1332: Screen Time | Skeptical Sunday

Summary

The Jordan Harbinger Show — Episode 1332: Screen Time | Skeptical Sunday (May 24, 2026)
Host: Jordan Harbinger
Guest/Co-Host: Michael Regilio
Theme: A skeptical deep dive into the anxieties, myths, and science behind screen time—exploring whether today’s concerns are new, what the research actually says, and how to critically navigate our digital world.

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Episode Overview

This week’s Skeptical Sunday zeroes in on “screen time” – a persistent topic of parental worry and media headlines. Are smartphones and social media uniquely harmful to our brains, relationships, and happiness? Or are we replaying the panic that's greeted every new technology? Jordan and comedic skeptic Michael Regilio trace the long lineage of tech-based moral panic, dig into the real science shaping the screen time debate, and tackle what genuinely matters for kids, adults, and families navigating our digital reality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Update & Science Marvels (01:59–06:49)

• Michael’s New Vision: Michael shares his journey from being blind in one eye all his life to receiving a cornea transplant and gradually regaining vision—an awe-inspiring testament to modern medicine.
  • Quote (03:29): “Science is crazy, man.” — Jordan
• Discussion on vision, perception, and adaptability: The group reflects on how the brain adapts to lost senses and how quickly medical technology is evolving.

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2. The Anxiety Isn’t New—Tech Panics Through History (08:01–18:35)

• Yesterday’s Panic: Today’s fears about screens are almost word-for-word echoes of those sounded over TVs, telephones— even the printing press.
  • Quote (09:48): "Critics argued that speaking to someone without physically being present was unnatural and would weaken social bonds... Newspapers and clergy warned that the telephone would accelerate rumors and lies, allowing falsehoods to travel faster than the truth. Maybe that sounds a little familiar." — Michael (09:48)
• Party lines and privacy: Early phones meant shared lines—cue paranoia about privacy, eavesdropping, and social decay.
• Socratic Skepticism: Even Socrates argued that writing would erode memory and “create the appearance of wisdom without the reality” (17:04).
• The Theme: We have always been afraid of what new tech might do to our kids, our minds, and our society.
  • Quote (18:01): "So being scared of new technology is not new. And it seems kind of innate in all of us." — Jordan

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3. What Makes Screens Different This Time? (21:12–22:57)

• Unprecedented Reach: 5 billion smartphones—62% of the global population—makes this more than just a fringe issue.
• Is It Moral Panic—Or Something Real? The scale and immersive nature of today’s screens (especially social media) may represent a new level of concern.

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4. Happiness, Well-being & Age—The U-Shaped Curve (23:02–27:01)

• The U-Curve: Happiness is high in youth, dips in midlife (aka “midlife crisis”), and often rebounds after 50. This pattern has been stable across societies—until recently.

  • Quote (25:45): “After about 50, happiness starts to rise again and often keeps climbing into the 70s, even as health declines.” — Michael

• But Now…: Young people are more unhappy than in previous generations. Many blame the omnipresence of screens—especially social media.

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5. Screen Time & Childhood Development (27:18–34:45)

• What’s the Guidance?

  • AAP recommends almost no screen time for kids under 18 months except FaceTime with family.
  • 2–5 years: No more than 1 hour/day of sedentary recreational screen time.
  • Quote (28:56): “Facetiming with Grandma is fine... That back and forth is the natural way humans learn.” — Michael

• Chicken/Egg Problem: Is it the iPad, or is it disengaged parents? Hard to untangle, but the loss of conversation, play, and sleep is a clear concern.

• Jonathan Haidt’s Argument: Play, real-world adventure, and face-to-face interaction are what build brains and resiliency. Their disappearance correlates with increased anxiety and lower well-being in children and teens.

• Measurable Brain Effects: Studies (e.g., by John Hutton) show more screen time → lower integrity in white matter pathways for language and cognition.

  • Quote (34:37): “For roughly the last hundred years, each generation has performed better than the previous one on cognitive tests. This appears to be the first generation to take a step backwards, which makes it totally worth studying.” — Michael

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6. Teenagers, Social Media, and the ‘Comparison Trap’ (35:46–41:15)

• Reality Check: Anecdotally, kids are still smart and capable—but research shows strong links between screen time and depression, anxiety, and especially worse outcomes for adolescent girls.

  • “Heavy screen time also correlates with less emotional regulation and less cognitive flexibility... no group is being hit harder than teenage girls.” — Michael (37:59)
  • Quote (38:21): “Teenage girls are scrolling through social media. They see girls that they think are prettier, that are skinnier and happier, that are using filters or whatever. And of course it makes them feel worse.” — Jordan

• Global Pattern: Cross-national studies repeat these findings—screen time, notably early exposure, predicts lower social/academic outcomes.

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7. Addiction by Design: How Apps Hijack Our Brains (45:37–51:16)

• It’s Designed to Be Addictive: Social giants employ behavioral scientists to maximize engagement, using principles akin to gambling addiction (Fogg Behavioural Model, developed at Stanford).
  • Infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, streaks: “App designers make it harder to stop being on the app than it is to just continue being on the app.” — Michael (49:24)
• Teens are (especially) defenseless: “The difference though, between say, your parents or even me is that our neural pathways were formed before infinite scrolling. So these kids today, they are developing their brains inside these systems while their brains are still young and malleable.” — Michael (50:55)

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8. Legal Reckoning: Are Companies Responsible? (60:01–63:36)

• Section 230 vs. Deliberate Harm: Tech companies usually avoid liability for user-generated harm. But in new lawsuits (California, New Mexico), courts are reviewing whether platforms themselves are addictive by design and targeting children—possibly breaking new legal ground.

  • Quote (62:45): “If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.” — Meta internal memo

• Analogy: Letting kids on social media is like letting them loose in a casino built for addictive compulsion (63:04).

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9. Not All the Evidence Agrees—The Academic Debate (70:06–74:09)

• Contrary View: Some top researchers (Andrew Przybylski, Oxford) find “very small, inconsistent, or in some cases, no clear association with overall well-being.”
  • “Screen time” is a mushy term; not all uses (e.g. homework, Facetime) are equal.
  • Mental health reporting also fluctuates as diagnosis, labeling, and awareness change (“uptick in ADHD” doesn’t always mean more actual ADHD).
• Current Nuance: What matters is how you use screens, what you do, and when. Social comparison on algorithm-driven platforms is particularly toxic for the vulnerable.

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10. Gaming, Multi-threading, & Screen Benefits (75:13–78:54)

• Video Games: Far from rotten—gaming can boost learning, stress release, endorphins, social skills, and modern “multi-threading” (juggling conversations, tasks across platforms).
• Violence Link? No evidence games like Call of Duty make kids violent. Social “atrophy” is not supported by data.
  • Quote (77:54): “Kids who play video games are often learning 21st-century social skills. People increasingly have to communicate with fewer nonverbal cues, and gamers get a lot of practice doing that.” — Michael

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Complaining about printing text is the 15th century version of complaining about the Internet. On the Internet.” — Michael (17:03)
• “Nothing motivates me like finding out I’m about to lose my Duolingo streak.” — Jordan (51:49)
• “App designers make it harder to stop being on the app than it is to just continue being on the app.” — Michael (49:24)
• “Imagine trying to quit an addictive behavior when the trigger is always in your pocket, always buzzing, always available. Like, imagine trying to quit heroin, but everywhere you go, you have heroin with you.” — Michael (65:33)
• “Smartphones are not the devil. Video games are not turning kids brains into soup. But how they’re designed and how they’re used actually matters. Especially for kids whose brains are still developing.” — Jordan (80:32+)
• “Maybe instead of a screen time report each week, we should get a screen down time report. What did you do with your one short life when you weren’t scrolling your phone?” — Jordan (80:51)

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Practical Takeaways

• For Parents (28:56, 33:32, 78:39):

  • No/very limited screen time for under-2s; prioritize conversation, play, and sleep.
  • Play video games with your kids or at least watch and engage.
  • Model healthy screen behaviors and proactively manage notifications.

• For Everyone:

  • Be aware that your phone is intentionally designed to maximize your attention.
  • Social comparison, algorithmic feeds, and disrupted sleep are the most toxic aspects.
  • Not all screen time is equal: educational, creative, or social uses are different from mindless scrolling or endless passive consumption.
  • Develop habits and boundaries: Focus modes, “do not disturb,” and scheduled downtime can help counteract addictive app design.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Discussion | |-----------|---------------------| | 01:59–06:49 | Michael’s vision recovery & science wonders | | 08:01–18:35 | Historical panics: Telephones, print, and more | | 21:12–22:57 | Why screen time is a uniquely modern debate | | 23:02–27:01 | The U-curve of happiness across life stages | | 27:18–34:45 | Screen time, children, development & guidelines | | 35:46–41:15 | Teens, mental health, and social media | | 45:37–51:16 | App design, addiction, and dopamine | | 60:01–63:36 | Legal responsibility & new lawsuits | | 70:06–74:09 | Academic pushback: Not all screen time is bad | | 75:13–78:54 | Video games & their nuanced effects |

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Conclusion: Balance, Not Panic

Screens themselves are neither saviors nor demons. They amplify both our best and worst instincts. Evidence is mounting that how we use screens—and how much control we give companies over our attention and our children’s minds—matters greatly. “Screen time” isn’t the full story; it’s about intentionality, boundaries, and remembering life exists outside our rectangles.

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Suggested Next Steps for Listeners

• Audit your notifications; don’t let apps dictate your attention.
• For kids: Engage, co-view, and foster plenty of off-screen play.
• Reflect regularly on your own habits: “What did you do today when you weren’t on a screen?”

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For more deep-dives, practical critical thinking, and expert interviews, visit jordanharbinger.com or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

Kinda. You wanna give us a couple lines about that? Cause that's not something you hear every day.

[Michael Rugilio]

No, you don't. I was basically born blind in my right eye with a condition called keratoconus. The story gets even weirder cause I had it severely from birth in my right eye and not at all in my left eye, which Is so unheard of that when they finally diagnosed me when I was, like, 19 years old, because they didn't know what. What the heck. It was when I was a kid that when I went back to my eye doctor at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston, there was a line of doctors down the hall leading to my doctor's office. And when I got into the office, he's like, can my colleagues take a look at you? And one after another, all these doctors just lined up are like, what the heck? And, yeah, after a lifetime of basically being blind in my right eye, I got a cataract in my left eye. The surgeon said, hey, once we get this all taken care of, give me a shot at the other eye. I think a cornea transplant can give you vision. And I said, you know what? Let's give it a shot. Let's see what depth. This depth perception I've heard so much about.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. What is that called? Like, let's see what the stereoscopic vision

[Jason Pfeiffer]

people keep raving about feels like.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow.

