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Phil Robertson
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Jase Robertson
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man.
Zach Dasher
Then he told everyone how much he.
Jase Robertson
Loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day.
Phil Robertson
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Jase Robertson
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Phil Robertson
Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be.
Jase Robertson
To be.
Al Robertson
I am unashamed. What about you?
Phil Robertson
Welcome to Unashamed. This is a very.
Al Robertson
It's a first.
Phil Robertson
It's a first. It's a unique situation we have today as we start our podcast, because we've already had our podcast, but we're now starting the podcast.
Al Robertson
Well, Zach, you know, yesterday, because he was in charge of this, he was like, I got a guest coming on. I'll give you all the details and.
Phil Robertson
I'll send you some questions.
Al Robertson
Last night at about 11:00, I was like, Mrs. Like, what are you looking for? I was like, I'm looking for the details that Zach was going to send me.
Phil Robertson
And it was literally the last thing he told us yesterday, to be fair.
Zach Dasher
To be fair. My wife's van, literally kaput, is gone, blew up. So I've been. I had to deal with some issues.
Al Robertson
Madd, can you send him a cheap violin and he can use it as a prop where we can just say.
Phil Robertson
Let'S just play that violin.
Al Robertson
So Zach found a doctor who, you know, I was saying, oh, you know, is he a believer? And Zach started him hawing around. I'm not sure about that. You know, he's like, but we have a common interest. And it was really about this epidemic, what I call the zombie apocalypse, with the cell phones.
Phil Robertson
This is something we've been talking about on this podcast since we started for.
Al Robertson
Years, cell phones with the kids, the damage to the society, the distractions and the horrors of social media and putting immature people in mature environments. And then shocked. Why? They're disconnected, bullying no social skills, suicide going out the wazoo among teenagers. I mean, it's just. It's an epidemic.
Phil Robertson
Yeah.
Zach Dasher
And you got to look at it. I mean, I think people are like. Like, this is may. This may be the most important discussion that we need to be having with our families and children right now.
Phil Robertson
It's so big.
Al Robertson
But what I feel that's powerful about the conversation we just had is here you have people just from the world agreeing with Christianity of what is happening to our kids. Where are the parents? You know, and so it's. What I found fascinating was really wasn't about cell phones, even though we talked about that a lot in the epidemic.
Phil Robertson
It's about kids, it's about childhood.
Al Robertson
It's the way he. Family, ultimately families.
Phil Robertson
And just so you know, as we're going into. We're setting you up to. To hear this podcast. He. This is Dr. Jonathan Haidt. He is a Jewish professor from New York, and. And he teaches at NYU School of Business. He could not be any more different than. Than this podcast. We found a synergy with him in his book and his research that was fascinating.
Al Robertson
I was like, I agree with everything this man is saying. You know, what's incredible is he has all the data and research that is just anybody should be able to look and say, okay, humanity, we have a problem that has emerged through this. And so I found it very powerful that even when the world is crying out saying, this won't work for society, we're breaking down society. And so what's real funny, I think, and interesting as it went along, Zach, in his theological brain, brought up some real deep truths of the Bible, but he found them absolutely fascinating.
Phil Robertson
He was taking notes.
Al Robertson
He was taking notes. So, Zach, good job on that.
Phil Robertson
That was a tip of the cap. I thought the same thing. Zach, You.
Jase Robertson
You were.
Phil Robertson
You were definitely teasing this man to look into the. Because he's a Jewish man, and you were teasing him to look into the New Testament, some of the things we teach.
Zach Dasher
Well, I don't want to. I don't want to give it away, but he threw a clue out. He threw something out there. I was like, that's interesting. So I went and looked up what he said. I was like, whoa, there's another piece of this that you might be interested in. So it was. But you definitely got to listen to the whole thing because I think it's towards the end of the podcast, but I, I think it's a. The discussion here, like, there's not a family that I know of that is immune from this discussion. Not, not one, not mine and not Jace's, not Al's. And there's some raw conversations in this episode. And what in this conversation is about to be had. I mean, I, I want to encourage you to not just listen to it, listen to the entire thing and also share it, because this is a movement that we, we want to enter. We want to enter into as, as people of God. We want.
Phil Robertson
We.
Zach Dasher
We need to be.
