Jonathan Haidt: How Phone Addiction & Social Media Are Making Us Anxious - And What To Do About It - Tools & Tactics

Summary

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Podcast Summary

The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Show

Episode: Jonathan Haidt: How Phone Addiction & Social Media Are Making Us Anxious – And What To Do About It

Hosts: Lauryn Bosstick & Michael Bosstick
Guest: Dr. Jonathan Haidt (social psychologist, author of "The Anxious Generation")
Release Date: September 29, 2025

Main Theme

In this episode, Lauryn and Michael Bosstick sit down with Dr. Jonathan Haidt to discuss the pervasive influence of smartphones and social media on mental health—especially among children and teenagers. Drawing on his book "The Anxious Generation," Haidt explores how childhood has been "rewired" within a decade, identifies the mechanisms by which big tech companies have ensnared minds, and provides concrete guidance for parents and adults on reclaiming attention, building resilience, and nurturing healthier digital habits.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Biggest Alarming Change in Today’s Society ([01:43])

• Loss of Attention Span: Dr. Haidt emphasizes, “The single biggest change is the loss of the ability to pay attention.” Instead of engaging in sustained activities, kids now consume short, addictive snippets on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, rewiring brains for distraction.
• Not Just Kids: This phenomenon affects all age groups.

"I now believe the biggest damage is the loss of the human ability to pay attention. And it's not just hitting kids, it's hitting us too." — Jonathan Haidt [01:52]

2. Distinguishing Passive Entertainment from Addictive Social Media ([03:02])

• Storytelling Is Not the Enemy: Watching movies or old cartoons as a social activity is not problematic; the real harm arises from “short stuff”—the endless feed of brief, algorithm-driven videos.
• Addiction Material: Platforms engineer these snippets as “addiction material,” unlike the immersive narratives of traditional media.

“It's really the short stuff… TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels… that's not stories, that's addiction material.” — Jonathan Haidt [03:30]

3. Setting Up Children for Digital Success ([04:02])

• Planning Ahead and Boundaries: Early, clear rules are essential—especially “No screens of any kind in the bedroom, ever.”
• Direct Communication vs. Social Media:
  • FaceTime and synchronous communication help develop real social skills.
  • Platforms like Snapchat are particularly harmful due to anonymous, vanishing messages, leading to sextortion risks.

"No screens of any kind in their bedrooms. Ever. ... As soon as you allow them in the bedroom, they have a relationship with it." — Jonathan Haidt [04:20]

4. The Dangers of Specific Platforms ([06:18], [08:15])

• Snapchat:
  • “Ideal for sextortionists and drug dealers.”
  • Statistic: 10,000 reports of sextortion per month in the USA (2022).
• TikTok:
  • Designed to destroy the ability to pay attention, like “a slot machine.”
  • Algorithms reinforce swiping behavior, emphasizing excitement or shock, exposing children to violence or sexualization.
  • Caution: “There is no reason for anyone to be on TikTok.”

“TikTok is the best program ever devised to disrupt the normal development of ... executive function.” — Jonathan Haidt [08:15]

• Algorithmic Virality:
  • These platforms amplify what is most “engaging”—often what is violent, polarizing, or sexualized.

5. Social Media's Effect on Society and Mental Health ([13:54], [17:44])

• Collective Action Problem:
  • Individual action (like withholding a phone from your child) feels impossible when “everyone else is doing it.”
  • Evidence: IQs rose for decades, but have dropped post-2010, correlating with smartphone adoption.

“We can't blame this on individuals. ... Companies have put us all into a series of collective action problems.” — Jonathan Haidt [14:09]

• Historical Perspective:
  • Millennials had a “normal” childhood; Gen Z was the first to experience puberty with social media omnipresent, leading to spikes in anxiety, depression, and hospitalization for self-harm (2012 onward).

“You hit 2012—elbow hockey stick. … Everything flips. Now everyone’s getting an iPhone with social media on it.” — Jonathan Haidt [20:40]

6. Solutions: What Needs to Change ([21:58], [31:57])

• Design Changes and Regulation:
  • Content moderation (“you can’t post that”) doesn’t work; better to focus on platform design (e.g., less virality, algorithmic amplification).
  • Calls for “know your customer” laws to verify every account—make platforms less hospitable to predators and bots.
  • New platforms with verified users could be a path forward.

"Somebody will create a platform that has know-your-customer laws... everyone on the platform was verified as a real human being.” — Jonathan Haidt [23:45]

• Four Parental Norms ("The Anxious Generation" Movement) ([33:26], [34:16]):
  1. No smartphones until 9th grade (age ~14)
  2. No social media until 16
  3. Phone-free schools (“bell to bell”) – 19 states with strict policies reported huge improvements (focus, less violence, more laughter)
  4. Foster independence and real-world play – Give kids an “80s or 90s” childhood, encourage unsupervised play and responsibility

7. Parenting & Family Tips ([37:33], [41:47])

• Norms Work Best in Groups:
  • If parents coordinate with other families, restrictions feel less isolating to kids.
• Present Parenting:
  • Be fully engaged when present with young children—“continuous partial attention” is toxic for infant development and signals “you don’t matter.”
  • Model healthy phone use—kids copy what they see.

“When the kids are little, be present. When you're engaging with them, be fully engaged.” — Jonathan Haidt [41:47]

8. Adult Strategies for Managing Phone Use ([47:12])

• Turn Your Phone into a Swiss Army Knife, Not a Slot Machine:
  • Remove addictive apps from your phone; use them only on desktop if necessary.
  • Limit push notifications strictly to essentials (Uber, emergencies).
  • Control morning and evening routines—no phone before bed or upon waking.

"Turn your phone from a slot machine into a Swiss army knife." — Jonathan Haidt [47:12]

• Batch Your Digital Life:
  • Batch checking emails and texts for focused, deep work (referencing Cal Newport's “Deep Work”).

9. The Broader Impact on Society, Work, and Relationships ([40:11], [66:27])

• Sex Recession:
  • Decline in intimacy and relationships, even in marriages, with the rise of smartphone “distraction devices.”
• Workplace and Friendships:
  • Fragmented attention means less productivity and shallower connections.
  • Replace continuous texting with occasional phone or FaceTime calls for richer communication.

“Young people … don’t seem to understand that when they're talking to someone, they shouldn't be checking their notifications.” — Jonathan Haidt [41:06]

10. Rapid Fire Insights ([67:05])

• Misconceptions about Gen Z: Not lazy, just overwhelmed and trapped by digital addiction.
• Surprising Research Findings: The impact on boys—addictive distractions “sapping” motivation—turns out to be even more profound than previously assumed.
• Most Underrated Skill: The ability to start and maintain real-life conversations.
• Raising Resilient Kids: Protect brain development by limiting digital exposure until the brain is mature.

"The best way to prepare your children for life in the digital world is to protect them from it until their brain is largely developed." — Jonathan Haidt [69:02]

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Memorable Quotes

• "Snapchat is an adult only thing to send naked pictures of yourself. That's what it was made for." — Jonathan Haidt [05:08]
• "TikTok is if you want to destroy your child's ability to pay attention and lower their IQ, TikTok is the way to go." — Jonathan Haidt [08:15]
• "It's a collective action problem... we're all suffering from this." — Jonathan Haidt [14:09], [53:39]
• "We have overprotected our children in the real world. We have under protected them online. We've got to reverse those." — Jonathan Haidt [71:14]
• "Replace the slot machines in your pocket with the tools you actually need—a Swiss army knife, not a slot machine." — Jonathan Haidt [47:12]

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Actionable Tools & Tactics

• No devices in bedrooms, ever (kids or adults)
• No personal smart devices (including iPads) before 9th grade
• No social media before 16—ideally 18
• Support phone-free schools
• Model healthy tech boundaries: put your phone away when with children and at family meals
• Coordinate with other parents for norm-setting (to avoid “collective action traps”)
• Remove social media/push notifications from phone
• Batch check emails and texts; don’t feel pressure to respond instantly
• Rekindle phone calls with friends and practice real-life conversations
• Bookend your day: keep mornings and evenings phone/internet free for sleep, recharge, and present family time

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:43]—Biggest alarming change: loss of attention
• [03:02]—Difference between storytelling (movies) and "addiction material"
• [04:08]—Parenting boundaries: no screens in bedrooms
• [06:06]—Snapchat dangers and sextortion stats
• [08:15]—TikTok’s harm to attention and brain development
• [13:54]—Collective action problems with tech
• [20:40]—History and sudden explosion of anxiety in Gen Z
• [21:58]—Systemic fixes: design over content moderation
• [33:26]—The four norms to reclaim childhood
• [34:16]—Q: If you could re-raise your children, what would you do?
• [37:33]—How to communicate boundaries to kids
• [41:47]—Parental distraction: effects on relationships with children
• [47:12]—Swiss army knife vs slot machine approach, tips for adults
• [53:39]—Advice for handling the flood of texts and notifications
• [59:52]—Bookending the day: morning/evening routines for mental health
• [66:27]—Social media's effect on friendships and the importance of quality contact
• [67:05]—Rapid fire round: debunking myths, skill-building, and key takeaways
• [69:02]—How to raise resilient kids in a digital world

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Conclusion

Jonathan Haidt’s conversation with Lauryn and Michael is a wakeup call and a toolkit for reclaiming control in an age of engineered distraction. The antidote: collective parental action to delay and regulate kids’ device access, redesign social norms and tech boundaries for adults, and foster authentic, present relationships offline.