[Michael Rugilio]

Give it a shot. So I got the surgery. Don't recommend. The first week was crazy. I had no white of my eye. It was blood red and nasty, and. But here we are five weeks out, I think, and everything seems to be healing. And I am slowly. It takes about six months, but I have some vision in my right eye. I'm starting to see things.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Science is crazy, man.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I mean, this is just an amazing thing. By the way, you said surgery. I had the surgery. Don't recommend. You just mean having someone cut your eye open sucks. You don't mean. Actually, I don't recommend.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Cause you can see out of your

[Jason Pfeiffer]

eye, which is kind of a big deal. Like, I think.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, it's a huge deal. Okay, I. We'll see how the. What the end result is. I may very well recommend the entire panoply of surgery and heel time, but the surgery itself was more than I was expecting. It's a lot to have surgery on your eye.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it sounds crazy, and I'm so glad that this was able to be something you could take advantage of. And normally, again, we don't talk about a ton of personal stuff on Skeptical Sunday, but I just thought, especially when it's not relevant to the topic at hand, But I thought, okay, screen time.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now you can look at the screen with both eyes. I guess that's the nexus we're going with here in the episode. Yeah.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I wanted to give you a chance to share that because I just think it is quite incredible and amazing what science can do and that you've done that, and that's why you haven't been on the show for a while, because you have been recovering from that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm excited to see where this goes.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

It's really interesting that they can do that and kind of a miracle and just really, really happy for you.

[Michael Rugilio]

And I'm just excited to see.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes. Literally.

[Jordan Harbinger]

By the way, you could drive before with one eye. That sounds dangerous. Is it?

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah. I'm not the only one. It is technically legal to drive with one eye.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Okay.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Has that ever caused a problem? Because I just feel like if I closed one eye, I don't know. I don't want to try that experiment.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah. You know, but for you, it's different because you would be closing one eye and seeing half of what you normally see. Since birth, my brain has been learning to use one eye to create the full picture, which led to a number of crazy things. Bad postures, always sitting. Like, my head always being tilted in weird ways because my brain was trying to make the half a picture into the whole picture, not knowing that it was missing information. Yeah.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So eventually you just. Your brain maps the size of something that you would expect it to be with the distance it is, as opposed to using the stereoscopic part to measure it from two different points. Yeah, that makes some sense. But, yeah, still maybe kind of a pain. And I. I've seen. When you're reading and stuff like that, I've seen you do that. And I did notice before that you tilted your head strange. I thought you just had glasses that needed updating.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I didn't realize that you were actually

[Jason Pfeiffer]

blind in one eye for a really long time. Like, for the first couple years of knowing you, I was like, huh, you

[Jordan Harbinger]

need to have those bifocals redone, bro, because you are. You look like one of those professors

[Jason Pfeiffer]

that has to do that squint where your nose hair comes out in order to read.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You know I'm talking about. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

Well, I've been told I look like a professor many times. In fact. It's funny. I don't technically need glasses right now. Oh. And several people on the comedy scene have been like, dude, but your image.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, my dad is 84 or something like that. 83. And he just had cataract surgery, so you're in good company.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And he also had.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I guess they implant a lens in there. Cause they're like, well, we're already taking this thing out. Let's put this other thing in.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So he doesn't have glasses anymore at age 83. And he's like, yeah, I don't miss those. You know, they're always getting gross.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I mean, wearing something on your, on

[Jason Pfeiffer]

your face all the time, they get gross and they, you lose them and you sit on them and then you get, you pick them up by the lenses and you're like, dang it, and I got to clean that. You know, it's a whole thing. It's maybe better not to have them.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Your image. You know what, man, Fine, go to

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Warby Parker and get some clear lenses or something like that and wear those on stage as a costume element of your personality. It's better not to need them, that's for sure.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Anyway, on the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn

[Jason Pfeiffer]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today on the show. Screen time. It's not exactly a new concept for

[Jason Pfeiffer]

those of us old enough to remember, when parents worried about how much television we were watching.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Turn off the boob tube.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

A parent would shout from the other room.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And you know, even back in the 80s, parents were concerned about how much time their kids spent staring at a screen.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Now that I think about it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And then just like now, there were

[Jason Pfeiffer]

studies that implied too much TV is

[Jordan Harbinger]

going to be bad for kids. Too many cartoons are bad for kids. Sitting too close to the TV is bad for kids. Now the scientific study, I think that

[Jason Pfeiffer]

part was actually true.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now the scientific studies and experts are warning parents about the real dangers of

[Jason Pfeiffer]

a new kind of Screen time.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And it turns out it's not just the kids, it's us adults as well, being told that we spend way too

[Jason Pfeiffer]

much time staring at our devices.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now, I get a screen time report every week on my smartphone, but honestly,

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I'm not even sure what most of it means. It just tells me that I'm spending too much time on Instagram or usually Reddit.

[Jordan Harbinger]

If I listen to a podcast like the one you're listening to right now, does that count as screen time?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Even if I'm really not looking at

[Jordan Harbinger]

the screen and I'm just walking around

[Jason Pfeiffer]

with the phone in my pocket using that app? I don't know.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Which leads to the obvious question, what are we even talking about when we say screen time? This week, comedian and skeptic Michael Rugilio is here to cut through the glare and find out whether screens are draining our lives or just our batteries.

[Michael Rugilio]

Man, he really brought me back with that line. Turn off the boob tube. Yeah, my parents were obsessed with turning off the boob tube. I eventually started to wonder why we even had a boob tube in the first place. It seemed like the only thing we ever did with it was turn it off. And that gets to something really important, and that is that the fear of technology is not new. It did not start with television. In fact, many of the fears people have today about the smartphone are almost identical to the fears people once had about the phone. Phone. Or I guess now we'd have to call that the dumb phone.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, so people were worried that the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

phone, the regular phone, would destroy real human connection.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yes, exactly. Critics argued that speaking to someone without physically being present was unnatural and would weaken social bonds. Many people believed that face to face conversation was morally and socially superior and that the telephone encouraged emotional laziness. There are also fears it would spread misinformation and gossip. Newspapers and clergy warned that the telephone would accelerate rumors and lies, allowing falsehoods to travel faster than the truth. Maybe that sounds a little familiar.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, familiar.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So the same hang ups and maybe different devices at a slightly different scale.

[Michael Rugilio]

Absolutely. So people were super freaked out about the telephone. They thought it would collapse social hierarchies and destroy privacy. Do you know what a party line was?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Those 1900 numbers that teenagers called in the 90s when your parents found the bill in kicked your ass because it was like 3.99aminute.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's why you got dumped into a

[Jason Pfeiffer]

line with 10 other pimply faced kids and somebody was like, I'm going swimming in my pool. And the other person's like, yeah, I'm just playing Atari with my brother. What am I talking about right now?

[Michael Rugilio]

For one, yes, that is exactly what a party line was back in the 90s. And I'm a little embarrassed to admit I called a few times.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Well, they were fun, but they.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Again, you get in trouble because they're super expensive, and they're kind of praying that you don't know that they're two bucks a minute.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, they're praying that you go behind your parents back and stick them with the bill. And it probably was a pretty good business model, but, no, we both have the right idea. But party lines go back way further than the 1990s, and they were not for socializing. They were actually a necessity. See, in the early days of the telephone, people used party lines, meaning multiple households shared the same connection, and people would get freaked out. Critics were warning that eavesdropping would become normal, which I'm guessing it probably did if you could hear what the neighbors were talking about on the phone. People claimed that the telephone would rot the brain and shorten attention spans. Some people argued that these new rapid, disembodied conversations overstimulated the mind and made people impatient with slower forms of communication. There was even an etiquette manual in 1902 that warned that communication by telephone should not be considered private. People worried about constant surveillance.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

It's funny that you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now that you mention this, my grandma

[Jason Pfeiffer]

had a party line. I remember my dad mentioned it because I picked up the phone once. I can't remember why. And I heard talking, and then I hung up, and I heard talking, and I hung up, and I heard talking.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I was like, dad, I hear talking.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

The phone's not working.

[Jordan Harbinger]

He's like, oh, hang up. That's the neighbor across the street or

[Jason Pfeiffer]

next door or whatever.

[Jordan Harbinger]

They're using the phone. Like, what are you talking about? It was like you could just pick up the phone and you would hear your neighbor if they were using that line. So that's, I think, what people were saying.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Oh. Critics warned that eavesdropping would become normal. Not just your eavesdropping on whosoever on the phone in your own house, but

[Jordan Harbinger]

that if you were bored or nosy, you could silently and quietly pick up

[Jason Pfeiffer]

the phone in your own home and listen to your neighbors making calls.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it was very weird, but it was cheaper than having your own phone line.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And then Sometime during the 90s, my

[Jordan Harbinger]

dad went, can you believe the phone company made my mom, my grandma, get rid of the Party line. And they just gave her her own

[Jason Pfeiffer]

landline for the exact same price. Because they were like, holy crap, these old people in Detroit are using party lines.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And it's a billing nightmare, right, because you got to split the bill.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

But then someone's like, yeah, my neighbor's using the phone constantly and I never do and I'm not paying.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it's just caused all kinds of annoying things. And I would imagine also it's tough for the government to like wiretap two

[Jason Pfeiffer]

people when one of them might be a criminal and the other person is totally innocent. It's like, how do you handle that?

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it's probably much easier for them

[Jason Pfeiffer]

technically, administratively, for all kinds of reasons, to just give everybody their own phone line. So then she was like, I got my own phone line for $15 a month. Because it was literally like 15 bucks a month to share a phone.

[Michael Rugilio]

Wow idea that party lines like that were still around in the 90s, really.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Old Detroit neighborhood, right? Detroit west side. You know the street that has three 85 year old white people left on it and the rest of them are young families from wherever and. Or like, basically it's Mexican town area now. And it was just like, you know,

[Jordan Harbinger]

old, old, super old white people. And they weren't gonna, they, I don't need my own phone line.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

She would say, I don't make that many calls.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Nobody calls me. Which is kind of sad, but true

[Jason Pfeiffer]

when you're an 85 year old woman who knits all day.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like, you probably really don't need your

[Jason Pfeiffer]

own phone line necessarily anyway.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, this whole communication by telephone should not be considered private, constant surveillance. I mean, this, it kind of all

[Jason Pfeiffer]

sounds like any TED Talk you listened to a decade ago about modern technology.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. And people were super freaked out by this at telephone. Many religious leaders argued that the telephone encouraged idle chatter and temptation, and especially between young men and women.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

One Boston clergyman warned that young women using the telephone would be exposed to unseen male voices.