Phil Robertson
And I noticed, you know, both of you guys being a little, you know, Jace, the tail end of yours generate your kids. And Zach, kind of the middle back of his, have raised your kids through this generation. He's talking about, because he kind of zeroes into 2012. This, this rise of social media and sort of addiction to smartphones. But my constant fear. And I know this speaks. I know this speaks powerfully to our audience because I'm worried so much about my grandkids. We're now in 2025, so we're sort of 12 years removed from where he was doing this research. But I mean, I just, I pray for him every day and I'm like, what can I do to walk alongside my kids to help them? So when I was reading this book, Jason, what you didn't get that I got was a copy of the book.
Al Robertson
Yeah.
Phil Robertson
So I don't know if Zach thought you couldn't read or what actually worked though, because. Yeah, because, you know, he said that.
Al Robertson
He'S like, I was asking the questions. It was my orientation to this and.
Phil Robertson
Which will be all of our listeners that hadn't read his book.
Zach Dasher
Yeah.
Al Robertson
I had no idea who he was.
Phil Robertson
But I immediately started taking, highlighting and taking pictures of this book. I was in and out of airports when I started reading this book and sending it to my kids. And I was. Because I was like, we must implement this now because my grandkids are the age that he's talking about.
Al Robertson
Well, because I went, I just went through this with all my kids and one story I've never shared, but, you know, one of my sons, he was spending a lot of time on his phone. It was quiet, you know, which is, what are you doing? And so I would frequently get my kids phones since I'm paying for it, which they didn't get one till they were pretty far in their teenage years. And so I found this interesting text in that it wasn't a text thread, just hours of he's talking to this girl. But something didn't feel right. There were no, you know, no profanity. There was not one thing in there. That was like in a. Inappropriate other than the fact of. I was like, this is a, it's like a fantasy relate. Who is this person? Because it wasn't like somebody he knew. And which. It started on social media and, and went, you know, hey, I'll give you my number. And so what's, what's interesting is when I ran across this thread which took me hours to go through, I realized they were fixing to meet. She had lined up the meeting. So I was like, I'm fixed to check out who this person is. Well, it turned out much older woman, filled with mischief problems. And then it hit me as like, this woman's a predator. She, she's lured my son, who's whatever he was 16 years old and, and spent so much time just lured. Because it's kind of like one of those, those threads, you know, the more I read, everything was too perfect. Everything. She, she was saying. It was like she was manipulating the conversation, which kind of scared me. Yeah, I was like, there's no flaws here that the lack of anything inappropriate. It was just luring to a meeting.
Phil Robertson
Yeah.
Al Robertson
Turned out much older woman, obviously. What are you doing having hours and hours of texting with a 16 year old. God, where's this headed? And then, you know, when I found out who she was and legal problems and all this, I thought, yep, so we squelched that. But it scared me because I thought this is the new normal now where you have depraved people preying on kids in very clever ways and very clever. And meanwhile this guy's in La La Land. You know, I'm like having to give a month tutorial on you're in La La Land. This is not real. Yeah, it seems real, but it's not. There's a hook in this.
Zach Dasher
And if you think your children are not my kids, they're immune to that, well, you better think again. I mean, it scares me too. And we've, you know, we've had encounters as well with nieces and nephews and our own children and just, I mean it is a. I think you got to just remember like what's out there and, and, and even the more benign stuff too. We're going to talk, we talk about that in the coming interview. You know, just a little the things that you think are benign, but there are real world consequences for the development of your children and even ourselves, I would argue. So this is like a must listen to. I think it's one of the, my favorite podcasts that we've done, which is why we've done the. The first time ever. We've never recorded the introduction after the, after the fact. So we're actually.
Al Robertson
That was, that was a bold move because I always thought it was a bold move because I thought, well, you know, we get our, our manual. You know how these people say, hey, there's no parenting manual out there, or there's no manual for humanity. And I'm like, well, the Bible's a pretty good manual for the way humanity should live and in a parenting, you know, to give you parenting skills. But in this case, I just think it does draw attention that you're trying to find commonality when, especially when it comes to morality and our kids and how all that's going. You want people to band together. And it's fascinating to me that even people who don't line up with our faith or whatever, they are upset about this and have every right to be so. And I'm like, let's come together for the future of our kids and generations and see what we can do about this. It's an epidemic.
