly end up with short videos. The kids are used to using iPads and computers. They have them at home, they use them at home. If you put one on a kid's desk, it's gonna end up at TikTok or YouTube shorts. Now stories are good, long videos are good. There's a role for long videos in class. I'm not saying teachers shouldn't show videos, I'm not saying they shouldn't show YouTube videos, but I am saying they shouldn't show YouTube shorts or TikTok or Instagram Reels. I think the, the short form videos seem to be the most devastating for, for kids developing abilities to pay attention. That's what my students tell me. To quote one of my students, yeah, I take out a book, I read a sentence, I get bored, I go to TikTok.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So bans age limits. These are ways of drawing a boundary around social media as we've known it. But the ground is shifting again, John. Like kids aren't just on feeds anymore, they're interacting with AI. There's chatbots, AI friends, algorithmically generated video, more really personalized content.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

What do we do about AI?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Yeah. So this is probably going to be 10 times more harmful. This is it. It's horrible that the social media companies hacked kids attention and took most of it, literally most of their attention. That's horrible. That should be the crime of the century. But what's about to happen and what's begun to happen in 20, 25 and 26 is now they're hacking attachment. Kids are lonely. We're mammals who are seeking connection. We're born into this world looking for that one stable thing, the caretaker. That's what the attachment system is about. And we parents, we are mesmerized. We become attached, we fall in love with our, with our baby, and we engage in what's called serve and return interactions. You know, you make a face, she smiles, it brightens your heart. You know, you make another face, SHE LAUGHS. Those sort of things, that's what the baby's brain needs to do to tune up. And with thousands and thousands of those experiences, you develop internal working models of attachment where you trust your mother or your father, and then those are the basis for your later friendships and especially your later romantic relationships. All of that is now at risk. All of that may not happen for future generations.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So if you're updating your four norms, what's the AI norms norm?

[Jonathan Haidt]

So we're just beginning to. We're just beginning to formulate that, I think. I mean, the simplest thing I guess, would be the fifth norm is no AI companions. For miners. They, you know, of course Chat GPT can become a companion. I'm not saying they can never use Chat GPT, but obviously character AI, or any AI that acts like a friend that says, I understand you, I'm here for you. Any of that is attachment hacking. And while someday that might be proven safe, I doubt it. And I think the mistake we made with social media was to say, how about you guys get to do a giant test on all of the world's kids, you get to roll out a new technology, change childhood, and It'll take us 20 years for the researchers to fight it out about whether it's harmful or not. And by then it's too late. So that's what we did with social media. We're about to do that with AI, but it's going to be much quicker and much more devastating because we're talking about severe reductions in attachment. So I'm extremely alarmed about AI, but my personal strategy here is we're so close to winning on social media. On social media, we understand it, we have decades of data. We know exactly what's going on, we see the harms, and there's a lot of legislation around the world. So if we can win on social media this year, 2026, then I think we have a chance to actually regulate AI and to put on some limits. But we don't have five years to get the social media thing. We have to finish this in 2026.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Where do you see these lawsuits, these bans? In various countries, getting phones out of schools. Like, what is the end goal? What do you realistically think we can achieve?

[Jonathan Haidt]

Yeah, well, when I started this in 2024, I didn't know what we could achieve. But because mothers around the world stood up immediately and started acting, we actually got phones out of schools in, in most states in 2025. We are now getting age limits in countries around the world. Australia started it in and there's one into effect in December and in January, five or six European countries committed to doing it. France being first followed, it looks like now. Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Indonesia, their law goes into effect soon. And so I think we're going to see massive change around the world. People realizing that digital tech is deforming children. It's useful stuff for adults, but children need to do hard things. Children should not be talking with strange men on anonymous platforms. And so I think we're going to see a global change in 2026 around kids and technology. Actually, we can win. It has felt as though it's just a digital tidal wave overwhelming us. But what we're discovering is, especially when these companies have angered the mothers of the world, we actually can push back. We can get laws enacted, and there is a chance that we can get some balance back into our lives.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He is the author of the Anxious Generation. He has also written a graphic novel called the Amazing Generation. The idea is to bring some of his concerns about screens and social media directly to kids, younger ones. His co author is Catherine Price.