[Jordan Harbinger]

He was close. It's more like unseen male breathing. But so, yeah, the familiar fear that without rules, women would spiral into moral chaos.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Meanwhile, yeah, men were definitely using the phone to call women. And then just go like, what are you wearing?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That was one I got a few times.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I was like, mom, it's for you. You got Mom, I think it's for you.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, look, I don't know a single guy that just gets random nude photos sent to his phone. But every woman I know has received unsolicited Richard pics. So, yeah, I'm not sure that women were ever the problem in this equation.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No, no.

[Michael Rugilio]

Look, besides the paranoia and the sexism of the era, there were some legit criticisms. Mark Twain talked about how intrusive the telephone was, and he warned it would shatter peace and quiet.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I guess he. Well, he had a point. If you ever hear, of course, you

[Jordan Harbinger]

have a rotary phone ring, you could hear that thing.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And I guess this is the point.

[Jordan Harbinger]

If it was upstairs or downstairs, you

[Jason Pfeiffer]

could hear it through the whole house.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And you'd hear your neighbor's ringer.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

If the window's open, you'd think it was your own because they all sounded the same. They were loud.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, I know. I remember it well. You could. Yeah, you could hear. I remember being out in the yard and you could hear the phone ringing. But another criticism other than Mark Twain's that had a little merit was the idea that disembodied voices strip conversation of empathy and nuance, which is actually pretty undeniable. Language experts will tell you that body language and micro expressions are a huge part of communication. And that is exactly one of the criticisms experts now have about screens.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Wow. Yeah. I had no idea people's fears about the telephone would be echoed so closely by the smartphone. But here we are.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah. And those concerns were echoes from generations earlier about the printing press. Back then, critics argued that putting knowledge on paper itself would weaken the mind. You can find that complaint in texts from the 15th and 16th century.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Wow. Okay.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I think I've heard this. But it's funny that people complained in

[Jason Pfeiffer]

printed text that printed text would weaken the mind.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I remember. Was it like one of these ancient Greeks?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And maybe we'll talk about it in a minute. But he was kind of like, oh, reading is so bad for you because you have to memorize everything.

[Michael Rugilio]

Oh, yeah, we're absolutely going to get into that in about half a second. But I'll just point out that complaining about printing text is the 15th century version of complaining about the Internet. On the Internet.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Well, there you go.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

And you got it exactly right. And that person you're thinking of was none other than Socrates. Centuries earlier, he made the same complaint about writing itself. He warned that it would create the appearance of wisdom without the reality.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes, but he put his money where

[Jordan Harbinger]

his mouth was because didn't he not write anything? He.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So we only hear about him through other people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Kind of.

[Michael Rugilio]

Socrates never wrote down a single word if it wasn't for that pesky Plato writing down everything he said. Socrates would never have made it into Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. And then no one from my generation would have ever have heard of him.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

God, I loved that movie.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That was just so.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

My. By far, my favorite movie from back then. It's funny that it's Keanu Reeves, too. And another guy whose career went nowhere. I guess so.

[Michael Rugilio]

Alex Winters.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Is that. But you know that because he's the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

guy who was in that movie. And then, like, Lost Boys and then nothing else forever, for some reason.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Or I think it was called Lost Boys. The vampire one. Yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

Oh, no. That was a great movie.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

It was. Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So being scared of new technology is not new. And it seems kind of innate in all of us. It makes you wonder how the guy

[Jason Pfeiffer]

with the first sharpened stick was received. Like, oh, you're going to draw pictographs? This guy's trouble. Keep your kids away from him.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, well, people probably saw his sharpened sticker were like, come on, Erk, it's too quick. Takes the personal touch out of bludgeoning someone to death. Yeah, and look, in my research, I even found people writing about how dangerous the bicycle was going to be. So we are just scared of new stuff. I mean, I wonder what people must have thought of the newfangled elevator.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So your screen time report just dropped six hours a day. Congrats. You're basically in a toxic relationship with a rectangle. Speaking of things that quietly ruin your life, let's hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Ridge. I got the Ridge five in one Travel Power Bank.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

It has come in handy so many times. We bring it everywhere we go.

[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

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[Sponsor Voice]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is also sponsored by SimpliSafe. One thing that's always driven me nuts

[Jason Pfeiffer]

about traditional home security companies is the way they trap you into these insane long term contracts.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's why like Simplisafe, they figured out how to make home security simple, effective and affordable without this giant contract hanging over your head. And as the person responsible for protecting this house, what I've appreciated most about

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Hey all, don't forget about our newsletter. It is practical. It is a two minute read on just about every Wednesday. Great place to go get wisdom from the show, especially those back catalog episodes

[Jason Pfeiffer]

you haven't heard in years or maybe ever.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Jordanharbinger.com News is where you can find it. Now back to Skeptical Sunday.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

My friend Jason Pfeiffer, he had a podcast about new technology back in the day. I don't think it exists anymore, but one of the episodes was about the elevator.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And you're right, people were like this is ridiculous. It's going to cause all kinds of problems.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And then it was elevator operators.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Can you believe they're going to let people operate this thing without any training? It's going to be so dangerous.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

People are going to be out of the job. And now it's like oh yeah, maybe those jobs, just maybe you don't need a guy sitting in the elevator all day long, pushing the button or doing whatever. None of it made sense.

[Jordan Harbinger]

In one sense, it seems to me

[Jason Pfeiffer]

that all the panic about the telephone, riding bicycles, I still don't understand that one, or whatever it was, is fear of the unknown. Okay?

[Jordan Harbinger]

And we as humans are adaptable.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

We look at the new technology, we adapt it to our lives, and everything was fine.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So this fear of smartphones and social media apps, does it run the risk of just being more of the same? But on the other hand, it is kind of different.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

It's not a moral panic. There's sociologists, psychologists, scientists who, you know, people who actually study this stuff, and

[Jordan Harbinger]

they're saying, hey, maybe we don't need to be comparing ourselves to a million

[Jason Pfeiffer]

people at once through this little device while we're laying in bed with our snuggling with our kids.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. It isn't the same as the moral panics of years past. And let's start with this. There are about 5 billion smartphones on planet Earth. Roughly 62% of the human population has one. So if smartphones are affecting us negatively, this is not a fringe issue. This is a question worth asking. So how are they affecting us and why? And the first place to look is our happiness. Are we happier staring at screens 24 7? And when it comes to happiness, the data all starts with the You.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Okay, so are you saying when it comes to happiness it's about the individual or.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What do you mean?

[Michael Rugilio]

What I'm saying is that when it comes to the happiness index, it's all about the U, or at least the shape of the letter U. I'm talking about the shape plotted out on a graph. The U shape of happiness is one of the most consistent findings in social science across countries, cultures, income levels, you name it, the U shape shows up. Plot happiness across age, you get a big U.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So if I'm understanding you correctly, happiness starts high, it dips for a while

[Jason Pfeiffer]

and then it rises again. So the graph looks like a U. So basically a reverse bell curve. Is that accurate?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

No.

[Michael Rugilio]

Bingo. Bingo. So let's start with the first high point on that graph, which would of course be youth. People tend to be happier when they are young. Their life isn't perfect, not absolutely carefree. But optimism does a lot of heavy lifting in youth. People expect things to get better. Identity still feels open ended. Even stress feels temporary. I know I was convinced I was going to be a rock star when I grew up, which Made me an extremely happy teenager.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. I don't remember what I wanted to be.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I don't think I had. I think one of my sources of stress was I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I remember thinking, I have all the time in the world to figure this out, so it doesn't even matter.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I don't have to worry about it. And I'm going to live in all

[Jason Pfeiffer]

these different places and I'm going to

[Jordan Harbinger]

do all these different things and it's just. Yeah, the world is your oyster. The luxury back then is you go, I can try this thing for a year and if it doesn't work, it

[Jason Pfeiffer]

doesn't matter because I have a year after that and a year after that, and a year after, you just have no real responsibilities. Right. And then you go to college and you're like, I just have to sort of do whatever, float through this. Yeah. I mean, that's a different kind of life than I have now by a lot.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, absolutely. So that, I mean, youth is happy. But then we hit midlife. And trust me, there is a reason that when you say midlife, the first word people think of is crisis. Because happiness declines through the 30s and 40s and usually bottoms out somewhere between early 40s and early 50s.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, I get it, man. Bills, first of all, career, you got

[Jason Pfeiffer]

kids going, and then your parents start aging. And I think for a lot of

[Jordan Harbinger]

people, I'm fortunate that this isn't me.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

But I think for a lot of people, and I know a lot of

[Jordan Harbinger]

these people, life doesn't work out the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

way you think it will.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I don't mean like, oh, you're

[Jason Pfeiffer]

not a rock star.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Boo hoo.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I mean, there's people who thought like,

[Jordan Harbinger]

hey, at least I'll be upper middle

[Jason Pfeiffer]

class like my parents. And it's like, oh, that didn't work out either. Or like, oh, I didn't think I would have gotten paralyzed in this tragic

[Jordan Harbinger]

accident, you know, so there's people whose

[Jason Pfeiffer]

lives did not work out the way that they thought it would for a lot of people in ways that are particularly damaging.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And then, yeah, then it comes the realization that we're only here for a

[Jason Pfeiffer]

blink of an eye and poof, it's over in your warm food. And that's not maybe comforting for a lot of people.

[Michael Rugilio]

That's a rather dark way to look at it, which you're 46 years old, so we'll call that exhibit A for stress maxing out midlife.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

You're not wrong.

[Michael Rugilio]

The Good news is that after about 50, happiness starts to rise again and often keeps climbing into the 70s, even as health declines.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That sounds counterintuitive. So as health declines, people stay happy? Er, why?