Phil Robertson
And that's what I love about what you're about to hear is because it was a scholarly work done by a college professor and a lot of research and data, and yet it's so practical and helpful. And that's what I took out of for me that I share with my kids. So we're going to take a break on the other side of that break. This is a super, super good and important podcast. We're excited for you to get to hear it. So we'll see you on the other side of the break. So, Jase, we talk a lot on the podcast about what really matter in life. Talk about faith, we talk about family, we talk about all the things that motivate us. One of the things we don't mention a lot, but it's important, is to get good sleep and to be comfortable in your castle. That's what I call it, right? I mean, yeah, you got to have a castle. You got to have a place you can retreat to and be comfortable there. One of our new sponsors is called Cozy Earth, and that's what they help you do. They have the softest, most breathable bedding and pajamas you'll ever own. They have bamboo sheets that I call the game changer. And you sleep like a rock because Cozy Earth keeps you cool when it's hot and warm when it's chilly. The best part, you can try Cozy Earth risk free for 100 nights. If you don't love them, you can send them back, but you're going to love them, trust me. They also back their bedding with a 10 year warranty. Jase, you guys have been doing Cozy Earth before. They were sponsored.
Al Robertson
Yeah. Didn't even know. Missy had an idea for Christmas. She bought everyone Cozy Earth pajamas. And that was a couple of years ago.
Phil Robertson
Big hit.
Al Robertson
Well, trust me, nobody wanted to send them back.
Phil Robertson
I love it. I got some. I wear them all the time. I hate to let Lisa wash them because I love to wear them. I don't want to miss them for a day. And we're also sleeping on the sheets and they're fantastic as well. So we want you to check it out. Don't put it all. Take care of yourself so you can take care of what matters most. Visit cozyearth.com unashamed or you can use our code unashamed for 40% off sheets, towels and more. And if you get a post purchase survey, let them know you heard about Cozy Earth right here on the Unashamed podcast. That's cozyearth.com unashamed or use our code unashamed for 40% off. Sleep better with Cozy Earth. Welcome back to Unashamed. We have our guest with us we are super excited about and we put Zach in charge of finding this fantastic guest and he has done it yet again. Dr. Jonathan Haidt. Dr. Height, welcome to the Unashamed podcast.
Jase Robertson
Thank you so much. Please call me John.
Phil Robertson
Okay, John. He is a professor at NYU School of Business. He's written some books. One is called the Righteous the Coddling of the American Mind. And the one I'm holding in my hand for those of you watching today instead of listening, says the anxious generation had the great rewiring of the childhood of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. And I have to tell you, John, when I got the book started on an airplane, I could not put it down. It's, and it's, it's really amazing because all of us, like, I'm 60, Jace is 55.
Al Robertson
You're in the range.
Phil Robertson
Yeah. And Zach is nearing 50, I think. And so, you know, they have children of this generation kind of on the back end. Mine are more grandchildren in terms of what I see you talking about in this book. But it's so apropos for everything we talk about in terms of social media and everything like that. So it's, it's very well done. I just wanted to first of all, just tell you thank you for writing it. It's amazing.
Jase Robertson
Well, thank you. Thank you, Al. You know, everyone who has Kids has, has seen this. Something's going on with the kids and the screens and that's what the book's about.
Al Robertson
Well, I al, you mentioned that Zach was in charge of this, so I didn't get the email that Dr. Height would be on. So I'm like, this is my orientation to your work. And so before I, you know, ask how this got started, I'm just fascinated by this picture because on the COVID yeah, there's this little girl and there's all these little balls and. But she's on her cell phone.
Phil Robertson
It's little emojis, I think is what is meant to be.
Al Robertson
But this, this reminds me of the experience I had with each of my kids who are now all grown and I will have to admit, have turned out quite well and respected humans. But the number one issue in their teenage years was that cell phone. And so I was just wondering how this got started.
Jase Robertson
Sure. And actually it works pretty well if you haven't read the book, because, you know, this gives me a chance to just sort of lay it out the big picture for all the listeners who haven't read the book. So what the book is about is that something changed around 2012. I'm a college professor and we saw this with the students coming in to campus around 2014, 2015, they were just much more depressed and anxious. And a lot of surveys found the same thing. It wasn't just college students. It was all kids who were born 1996 and later we now know them as Gen Z. They're not millennials. It's a different generation. They have much higher rates of anxiety and depression and self harm and even suicide. So what happened and why was there no sign of trouble before 2012? All the way up through, from the 90s through 2010, there's no sign of a mental health problem. And so what my book is about is about how this period, 2010 to 2015, was the great rewiring of childhood. If you were born in 1995, you're the last of the millennials. You went through puberty with a flip phone. You didn't have a smartphone when you were in middle school, you had a flip phone. And a FL phone is good for talking to your friends and texting them. You're not talking to strangers, you're not looking at your, you're not on your phone 10 hours a day. But if you were born in the year 2000, you're Gen Z and you turn 15 in 2015 and you got a smartphone. If you're a girl you probably had Instagram. You're spending all this time posting pictures of yourself. People are commenting on it. It makes you anxious and a whole bunch of ways. Kids who went through puberty on a smartphone were kind of blocked. They, they didn't get to do the things that kids normally do. And that is the story that I'm telling in the book about why we see this very sudden increase in depression and anxiety and self harm and suicide right around 2012.