For more on Haidt’s research and ongoing movement, visit anxiousgeneration.com and his Substack afterbabble.com. A kids’ edition—The Amazing Generation—arrives December 30, 2025.

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Transcript

[A]

The following podcast is a Dear Media Production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.

[B]

Fantastic.

[A]

And he's a serial entrepreneur, a very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.

[C]

Get ready for some major realness.

[A]

Welcome to the Skinny Confidential him and her hello everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential him and her show. Today we're sitting with Dr. Jonathan Haidt. He is one of the most requested guests guests on this podcast. We've been wanting to do this with him for a while. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Dr. Jonathan Haidt, he is one of the world's most influential social psychologists and best selling authors. Jonathan has spent decades researching morality, human behavior and culture. But his latest work zeros in on something every parent, teacher and young adult needs to hear. Hell, everyone needs to hear the profound impact of smartphones and social media on mental health. In his new book, the Anxious Generation, Jonathan exposes how childhood was rewired in just a single decade and why Gen Z is experiencing record levels of anxiety, anxiety and depression. We also talk about what modern smartphone use and social media is doing to adults, anyone that is on these platforms, and how we can best guard ourselves against some of the pitfalls of using these platforms. This conversation is eye opening, practical and necessary if you want to understand what's really happening to kids, teens and adults and even yourself in today's digital world. With that, Jonathan Haidt. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential him and.

[B]

Her.

[A]

All right, Jonathan, when you look at today's teenagers scrolling through their phones, what is the single most alarming change you see happening that is directly changing society? And why should every parent, teacher and adult care Right now?

[B]

The single biggest change is the loss of the ability to pay attention. And what's been happening since 2012 is that instead of kids going through childhood and puberty having interactions and conversations and watching TV programs that were 25 minutes or 90 minutes long, and these are normal parts of development. Instead of that, our kids are spending half of their childhood, that's the average half of the time is spent going through short little bits of content that are designed to hook them. And so the biggest damage, I used to think it was the mental health, which is huge. But I now believe the biggest damage is the loss of the human ability to pay attention. And it's not just hitting kids, it's hitting us too.

[C]

It's funny that you say that, because the other day I put on Hulu and we have the Commercials on it. And a commercial came on. And you would have thought that the end of the world was happening in my house. My kids, they couldn't believe that there would be an interruption in their programming because they're so used to there being no commercials. But when we were little, there was commercials all the time.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And so I get what you're saying.

[A]

We put those on because we kind of, if our kids do watch anything, we try to put the old 90s cartoons that we grew up with. My kids, my son's Super Ninja Turtles, but the old 90s version of the Ninja Turtles.

[B]

Yeah. So a key thing, parents hear me talk and they think I'm saying, no technology. Never let your kids see a screen. But the thing I really want to make clear to parents is that humans are storytelling animals. Humans have always raised their kids with stories and a screen. A movie theater screen, a TV screen is actually a pretty good way to present stories. And so if you want to let your kid watch a movie, especially if it's like with a sibling or with you, so it's social, you're talking about it, you're together.

[A]

That's good.

[B]

There's no problem watching movies. It's really the short stuff. And when you see what kids are doing, it almost always goes down to TikTok YouTube shorts and Instagram reels and then the video games and when they're older, the porn. And that's what our kids are being raised on. That's not stories. That's addiction material.

[C]

That makes so much sense to me. I totally get what you're saying with that. How do you think that parents should position their children to be successful within social media?

[B]

So you guys are really lucky. Cause your kids are 03 and five. So you get to plan ahead.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And to plan ahead, you know what? Everyone has to understand. And we'll talk about teenagers later. Cause I'm sure a lot of your audience has teenagers. But especially for those who have little kids, you need to plan ahead. Because your kids are going down a path where hundreds of companies have perfected the art of grabbing your child's attention and selling it. It's like you're sending Little Red Riding Hood down the path and there's all these wolves, okay? So you gotta prepare your kid. And so here's the most important thing you can do early on is start with this simple rule. No screens of any kind in the bedroom, ever. This is the rule I wish to God I had done when my kids were little. No screens of any kind in their bedrooms. Ever. You start with that. You can have a TV in the living room, they can watch tv. Sometimes you can have a computer in the living room or kitchen or whatever. They can go online, they can Google things. But if you start with that policy, then screens are just things that they sometimes use, but as soon as you allow them in the bedroom, they become things that they have a relationship with and that they're on. Many of them will be on almost all the time, so start with that. You gotta focus on the screens first. Okay. And then let's talk about social media. What is social media? Texting, WhatsApp, FaceTime. These are direct communication and you know, FaceTime and phone calls are great because it's synchronous. You're learning social skills. Those are great. Texting, WhatsApp is not as good and it has some downsides, but it's not terrible. Social media is a way that giant companies connect you to strangers and they push you and push you and push you. Do not let your kids on Snapchat. It pushes you relentlessly to connect with people you don't know, some of whom are men who want sex with your child or to sell them drugs. So it's insane that children are on Snapchat. Snapchat is an adult only thing to send naked pictures of yourself. That's what it was made for.

[C]

I never got more penis pictures in my life than when I was on Snapchat.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And it was like disgusting.

[B]

It's disgusting.

[C]

Like I never even seen penises like this.

[A]

The hell are you doing on Snapchat?

[C]

Well, it's like, what are these people sending messages?

[B]

That's what it was designed for. And because Snapchat, also because it used to dis.

[A]

I remember you'd send and it would disappear, right?

[B]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Even Snapchat, they don't even keep copies. So that's why it's ideal for sextortionists and drug dealers. Snapchat is ideal for people who want to break the law and want no record of it. It is not good for children. In 2022, so many kids are dead from this, from suicide, from drug overdoses that a lot of them are suing Snapchat and Meta and TikTok. And what comes out in the course of the trials? Actually, this is the state attorneys general are suing these companies. What comes out in the trials? The attorneys can do discovery. They get documents internal and then they quote from these in the briefs. And I have a substack afterbabble.com. we went through a bunch of these briefs. We took out some selected quotes. Here's what we know about Snapchat. In 2022, they were getting 10,000 reports of sextortion. Not a year, a month, every month. And that's just what was reported to them by their American users. Which means we're talking about millions of kids getting sextorted around the world every year. Millions. And if you can imagine, it's especially teenage boys. Because who else would be stupid enough to believe that some beautiful stranger wants to trade naked pictures with you? Especially when teenage boys do it. And then the person reveals, like, you know, give me $500, I'm sending this picture of you and your penis to your parents, to your friends, to everyone in your school. What do they do? I guarantee you they're almost all considering suicide. Cause you're trapped. You're completely trapped, and suicide is going to occur to you. Now, most don't kill themselves. Very few do. But it's. We know there are 42. Like, we know exactly that. This boy killed himself because he was sex dorded that day. So it's probably hundreds or thousands who are dead because of this. So again, all the platforms are terrible, but Snapchat is uniquely terrible for connecting your kids to strangers.

[C]

What about TikTok?

[B]

TikTok is if you want to destroy your child's ability to pay attention and lower their IQ, TikTok is the way to go. It is the best program ever devised to disrupt the normal development of what we call executive function.

[A]

What about for adults, too?

[B]

Oh, yeah. So it's terrible for everybody. But here's the thing I really want to get across. The human brain is this incredible organ that it grows very, very fast early on. But it. So by age six, it's almost full size. It's like 90% of full size by age six. Okay. The rest of growth isn't. Isn't growth. The rest of it is, okay, you got all these neurons. Which ones are you going to keep? Because a lot of them are going to die off. A lot of connections are going to die off. Others are going to be made. That's all guided by experience. Which neurons are we gonna keep? Because they're useful. And so if your kid is playing with blocks and then climbing and then playing with kids and then flirting and then, you know, doing all the normal progression, then those neural circuits are the ones that will stay. But if your kid goes through puberty, this is the main period we're talking about. If your kid goes through puberty, Swiping, swiping, swiping, posting. Feeling shame because people didn't like their picture. If they go through this, then different neurons are the ones that are gonna stay. And TikTok is ideal for teaching the kid's brain that as soon as something isn't super interesting. I've been on this video for 7 seconds already. Doesn't look very promising. Swipe. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow, this is really funny. So that's what we call a variable ratio reinforcement schedule. TikTok is a slot machine. Your kids are on it, you know, they pull the lever. Not so interesting. Not so interesting. Not so interesting. Oh my God, that's disgusting. Which is actually pretty cool for them, especially the boys. TikTok. There is no reason for anyone to be on TikTok. TikTok adult child. TikTok is horrible. And it is literally run by the Chinese Communist Party who is kind of at war with us.