[Michael Rugilio]

I don't know. I mean, a few things seem to be going on. Let's start with expectation adjustment. As people get older, they recalibrate what they want from life. Fewer grand fantasies, more appreciation for what they have. Emotional regulation also improves. People get better at avoiding unnecessary conflict and letting go of things that don't matter. And time perspective shifts. When time starts to feel finite, people start to prioritize relationships and meaning over status and achievement.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I think there's something else going on there too.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

People who make it into older age,

[Jordan Harbinger]

they're simply more resilient, man. They've been there, they've done that. There's a stabilizing effect.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I think that probably comes from having survived long enough to reach old age. And you've seen people come and go and you're one of the people who hasn't gone yet.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, but you will remember that I said the happiness reverse bell curve was a constant in sociological studies. Studies from around the world was.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I haven't read about this a bit. I can tell you right now it

[Jason Pfeiffer]

is that first high point of happiness that I think has changed youth. So young people are seemingly more unhappy than ever. And many critics point to the device that seems to be super glued to their hand and plopped out about a foot in front of their face.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yep, you're 100, right. And let's start at the very beginning. Literally the beginning of life. There's not much debate when it comes to screen time for very young kids. And that is because of how learning actually works. Before babies can talk or understand words, they are already fluent in faces, body language, micro expressions, the emotional feedback they get from the parents. The very thing that people thought talking on the telephone would rob us of a screen can't do that. Even educational apps for really young kids replace human interaction with bright lights and sparkly distractions that overstimulate. These are hardly replacement for a loving parent.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, right.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Isn't the rule no screen time at all before 18 months or something along

[Michael Rugilio]

those lines, yes, you are talking about the American Academy of Pediatrics guide guidelines. And you're mostly right. There is one small exception that they make. They say facetiming with Grandma is fine. And that is probably because you can see Grandma's face. She reacts to the baby and the baby reacts back. That back and forth is the natural way humans Learn. So that's the way it is until 18 months of age. They say just pretty much no screen time at all. But then after 18 months, the recommendation is limited screen time between 18 and 24 months. And even then, an adult should be present to explain what is happening and help make real world connections for the young person.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, my kids, I don't remember what

[Jason Pfeiffer]

age we let them start watching iPad.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Probably too early, candidly, because we didn't

[Jason Pfeiffer]

really know about all this early on.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But they weren't always interested in that stuff. My daughter is much more interested in

[Jason Pfeiffer]

it than my son.

[Jordan Harbinger]

My son will watch those Mark Rober

[Jason Pfeiffer]

videos and stuff like that. He likes science videos. Or he'll be curious about something and

[Jordan Harbinger]

he'll be like, hey, how does a submarine go up and down in the water? I'm like, okay, a video is a really good way to illustrate this.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Somebody for sure has made a video for kids that explain submarines.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So we let them watch. But my daughter, she watches a wider variety of things, and she's four now, and this variety I don't always love. Sure, she learns a ton from YouTube. She'll start using words that we didn't teach her.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

She'll tell us how things work, and she.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But then other things we'll catch her watching. I'm like, okay, so this is people singing and dancing or doing something stupid

[Jason Pfeiffer]

like throwing plastic things at each other. And it's not even in English, so. So they're watching, I don't know, Russians or Indian kids, you know, saying things in a foreign language and not doing anything educational. They're like having a water fight.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I just find it really tough to

[Jason Pfeiffer]

believe she's getting anything out of that. So we try to limit that stuff.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But, yeah, my son, you say, hey, no more iPad.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And he's like, whatever.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But my daughter, depending on her mood,

[Jason Pfeiffer]

sometimes she really wants to watch that stuff. And it's a little disconcerting, right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like when you take.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Take an iPad away from a kid and say, let's go play something. Usually they're okay, but when they start reacting like a heroin addict that you've taken away their stash, that's highly concerning when they're that young.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah. I can only imagine. This gets exactly into what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. So they say for kids between 2 and 5, no more than an hour a day of what they call sedentary recreational screen time. That phrase definitely matters, the sedentary recreational part, because that's what you're talking about. It's not the Educational. It's not the interactive. It's just the sitting there watching for the fun of watching. And a systemic review and Meta analysis in 2023 found that increased screens in early childhood is associated with poor cognitive and psychosocial outcomes. Not because screens are just straight brain poison, but because passive viewing replaces conversation, play, and sleep.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, so what I'm curious about here is this is sort of a chicken

[Jason Pfeiffer]

egg thing for me because. And again, I don't know the research, so I'm not saying that as fact.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm just saying my question is what comes first? Because, okay, your kid watches a lot of iPad and, oh, he has poorer cognitive and psychosocial outcomes than other kids. Is that because he's watching too much iPad? Or is he watching too much iPad because his mom is addicted to the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

phone and his dad works 14 hours a day?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Or mom and dad both work 14 hours a day.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

When they get home, they're brain dead and they turn on their own phone and social media, or they stick the kid in a room alone because they've

[Jordan Harbinger]

got to make dinner and cook. And so the kids watching. So it's like, is it because of. Basically, I think what I'm saying here is, is the iPad causing the poorer psychosocial and cognitive outcome or is that

[Jason Pfeiffer]

because the parents are disengaged from the parenting process for whatever reason, Even if it's a really good reason, like they have to take care of people, elderly parents, or the house or their own kids, and they're just not involved with that particular kid very often, except on the weekends. So you see what I'm saying, Like,

[Jordan Harbinger]

is it the iPad causing it, or

[Jason Pfeiffer]

is it the fact that the parents are overstretched and too busy?

[Michael Rugilio]

That is such a good point. That is a super sharp observation. And you're hitting on what researchers call the confounding variable problem. And it's definitely something they're trying to consider when looking at this data. The honest answer from the research is probably both, like you just said, but it's genuinely hard to untangle. Some studies try to control for parenting quality, socioeconomic factors and home environment, but you can't perfectly isolate the screen variable from the parenting. So parenting is kind of an X factor. Unless the researchers can go into the home 24 hours a day for some number of days and judge the parents. They just don't have an indication one way or the other of the how much that's playing into it. But what is known is passive viewing replaces, like I said, important stuff, conversation, play and sleep.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I see.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So this is good to know because

[Jason Pfeiffer]

my daughter probably does watch, let's say

[Jordan Harbinger]

more than an hour.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Maybe it's an hour and a half of just watching stuff. Some of it's educational, so maybe it's not all recreational. But let's say she watches that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But she plays really well at school, she sleeps really well at night.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

She's always talking with people at school and here at home, so.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So is that going to matter?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That's the question. Yes. It's probably better if she's not watching. I don't know. Kids buy things on Amazon and throw them at each other on YouTube. But is it going to cause the same kind of problem? Maybe not. I don't know. Or that's copium or what Hopium from me.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And this sounds a little bit like

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Professor Jonathan Haidt's argument in his book. He wrote a book called the Anxious Generation that was episode 990 here on the show.

[Jordan Harbinger]

He basically said that mammals have play based childhood and that play for children

[Jason Pfeiffer]

is one of the most important experiences for brain development and emotional growth. Which is probably not a big surprise.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, and no, you're exactly right. In Professor Haidt's book, the Anxious Generation has done a lot to forward the notion that smartphones are really, really bad for childhood development. He argues that once you remove play, social interactions, adventure and what we used to just call childhood, you predictably get weaker language skills, shorter attention spans and less social connection.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Which explains the collapse of HAPP in youth.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

There's MRIs of children's brains that back all this stuff up, correct?

[Michael Rugilio]

Yes. Most famously there's Dr. John S. Hutton who published a study that found that higher screen time was associated with lower microstructural integrity of white matter tracks.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, there's no doubt in my mind

[Jason Pfeiffer]

you have no idea what any of those words mean.

[Michael Rugilio]

And you would be correct. But having read about the study, I know that this is the part of the brain that supports language literacy and related cognitive networks.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Can I fairly say you don't necessarily

[Jason Pfeiffer]

know what that means?

[Michael Rugilio]

And you'd be right again. But I know this is affecting important stuff in kids brains.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Michael Rugilio]

I don't need to know exactly what all these scientific words mean. I just need to know that the people who study it definitely know what these words mean. Yes. For example, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, he has conducted research at Harvard Medical School. He argues that our kids are the first generation in the past hundred years to be cognitively worse than we are.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Cognitively worse.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That, is that a nice way? Is that a sciency way to say dumber?

[Michael Rugilio]

I think that is what he is saying. He argues that this generation performs worse than the one before in areas like attention, memory, working memory, creative thinking, divergent thinking, and critical thinking. So for roughly the last hundred years, each generation has performed better than the previous one on cognitive test. This appears to be the first generation to take a step backwards, which makes it totally worth studying.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Look, I'm not trying to pick a

[Jason Pfeiffer]

fight with the data or with a scientist who knows his stuff here, but

[Jordan Harbinger]

my own experience tells me that kids today are actually pretty great. Yes, teenagers are constantly on their phones, but when you sit down and actually

[Jason Pfeiffer]

have conversations with young people, with teenagers, I don't have any in my immediate family, but I've done this before and

[Jordan Harbinger]

it's obvious, it's so obvious that they

[Jason Pfeiffer]

are smart and they're navigating some pretty unique challenges.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I know this sounds weird, but let's

[Jason Pfeiffer]

say I go to New York, for example. I do a lot of walking around and I'll see these like young, sort of like punky looking kids that are local to Manhattan or maybe Bronx, Brooklyn. And they're at a convenience store and I'll be like, hey guys, do you mind if I ask you something? They'll be like, what's up?

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I'll ask them a question like, do you know what's going on in

[Jason Pfeiffer]

the world today or do you mostly watch, you know, like Sneako Stream? And they're like, nah, screw that guy. Da da da da.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And then they'll tell me something like, here's what I'm concerned about in the world.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And they're like, I don't really care

[Jordan Harbinger]

about gas prices because I don't have

[Jason Pfeiffer]

a car, but I know it affects other things in the world economy and I'm worried about getting a job. And I'm like, how old are you? And they're like, I'm in 10th grade.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I'm just like, this kid has Junco jeans on and his pants are falling down. He's got a broccoli haircut and he looks like the kind of guy who, I don't know, jumps off a second story window into a pool full of jello. And it's like, no, he's actually not as ignorant as he looks.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

He's just got teenage style. But these kids are not all just brain dead. They're smarter than a lot of adults that I know. Again, anecdotal evidence is, you know, it's not really refuting Your points here, but

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm not seeing this whole sort of

[Jason Pfeiffer]

brain dead wall E generation. And if I am, it's adults, not kids.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, no, you're getting to something important and that's because it depends on what kids you're speaking with. And there is actually a counter narrative to all of this. And we'll get into that. But first let's dig into what some of the scientists who are ringing the alarm bells are actually saying. So you were right to point out teenagers, they are the group being studied the most. Multiple studies find that higher screen time does correlate with mental health issues, especially anxiety and depression. Heavy screen time also correlates with less emotional regulation and less cognitive flexibility. And study after study shows that no group is being hit harder than teenage girls.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, right. It turns into this depression loop. And I can, I mean, I can kind of relate.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I would hate to compare myself to

[Jason Pfeiffer]

other people on social media all day.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I cannot imagine how much harder it

[Jason Pfeiffer]

is to resist doing that for young women.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Teenage girls are scrolling through social media. They see girls that they think are

[Jason Pfeiffer]

prettier, that are skinnier and happier, that

[Jordan Harbinger]

are using filters or whatever. And of course it makes them feel worse. I'm an adult man. I'm 46 years old.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I see other things like that and I feel that little pang of like,

[Jordan Harbinger]

oh, I really should lose a few pounds.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I bet I, I could. Oh, I'm not doing the kinds of exercises this professional athlete in calisthenics gymnast

[Jordan Harbinger]

is doing, I should be doing. And then feeling worse, it sends them back to scrolling, which leads to more

[Jason Pfeiffer]

comparison and more anxiety. And around and around it goes. If this is happening to a 46 year old man who can put this thing down and look at all the blessings I have in my secure, happy life. I can't imagine being in a sort of a precarious teenager position and having to do that same thing without the foundation of being able to go back to, well, I've got it made over here. Right. You're already insecure and then you've got this insecurity slot machine in your hand.