Phil Robertson
Well, and I thought so you, you, you started and end the book with an analogy that I love. We know we love analogies on this podcast. So you talked about what it would look like to send your kids to Mars. That's how you open the book. And then you talk about the end. How do we bring them back to Earth? So talk about that in terms of how foreign the idea is that we would turn over our children to an entity beyond our ability to impact and influence.
Jase Robertson
That's right. So I love metaphors. And you know, in my teaching and my writing, I always try to try to give people a kind of a feeling for the phenomena with a good metaphor. So the metaphor that I chose for this after working on this for years was what if your 9 year old daughter comes to you and says, mommy, Daddy, I've signed up for a trip to Mars. I'm going to actually move there and I'm going to finish growing up there and I'm going to be part of the first colony of humans to live on Mars. It's very exciting. What would you say? I mean, of course you like, what the hell is going on here? But you know, even if like, you know, I always wanted to be an astronaut when I was, when I was a kid. So even imagine that, you know, I was willing to say, well, okay, let me hear you out. It turns out that the people running this space colony, they don't give a damn about kids. They didn't, they have no idea if the kids are going to be okay. They didn't even ask the question. They didn't do any testing. They just want to get as many kids as they can, bring them to Mars, let them grow up there, and then maybe they'll send them back when they're adults, maybe not. So this is a horrible situation. We'd never let that happen. But that's kind of what happened when we gave our kids smartphones and Instagram and all these other apps and then those companies now own our children's lives. Not for everybody, but half of all teenagers say they're online almost Constantly. About half of them are basically on social media most of the time. So half of our kids in a sense have gone off to this different way of growing up. Now you might have said back then, well, maybe it's okay, maybe, you know, the technology would be good for them. Maybe they'll be super social. And I thought that back in 2010, like, maybe this is going to like stimulate brain development. But now it looks like it had a devastating effect. Not just in the US the reason I'm so passionate about this is that it's not just us, it's it. The exact same thing happened in Canada, the uk, Australia, Scandinavia. We have good data from a lot of countries. Something happened to kids around 2012 in so many different countries. So that's why it, that's what I was trying to convey. The sense of kids being taken away by a foreign, you know, company trying to make money off our kids. And they're, they're coming there, many of them are harmed or damaged or blocked.
Phil Robertson
Well, one thing I love about your work, it's a scholarly work because it's full of data and charts and graphs that show just what John just talked about. Our dad used to be on our podcast, John and he, you know, he never, he's like, you know, he's almost 80 years old and so he never understood cell phones, he never understood computers. He's famously, you know, says I never owned one. And so for years, anecdotally he has said what you say with data and evidence that it just seemed to him like it was a bad idea to send your kids to Mars in this situation. As you lay it out. I wanted to ask you, you make a distinction difference between how it affects boys and girls. Obviously our audience is a lot of young people, a lot of young men especially, but a lot of young people, a lot of people just starting families. So what, what did you notice about the difference between the breakdown and how this works between boys and girls in terms of effect?
Jase Robertson
Yeah. So let me, let me address this both to the young men and the young women who are listening, that is those who are in their 20s. You know, Gen Z is turning 30 this year. So if you're in your 20s, you're Gen Z. And I also especially want to address everybody who has a son or a daughter. And so the girl story and the boy story are different. I didn't know this when I started writing the book. I thought the story was going to be. Social media is really bad for kids mental health. And it turns out that the connections between Social media and depression and anxiety for girls is really strong. Girls who spend a lot of time on social media are two or three times more likely to be depressed or anxious. For boys, they're a little more likely, but not that much. So it looked like social media is really particularly bad for girls. How does it. Why is it so bad for girls? If you want to trap a girl, if you're a company, you want to extract all the attention from a girl and sell her advertisements. How do you trap girls? You offer them bait, as you guys would know. How do you attract an animal? Well, a trap, you have to put bait that the animal finds attractive. But then the trick is when the animal takes the bait now, something changes and they can't get out. That's what a trap is.