[C]

It's really interesting that you say that because when I got pregnant, I was like going on TikTok and I started to feel not good. I don't. I don't even know how to explain it. Maybe just melancholy about it.

[B]

How about degraded? Did you feel degraded?

[C]

I just didn't feel good. I don't know. The frequency was low. Vibration.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why do you use the word degraded?

[B]

Because what happens on a lot of these, okay, there's an interesting word, enshitification, which means everything goes to shit. And so what happens is these platforms come out. TikTok, it's creative dances, it's kids doing synchronized dances. It's kind of fun, okay, but because there are no guards on this because anyone can go on anonymously. Predators, assholes, trolls, anybody can go on. So all of these platforms start off nice and then they become hellholes. Now it's not to say that most of the content is hellish, but what happens over and over again is you get on and parents should try this. If you're thinking of letting your kid on TikTok, create an account for yourself. Say that you're a, you know, say that you're a 14 year old girl and see what happens to you. See what you get. It's a lot of sex, content, sexiness. The girls are being prematurely sexualized. They're learning, basically moves from porn. And the boys end up with a lot of violence in their feed because the algorithm can tell quickly. What do you linger on? What are you interested in? Girls are not interested in seeing people run over by cars or shot, but boys are. And so the boys end up With a lot of violence in their feedback. This is degrading. This is dehumanizing. This teaches them. This is just, you know, I mean, like the horrible video of Charlie Kirk being assassinated. Boys are gonna be seeing this over and over and over from an early age.

[A]

The problem with something like that, too, is this is terrible what happened. But I was on yesterday, as many people were, and I wasn't expecting to see that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, it wasn't a video, but it was. You press play and all of a sudden you see that graph and. And it's something you cannot now unsee.

[C]

Can I give you a little pushback, Michael?

[B]

Sure.

[C]

You're the perfect person. That is why I don't go on X. Because you see stuff. Wait, let me finish. That you're not expecting to see. And in my opinion, I think as an adult, you have to be accountable for yourself. And how you're accountable, in my opinion, is I've deleted that app, so I don't have that in my Ethereum and I won't have to see that. You're essentially, in my opinion, watching the news all day long. When you're consuming X, it's essentially like having the news on in the background all day long. So you can't be mad at the platform for serving that. You have to take accountability and think, I'm the one that's the consumer on the platform.

[A]

One of us was receiving endless dick.

[C]

Pics on Snapchat and it was, yeah, but here's here. And I was sick of the dick pics and the veiny dicks, so I got off and with TikTok when I got pregnant and I felt it was low vibration. I haven't been on for 10 months and I feel great. So you. I think.

[A]

No, but listen, I wanna.

[C]

We can't just blame the platform. The platform? The platform. We have to get off. But as children, it's different.

[A]

I think what's so interesting about this for you is. And the reason I asked that you're.

[C]

Gonna change the subject.

[A]

No, because I will say something. I think that this is an issue for all of society to combat.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Right. And we are all guilty of it. And I would say we are one of the first generations to ever live with this kind of technology and are navigating. We were talking about people that are maybe a little older than us with kids that are a little bit older. Gen Z was the first young generation to go. We, like Lauren and I did not get this kind of technology until after we got millennials.

[B]

And that's why you're okay. The millennials were the last generation to go through puberty with a normal childhood.

[A]

Yeah. Like, we used to have the landlines and the pagers and the dial up modems.

[C]

So I guess my question is how much, when it comes to adults, how much is in their own hands?

[B]

So let me say something which will be a partial defense of Michael, which is this. Well, okay, it goes like this. The reason why this has sucked in all of society, the reason why we're all getting stupider, new data's come out in the last year or two. IQs were rising for 50 years, 70 years up until 2010, and then they've begun dropping ever since. We can't blame this on individuals. The reason this is happening is that the companies have put us all into a series of collective action problems. So collective action problem, it's a common term in the social sciences. It's where I want to do something, but I can't do it because of what everybody else is doing. I don't get to make the choice for myself. And so, for example, I would like to wait until my daughter is 18 to give her a smartphone, but everybody else has done it in fifth grade. And so my daughter's now left out. And now if I do the right thing, I'm hurting my daughter. Now, in the long run, it's good for her, but she's gonna be suffering. We're gonna fight. And so most people give in because the collective action pressure is really, really strong. And so for both, I think, X and Instagram, a lot of adults have to be on it for professional reasons. I assume you guys are running a company. You can't just not use these platforms at all.

[A]

Imagine doing this show and then just saying, like, hey, where does this live? And how do you just put it.

[B]

Up on and hope for the best and not do anything? That's right. So we're stuck in a system in which everybody expects everybody else to be on. They expect people to respond quickly to texts, and we have to get back to a system in which people sort of guard their own consciousness, their own attention, and we don't expect everybody to be on all the time. It's just so bad for us.

[A]

When did you personally get so focused on this topic and this subject and this area of life?

[B]

So I'm a social psychologist. That means I study human social nature. And my own research is on morality, moral judgment, how morality varies across nations originally and then how it varies across left. Right. Like the American culture war is like two different Cultures. So I've been studying political polarization for a long time. My second book, the Righteous Mind, is about political polarization. Now, this came out in 2012. And so, you know, Facebook was new. It wasn't particularly toxic. There wasn't really any news feed when I was writing the book. And so I was interested in. So I didn't really think of it as a villain. And it wasn't that bad in its early days. And that's the thing you millennials, you remember when it came out and you made the most of it. But what I observed, things changed right around 2014. It was as though there was a disturbance in the Matrix and things got weird, and they got weird on campus. And I was teaching at the University of Virginia most of my career, and then I moved to NYU in 2011, and we began to see students freaking out about little things and speakers come to campus. This is gonna kill people. We have to shut it down. What? Just don't go to the talk. And so I wrote an essay with my friend Greg Lukianoff called the Coddling of the American Mind, because it's a.

[A]

Great essay, by the way.

[B]

Well, thank you. Because in 2014, the students coming out to campus were not millennials. We didn't know. We thought they were, but they were suddenly different. And they would freak out, some of them. They would freak out if someone said a word that they didn't like or assigned a book in class that had a scene that they thought was traumatized. Like, wait, Shakespeare. I can't assign Shakespeare. You need a trigger warning.

[C]

Disney got a trigger warning, too.

[B]

Disney. Yeah, that's right. Everybody went in for it, not because they wanted to, but because they felt if they didn't, they'd be attacked. So that weirdness all broke out around 2014. It wasn't like this in 2012.

[A]

What caused it?

[B]

Okay, so at the time, I didn't know. At the time, we thought, well, we both were protecting our kids. You know, maybe social media, because the timing is right, but we don't know. Now we know social media, originally, it was just like a glorified address book. Here's my page. Oh, let me go to your page. That's fine. But then you get the news feed 2007, 2008. And then you get the iPhone, which is okay at first, but then you get the App Store and push notifications. And so we go from 2006, 2007. It's not a very toxic tech environment. By 2012, 2013, it's pushed notifications about things in the newsfeed about the horrible thing that those people did. And what's your opinion of it? And you better condemn it, otherwise we'll condemn you for not condemning it. And so everything gets frenetic. Everything gets public display. Also, Meta said Meta, because Meta's job has always been they literally incentivize their engineers by saying, if you can increase the time people spend on. On Instagram or Facebook, we give you a raise. And so Meta engineers realized, hey, let's let people fight in the comments. Before 2014, you know, if Barack Obama said something, you'd have comments that were full of hate, but that was it. Like, some guy said some terrible thing. That's it. But after 2014, some guy says a terrible thing, and then other people fight with him. And he. And before you know it, it's just a slugfest in the comments. Now imagine that our public life. Imagine that our democracy. Democracy is a conversation. Imagine what the conversation was like when it took place either in person or through letters to the editor in the newspaper side of slow and thoughtful. And then it turns into a free for all on Twitter a thousand times a day. And so I began to realize, oh, my God, how is our democracy going to make it through this? So I got into this, focused both on the students who were suddenly much more fragile, and on the politics, which was suddenly much more explosive. And so those were my two interests. And I started writing a book. The title was going to. I got a contract for it. I still have the contract called Life After Babel. Adapting to a World We May Never Again Share. It was going to be about politics, like, what's happening to our country? And I wrote the first chapter, which was because I had all this leftover data on teenagers. I wrote the first chapter, say, look what happened to Gen Z. The first generation to move their social life onto Instagram and social media and smartphones. They immediately became depressed and anxious. Like, within a year, we released it starts 2013, the increases. So I was gonna start with one chapter on what happened to teens. And then I was gonna say, now let's look at our country. And we instantly went crazy too. But once I wrote that first chapter, which became chapter one of the anxious generation. And I saw the graphs here. I'll draw all the. Which camera is this camera? I'll draw all the graphs in the book. They all go like this from, like 1998, whatever you're measuring, which is bad, it's sort of steady, you know, in the late 90s into the 2000s, 2010, 2011, no sign of a change. Maybe up and down a little bit. You hit 2012 elbow hockey stick. Like it goes up and up and up. Whether we're talking about hospitalization for self harm, whether we're talking about feelings of uselessness and pointlessness, whether we're talking about depression, anxiety, they all go shooting up around 2012, 2013 for Gen Z, which is kids born 1996 through about 2010, 2011, they went through it, it severely damaged their childhoods, it deranged social life. And once I saw these graphs and that it wasn't just us, that's what blew my mind when I said the same thing happened in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia. It was a worldwide thing, right? So like either, you know, there was some additive in the food everywhere in the world, you know, or there was some cosmic radio, I think, like what could cause this? Oh, that's the year. 2012 is literally the year that we went from most people having flip phones or basic phones. You know, the iPhone came out in 2007. But it's really 2012 is the pivotal year when everything flips. Now everyone's getting an iPhone with social media on it.