[Michael Rugilio]

Absolutely. One of the leading researchers on this is David Blanchflower and he's been flashing the warning lights in a big way. He has noticed that this very stable happiness index we've been talking about, it started to go awry around 2014.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So right around the time every teenager got a smartphone because they became affordable and ubiquitous. Yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yes. Teens used to be among the happiest age group. Like we said in recent years, ranch flowers notice that roughly 1 in 10 teenage girls and a smaller but still significant number of boys report severe mental distress, describing their mental health as poor almost every day.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Again, I don't want to argue with experts, but I'd be curious what percentage

[Jordan Harbinger]

of teenage girls identify as goth, because that might explain why they're feeling depressed

[Jason Pfeiffer]

every day as well.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No, I. I kid, but I'm also. Look, I see.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And it could just be where I live, but I do travel a lot and I feel like I see this everywhere.

[Jordan Harbinger]

When you and I were younger.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Makes me feel so old saying stuff like that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But when you and I were younger, there was like a couple of kids that would wear the metal stuff and

[Jason Pfeiffer]

the black lipstick and the eyeliner.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And now I feel like maybe there's

[Jason Pfeiffer]

a lot more of those darker subcultures. Maybe this isn't linked to depression and I'm just reading too far into it and people just like different kinds of music and I don't get it. I. I hope that's the case.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But the mental health stuff, stuff, it's really scary in kids and teenagers.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I hate hearing this because it makes me really sad. I mean, if you had a couple of depressed kids in your high school, everybody kind of knew about it and felt bad for them. It seems like that's just everyone now. That freaks me out. I hate hearing that you're supposed to be happy. You're not supposed to have clinical depression when you're 15. I mean, that's just. I don't know, it just makes my. It breaks my heart, really.

[Michael Rugilio]

It's a complex issue. But the fact of the matter is this is not just a US phenomenon. This is cross national research that shows similar, similar patterns emerging among young people around the entire world. So there's the thing called the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development and that found that early screen exposure had lasting effects. Each additional hour of screen time was associated with lower classroom participation and weaker math performance.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Years later, your ancestors fought saber toothed tigers. You fight the urge to open TikTok during a conversation. Evolution is not impressed. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Progressive. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. They make it super simple. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions. You'll get a quick quote with coverage options tailored to your choices. Plus you'll see what discounts you may qualify for, like the online quote, discount or savings for paying in full. In fact, 99% of Progressive Auto customers earn at least one discount. See if you could save when you switch to Progressive, you'll feel good about

[Jason Pfeiffer]

making a savvy choice.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little extra cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary this episode is brought to you in part by Lufthansa. When people talk about travel, they usually focus on the destination, the hotel, the restaurants, all the stuff that happen land. But the flight is part of the experience too. Just like a great hotel can shape an entire trip, so can a great flight. That's exactly what Lufthansa Allegris is built around. On a long haul route, comfort matters more than people realize. If you're cramped, tired and can't relax,

[Jason Pfeiffer]

you feel it the second you land.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But when a flight is comfortable, you can actually stretch out, rest, work or just enjoy the ride. It changes the whole trip. I was thinking about that on my recent Intercontinental Lufthansa flight. I got so comfortable I honestly didn't

[Jason Pfeiffer]

want the flight to end. Which is not something you say very often after a long international trip trip.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's why Lufthansa Allegris stands out. It's built around the idea that people travel differently. Lufthansa Allegris business class has five seat options. You've got the suite, the privacy seat and the extra long bed, the extra space seat and the classic seat so you can choose what works for you. And that's what I like most. It feels elevated, but still practical. More privacy, more comfort, more thoughtful design for the way people actually travel. Now visit lufthansa.com and search for Allegris to learn more. Lufthansa Allegris all it takes is a yes. Limited availability on select routes. More routes coming soon. We've also got a Jordan Harbinger subreddit if you want to talk about the show. Talk about concepts from the show. Ask questions of the show team. That's over there on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now back to Skeptical Sunday. There's also the element of being in

[Jason Pfeiffer]

school is often not that interesting. So if you are really on your

[Jordan Harbinger]

phone all the time and you're hooked

[Jason Pfeiffer]

on your phone all the time, then you're not doing your homework and you have less to say in class and you haven't done the reading because you're hooked on your phone. I feel like this is a. A cycle, right? You get addicted to the phone and then you end up doing less of your schoolwork.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's what happened when I got a computer, man, I got a computer, I

[Jason Pfeiffer]

started finding out about the Internet. I started playing Doom and stuff like that, and I stopped doing other things that I needed to do. And then I didn't know what was going on in school, so I kind of retreated into my head. I didn't have a phone. And then I'd come home and instead of being like, I better catch up with everybody, I was like, screw it, I'm going on the Internet again.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So, yeah, it's a cycle.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, for sure. Sure. It's definitely a cycle. And it's actually a pattern which is repeating itself. It's not just the Quebec Longitudinal study, but research from Spain has found that higher levels of screen media are associated with lower academic achievement.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, so correlation.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Got it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But causation, though, can they show that this is causing that? I mean, I gave you my hair

[Jason Pfeiffer]

brain theory about it earlier that I had from me growing up with a computer. But do we know that this is causal?

[Michael Rugilio]

Maybe. It's too early to say for sure, but the numbers are pretty alarming. I've noticed the potential for depression in body image anxiety in my own family. Like, we're taking family photos and my little nieces want to immediately review the photos and make sure they were good enough. And I mean, that breaks my heart. I grew up in a time when photos were taken on film. The camera just disappeared into a lab for three months, and when it came back, never crossed my mind to look at it and wonder how I look. And by the way, I've seen some pictures of me as a kid. I should have been concerned with how I looked. I mean, I got one here I'm going to show you right now. And this picture is. Yeah.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Wow, you look like Jim Carrey and Dumb and Dumber and Hottie Doody Doll, to be frank, had a demon child who got mauled by a bear.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, well, we'll put that in the show notes on the website when we drop this episode. Look, I get it. Kids today, they're under a different kind of pressure. And let's be honest, a lot of

[Jason Pfeiffer]

this is by design man.

[Jordan Harbinger]

App developers, phone designers, you cannot convince

[Jason Pfeiffer]

me that they are not deliberately building systems that condition us to crave our phones and stay on them. My friend Nir Eyal wrote a book called Hooked it's actually quite. It's probably 15 plus years old now. And it was about how companies are doing this.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And you would think like, oh, this is gonna be the warning sign that everybody is being lied to by these big companies. And so what happened? He wrote this book to warn everybody,

[Jason Pfeiffer]

and he immediately got hired by all of these companies because they're like, tell

[Jordan Harbinger]

us how to do more of the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

things you're talking about in Hooked. And he's like, I kind of didn't.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's not where I was going with this and stuff.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And it's. He's between a rock and a hard place. Because, yes, you're going to probably consult for Meta because you want to sort of steer things. You want, one, you want to make. Make money because that's who's got the money to pay you. But two, he's like, I can steer things so that they're not as harmful. And they were kind of like, look, we're not interested in your sort of moral boundaries of this. We just want to learn how to make this stuff more addicting. And he's like. So he started writing about other things. He's still into behavior change, but I think he got.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It was a cold shower writing a

[Jason Pfeiffer]

book about how everyone's hooked on this. And then the people who are the most interested are the social media companies. So they can make the problem worse. Anyway.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, young kids and adults for that

[Jason Pfeiffer]

matter, are basically defenseless against the research and development teams at massive tech companies. I mean, what are we supposed to do, man?

[Michael Rugilio]

The story of your friend. That is crazy. It's.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

And of course we don't want to hear that we're addicted to our phones, but it makes so much sense that the app manufacturers, they want to hear it, like, tell us more.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, so that's such a good point. But yeah, big tech companies all have neuromarketing and behavioral science teams. These are scientists whose job is to figure out how to influence behavior and keep people consuming more and more of their products. In fact, there were just two huge landmark cases against Meta and Google that exposed a ton of information there. They are literally trying to drive behavioral change. One of the most widely used frameworks for this is called the Fogg behavioral model, developed by BJ Fogg. He's at Stanford. His research sits underneath almost all social media design.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I'm glad you brought him up. Yes. He's a friend of mine as well and a guest on the show episode 306. And I meant to say Nir Eyal has been on the show several times. I don't have his episode numbers handy. He was on recently about belief in behavior change.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But yeah, BJ Fogg also completely horrified

[Jason Pfeiffer]

by how his behavior change research, which he was doing I think at Stanford,

[Jordan Harbinger]

how that's been used to create tech

[Jason Pfeiffer]

addiction in young people especially. He told me, I went to his house and he was saying that one of the major issues that he has

[Jordan Harbinger]

was he was teaching all these kids in Stanford, like, hey, you know, look at all this behavior change stuff.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And here's how you can use it to form good habits and break habits. And a lot of his top students went on to be like, here's an

[Jordan Harbinger]

app that uses all of the behavior

[Jason Pfeiffer]

change stuff to keep you using the app as much as possible.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And he was kind of like, that's not really what I was hoping y' all were gonna do with this. So he, he, he's kind of like

[Jason Pfeiffer]

the scientist who invented this thing that gets misused in a Marvel movie movie.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's like, I've invented unlimited energy. And the evil guy's like, great, I'm gonna use it to nuke everyone.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. I was.

[Michael Rugilio]

He's Oppenheimer.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes, he's Oppenheimer. Exactly. Yes. So this stuff, this BJ Fogg stuff,

[Jason Pfeiffer]

this is really the science behind endless scrolling where the feed never ends and there's autoplay of videos and one video finishes and the other one immediately starts. I mean, all of this kind of stuff, it stems from his original principles.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, exactly. And, and the way the tech companies have worked it is teenagers are not staying on these apps because they are choosing to. They are staying on the apps because the app manufacturers have made it frictionless.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Michael Rugilio]

App designers make it harder to stop being on the app than it is to just continue being on the app. You pointed out two of the big ones already, which is Infinite scroll and Autoplay, then add one tap likes instant reactions, instant pre filled responses like LOL and emojis. And now they've all incorporated face id, which removes the last barrier, which is you don't even have to log in. You just pick up your phone and you're in. This completely highlights the difference between the Internet and social media apps. And when we talk about teenagers and screen time, we are pretty much mostly talking about social media apps.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Let's be honest, this is not just

[Jason Pfeiffer]

teenagers we are talking about. You just described all of my middle

[Jordan Harbinger]

aged folks, even my parents, again, Both in their 80s. They're on their phones More than anybody

[Jason Pfeiffer]

that I know, just absolutely constantly, it makes me wonder how long it'll be until the other high point on the happiness graph falls off a cliff.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, I'm retired now. I can garden all day.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Actually, I'm gonna sit inside, look at anti. Whatever Joe Biden or Donald Trump posts or whatever on Facebook all day, watch people complain and watch videos of people my age falling or something. I mean, it's just. It's only a matter of time. Time. They've already figured out how to hook these people. So, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if it's already there and we just don't have the research calculated yet.