Phil Robertson
Zach, you've done quite a bit of work, apologetics, in terms of looking at things that kind of point to our belief system. And one of those is the idea of martyrdom, which we talk a lot about sort of our founding fathers in the church and the fact they were martyred and persecuted. But it's not just an ancient thing, correct?
Jase Robertson
Yeah.
Zach Dasher
I mean, for me, it's more than an apologetic. I think that we need to understand these stories now that are happening now. This is a real. This is the history of the church that continues into the.
Phil Robertson
And what you're describing is a fantastic ministry called the Voice of the Martyrs. And Todd Nettleton, who is the Voice of the Martyrs radio host, has written a new book and it's called when faith is forbidden. 40 days on the front lines with persecuted Christians. And these are stories that Todd has written in 20 years of travel in these restricted nations. And he has met these courageous Christians and shows exactly how they continue to be martyred for their faith. They go to prison. There's amazing stories. There's one in there about an Iranian man, two different chapters dedicated to him and what he went through for the cause of the kingdom. And it's very, very powerful, very encouraging. And so as you go in each step along his journey, you sort of reflect then on your own walk, which I find very powerful. A copy of the book is free, which you can't beat that When Faith is forbidden. So here's what you do. To request your copy of When Faith Is Forbidden, you call 844-463-4059. That's 844-463459 or visit vom.orgunashamed. that's vom.orgunashamed.
Jase Robertson
Girls. What you put in the trap is social information. Who said what about whom, who's dating whom, who's mad at whom. And girls, girls care more about social relationships. They're more sensitive to it. So the girls will go rushing onto Instagram. They're all talking about each other, they're all talking to each other. Now they're trapped because any girl who says, wait, this is crazy, this is terrible, I want to be out playing that girl's now alone because everybody's on Instagram. So the girls get trapped by social media, especially Instagram, but there's a few others. And then now they're not spending time with their friends as much. What girls need is a couple of close friends. If they have a few close friends to talk with, to gossip with, to comfort each other, they're probably going to turn out fine. But what social media does is says, how about you spend five hours a day on this platform interacting with hundreds of people so you don't have any time for your real friends. And you're not going to see them much, you're not going to laugh with them much, you're just going to share emojis. So that's what it's doing to girls. Oh, plus the incredible amount of sexual harassment of girls and plus the social comparison and the constant comments on their face, their hair, their, their breasts, everything. It's, it's a terrible thing to do to an 11, 12, 13 year old girl to put her on social media. So that's the girl story. And at first I thought that's what most of the book would be about. And I thought, well, the boys aren't doing as badly and they're not as depressed and anxious. So if you look at the kids when they're 14, the girls look like they're doing worse than they are at 14. The boys are playing a lot of video games, which are great fun and they're watching a lot of porn. But what is the effect on the boys if they spend their childhood playing video games and watching porn? They're not doing anything else. So here's the most shocking stat in the book. I think when you look at the rates of hospital admissions for broken bones, how many kids in America break a bone and go to the hospital? Who do you think used to break bones the most? Young people, Old people, boys, girls. Like, you know, who are the people who are ending up in hospitals? Broken bones? Teenage boys. Right? Yeah, that's what it used to be. Teenage boys used to have by far the highest rates of broken bones until about 2010, 2012. Then what happens once the teenage boys are all spending their time now on video games and also on their smartphones and they are on social media too. But once everything is on the screen, teenage boys rates drop so low that they are now less likely to break a bone than their fathers or grandfathers. Because teenage boys aren't doing anything that's risky. And if boys aren't doing anything risky, if they're playing it safe, they're not going to turn into men. Or at least it's going to be harder. I should say boys need to take more risks. They need to learn how to manage risk. They need to have conflicts in the real world and learn to manage them. They need to do sports and the video games are great fun, but they don't really help the boys develop. They don't turn, they don't develop skills. So what we're finding is that if you check in on kids when they're in their late 20s, the girls, they finish their education, they're more likely to have gone to college, they're more likely to have a job. Who's more likely to be living with their parents at the age of 30, it's the boys. So the boys story is not about social media so much. It's about missing out on all the things that are going to turn boys into men and instead spending thousands and thousands of hours on video games, porn and YouTube videos. Short videos on TikTok.
Zach Dasher
Yeah, that's interesting. You also talk in the book, there's kind of a another side of that. You talk about with the overprotection of kids. Talk about a little bit how that. Because that plays into it as well. I actually believe there's a great crisis of masculinity in the country right now and the world for the, a lot of the reasons you mentioned. But there's also coupled with that, is that over coddling of the American mind, particularly with boys. Talk about a little about the safety ism and.