[Catherine Price]

Initially, the assumption was that it would be the Anxious Generation, written for young readers, young readers edition of the Anxious Generation. And what I tried to bring to that is, okay, well how do we translate that into a concept and language that actually kids get excited about?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Catherine's previous book was the Power of Fun. Together they came up with a plan to make the topic of getting off screens more intriguing.

[Catherine Price]

So we framed it as this battle between the tech wizards who want to control people's time and Attention and essentially steal their lives from them from under their noses versus these young people who are choosing a different path. These wizards, these technologies, wizards created these magical stones that they convinced all of us to pick up at some point and just said that our lives were going to be better, we were going to get more friendship and more freedom and more fun if we all picked up these stones. And so we all did. And before long, everybody was just staring at these stones all day long. And then the second part of the story is that there are a number of young people, a growing number of young people who have recognized what is happening and have decided, I actually don't want to live that way. And so they are, in our telling and also in reality, they are the brave group of young people who are actually saying, no, no, no, no, I want to choose a different path. And I think one of the reasons that it's working because, you know, we were very worried about this being cheesy, but I think it's that it's true. We are all engaged in this battle for our attention.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I think one of the frustrations I have had is that we, we say to kids, like, put down your phone, oh my gosh, you're on your phone so much. But we don't give them many suggestions as to what to do once they put down their phone. And that's what I loved about your bringing your fun mentality into this book. So let's talk about that.

[Catherine Price]

Yeah. So the personal story on my end is I'd written how to break up with your phone. You know, it came out in 2018, very much to solve my own problem. Cause I had noticed I was spending more time on my phone than I wanted to, especially when I was with my daughter, who was then baby. But then I ended up uncovering this other problem, which is that I reclaimed time from my devices. I realized, oh my goodness, I need to have something to fill this time. And I ended up signing up for a guitar class because I had a guitar. I'd always said I wanted to learn it, but I'd never gotten around to it. And that opened up this entire community of people to me. But it also led to me having this feeling, this kind of magically energetic feeling that sounds so woo woo. I don't mean it that way.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

No, I get it.

[Catherine Price]

Just this, like, joy and this release and the sense of freedom and connection and happiness all rolled into one hour and a half class where, you know, it was a bunch of other parents and me strumming basic chords on the guitar. And trying to sing like the theme song to Moana. We were not trying to be professionals. And it was this feeling of just buoyancy that you probably can hear in my voice. Like, it stayed with me for days after this class. And I got very curious about what is that feeling that I am experiencing? And it took me this embarrassingly long time to recognize that the best word to describe that feeling was fun. So what is this feeling that we call fun?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Here's Katherine Price on the TED stage.

[Catherine Price]

Well, when people tell me their stories about fun, it's really interesting because the details are all different and often quite mundane, but the energy running through them is the same. And there are three factors that are consistently present. And those three factors are playfulness, connection, and flow. So by playfulness I do not mean you have to play games or God forbid, make believe. I just mean having a light hearted attitude of doing things for the sake of doing them and not caring too much about the outcome. Letting go of perfectionism. When we have fun, our guard is down and we're not taking ourselves too seriously. Connection refers to the feeling of having a special shared experience. And I do think it's possible in some circumstances to have fun alone and for this feeling of connection to be with yourself or the surroundings or the activity. But in the majority of stories that people tell me about their peak fun memories, another person is involved. And that's true even for introverts. And then flow is the state where we are so engaged and focused on whatever we're doing that we can even lose track of time. You can think about an athlete in the middle of a game or like a musician playing a piece of music. It's when we're in the zone. Now it's possible to be in flow and not have fun. Like if you're arguing, but you cannot have fun if you are not in flow.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Just to bring it back to your children's book and the Amazing Generation. I feel like if you'd had this conversation with me in the 1970s or 80s, I would have been like, what are you talking about? But the fact that we have to talk about having fun and deciphering what is true or fake fun. Tell me why you think we need to do that and how you do explain it to kids.