[Michael Rugilio]

Look, man, let's. I'm. I'm happy to look in the mirror right now and say, myself included. Like, the difference though, between say, your parents or even me is that our neural pathways were formed before infinite scrolling.

[Jordan Harbinger]

True.

[Michael Rugilio]

So these kids today, they are developing their brains inside these systems while their brains are still young and malleable. So that's what's so dangerous about what, unfortunately, your friend's system developed and what his students went on to then exploit with these social media apps. And there's a step two to the fog model as well.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's crazy that the method by which

[Jason Pfeiffer]

apps are making young people's brains hazy

[Jordan Harbinger]

is called the fog model.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That's just. I mean, it's just two GS, but

[Michael Rugilio]

still, reality loves irony, Jordan. So step two, and this is where it gets. What's pretty insidious is the prompt. And social media companies, they are crazy for it. And these teenagers, they are bombarded with prompts from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep. Push notifications, vibrations, badges, streak warnings. Hey, your friend just posted. Or you might like.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, okay, I got to admit, this stuff works. Nothing motivates me like finding out I'm about to lose my duolingo stream streak. I just recently lost my streak and it's because I was on a boat with no Internet and I was like,

[Jordan Harbinger]

this is a good time for me

[Jason Pfeiffer]

to break the habit of feeling like I have to log into this thing at 11:30pm even though I've already. I'm already half asleep or already asleep

[Jordan Harbinger]

to keep my streak. I did have like an 800 day streak and I had a 400 day streak after I broke that one when

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I went to Japan because the date changed. And I immediately. I don't think streak freezes existed. So I just lost my streak, like, oh, over an error.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I emailed them to put it back and they didn't get it or they didn't do it.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I can't remember. And I was like, fine. So I stopped using it for weeks and weeks and weeks. And I just again last week lost.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like, right now, my duolingo says, Jordan, oh, no, because I haven't done it and my streak is now zero.

[Michael Rugilio]

Oh, no.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

Indeed. I'm a little bit proud. I'm at 390 days of German lessons here.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Das is good.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

My.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Huh? Keep practicing, Dumkopf. Yeah, that's the. Well, we're going to do a Skeptical

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Sunday on language learning apps because.

[Michael Rugilio]

Oh, I'd be so curious. Yeah, I am trying. I find German to be that interestant. Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Anyway, any language is going to be

[Jason Pfeiffer]

a tough one to learn in the app I use. This is an aside and maybe a sneak preview of the Skeptical Sunday, but

[Jordan Harbinger]

I use it as an addition. Like, I use it to reactivate Spanish,

[Jason Pfeiffer]

which I already spoke really well back in the day and has since gotten beyond rusty, and it's worked really well for reactivating things. I use it to improve sentence structure

[Jordan Harbinger]

in German because my spoken German was really good, but my written German was crap.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I used it to learn common phrases in Chinese that I maybe didn't use

[Jordan Harbinger]

because I don't talk about owls very often in Chinese.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I guess it's not a common phrase,

[Jordan Harbinger]

but you can use it for things like that.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

But they're very hard, slash, not useful for people who want to start a brand new language. And you're like, I'm going to learn Quechua or whatever from Duolingo.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's like, no, you're gonna pick up a couple vocab words. But picking this up from the beginning

[Jason Pfeiffer]

levels is basically a fool's errand. In these apps.

[Michael Rugilio]

I've definitely noticed that I'm doing that thing that everybody does, which is I watch my Netflix in German. Now. I'm currently going through BoJack Horseman in

[Jason Pfeiffer]

German, so that's actually kind of a fun idea. I should probably watch movies with Chinese subtitles or something like that. Or English subtitles.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Or is it.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Do you watch with English subtitles but the audio is German?

[Michael Rugilio]

Is that what you're doing with Netflix? You can switch the audio so it's. Even though it was shot in English, not shot because it's cartoon, but it was made in English. You can switch it to German and then turn on the English subtitles.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I see. Okay. I could see that being useful if you're a D. If you have enough

[Jason Pfeiffer]

of a basis of each Language. Otherwise, you're just listening to stuff you don't understand at all and reading subtitles, and it's pointless.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, I do a lot of pausing and try and figure out what exactly was said there, but no, it's. I'm gonna need more than duolingo. And again, looking forward to this episode. Definitely gonna listen to that one. Anyway, so back to the social media apps. In fact, back to what we were talking about, which is the prompts. So the way that they're evil is that they arrive at moments of boredom, loneliness, insecurity, and social comparison. The apps make sure there is never silence in your life. Which is interesting because when I was in music school, we used to make a joke that the guy who overplayed his flashy guitar solo was really just saying, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. Right, Right? And that's basically what our phones are now constantly screaming, look at me. We are like Pavlov's dogs. We're trained to hear a beep or feel a buzz, and the phone wants us to drop everything. See what just came in?

[Jordan Harbinger]

So Nir Eyal's book hooked.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And again, this came out in probably 2009 or 2010 or something.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I don't know. You know what? I could be. That could be a little early.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Maybe it's 2013. But one of his first tips was turn off your notifications for things like email. Back then, you only had a few apps, right? You had, like, email apps and things like that. Now, if you don't actively manage your notifications for everything, which I do religiously, I get notifications for only a few apps, right? It's like iMessage, WhatsApp, and I do

[Jordan Harbinger]

have New York Times breaking news, and

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I toy with turning it off and on again, depending on the focus mode that I'm in. Because I don't need, like, breaking news. It's raining in Chicago. I don't need that kind of stuff.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But I don't have. If you don't manage your notifications, you're getting like, oh, hungry panda, 14% off bubble tea this Saturday at this place

[Jason Pfeiffer]

really far from your house. And it's like, I don't need to be constantly pulled back to that and to throw my wife under the bus. Love you, Jen. But her notifications are on for email, and they go to her watch.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So she'll get, like, Crate and barrels having a sale. Here's our newsletter. And it goes to her watch.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And I'm like, huh, money. You're driving yourself insane.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You're driving yourself insane. I have so many notifications. I'm like, yeah, for email that you can look at later, none of which you're going to address now.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

They're just stacking up on your phone screen, giving you anxiety. And yeah, you've really got to make darn sure that these things are off.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But back to your Pavlov's dogs thing. When you hear the beep or you feel the buzz, you want to drop

[Jason Pfeiffer]

everything and see what just came in. Which is kind of ironic because.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because most teenagers are feeling insecure and

[Jason Pfeiffer]

thinking, you know, don't look at me, don't look at me. But then they're perfectly happy to have their phone, which is telling them to look at other people. I don't know. It's crazy to me.

[Michael Rugilio]

Just like the Pavlovian dogs. For me, the moment a notification comes in, it's tough to fight that temptation to drop everything and check my phone.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Who hasn't almost gotten into a car accident?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Because we just need to know who texted me five seconds ago. That's one of the notifications I saw have on.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Which is extra disappointing again because you realize, wow, I almost died to learn that I could get 10% off at

[Jason Pfeiffer]

sunglass Hut this weekend.

[Michael Rugilio]

Believe it or not, I eventually had to make a rule for myself. It's crazy. One, keep your eyes on the road when driving.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah. In your case, I on the road until recently.

[Michael Rugilio]

Soon to be eyes.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Michael Rugilio]

But yeah, look, once I start stopped checking my phone every time I got a notification, I actually noticed something kind of funny, and that is that when you're late and you need to get somewhere, you hit every red light. But if your phone dings and you're like desperate to check it, like, you know, is that the important gig? Is it my doctor that I asked about coming in? Like, when that happens, somehow you hit every green light. It's crazy.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Michael Rugilio]

I call it Rigilio's law.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Michael Rugilio]

Anyway, so you and I are grown men, so we have the trouble fighting these temptations. Just imagine how much harder this must be for teenagers. And app developers know exactly what they're doing. Adolescents crave social acceptance, status, novelty, emotional intensity, and they fear exclusion. So these systems are designed to exploit every one of those instincts.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I'm starting to think that screen

[Jordan Harbinger]

time report we get every week is literally this the the least big tech could do.

[Michael Rugilio]

Oh, yeah, of course. Just like they're manipulating teenagers brains by design, they're doing as little as they can by design because this is how they make their money. In fact, Reed Hastings from Netflix once admitted that the real competitors are Sleep and Human Connection.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Oh, my God. Is that real?

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Oh, my gosh.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, it was like on an investor call or something.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. I was going to say he probably

[Jason Pfeiffer]

didn't say that during appeal opportunity because it's so dark and dystopian.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah. But it tells you everything you need to know about their incentives. And it gets actually worse. So through whistleblowers and records obtained through lawsuits filed by state attorneys general that we have now 31 internal studies done by Meta. And the studies show pretty clearly that Meta knew their product was doing harm to young people, particularly, once again, again, adolescent girls. They employ the same psychology that slot machine designers use. And these are powerful techniques that hack our brains and keep us pulling that lever for the next dopamine hit.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, it doesn't get much clearer than that.

[Michael Rugilio]

I guess, actually, to be honest with you, it gets a little bit clearer than that because let's talk about what we actually discovered in those two big cases I just talked about against Meta and Alphabet, which is the parent company of YouTube and Google.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Okay.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now, as a content creator and a

[Jason Pfeiffer]

lawyer, I know that social media apps, so they actually have a lot of protection from being sued for what third parties put on their platforms under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Right. Like, basically you can't sue Facebook because somebody posted Nazi stuff or whatever on there.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yes, that's absolutely right. So section 230 was written in 1996, and just for comparison, Netscape was the biggest game in tech at that time.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Wow. Yeah.

[Michael Rugilio]

Which illustrates the problem with tech. It moves faster than the legal system.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, by a lot.