[C]

So really interesting, by the way, what you said about, about if someone condemns something, they want you to condemn it. And if you don't condemn it, they're going to condemn like it's, it's very interesting what you said about that. But what, what is the fix to the problem?

[B]

So we have to distinguish between children and adults because in America we have a generally libertarian attitude, which you expressed, which is adults are responsible for themselves. We generally don't like it when the government tells adults what they have to do. There better be a darn good reason. And so what is the fix to change adults behavior? That's very hard. There are some design fixes. People assume that regulation means content moderation. Like the government is going to say, you can't post that. And then you end up in just, that's a terrible way to go. And it doesn't work. But there are design changes you can make. And so for example, the real problem is caused by the virality, the virality and the algorithm. So people have a right to put up content promoting suicide. That's, you know, if you're an adult and you want to put up a video promoting suicide is a way out. You know that your first amendment right, you can't be forced to not put that up on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. But for God's sakes, why do the algorithms Keep pushing that to your child. Like, how does it happen? And so the toxicity isn't just the stuff posted. The toxicity is that the algorithms amplify whatever gets the most clicks, whatever seems to be the most engaging. They're not trying to hurt kids, although given TikTok, we don't know. But I don't think Instagram is trying to hurt kids. But they don't seem to care that kids are getting hurt. And so there are all kinds of design changes that would make things less viral. The biggest change of all would be if platforms had what we call know your customer laws. So you can't just open a bank account without telling them who you are. You can't just money launder. Your bank has to know who you are. Now, it's not public. People don't know that I have an account at this particular bank, but the bank knows who I am. TikTok met these companies. They have no idea who they are. And a lot of the people are Russian agents, Chinese agents, drug dealers. They have no idea. This is a wildly inappropriate place to have a nice conversation or for your child to be. So what I'm hoping is that somebody will create a platform that has know your customer laws rules. That is, everyone on the platform was verified by the company as a real human being. And if that person sextorts kids or sells drugs, they actually get kicked off. And there could even be criminal penalties if they do criminal police try to.

[A]

Do this, or are they doing it?

[B]

No, there's. Oh, I'm sorry, there is the authentication, there is the blue check mark stuff. So actually. But that's right. So imagine a platform that said everybody has to be verified. I would much rather be.

[A]

Can you imagine a platform that said anybody who is not verified could maybe not be a real person or could be somebody like, I think, you know, to your point, it's with the problem with a lot of these platforms. And I don't know how much truth there is to this, but you'll hear people say, like, you know, I'll use the China example. Our countries that maybe don't have our best interests. Is it true that potentially they could have these bots that are trying to show division?

[B]

Like, we know they're doing that. The Chinese and the Russians, we know they're doing that.

[A]

The question is, you could be arguing with a bot. That is the entire intention is to make you upset.

[B]

And they know that one of the main cleavage points is racism, sexism, anti Semitism. They're trying to enrage us. This is our Weak spot. You know, we're like, what is it? You know, Samson, you know, the biblical figure of Samson, you know, or Achilles, you know, our Achilles heel is that we're easily, we're easily divided. We're a powerful country where we're easily divided against ourselves.

[C]

The holidays are coming and I have a place for you to go get all your holiday decor. I love decorating my home for all holidays and a place that I always go to is Wayfair. It's your one stop shop. So last year for Christmas I did a Frank Sinatra tinsel tree and I found the most beautiful round vintage looking Christmas lights on their site. And I was able to do a bunch of like silver tinsel on the tree and then use those big bulb lights to get that really like 1960s feel. They have the cutest holiday decor for every room in your house. Whether it's Christmas trees, wreaths or inflatables. Wayfair really does it all. They also have a lot of different things to refresh the home. So bedding, linens, throw pillows, accent chairs, all the things you could possibly want. For way less. So if you're looking to host a holiday party or you just want to add a little flair for the holidays or even to your home, check out Wayfair. It's free and easy delivery, even on the big stuff, which is so nice so there's no more huge delivery fees for furniture. There's something for every style and every home. I always find so many good seasonal must haves on their site. Get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.

[A]

Quick break to talk about the Soak app. What if I were to tell you right now that there was something that you can listen to right now that would absolutely change your life? It could help you sleep better, it could help you feel less anxious, it could help with depression, it could help with anxiety, it could help you have more energy, it could help you feel happier. Well, there is something out there and it is called the Soak app. We have had the founders of Soak on this podcast twice now to talk about the incredible product that they've created. Here's what they do. Soak frequency compositions are created in clinic by a team of experts for specific outcomes. We've talked about frequencies on this podcast for years and now Soak has created compositions that have all sorts of different benefits and outcomes for people on the other end. The same sound frequency compositions that are used by the United States Air Force for peak performance are now available to every Skinny Confidence the way that we've been using these compositions for a long time now is we put them on before bed and it helps us sleep better. Sometimes in the morning if I need a little bit of energy or any little pick me up, I'll put on a composition that will do that if I'm feeling a little bit stressed or anxious. They have frequencies for that as well. You can also use these while you're working out if you need that extra boost of motivation. Lauren and I are always looking for that next edge, that next thing to make us feel better, operate better, and just feel happier. And so compositions are perfect to add into our assortment of things that we use, so check them out. Visit soak.com skinny and use code skinny at checkout to get your first month free. That's S O A A K.com skinny and use code skinny to get your first month free. You have nothing to lose. Check them out and thank me later. This episode is sponsored by Cotton. Let's take a quick break to talk about cotton. As someone who's constantly refining my routine, from what I eat to what I wear to what I invest in, I've learned that the materials we surround ourselves with matter more than we would think. That's why I've made a conscious shift towards wearing more natural fabrics, especially cotton. It's timeless, it's versatile, and it's rooted in something real. Cotton literally comes from the earth, a flower that transforms into a soft, breathable, durable fabric. You can't beat that. Cotton is incredibly gentle on the skin. It is so hot out here this summer in Austin that you need something that breathes. It's hot everywhere, to be honest, so having something that breathes and cool and keeps you fresh and energetic is so important. It's obviously naturally hypoallergenic, especially as the weather warms up. I find myself reaching for it more and more these days, but it's not just about comfort, it's also about quality. Cotton lasts. That's so important. Nothing worse than having clothing that just falls apart. Cotton lasts and lasts. It holds its shape, and most importantly, it fits my lifestyle. Whether I'm heading to the office, at the gym, traveling from day to night, cotton moves with me, not against me. And when I'm investing in something, especially now, as a parent, I want it to be well made and built to last. Cotton checks that box Every time it's reliable, it's elevated and it just fits how we live. So here's my advice. Check the tag. When it's made with cotton, you're choosing something that's better for your body, better for your skin and built to last. You'll feel the difference in your skin will. Thank you. Cotton is the fabric of our lives. To learn more, visit the fabric of our lives.com Again that is the fabric of our lives.com.

[C]

One thing that I do not play around with, I've been doing it for two years during every workout is creatine. I love creatine. What I've noticed most about it for me is that it tightens my skin to the muscle. I know that sounds so weird, but I notice like more definition from the muscle. I really like to habit stack it. So what I'll do is I'll take a cup before a workout and I'll do some aminos and add my scoop of creatine and froth it up with ice and enjoy it while I'm working out the creatine that I love, the powdered creatine is by Momentous. I like this brand because Momentous is the gold standard in creatine. They source their creatine and it's the purest, most effective creatine available. It's single sourced from Germany so it's not cut with fillers or junk. But most importantly, they have these little travel packets. So they're new lemon travel packets and you can just take them on the go. So I'll put them in my purse, I'll add them to my travel carry on. I will bring them to the gym. Like I said, sometimes I don't have time to make my drink before the gym so I'll just throw them in my car. And they're effortless. They're naturally flavored. I love lemon. Lemon is my favorite and they're perfectly portioned so you can just pour them in your water and take them on the go. Creatine isn't just for muscle. It's an essential daily fuel for your brain, your body and your long term performance. Performance. And I can tell you we've interviewed so many experts and all of them recommend creatine for men and women. Check them out. Head to livemomentous.com and use code skinny for up to 35 off your first order. That's skinnyvemomentous.com I'm of the mindset that I wish these platforms would do all these things, but it's not going to happen, like for us to snap our finger. So I guess my question for you is, as parents, if, let's say the platforms stay the same, what can we do to support our children in the best way?