Jase Robertson
Yeah. Oh, thank you, Zach. Yeah. Because you know, the conversations tend to focus on the phones. That's what everyone's interested in. What the hell's happening to our kids with all these screens. But thank you for pointing that out that the book isn't really about screens. It's actually about childhood. And there's two pieces to it. I can summarize the whole book with this sentence. We have overprotected our children in the real world and we have under protected them online. So when, you know, when us older folk, you know, I'm 61, so you.
Zach Dasher
Got to repeat that, because I think that is a. A key line.
Jase Robertson
Okay. We have overprotected our children in the real world, where it's actually much safer than it used to be and where they need to take risks. And we have under protected them online, which is actually a kind of a dangerous place where a lot of men are trying to get to your kids and all kinds of bad things happen. So we have to work on both of those. And so, you know, when me and. And Al and Jace were growing up in the 70s, there was a huge crime wave. I don't know what it was like for you guys in Louisiana, but I grew up in the suburbs of New York and the whole area. You know, there was a lot of crazy stuff and a lot of drunk drivers. Some of those drunk drivers were us. I mean, we just took a lot of risks and life was kind of dangerous. But all kids went out to play, right? Am I right? At age 7, 8, 9, we were all out playing.
Phil Robertson
You'd leave in the morning and basically not come back until dark in the summertime.
Al Robertson
Every day.
Phil Robertson
Every day.
Jase Robertson
Yeah, that's right. And if you tried to come back, your mom might say, get out of here. Don't watch television. Get out of here. Don't come back until dark. Don't come back until dinner time.
Al Robertson
I actually don't remember my parents even being around because we were all outside. Yeah, they were around somewhere. We were out playing.
Jase Robertson
But that's. But that's kind of like what hunter gatherer childhood is like. If you look at, you know, ancient societies, the adults aren't, like, watching the kids. Like, the kids are socializing among themselves and they're teaching each other and they're inventing games. And one of the most valuable things groups of kids can do is get into an argument about, well, what should we do? Or, okay, we're playing this game. But you broke the rules. No, I didn't. Like, all that stuff is pure gold for social development. This is how kids learn to be citizens in a democracy where we're going to disagree and the majority is probably going to win. But you don't want to crush the minority because you want the game to keep going. You want to keep the group together. So these are such crucial skills to learn. But we only learn those skills when we're not supervised by grownups. Because if you watch kids today on the playground, there's always. It's so sad. I don't know if it's what it's like there, but in New York City, you go To a playground. Here we got great playgrounds. What are you going to see? You're going to see one or two parents standing near the equipment, talking to their child, who's on the equipment. You don't see the kids playing with each other. It's all. Each individual child is being watched carefully so that they don't fall or something like that. We're so overprotective and we're blocking those. Just the unsupervised play. So what I'm arguing is that in fact, what I show with a lot of evidence in the book is that kids used to play outside. They used to have be unsupervised a lot until the 1990s. That's the decade when we freak out in America and we say, if I ever let my kid out, he's going to be abducted. A lot of parents now start saying, I can't even let my kid go two aisles over in a grocery store because I heard that a kid was abducted from a gross. Which never happened. Okay, there was actually one case. There was one case in 1980 which sort of was like that one case. But people freak out in the 90s and we don't trust our neighbors anymore. We've lost a lot of trust in our neighbors. And what that means that we have to supervise our kids all the time. And that falls on the mothers. Mostly mothers start spending a lot more time parenting, being with their kids. It's not good for the kids. It's not good for the mothers. The kids need to be out with each other. So that's the first piece of it that starts in the 90s. And then by the time we get to 2010, outdoor play is really reduced. Kids aren't doing a lot outdoor. They're spending a lot of time on the Internet, on computers. And then when they get social media and smartphones, 2010 to 2015, that's when their mental health collapses. So that's the story that I tell in the book.
Zach Dasher
There's two pieces to it which can be tracked. I mean, I read a book back in 2000, I want to say 17 iGen.
Jase Robertson
Yes.
Zach Dasher
And she had put the. The doctor had put the stat. It was like a line graph of the adoption of the iPhone and then the increase in depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety disorders. And it was almost a mirror image as. As the iPhone was adopted by children and young people, that it was a mirror image of the increase in mental illness, which is just fascinating to think about how well that correlates on a graph.