[Catherine Price]

Yeah, so we use the word fun all the time in all of these different contexts that don't tap into that deep joyful feeling. So fake fun is the term I came up with to refer to the feeling we get from these other activities. The stuff that's Marketed to us as fun, but doesn't produce playful, connected flow. In the book, we talk about how the tech wizards promised people of all ages, as I alluded to earlier, that you would have more friendship, you know, connect with your friends. That's part of many of those companies mission statements, more freedom and more fun. But if you really think about it critically, it's not real friendship. Having a follower is not the same as having a friend. It's much more rewarding to be in person with your friends and to have real relationships. And it's not really that that free to be tethered to an app. And then it's not fun. I mean, based on the research I'd done for my adult book, the scrolling through social media is not. Even if you're like laughing at a meme, it's not actually fun. Like fun happens in real life with other people. So we really wanted to draw this distinction for kids so they could see what's happening more clearly. And I've been actually really impressed by how thoughtful and astute kids have been and at very young ages. And just as one concrete example, I have a friend whose kid was very into Fortnite. I think he played. He said he played 650 hours in a year. He read the book and then he's fifth grade, he said to his mom, you know, I really like Fortnite, but I'm not sure it's a hobby. I want to have more hobbies. And now they're going regularly to the climbing gym as a family. His mom said she feels like now they're on the same side for the first time about screenshots. And it's not that he doesn't ever play Fortnite or he doesn't want to be on screens, but he actually has been able to, you know, stop using it without a conflict and actually ask for help in finding more real hobbies. That one just gave me chills. I just thought that was so cool.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So let's talk us through how do we get more fun in our lives? Because I do think part of the appeal obviously of screens is the convenience it is. It's inertia, right? Sure is easier to look at my phone than schlep, get my coat on, my hat, drive somewhere, deal with like finding a parking spot. Yeah, pants, exactly. That alone. But you have ideas about how to get more fun into your life.

[Catherine Price]

So when I think about how do you have fun? I think of it from two different angles. I think about it from a spontaneous fun side, and then I think it fit from engineered fun. So the spontaneous side is basically opening yourself up to and noticing opportunities for little bits of playfulness and connection and flow. I remember a guy telling me a story about his memory of Tru Fun. He was sitting on a park bench with his nephew, and they were just trying to catch leaves as they fell off a tree. Like, they did that for you? He said an hour. And it was so fun. And they were giggling, and I was like, oh, my God, I love that so much because you just gave me. It's like metaphorically. Exactly what I'm talking about. There's opportunities for fun floating in the air all the time. We just have to be better about reaching out and grabbing them. So that's kind of like spontaneous fun. On the other side, it's hard to have fun. It's much harder because we are so busy. So the other side is to actually say, okay, let's actually do. This is where I'm get dorky. An analysis of, like, what I call your fun magnets. Fun magnets are a term. It's a term I came up with to help people figure out what to prioritize in your very busy life. So they are the people, the places, and the activities that typically bring a feeling of fun to you. So it's like a friend you always have fun with when you're together. Or it's a setting.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

She's really fun.

[Catherine Price]

She's really fun. Yeah. Or like a setting. Like, for me, it's like summer camps or lakes. Those are two fun magnets for me. Like a setting where you're like, oh, that's that. I consistently have fun when I'm in that context. And then activities, obviously, are activities that often lead to you having fun. And the reason I think that's really useful for adults is that our lives are very busy. But if you know what your fun magnets are, you actually can carve out time for them in your schedule. It doesn't guarantee that you're going to have fun, but if you're like, all right, I'm going to prioritize. In my case, for example, I'm going to prioritize playing music with friends because I know that that is a fun magnet for me. So you can use your fun magnets to carve out time and be a little bit more specific about how you are spending your limited leisure time in hopes that it will lead to true fun. But at very least, you're probably going to end up with some playfulness or connection or flow, and you're going to feel a lot better than if you had spent that time scrolling on the couch or answering your work email.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So get off the phone.

[Catherine Price]

Get off the phone.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Go find your fun magnet. Get out of here. That was Catherine Price. She's the co author of the Amazing Generation, your guide to fun and freedom in a screen filled World. You can see her full [e-mail] thanks so much for listening to our show this week. If you are a subscriber of npr, you can hear more of my conversation with Maximilian Milovidov in our bonus episode that's coming out next week. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, Phoebe Lett and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour, James Delahousy and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Matthew Cloutier, Harsha Nahada and Rachel Faulkner White. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Damien Herring and David Greenberg. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxanne Hylash and Daniela Belarazzo. I'm Minouche Zamarodi and you have been listening to the TED radio hour from NPR.

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