[B]

Yeah, good. Celebrate. So let's move back to the kids because what I was saying was we look at the adult situation, it's very hard and I don't really know what to do. If we look at the kids situation, it's actually pretty easy. And I know exactly what to do. Because we're stuck in a set of collective action problems. We all feel we have to let our kid on because everyone else is on. Everyone's talking on Snapchat. I'm excluded. And I keep getting the question of, well, how can we make it safer and nicer? You can't. You cannot make talking with strangers on these platforms nice. So how about just. No, how about we do this? Four norms. We roll back the phone based childhood. So here they are. No smartphone until high school. Just, you know, what's happening is really exciting. Parents are actually buying their kids landlines. There's a tin can is this wonderful simple landline. And if in your neighborhood, if a bunch of the kids all get landlines, they can call each other just like you did in the 90s on a phone. No problem with that. They're giving their kids basic phones that just text and call.

[C]

That's what I want to do.

[A]

In Texas, they're passing laws to ban them in the school.

[C]

When you say give the kid a smartphone in high school, that to me even feels like I almost, I don't know. That feels like a lot for a high schooler too.

[B]

No, you're right. So what I did in writing, the anxious generation was, was I didn't try to say what's the best age. What I did is I said, we're all stuck, we're trapped. Nobody. You know, we have to pick a target age as a floor and say, how about we all just hold, Just clear this out of middle school. Let kids get through middle school without this craziness.

[C]

Got it?

[B]

So let's just say nobody get your kid a smartphone before 9th grade in America, 9th grade in Europe. Let's say age 14 or so. How about that? How about we just be in a norm now, A lot of parents, because you're going to get such good results with this and your kids are going to be normal and happy and they're going to go outside and play. So a lot of parents might wait later, but let's just set that nothing before high school. And that also includes unfortunately an iPad, because almost everything you do on a smartphone you can do on an iPad. So not a don't give your kid their own personal iPad that they can keep in their room and use. I'm not saying they can't use an iPad at home sometimes, but just don't give them their own. That's norm number one. Norm number two, no social media before 16. This is an inherently adult activity. Agreed. Looking at dick pics from strangers like this is, you know, so really it should be 18 or 21. But my goal wasn't to say what's optimal, it's what could we get what's optimal?

[C]

If you could re raise your children right now in your perfect world, what are you doing?

[B]

Oh, well, first of all, I would say as a country and as a planet, we should recognize, we should have recognized long ago social media. It's like gambling and porn, right? If adults want to do it, they can do it, but this is just not appropriate for children. So it should be 18, legally. 18. That's what it should have been.

[C]

I agree with you.

[B]

And so the no smartphone before high school, I would have made that a norm. Not a law, but a norm that we don't give even smartphones until I would say 16. I think that would be a better age. So smartphone at 16, social media 18, I think would have made a lot more sense. But just to finish with the forums that I did propose, so we've got no smartphone before high school, no social media before 16. The third is phone free schools. And this is where it's been absolutely spectacular. 39 states have passed legislation in the past year or so to get phones at least out of class, which helps. But then they're all on it during lunch and recess. So the states that just did in class are not getting that much benefit. But 19 states passed something like our model law at anxious generation. We have advice for legislators, we have model laws, which is bell to bell. You come in in the day, you put your phone in a yonder pouch or in a phone locker or an envelope, something, and then you get it back at the end of the day. I love that idea and it's amazing what happens. There was a viral video of a teacher in Alabama on the third day of phone free school. He put up on TikTok and Instagram. He said, Today 100% of my students, 100% paid attention in class, did the in class assignment, turned it in. Then when they were done, they talked to each other like I'm trying to convey his amazement at what happened. And then he says, was it this easy of a solution all along? Is this really all we had to do? So teachers have hated the phones. I mean, how can you teach when your kids are watching TikTok and porn and video games like so teachers have been put in an impossible situation. Phone free schools works like magic. And so the 19 states, including New York state that did it this year or last year are getting spectacular results. What we hear, the main phrase we hear is one, we hear laughter in the hallways again because it used to be a zombie apocalypse. Everyone's checking their Instagram in between classes. Now they're talking and laughing. And the other thing we hear is discipline problems go way down because why would you lure a kid into the bathroom to beat the hell out of him if no one's taking a video to put up on social media? There's not much reason for violence if you can't take a video of it. So violence drops, disciplinary problems drop.

[C]

Is Texas one of the states?

[B]

I don't, I don't know what Texas did. I actually, I don't know.

[C]

We gotta get Texas on board.

[A]

I think Texas is. I have a question for the benefit of the parents. Say you have children and you're looking to do as you say. How do you communicate with your children and start setting those boundaries without blowing up the family and having a constant fight if they feel, hey, everybody else has Snapchat or everybody else has Instagram or whatever, what's the conversation that takes place and how do you hold that boundary?

[B]

Sure. So if your kids are young, as yours are, you have a lot of control to frame it. And we have a kids version of the Anxious generation coming out in December for kids age 8 to 12 called the Amazing Generation. And it has a great graphic novel and it really tells the story of what's happening to you, what happens to your brain. So if you can control the environment for your kids early on, you're going to have a lot more success and it's not going to be a blow up. But if your kids are already in that, they're already on devices, it is much harder. That's true. But here's what you need to do. Kids are terrified not of being separated from their device, but of being left out. And so if you go to the parents of your kids friends, because most, if you're feeling this way, I guarantee you a lot of the other families, we're all going through the same thing all over the world. We're going through the same thing. So if you talk to the parents of your kids friends and you say, you know, say your kids are 14, 15, they've been on for years and you say, we gotta do something about this, are you in? And if you can get three or four kids, families to say yes now, you can say, we're not going to make you delete your Instagram, but we're going to put some real restrictions that it doesn't take over your life. So we're all doing the same thing, which is all screens out of the bedroom at 9:30 or 10:00 clock at night. Like everything, you know, it lives on the kitchen counter. It doesn't go in your bedroom. So we're going to put limits on that. You're not going to be left out. Everyone else is doing it. Video games, you're playing three hours a day. We're gonna go to two hours a day on Saturday and Sunday only. You don't do any video games during the week. But don't worry, your best friends are doing the same thing. But guess what? When I get together with them, great here, you know, we're all, you know, if you guys, if you can ride a bicycle down to a pizza shop and get great, do it. Here's money. Go, go, go. And so the fourth norm after phone free schools, the fourth norm is far more independence, free play and responsibility. In the real world, we have to give our kids back an 80s or 90s childhood where they're out on their bicycles by the age of 8. Kids can have a lot of independence. Not in every single neighborhood. Sometimes you have automobile risks, you have crime risks. I'm not saying it can work everywhere, but you can begin giving your kids some independence. Even just you go to a supermarket and you say, honey, can you go get a quart of milk? It's an aisle seven. And your seven year old can do that. And when they come back with the milk, they're gonna be so excited they did it. So we can begin giving our kids independence from the age of really 7.

[C]

What are the effects of a relationship with the phone? Meaning like say you have a partner that's always on their phone. What is the effect of that?

[B]

One thing we know is that we are in a sex recession. There's a lot less sex going on. And it began in the early 2010s. It began as soon as we went from a flip phone, which is tedious to text on once everybody had a distraction device in their pocket calling out to them to check up on three or five different platforms plus text plus email. Sex began to drop. And the clearest indication is when you look at married couples because dating is complicated. The apps seem to make it easy to have sex, but actually the kids on the apps are having less sex than ever. But the amazing thing is that married couples who traditionally have had the most sex. Cause you know, you're right there like you're together every night. Married couples used to have regular sex. That's declining because people, everyone has to check at night and then you're tired or you're distracted, you're just not in the mood. So it is damaging marriages, it is damaging childhood, it is damaging our democracy, it is damaging the workplace. Young people are so used to having multiple screens. What I hear from employers is that they don't seem to understand that when they're talking to someone, they shouldn't be checking their notifications. When they're at their desk working, they shouldn't have their phone in front of their computer. So they can be constantly task switching.

[C]

It feels dismissive. When you're sitting with someone and they're on their phone, it feels dismissive. And listen, I'm on my phone is like how I make a living. So I'm not like trying to be self righteous at all. I'm just saying it feels dismissive. What is the effect of when the parent is on the phone in front of the child all the time?