[Michael Rugilio]

Because no one in 1996 could have ever imagined TikTok. But you're right, the apps basically can't get sued for what third parties do with them. Which is why these two cases, one in LA and the other one was in New Mexico, were such a big deal. In these cases, the litigants proved it was not third parties, but the apps themselves doing harm by design.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, I read a little about this. And lawyers argued that Instagram and YouTube

[Jason Pfeiffer]

were deliberately designed to be addictive and that these companies knew, knew their platforms were harming young people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And then the tech companies countered and they were like, hey, you can't blame

[Jason Pfeiffer]

our services for complex mental health issues.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But that's different. Look, if somebody had, let's say, a

[Jason Pfeiffer]

message board and someone's harassing your kid on the message board, that's kind of not the message board's fault because they can't moderate all that content.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But if the message board dings your

[Jason Pfeiffer]

kid's phone at night and then says, hey, look, all these other people are

[Jordan Harbinger]

cool and you're a big loser, that's different. Right? That's the company, that's the message board doing the damage.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And so, yeah, that's what the lawyers basically had said is like, no, no, no, no.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This isn't third parties and multiple users

[Jason Pfeiffer]

bugging each other using your technology. This is your technology deliberately doing this to mess with people so you can make money.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, well, you certainly did your homework on this one. But you're correct that the defense of the tech companies were basically like, look, mental health is complex. You can't blame it all on us. But the thing is that in both cases, the plaintiffs argue that tech companies intentionally designed their apps to take advantage of young people's developing prefrontal cortex, basically exploiting their lack of impulse control.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That is so messed up.

[Michael Rugilio]

Mark Zuckerberg himself took the stand and tried to argue that apps that his apps don't allow users on until they're 13 years old. But thanks to the good old fashioned discovery period.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Oh, yes. So discovery is where you can sort

[Jordan Harbinger]

of say, hey, we want your documents

[Jason Pfeiffer]

on this, this, this, your corporate policies. We want to see all the emails having to do with this.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This is where all the dirt comes.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Comes out.

[Michael Rugilio]

Right, Exactly. And the plaintiffs uncovered one document that said, quote, if we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Huh?

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah. And another internal Memo showed that 11 year olds were four times more likely to keep coming back to Instagram compared to other competing apps, despite the platform requiring users to be at least 13.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Wow.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So the whole thing was designed to

[Jason Pfeiffer]

keep them addicted and keep them scrolling, which is so gross. And then. And then to lie about it.

[Michael Rugilio]

Right. Well, Professor Hunter Height, who you've had on the show, uses a great analogy. I've heard him say it several times in interviews. He says that imagine if instead of an app, it was a casino that opened in the neighborhood and let children come in and allow them to gamble. Instead of running around with their friends in the woods and playing pirates, they were suddenly spending all their time at a casino gambling compulsively. Well, if that were the case, parents would freak out. They would have the place shut down. Well, the social media apps are a casino window opening in the neighborhood and robbing children of their youth and their sleep.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And as we have talked about on

[Jason Pfeiffer]

previous episodes of Skeptical Sunday sleep is absolutely essential, especially for the developing brain.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So a business model that intentionally eats

[Jason Pfeiffer]

into people's sleep, that's messed up.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah. Phone addiction is not classified in the same way alcohol, opioids or gambling addiction are. But the fact of the matter is it checks a lot of the same boxes. Most notably, and we just mentioned this, that dopamine driven reward loop.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Right. And that dopamine hit is the same thing you see with other addict addictions. Right?

[Michael Rugilio]

Exactly. Notifications and likes give the brain a little dopamine reward.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Sure.

[Michael Rugilio]

And that hits teenagers harder because the parts of the brain responsible for impulse control and self regulation are still under construction. Psychiatrist Ann Lemke, who you've actually had on the show as well.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes. Anna Lemke. Great conversation. Episode 951.

[Jordan Harbinger]

She's very smart and she was addicted

[Jason Pfeiffer]

to basically like smut novels and she talked about it, which I thought was really funny. I've never heard of anybody talk about their addiction to. Yeah, reading.

[Michael Rugilio]

Wow.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Smutty.

[Michael Rugilio]

Like the novels that had Fabio on

[Jordan Harbinger]

the COVID Yes, exactly. Like Harlequin. Well, I don't even know about Harlequin Romance.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Or like, this was actually basically just written porn. And she talks about how she would

[Jordan Harbinger]

read it and then she got into it and then she would eventually start

[Jason Pfeiffer]

skipping to just straight to the part where they're banging.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I'm like, oh, oh, this is

[Jason Pfeiffer]

kind of what guys do with videos. Right. It's just she was. And she was like, yeah, that's what I've heard. So she was very, very Open on episode 951. Anyway, go ahead.

[Michael Rugilio]

Wow. Yeah, yeah. She sounds amazing and quite good from what I was reading about her. She sounds super smart and knowledgeable as well. And she described modern tech as a high dopamine, low effort stimulus that overwhelms the brain's natural balance. Basically, try imagining trying to quit an addictive behavior when the trigger is always in your pocket, always buzzing, always available. Like, imagine trying to quit heroin, but everywhere you go, you have heroin with you.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it's like cigarettes, right?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

When you try to quit smoking, fine. But everyone's willing to sell an adult a pack of cigarettes. Especially early in the 90s and stuff, when it was just everywhere.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The apps are engineered to keep you hooked. Infinite Scroll Dopamine hits zero. Shame. Kind of like your last relationship. These sponsors, though, help Healthy, Stable, won't text you at 2am we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters a bad hire can cost you time, money and momentum. A good hire that can help you grow your business. This gives me flashbacks to a nightmare

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You can want healthy, loving relationships more than anything and still find yourself repeating the same painful patterns. Maybe you overthink. Maybe you people please. Maybe you shut down, push love away, or feel afraid to fully trust. And even when you know something needs to change, it can be hard to know how to actually change it. At the Personal Development Development School, they help people heal those patterns at the root. Through powerful courses, live classes, practical tools, and a deeply supportive community, they help people understand their attachment patterns, rewire subconscious beliefs, and create real transformation from the inside out. They're the number one online platform for helping people build the best relationships of their life. Because it's not just about learning why you struggle. It's about healing the parts of you that learned to survive in ways that may no longer serve your relationship relationships. Today, the Personal Development school has a 99.7% NPS score in helping people achieve the results they want in their relationships and dating life. The Personal Development School helps people grow, heal and build the best relationships of their life, starting with the relationship to yourself.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Thank you so much for listening to the show and supporting our advertisers. They do keep the lights on around here. All of the deals, discount codes and ways to support the show are on the website. Searchably clickably [e-mail] deals. Thank you for supporting those that support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday So instead of telling me I spent six hours on my phone, how about

[Jason Pfeiffer]

the phone just takes itself away at

[Jordan Harbinger]

night, turns off 8 to 10, lights out, go talk to your loved ones. Go be a person.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, that would be amazing. That's a great idea.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

But that would require them to stop designing apps that deliberately hack the brains of their customers. Whoops.

[Michael Rugilio]

Exactly.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The problem with that though is obvious.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because if one company pulls back the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

apps market, the whole thing would just optimize for the competitor that doesn't do that. Right. So that company wins the market.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it's kind of like you can't just say, hey, guys, we shouldn't do

[Jason Pfeiffer]

this because somebody else will just decide to go and do that.

[Michael Rugilio]

Oh, don't get me started on the pitfalls of unregulated capitalism, Jordan. Yeah, this is a whole. That's a whole different episode.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

It is communist.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Michael Rigelius. Okay, so before, before I have to sit through one of your Bernie was right about everything lectures. Let me, let me say this. The argument that there's a connection between smartphones and teen anxiety, that's pretty solid.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Okay.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But smartphones are not the only thing that has changed since we were kids. The 24 hour news cycle is a new thing.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I think it started with CNN cable news because they're like, hey, we need 24 hours of news instead of one. So start pulling out things that weren't news yesterday and make them news now and then. The constant negativity in the media is kind of new, I think, Right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

I mean, yes, you would hear news

[Jason Pfeiffer]

about things that happened that were negative, but again, only during the News, which was 30 to 60 minutes every night.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And there was fear about climate change. That's kind of new. As an adult, or at least as

[Jason Pfeiffer]

a young adult, we started hearing about that. There's now there's fear about fascism or

[Jordan Harbinger]

fear about liberals coming to make the frogs gay. I don't like them putting chemicals in

[Michael Rugilio]

the water that turn the frigging frogs gay.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So you got that?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Could all of this also be contributing

[Jason Pfeiffer]

to what teenagers are going through right now?

[Michael Rugilio]

Absolutely. There has been a lot of research that pushes back against just about everything we've been talking about.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Sure.

[Michael Rugilio]

And okay, that's just the reality of something, of studying something really new. Smartphones have only been around for about 19 years. So one of the leading voices on the smartphones aren't that bad side of the debate is Andrew Prabilski at University of Oxford, expert. Now, Przbylski's research argues that screen Time shows very small, inconsistent, or in some cases, no clear association with overall well being.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I get that the science is not

[Jason Pfeiffer]

perfect, but this feels like it completely contradicts what we just laid out. So how does that happen?

[Michael Rugilio]

People have asked the good professor about that, and Przbylski, he explains this by pointing out that what he calls a tech lash, basically a backlash against technology that's going on right now. So for a while during, he says, the Arab Spring, tech was seen as a savior. Smartphones helped young people organize protests and challenge power. Then he points to Cambridge Analytica as a turning point. He says, suddenly people realize that there was a darker side. So the story flipped from tech will save us to tech is destroying us. So his argument is that when you actually dig into the research, the data does not completely support the fear part of the problem. Problem is that screen time, and we talked about this at the top of the show, is kind of a meaningless umbrella term. Another problem is that happiness and well being are actually not that easy to measure. So feeling unhappy is not the same as having a diagnosed mental health disorder.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Well, a person's feelings might not be perfectly quantifiable, but they are still incredibly

[Jason Pfeiffer]

valuable when we're trying to understand how new technology affects us, emotions, emotionally. I mean, how else are we supposed to do this?

[Michael Rugilio]

Well, what you're voicing now is something a lot of people in the field are feeling, which is frustration. Researchers are trying to study something that is important but inherently opaque. There's another paper worth mentioning here called to what extent are trends in teen mental health driven by changes in reporting? And that paper argues that reported increases in teen depression may be strongly shaped by changes in screening practices within psychology itself.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, you know, that does make sense. I feel like this is a problem with a lot of different things, right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Where people are like, there's an uptick in adhd. And it's like, okay, but are, are there actually more ADHD people? Or do we just have a word

[Jason Pfeiffer]

for all of the kids that couldn't sit still before that we considered bad or misbehaved or whatever. And it's like, now we just have a term for that. We're just expanding that. So come on. And you're supposed to look for it instead of just being like, oh, your

[Jordan Harbinger]

son has the wiggles. It's like, well, he's, he's 16, so it's not the wiggles.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

He can't.