Jase Robertson
That's right. That's exactly right. So Gene Twenge is a professor in California at the University of San San Diego. I'm sorry, San Diego State University. And she's a friend of mine. And when I was writing the Coddling of the American Mind, I was talking about overprotection but I noticed Greg Lukianoff, my co author, we noticed that social media might have something to do with this. We didn't know, we didn't know it was 2017. And then Jean's book comes out Igen and she's got graph after graph showing just what, just what Zach just said that the, all the mental health problems, they all sort of track the degree to which kids are kids are spending time on smartphones and social media. Now what Gene showed is what's called correlation. That is this happened and this happened at the same time and in the sciences and in medicine that's the starting point for an investigation like okay, these two things happen together. Did one cause the other? We don't know, we can't be sure. Lots of other things happened in the early 2010s. Maybe it's something else. And so what Gene and I have both been doing since then is collecting the evidence that it was the phone based childhood growing up on a phone is what caused the mental health and other problems. And we think we've got a lot of different kinds of evidence. I'll tell you one of the most shocking kinds of evidence is the words of the companies themselves. There's a lot that's come out because so many parents have lost their kids to suicide, cyberbullying drug overdoses from fentanyl laced drugs that they got on social media. So all these parents are suing Meta and Snapchat and TikTok and a lot of documents have come out from those lawsuits. And so my group and our substack, our blog@afterbabble.com we've collected just tick tock in its own words and it is absolutely shocking what they said in their internal emails and their internal reports. They know that their product is addictive. It was designed to be addictive. They know that it's shattering kids attention. It was designed to grab every little bit of consciousness it could. So from all three of those companies we have all kinds of quotes. They know they're doing this. Here's another piece of evidence. What do you think the founders of these companies do with their own kids? Do you suppose they give them smartphones and TikTok? Hell no. They keep their kids off. It's well known in Silicon Valley. A lot of the executives at these tech companies, they send their kids to a school called the Waldorf School because it has no technology. These people know that this stuff is bad for kids so they don't give it to their kids but they want to give it to your kids because that's how they make their money. So there's also a lot of scientific evidence and their experiments, but everything's lining up to say it wasn't just a coincidence. Growing up on a, on a smartphone. Social media blocks child development. Blocks social development. You get kids who are more anxious, fragile and, and full of problems.
Phil Robertson
You know the interesting thing Jace, about parenting is you know, you never really plan on how much you're going to be concerned about not only your kids well being but how they turn out their future. The grandkids you know they're going to bring into your life. It's, it's huge. It's important.
Al Robertson
It's organized chaos.
Phil Robertson
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Zach Dasher
That's an interesting name to your blog site too because we talk a lot on this podcast about the kingdom of God coming and, and that it's a acts chapter two. There's a, a story what we Call the. We think it's the rector. Like, it's. It's the redemption of Babel, you know, Or Babel, I don't know.
Jase Robertson
Acts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Zach Dasher
Acts Chapter two, the day of Pentecost. And so in. In the Christian world, this is. This is like when the Holy Spirit shows up or act or the Tower of Babel in Genesis 7 was that there was the creation of nations. And then God, Genesis 12 pulled out his portion Israel. But what happened is their language was confused. So you have this disorientation, a scattering of community. They were spread out to the ends of the earth, so to speak. And then in Acts chapter 2, in Christ and his eschatological kingdom is. He's bringing all of that back together. And so we're in Babel. The language was confused. In Acts 2, they could. Each nation could hear each other in their own native tongue. They could understand it.
Jase Robertson
Oh, wow.
Zach Dasher
So it's this beautiful picture of. Of community, what we would call embodied communities.
Jase Robertson
Oh, you call it embodied. That's great. Okay, I'm writing that down.
Zach Dasher
Yeah, it's a. Yeah, I think it's like, what, What. Because what is the hope? You know, I think about the what. What you've talked about a lot is in the book. And, and it certainly. I think we were all feeling it before even the data had come in. We were all feeling this disembodiment. We were all feeling the loss and trust in community. There was a time when I. When I had to buy milk. Not me personally, my grandparents, when they bought milk, they bought it from this guy called the milkman.
Jase Robertson
Yeah, I remember that when I was.
Zach Dasher
A kid, that was like a thing.
Phil Robertson
Right.
Zach Dasher
So, like, communities were much more connected, and we've lost that in the virtual world. I actually think that the hope for renewal of Western civilization is going to be coming back to local communities. And we love local parish model churches and, like, doing life together again. I think it seems like one author, Martin Gury, he said, we're drowning in data, but we're thirsting for meaning.