[B]

Yes. So we have to break it up by age. The most serious damage I believe is done when parents are on their phones with their infants or toddlers. Because the infant comes into the world, they can't control their muscles, they're trying to make sense of the world and the first thing they do is lock eyes. That they get right away. Not in the first couple, but you know, a couple weeks in, they begin to lock eyes and then they begin to smile. And then that's when it really gets magical. And what they're looking for is the back and forth. The psychologists call it serve and volley or serve and volley or serve and response. Like you do something, you go. And then the kid goes, ha, ha ha. And then you do it again and the kid goes, you know, so but you get that back and forth. That's really important, that synchronous interaction. But what happens, you know, both parents are working, everyone's busy, you got a ton of email coming and you have to make dinner. You're with your one year old, you're with your six month old, what do you do? You're like, you know, like, you know Here, you know, here. Here's a block. Here's a little puppet to play with. And you're on your phone and your kid is trying to say, you know, trying to get your attention. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Adorable. Yeah, yeah. This, what this does. The child is developing what we call an internal working model. That is a mental model of how things go and what mom is like and what dad is like. And if mom is always giving off, like, I can't get the servant volley going with mom because she's always on her phone. Oh, but dad, he's the fun one. Like, oh, yeah, dad is great. It's going to damage the internal working model of the mother. And so it's really important when the kids are little, when you're present, be present. When you're engaging with them, be fully engaged. Okay, so let's start with that with the kid. With the infants, as they go on later, it's not quite as damaging, but you are showing them this is normal. Like, we're at dinner and something comes up and, oh, I got a notification, so I'm gonna check out of dinner that you're teaching. This is normal. So the kids are gonna copy our example. The key idea is that when we're present, we need to be present, and when we're working, we need to be working. And it's what's called continuous partial attention. That's a phrase that parents often find useful. Most of us are stuck paying continuous partial attention to our kids. And that is. Right. It's dismissive. It's saying, you don't matter. I mean, they see the back of your phone all day long, and it's.

[A]

Tough because they can't communicate the same way an adult would. Like if Lauren and I were at dinner, and every time she was talking, I was kind of going in that, like, I'll hear from it right away. She would say, get onto the phone.

[C]

I will literally pinch him with my toe under the table.

[B]

Good.

[A]

But with your kids, they don't have the ability to communicate in that way.

[B]

Well, that's right.

[A]

So you get away with it longer.

[B]

That's right. Yeah, you're right. You're right. So as a parent, you have to commit to raising your kid as distraction free as possible, at least up until high school. I mean, it's get them through puberty. So 15, 16 is when sort of the main part of puberty ends. You really, you know, beyond that, you. You. You have a lot less control Once they're older, you have a lot Less control.

[C]

Ed Mylett came on this podcast, and he gave me such a good tip that I've tried to do every time. And he said that he. When he had his kids, he used to walk into the house on, like, on his phone, like, finishing up some emails, and he realized the connection was off, and so he started keeping his phone in the car when he would walk in. And the walk in was actually intentional.

[B]

And so it's a big deal. And they come running to.

[A]

You gotta, like, eat an hour.

[C]

I honestly am. To the point where I'm. What I'm hearing from you for my own self is like, I almost want to just put my phone on airplane mode somewhere else when my kids are around, because it just doesn't sound like there's a lot of pros there.

[A]

I think this is an important part of the conversation where adults can learn more is like, we live now in a time because of this device that people feel they need to respond instantly to everything and that they also need to comment instantly on any world, like, okay, doing what we do for as long as we've done it with a public platform, anytime any event happens in the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's a segment of people that rise up and say, you need to say.

[C]

Something now, now, now. Don't give me one second to even think about what you think about it.

[A]

And then there's a segment of people that, if you do say something, are upset that you said something. And I'm not saying one's good, but the. The pressure from society and the pressure in the workplace is that you act now and respond now instantly.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Don't think about it. Get on it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Get engaged. And so I think that these conversations are really important because we've been trained to go through and just be active all the time.

[B]

Right? No, absolutely right. So let me give you two tips or two things I hope will be helpful to help people disengage, help adults disengage. The first is you're absolutely right that we went through a period from around 2014, 2015 through 2024, 25, where it was like that. And this has been called the Great Awokening. This has been called callout culture, and everybody hates it. And finally, everybody's saying, like, this is horrible. And I think in some sense, it's on the decline now. So I think what you said a year ago would have been, yep, we're stuck in that, but I think it's changing. So now, if you don't opine on the latest thing, not Much is gonna happen to you. It's much less than it would have been a year ago. So, people, so we can all step back. The second thing I wanna say is that I understand your impulse to just put it on airplane mode, but I have a better solution for you, which is turn your phone from a slot machine into a Swiss army knife.

[C]

How do you do that?

[B]

So when the iPhone came out, all it was was a browser, a phone, a music player. So I had a few functions. And then there was also, there was maps and there was a flashlight, and that was really cool. I loved my iPhone and it wasn't addictive. When you needed a tool, you pulled it out.

[C]

Like a Swiss army knife.

[B]

Like a Swiss army knife. The Swiss army knife was not designed to keep you using the Swiss army knife. There was no blade on the Swiss army knife that makes you keep using it. Once you get the app store and push notifications, everything changes. And now all these apps are trying to get to you, trying to get you to come back. And the ones that reinforce you on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule, the ones that give you little bits of pleasure but at a random distribution, those are the addictive ones.

[C]

That's the slot.

[B]

That's the slot machine. So what I'm saying is this. How many platforms are you on?

[C]

First of all, I turned all my notifications off. And if the whole family was murdered at night, I wouldn't know because the phone's off. I have to create these boundaries or you're just screwed. You have to have boundaries.

[B]

That's right. That's right. But here's what I would suggest that everyone do. And I do this. I teach a course called Flourishing at New York University. I work with college students and MBA students. They make a huge amount of progress when they get this under control. Step number one, get all these things off your phone. I'm not saying you have to quit Instagram and TikTok. Just get it off your phone and you can still have it on your computer. And maybe you'll get to the point where you just check TikTok on weekends on your computer.

[A]

Meaning like you have X or Instagram. Just only on the desktop, only on the computer, because the thing is not in your pocket.

[B]

That way you're not going to it all the time. So because I never really was on social media other than Twitter and X, I've used that, but only on my computer. So I still have no problem with my phone. My phone has never been addictive for me.

[C]

So you don't have an Instagram account.

[B]

No, I don't. I mean. Well, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. I have one professionally, which me and, you know, my team manages. So I am on Instagram, but I'm not able to, like to run it all. But in terms of my daily habits, my daily habits, I do check X probably every day, but because I never do it on my phone. So if I'm waiting in line somewhere and it's not like with the slot machines, hey, come back and play slots. You never know what you'll find. So that's what I urge you to do. Yeah.

[C]

You swear? Hold on. Say it.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, let's. Let's get the commitment on.

[C]

This is like a vow of. What are you going to do in front of everyone?

[A]

I'm going to just put X on the. Especially after yesterday. I'm going to put X on the computer. I don't really even do Instagram outside of memes anyways, and other people help us with that.

[C]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[A]

I've never done.

[C]

Honest.

[A]

No, no, I don't. I don't. But I'm saying.

[C]

Oh, my God, Taylor, how many memes has he sent you in the last.

[A]

I sent memes. I sent memes.

[C]

You're such a liar.

[A]

You're not listening to what I'm saying. I don't know. Post myself a lot.

[C]

Okay, but you're on Instagram.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying I don't need to be on there to checking all the time. Yeah, like somebody else can post.

[C]

Taylor's literally looking at your meme that you just sent him an hour ago right now.

[A]

You're not listening to what I'm saying. I'm saying I don't post, like, the. I don't need. I have people that can help me post content, so I don't really actually.

[C]

What are you going to put on your computer?

[A]

I'm going to put the apps on the computer and I don't.

[B]

We just use the. Just go to the website.

[A]

Yeah, I don't use TikTok at all. And I stop sending dick pics like 10 years ago.

[B]

Lauren, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna commit to?

[C]

I. I don't go on TikTok, so that's already.

[B]

That's great. Step ahead of everyone else.

[C]

I don't go on X, but I do go on Instagram.

[B]

Okay, do you endorse, like. Do you feel that this is good? Use your time. You're perfectly happy with your Instagram habits on your phone.

[C]

No, I think I could get better. I think I. I think I can get better. What I would like to do. What can. What can I do with Instagram? I don't know that I could put it on a computer because of my work.

[B]

What do you mean? Why can't you just check it on your computer? Just go to instagram.com.

[C]

How do you post stories on.

[B]

You do it on the. You do it on the computer?

[A]

You load the file on the computer?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Can you actually do that?

[B]

Anything you can do on a phone, pretty much you can do on a computer.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

They're all desktop based.

[C]

I mean, I don't even. Okay.

[A]

They're all web based applications.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You can do the font and the colors and all this stuff on Instagram stories. Can someone confirm this?

[B]

Okay, look. And. Or look, if you want to have an iPad that you keep at home, if you prefer to use the app interface, maybe if you have it, have it on an iPad that you keep at home. The thing is, do not have a slot machine in your pocket.

[C]

So Instagram's a slot machine, but it's.

[A]

Also like a little bit of hand to mouth function.

[B]

They're all. What?

[A]

They're like hand to mouth function of the. Picking it up all the time.

[C]

It's like a cigarette.