[Jordan Harbinger]

He has impulse control issues that he

[Jason Pfeiffer]

has all of everywhere. He's not just misbehaved in school. And he's not, you know, it's not bad parenting or whatever.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Anyway, so we're this far into the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

episode and I still have no idea if smartphones are good or bad for you.

[Michael Rugilio]

There's arguments on both sides, and that is totally true. But if you look at the broader consensus in the field, it actually is that, yes, there's still debate, but general agreement among researchers is that excessive screen time does carry risks and has have very harmful effects, especially for young people. This is how science works, which is so great. This is part because of Professor Chablisky's work that newer studies have moved beyond simply asking, like, how many hours are you on your phone? Researchers now ask more precise questions. What are you doing on the phone? When are you using it, and under what psychological conditions? And so now with this more nuanced approach, the pattern remains strong. It's still there. So heavy social media use, especially on comparison driven platforms, is associated with higher levels of anxiety depression in teenagers. That's just kind of a fact. Late night phone use correlates with sleep disruption, which then cascades into mood and attention problems. Algorithmic feeds amplify emotional volatility. By design, intermittent reward systems activate the same impulses seen in gambling and in young children. Screens show measurable effect on attention and emotion regulation, and they replace human interaction.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So smartphones are bad?

[Michael Rugilio]

No, smartphones are great.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, well, this feels like a who's

[Jason Pfeiffer]

on first routine and is a very confusing episode.

[Michael Rugilio]

That's because this is a confusing topic. But come on, I'm old enough to appreciate that the thing I'm holding in my hand is a freaking miracle. Yeah, it's more powerful than anything we ever imagined. Even Star Trek did not imagine something as powerful as a smartphone. I'm not going to bore the audience by listing all the incredible things a smartphone can do. Like I said, everyone on Earth pretty much has one. We just need to be smart about how we use our smartphones, particularly if you're a teenager.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's funny that you just mentioned Star

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Trek, because I remember 15 years ago, people were marveling that flip phones literally looked a little bit like the communicators

[Jordan Harbinger]

they used on Star Trek. And people were like, whoa, Star Trek got it right. Oh my gosh.

[Michael Rugilio]

It's funny you should say that because that's one of Professor Height's recommendations for teenagers. They should only be allowed to use flip phones, not smartphones. Which, if you think about it, seems like a pretty good recommendation to me. So maybe Star Trek did get it right.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We somehow Made it this far without

[Jason Pfeiffer]

talking about video games, which is, I

[Jordan Harbinger]

think, where a lot of teen screen time actually goes. Well, actually teens and kids, because you

[Jason Pfeiffer]

got Fortnite and all this stuff.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So let me guess.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Video games are terrible and wonderful and complicated all at the same time, right?

[Michael Rugilio]

Let's look at what Rachel Cohort, who is one of the leading researchers on the subject. She's done extensive research on video games and she points out that they can actually be very good for young minds. They are effective for learning new skills, releasing endorphins and reducing stress. Kids learned leadership, cooperation, turn taking and operating within a set of rules. I never actually thought about this until I read one of Dr. Cohort's pieces. But when you're a little kid playing something like Chutes and Ladders, if you lose, you can throw a tantrum and half the time your parents will say, okay, okay, you get an extra turn, that one doesn't come count. And that's a terrible lesson. But video games don't care if you're crying, you lost. Deal with it, kid.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Facts. Oh my gosh, that hits close to home.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That maybe that works for Chutes and

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Ladders in a very young child. But I do remember Professor Haidt making the point that when children play games out in the world, like basketball, for example, they have to resolve the disputes, right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

One kid says he got fouled and

[Jason Pfeiffer]

the other kid says he didn't. And young people kind of have to learn to work it out.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Does that happen in video games?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Not really, right?

[Michael Rugilio]

No, of course not. And that's another excellent point. And all these points, the pros and the cons, it's all making me start to think that by inventing a super futuristic thinking machine and then trying to live with it is going to be kind of complex.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

What about violent video games like Call of Duty?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because I remember even when Pac man

[Jason Pfeiffer]

was out, people were like, oh, this is going to poison the kids minds. And then you had Grand Theft Auto and it's. Do we have research on whether this makes kids violent? I feel feel like it doesn't. But what do I again, I don't know anything about this.

[Michael Rugilio]

Your instinct, I think is a good one because Dr. Cohort says that even shooter games can be good for honing visual perception skills at improving frustration tolerance. She also points out that this is how a lot of kids hang out and decompress in the 21st century. And when you look at the research over the last 50 years, the overall impact of video games on players tends to be more positive. Than negative, even for games like Call of Duty Duty.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But the concern is that they make

[Jason Pfeiffer]

the kids more violent.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, well, according to Dr. Kohler, the research does not support a causal connection between video games and real world violence.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Okay.

[Michael Rugilio]

She argues that the fear of social atrophy, the idea that gaming makes kids unable to socialize in the real world, is not supported by the data either. In fact, she says that kids who play video games are often learning 21st century social skills. People increasingly have to communicate with fewer nonverbal cues, and gamers get a lot of practice doing that.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I see. But we started this episode by saying that kids need to learn to identify nonverbal cues kind of in real life.

[Michael Rugilio]

Well, look, that was for babies, which is why you keep the kids away from screens. But the stone cold reality is that this is the 21st century and these kids have to live in it. So I see her point. Kids are developing skills that previous generations just didn't need, like managing multiple conversations across topics at the same time. This is called multi the threading. I just learning about it. How are you at multi threading, Jordan?

[Jordan Harbinger]

I have gotten better over the years,

[Jason Pfeiffer]

but I'll be honest, I preferred it back in the old days when we did mono threading. I think it was called talking.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So is the good doctor saying I

[Jason Pfeiffer]

should just let my kids play video games? I don't know.

[Michael Rugilio]

Well, she says the best thing to do is to actually play the games with your kids. And if you don't want to play them, just watch your kids playing the video games. She says if parents are capable of watching a soccer game of 5 year olds for 2 hours, they can handle watching their kid play Fortnite for a little while.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That is true. Okay, so maybe video games are not that bad.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Honestly, I think it's super fun playing Mario Kart with my son and my wife.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

My daughter's a little bit too young. She doesn't know how to steer and stuff.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But I love video games.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Man, that's definitely some of my screen time.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Which brings us to another question. What if screen time itself is just

[Jason Pfeiffer]

a temporary problem because technology is changing so fast? Asked you and I talked about this a little bit before we hit record, but are screens even going to be a thing in a few years?

[Michael Rugilio]

Oh my God, that is such a good point. Yes. Futurists and companies like Neuralink are already talking about a future without screens. Instead of looking at a rectangle, the idea is to connect directly to the brain and create immersive experiences that feel real. So in theory, that could simulate human presence or richer environments. And maybe some solve some of the emotional flatness that we're getting from screens.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Let me guess, when that day comes, people are going to completely freak out.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So if the printing press, the bicycle and the telephone melted people's brains, mind control, human cyborgs are going to send

[Jason Pfeiffer]

people in a total collapse.

[Michael Rugilio]

Yeah, well, it's coming and we're just going to have to cross that bridge when we get to it. Look, shaking and completely freaked out, we will put one foot in front of the other and do what humans have always done, nervously embrace new technology. Look, I'm starting to think that screens are also like a very different old piece of technology, the mirror. Because we see ourselves when we stare at our phones. With all our potential and all our failings, of course we need to work on making the tech better for us. But we also need to keep working on the never ending project of making us better for us.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I guess where that leaves us is this. Screens are not evil.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Phones are not the devil. Video games are not turning kids brains into soup.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But how they're designed and how they're used actually matters.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Especially for kids whose brains are still developing.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And the research is not actually all

[Jason Pfeiffer]

saying that it's good or all bad. It's about balance.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So maybe instead of a screen time report each week we should get a

[Jason Pfeiffer]

screen down time report.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What did you do with your one

[Jason Pfeiffer]

short life when you weren't scrolling your phone? Maybe that's the perspective that we actually need. Thanks Michael for taking some of the

[Jordan Harbinger]

glare off of screens. And thanks to you all for listening topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, [e-mail] Almost every episode

[Jason Pfeiffer]

of this show that we do comes from you guys. So thank you for that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all@jordan harbinger.com deals I'm at jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

You can also connect with me on

[Jordan Harbinger]

LinkedIn and you can find Michael Rigilio

[Jason Pfeiffer]

at Michael Regilio on Instagram.

[Jordan Harbinger]

His special War bar dropped in October

[Jason Pfeiffer]

of 2025 and we'll link to that in the show notes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And this show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jay Sanderson, Tata Sidlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And I might be a lawyer, but

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm not your lawyer also. We of course try to get these as right as we can.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact checked.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially

[Jason Pfeiffer]

if it's about your health and well being or that of your kids.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Kids, remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love and if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the

[Jason Pfeiffer]

skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today.

[Jordan Harbinger]

In the meantime, I hope you apply

[Jason Pfeiffer]

what you hear on the show so

[Jordan Harbinger]

you can live what you learn and

[Jason Pfeiffer]

we'll see you next time.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Want to master the art of communication? Charles Duhigg, author of Super Communicators reveals key strategies for enhancing your connections and

[Jason Pfeiffer]

conversations and this enlightening podcast Episode Episode

[Charles Duhigg]

why do some people manage to connect with everyone else so effortlessly? And then there's times when I talk to my wife and like we cannot connect with each other and it turns

[Michael Rugilio]

out it's just a set of skills, right?

[Charles Duhigg]

Like it's just literally a set of skills that super Communicators know and that any of us can learn and become super communicators ourselves. Looping for Understanding and has three steps. The first is ask a question, preferably a deep question. Secondly, repeat back what you you just heard the person say in your own words. And thirdly, and this is the one everyone always forgets, ask if you got it right. The reason why this is so powerful is because it proves that I'm listening to you. It's really easy to stop thinking about how we're communicating. It's really easy to stop thinking about what's going on until we get in the habit of it. Communication isn't something that happens just one to one. Sometimes it's one to many. But the same principles still hold up. You're still having practical or emotional or social conversations. Laughter is actually one of the non linguistic ways that we connect with other people. There's been studies that show that in about 80% of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to something funny. It's because we're basically in a conversation and we're saying to someone, I want to connect with you. Nobody is born a super communicator. That's what feels tiring, is when you feel like you want to connect and you can't, right? This isn't a behavior, this isn't a personality type. This is a tool that once we learn, we can use when we want to use it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Learn how to categorize conversations, improve active listening, and overcome communication barriers to build stronger relationships. Tune in and transform your interactions into meaningful connections on episode 963 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Foreign

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Visit your nearby Lowe's.

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