[B]

That's right. Yeah, that's right. And people use it as a crutch, you know, and you see it like as soon as everybody walks in the elevator, everybody pulls out their phone. You know, you walk around New York City, it's like. It's like everyone's on their phone. I saw a cartoon the other day. It was everybody on their phone with a blind person's cane tapping because none of us are looking where we're going.

[C]

I will commit this, and I will commit this on the podcast. Hopefully you'll commit it, too. It's kind of like a wedding vow. I will commit to not being. To putting my phone away when I'm around my children in front of them.

[A]

Yeah, we need to stop. But no, I think, like, these conversations are very, like, even I tell people all the time, doing this show, it's not only for the benefit of the audience. It's like we directly learn ourselves. I mean, a lot of the growth over the years is being able to speak to people like yourself that have these perspectives and expertise so that we can try to improve ourselves. We're not perfect at all.

[C]

I have a question. I have a bone to pick about text message, though.

[B]

Okay. Yeah.

[C]

What do you do with that? Because the text message Kills me. I sometimes don't respond to text messages for two months because it's so overwhelming that I don't even know where to start. How do you mitigate that and manage it?

[B]

Now, text is the hardest thing. When I work with my students, they understand they need to get the social media platforms up. But what do you do about texting? That's really, really hard. And especially a lot of young. I know your audience is mostly, especially young people, people in your 20s. My MBA students, they say, well, yeah, I wanna block off time and do deep work and not answer my text for three hours. But my boss expects me to respond within five minutes. What do I do? And so this too is a collective action problem. If everybody thinks that everybody is online all the time, then everybody can expect quick answers. And so what you can do is with your friends, with your family, you can say, we're all overwhelmed. I'm going to try to block my day. I'm going to try to batch my day and I'll have several blocks where I'm responding. But it might take an hour or two for me to get back to you. Don't expect me to respond within five minutes and I won't expect it of you because we're all suffering from this. In the workplace, it's harder. But what I'm hopeful is that a lot of people will read. I always assign Cal Newport's book Deep Work.

[A]

I love that book.

[B]

It's amazing. And once you understand, like, oh, yeah, if we're always responding, then we're always doing shallow work. We never get to think. And so we can't be so responsive to our texts. We have to be break away from the idea that everybody can reach everybody at any moment and respect a response.

[C]

All right, let's talk about formula. So, Bobby, it's not just another formula. It's a movement. This is a really, really cool company. It's the world's first USDA organic whole milk infant formula and it's manufactured right here in the United States. So I had the opportunity of interviewing the founder of BOBI and interview. That industry is just wild. You really have to do your research. Bobbi is clean label certified and it's trusted by 500,000 parents nationwide. I personally think that when you are picking a formula, it's important to look into it. This formula has had three years of research. It has had testing, retesting, and it's led by a mom who really, really cares. So if you're looking for a brand that's by a mom who wanted something better for her babies and yours. You got to check this out. Their ingredients meet the strictest organic standards in the world. Everyone is talking about this company too behind the scenes. Like I hear. I hear about it from everyone. I personally like that their manufacturing facility is in Ohio. You know where it's coming from and it's really a premium recipe. If you're looking for a formula you have to check out Bobi. They really support the whole feeding journey. They even have DHA to support brain development which is crucial in the first year of life. And they gave you a code exclusively for our him and her listeners. Bobby is offering an additional 10 off on your purchase with code skinny. Visit hi bobby.com for more details. That's H I B O B-B-I-E.com people are loving dried raw dog food right now and there is this brand called Get Joys and it's freeze dried raw dog food. It's made with real whole ingredients like 100 USDA sourced meats, pumpkin for digestion, salmon oil for skin and coat health, and no seed oils or anything artificial. They also have this thing in it which is really interesting called bellybiotics and it's a proprietary blend of pre pro and postbiotics to support digestion, reduce inflammation and build a strong healthy gut. Because Joy starts from within so the meat is raw and then it's freeze dried to retain 97% of nutrients. They never use high heat or high pressure processing which allows them to maintain such a high nutritional value and maintain the flavor. So if you're serious about what your dogs are eating and you want to support their gut, I think this is a really good one. A couple things to note. There's no thawing, no mess, it's shelf stable for easy storage and it's scoop and serve convenience which is really nice and saves you time. I know I am very specific about what I feed my dogs and if you want something that's developed by veterinary nutritionists with PhDs, you have to check them out. You should also know it's third party tested. Get Joy Freeze Dried Raw Dog Food. Really thought of everything as a listener of the him and Her show, you'll get 30% off your first purchase of Get Joy's free freeze dried raw dog food plus two exclusive gifts, a free scoop and a four ounce bag of treats. Shop get joyfood.com skinny to make your dog's food as intentional as yours. Again, that's get joyfood.com skinny quick break.

[A]

To talk about good to know.org want clear, transparent information about your favorite beverages? We do too. That's why today's sponsor American Beverage launch Good to Know. A new platform with tons of information on your favorite beverages and no spin or judgment, just the facts. On the good to know facts.org website, you can explore 140 plus common beverage ingredients in one place for the first time. As a busy dad, I love having a resource that gives me clear facts so I can make the choices I know are right for me and my family. So if you're somebody trying to make the best choices for yourself without any judgment or any spin, Good to know Facts.org has you covered. Like I said earlier, you can check out more than 140 common beverage ingredients, including what U.S. and global food safety agencies have to say about them. It provides just the facts and no opinions or recommendations. And what I like about this is that it puts you in the driver's seat. You know what's best for you and your family and now you can get clear information about what's in your drinks without having to dig through confusing websites. There is Nothing worse in 2025 than having to be confused about what you're ingesting, what ingredients you're taking, and being confused about what you should give to your family or your children. So if you want to know more than what's on the label of Your favorite drink, goodtoknowfacts.org is a great, great place to start. So check them out. Visit www.goodtofacts.org for more information. Again, that's good to know facts.org for more information.

[C]

Let's talk about my favorite female run nonprofit. I'm so passionate about the charity I Stand With My pack. It's dedicated to saving animals and preventing cruelty locally and globally. So I was introduced to this charity by a friend of mine, Lucy, probably about five years ago and she was really passionate about how much that I Stand with My pack helps dogs. So what they do is they rescue dogs from high kill shelters in Southern California and they help them find loving foster homes or forever homes. There is an urgent need right now for donations and fosters so even if you can donate a dollar, every dollar counts. This goes to helping to cover medical care, food, transportation for rescue dogs. You can donate or sign up to [e-mail] that's istandwithmypack.org I also sometimes will just venmo them. It makes it really simple. More [e-mail] something that's really helped me with my mental health is that I bookend my day.

[B]

Good.

[C]

So I.

[B]

What do you do? What's your morning and evening routine?

[C]

I don't touch my phone until like to, to look at my phone. It's probably about 9:30, which I wake up at 7 so two and a half hours without the phone. This has been. I don't want to act like I'm perfect because this has been many years of figuring it out. And then before I go to bed around probably like 8:30, my phone goes on airplane mode in the other room.

[B]

Great. Tell me what you do after 8:30. What do you do between 8:30 in bed?

[C]

I read my Kindle.

[B]

Okay, that's fine. Yeah.

[C]

But I'm still even wondering my. I read my Kindle in front of my children. I don't know that they know the difference between that I'm reading and I try to explain it. I'm reading my book to better my mind not scrolling my phone. I don't know that they can understand the difference.

[A]

Yeah, they recently switched to physical books with an Amazon. Like it's a little red light. Book light.

[B]

Like it's all red.

[C]

So Michael's reading by candlelight.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

I'm just kidding.

[B]

Yeah, right. The little. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that sounds great. So let me tell. Because so here are the, here are like the top tips I can bring your audience from my flourishing class. You know, I tell them if you get nothing else from this course, if you do these two things you're going to be. Your life is going to go better. One is take charge of your morning and evening routines because that's going to set you up for a good night of sleep, a restorative period. And so from I have them lay out what are the 10 things you do before you close your eyes.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And, and, and the, the like the last one tends to be check their messages, their text, their Instagram, everything. Most of them do this. It's, it's, it's either the second to last or last thing they do before they literally close their eyes. And what's the first thing you do when you wake up? What are the first 10 things you do? And again it's like open your eyes, grab your phone. So, okay, let's look at this. Do you, do you like living this way? No, they don't. And so what I encourage them to do is see that period from about 10 at night or whatever until 8 or 9 the next morning. This is your recharge. This is for you. This is the time when you're not doing every. You're not responding to everybody else. And if you do that, you're gonna sleep better. You're gonna start your day in control. Because what happens if you don't do that? The phone guides every moment that you're awake.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

And that means you're not living your life.

[C]

I mean, I am someone that has gone through every different kind of relationship with my phone because of. And so I have seen the impact of too much phone in your face. I have felt it as an adult, which is why I'm so passionate about this subject for children, because I've felt it myself. And if you don't have parameters and boundaries around your phone, it will take over. It will take over.

[B]

Okay. So, Lindsay, you're doing pretty well. How about you, Michael? What's your evening and morning routine?

[A]

Well, Lauren's gonna do this thing where she.

[C]

I'm not saying anything.

[A]

Where's her high horse? I think it's waiting outside in the hallway now. Actually, you know what? I do pretty well in the evenings now because I get off and I put it on a charger away from the bed, and I switch to hard books. So I've improved over the last year. I think I got grilled on a. You know, maybe 30 episodes back, so I've been switching. And now in the morning, I get up really early because my daughter is going to school early. And I wait at least an hour before I touch the phone. So that's. That's where I'm at.

[B]

Good.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Also read the newspaper.

[A]

I read a physical newspaper now.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

I don't like to. For some reason, I've never been able to get onto the, you know, the iPad.

[C]

Where. Do you think you have room for improvement? Because I was honest.

[A]

No, I think that, like, when you. When I hear you talking about the. What did you call it? The past. Not passive. When you have your. When you have the phone in front of your kid and you're kind of like.

[B]

Oh, the continuous partial attention.

[A]

Yes, Continuous partial attention. I can definitely improve on that. And it's good. It's a good reinforcement to hear you talk about it. Because every parent sitting there. And I'll say, you know, a lot of parents are probably doing that, right? Yeah, the majority. That's right.

[C]

But the problem is, what he said earlier is that every parent is thinking, oh, every parent's doing this, so it's okay. What did you call that? Collective.

[B]

Well, it's a collective action problem.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Right. We also. Look, everyone else is letting their kid on the iPad all day long. It must be okay. But it wasn't okay. We didn't know. We didn't know. Parents shouldn't blame themselves. Like, five, ten years we didn't know.

[C]

Now we're all sitting there scrolling and we're like, oh, every other parent's doing it, so it's okay.

[B]

That's right, I said. There's two big things I want to convey. The first was get control of your morning and evening routine. Take charge of your day. I recommend with my students they do the five minute journal. Just anything where you lay out what would make today a great day or what do I want to accomplish today? Do that before you jump into the river of craziness. That's the first thing. The second thing, which, if my students get nothing else other than this, their life is going to go better, which is take back your attention. And the way you do that is. Is number one, get all the slot machine apps off your phone. We already talked about that. Put them on the computer and then quit a couple of them entirely. Especially TikTok. Just totally, you know, totally quit TikTok. And then the second thing is get charge of your notifications. Every app wants to send you notifications, and when you look through, you can go to the notifications, find out, look at the ones that are sending the most notifications and turn them off. You do not need a notification from any newspaper. Breaking news. You do not need that. Check it once a day. If there's a nuclear attack, I guarantee you everyone around you is going to be freaking out and you'll know. Oh, maybe I should check my phone. You don't need to know when there was a shooting someplace else, when some couple in Hollywood is getting a divorce. Like, you don't need to know that.

[C]

Agreed.

[B]

At the moment. So if you can shut off most notifications other than, like, you know, Uber or things where you really. Yes, I want this company to interrupt me. Everything else, shut off. If you can regain your attention and get a better night's sleep, you're going to be a lot happier and more in control.

[C]

One of my best friends is here. And, like, the way we text is like, it's. There's no, like, pressure on the text. It's like sometimes she texts me on a Friday and I don't text her back till Monday. Sometimes she texts me on a Tuesday. Like, I'll text her on a Tuesday. And like, we. We text in a way that's like, get to it when you can get to it. I feel like there Needs be to, to be that sort of unspoken rule with friendships. It can't be like just because someone texts you like you said, you get an instant response.

[B]

That's such an interesting phrase. An unspoken rule. Unspoken means we, we kind of assume people think it. But what I'm going to suggest here is that we make this a spoken rule. That is because it turns out we're all suffering, we're all suffering from this. And so if you say it, your friends aren't going to be offended. They're like, yes, I'm feeling it too. So I think we should also what we should do with your friends is have them watch this episode and say, you know, we're all going to try to have better relationships because what we want is not the quantity of check ins, it's the quality of sometimes really being together. And so if you have a texting relationship with people, what you might say is, how about we stop texting? How about we talk on the phone once a week or once a month? It's so much more satisfying.

[A]

Yeah. I also like a lot of time, I think that because of social media, in the way people present and you see all these, you lose a little bit of connection. You're like, I don't need to check in on how they are because I can see how they are. I saw them on that vacation so it must have been good. No reason to talk about it anymore, if that makes sense.

[B]

Yeah. Social media allows us to display anything that's one to many where you're putting up something so that lots of people see it. That's not communication, that's display. Whereas a telephone call or a FaceTime call, that's one on one. That's good.

[C]

I love what you're doing. I think it's amazing and so important. Michael, you want to do some rapid fire questions?

[B]

All right.

[A]

Yeah, rapid fire, quick ones. Biggest misconception about Gen Z.

[B]

Biggest misconception about Gen Z is that they are lazy. They are not lazy. They work very hard but they are just so overwhelmed with stuff. They're not able to do a lot of other stuff.

[C]

So they're overstimulated.

[B]

They're overstimulated and distracted. Yeah. Oh, one other, one other Gen Z is that Gen Z loves their phones. They don't. They see how much it's hurting them. They just feel trapped.

[C]

What surprised you the most when writing the Anxious Generation?

[B]

What surprised me the most when writing it was the boys story. I knew that the girl story was when social media came in, they instantly got anxious and depressed. I didn't know what the boys story was and it turns out it's not video games per se, it's all the stuff that is distracting them and addicting them. The boys story is about companies that are addicting boys and basically sapping their motivation to do anything. Which is why our boys are dropping out in the long run. Actually this whole phone based childhood is actually hurting the boys more than the girls.

[A]

I believe most underrated skill kids today.

[B]

Need starting conversations in real life and that includes on the telephone. They don't. It's awkward. It's awkward to call someone up. When we were young you had a call and you say oh hello Mrs. Smith, is Billy home? And sometimes you had to make a little conversation with Mrs. Smith. And now a lot of kids, you know when the phone rings they don't even say anything. They just wait for the other person to talk. So you know, we need basic communication skills.

[C]

Michael used to page me Every single morning 14:31 which would say I love you on the pager.

[B]

That's sweet.

[C]

That's a true story.

[A]

It was for the booty club.

[C]

You did it every morning. It was like a Monday. We were going to school.

[A]

Yeah, I'll take a Monday.

[C]

One sentence about how parents can raise resilient kids in a digital world.

[B]

The best way to prepare your children for life in the digital world is to protect them from it until their brain is largely developed. Do not let the digital world scramble their neural development and keep them off of smartphones till 14 and social media till 16 and you're going to, they're going to be much more prepared for life in the digital world.

[C]

Jonathan, I like I said I love what you're doing. Where can everyone pick up your latest book? What are you working on? Tell us all the things.

[B]

So the main website for the movement because it's not just a book, it really is a movement and it's driven especially by mothers around the world. The website is anxiousgeneration.com so start there and of course by the book Anxious Generation. But we have, as I said, On December 30 we are publishing the Amazing Generation, your guide to fun and freedom in a screen filled world. It is ideal for kids 8 to 12. It's really fun. It came out beautifully. You can pre order that now anywhere. So what we're doing, we began trying to help parents set norms, follow the four norms. That was the beginning of the movement and now we're expanding to understand AI. Oh parents do not buy your child this holiday season. Do not buy your child any toy with AI. It's insane. It's insane.

[A]

I feel like that's a whole nother.

[B]

That's a whole nother podcast.

[C]

I just think like knowing.

[A]

By the way, open invite anytime.

[B]

Okay, I'll come back next year when everyone's got AI friends and chatbots and girlfriends and boyfriends.

[A]

That's a whole rabbit hole.

[C]

You know, it might be fun to have boyfriend that say hi. Just program what you want. Thank you for coming on. I will tell you on air and off air that I. Anything that I can do to help you with what you're doing besides the show. If there's anything I can talk on, I would. I'm really passionate about this and I'm trying to set it up for my own kids and it's not easy. So if there's anything Michael and I can do because of what we do, we would love to help.

[B]

Okay, well, thank you. Just, just helping me to reach your, your large and generally young audience is great. I hope everyone will go to afterbabble.com. that's my substack. It's free. We put out research, we put out advice for parents and yeah, it'd be wonderful for me to come back or for other members of the team to come back. We have different parts of the story and to really especially promote the idea that we have overprotected our children in the real world. We have under protected our children online. We've gotta reverse those. We've got to give our kids back a play based childhood. That's the main message I wanted to convey here and I hope you'll hear.

[C]

You'Ll have to give my friend advice here. He watches porn about 15 times a day. So maybe you have some tips for him.

[A]

Not me.

[C]

I think he's watching it right now.

[A]

He's over there.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

Black hair, gray jacket.

[C]

Taylor rhymes with Taylor Oschmoner.

[A]

Thank you, Jonathan. You're the best. Appreciate you. Open invite anytime.

[B]

Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Lauren.

[C]

Thank you.