Jase Robertson
Absolutely. Oh, my goodness. I love Martin Guri. And wait, let's go into this. This is fascinating because I didn't know about Ash Acts too, but I. But I was very moved by the Genesis story in. I mean, sorry, the Babel story in Genesis. And so, you know, because my own work before I was. I set out to write a book on what social media is doing to democracy. Because our country has been weird since sometime in the 2010s. It's not like it used to be something weird is going on with our politics, the rising polarization. Everybody believes something different. And so I was looking around for metaphor. I love metaphors. And I was trying to, I was, you know, starting this book. The title of the book is okay, so I was starting the book and I was looking for metaphor and I reread the Babel story and when I got to that line, God says, let us go down and confound their language so that they may not understand one another.
Phil Robertson
Boom.
Jase Robertson
That's it. That's it. Because I always thought, you know, so I'm, you know, I'm, I'm Jewish, I grew up not very religious. I had a, you know, slight acquaintance with the Bible story story. I always thought God knocked over the tower. But no, in the story, in the, in the book, he just confuses their language that they can't understand one. And that's the way you shatter a community. And so, so that's why I picked the title for the blog After Babel. And the title of the book I was going to write is Life After Babel Adapting to a World We May Never Again Share. And this is what Martin Gorey was talking to you about, because I drew on him. He talks about how, you know, the Mass Media Age 50 years ago, the newspapers and television, we might all see the same TV show, we might all have the same understanding, we'll have our disagreements, but we have a body of shared facts. Not anymore. Now that we're all on social media, everything is fragmented, so and so. Right. The problem is the loss of any sense of community. So I'm so excited to hear about. I'll go, I'll go check out Acts two because I think you're right. The way we fix this, at least the way we bring some little bubbles of sanity to our lives is going to be much more local. And local parish churches is a great idea.
Phil Robertson
Well, and I love the way you give the simple sort of two step process because I want to spend our last few minutes together talking about some solutions for people who are really struggling out there with what do I do with all this? Because you talk about one, we can say with just don't use the devices, don't use the social media. But if you don't have some outlet, then as you then talk about this idea of this safety ism, if they can't go out and experience and have these things and have local community and fix, then they don't have a place to go and flourish. And so I like the idea of both sides.
Al Robertson
Well, I was going to bring that up too from solution wise because most of the things is just now raising three teenagers and sending them out there because I was like, what can I do about that? I knew there was a problem because I learned that just being a parent, I think the biggest problem is it's so easy to give your kid a screen so you don't have to do anything. But I noticed something. Even when my kids were real small, when it's real quiet, there's trouble when you don't hear them laughing, when it's just silence. When they got to be teenagers, I noticed that revolved around three teenagers going into their own separate rooms and getting in, you know, into the cell phone and all these fantasy worlds. And it's so weird that all three of them had different things that different problems that came out of that. But I've shared this story before, but I just wanted to share it with you and get your take as far as solutions, you know, What I wound up doing is I took one of my kids phones. Of course. I asked them, is there anything in here that, that Jesus wouldn't approve of? I thought that was a good question. And she was like, oh no, it's all great. But once I did some digging, I found it and it was a social media site, kind of hidden.
Jase Robertson
Which one was it?
Al Robertson
Do you remember the name Snapchat?
Jase Robertson
Oh yes. Snapchat brings so much degrading stuff to kids.
Al Robertson
Yeah. And once I got involved, I just followed all the trails and she had like seven other friends that were a group, but I saw places of bullying and then I went into each individual friend of hers and then a couple of theirs, they were, you know, having these encounters with men much older and like, show me yours, show me my. I'm looking at all this stuff. And so for two days I became my child on there. I just played the game. Of course it took them two days to figure out that this is not who they thought it was. And that's when I broke the news that I'm the dad and I know y'all quite well now. And so I just called a meeting with their parents. I was like, my daughter will be going in a different direction. And if you want to be a part of that direction, I need to have a face to face conversation with you and your mom, dad, or guardian. What? I was surprised.
Jase Robertson
Wait, how did it go? Did they respond? Did you actually meet with the parents?
Al Robertson
Six of the seven showed up with their mom.
Jase Robertson
Oh, that's fantastic.
Al Robertson
It was. And look. And this happened Years ago. But I mean, some of these people are still my friends. A couple of them actually came to the Lord and there were three or four that didn't go well. And it wasn't because of the kid, because it was the, oh, how dare you invade my kids privacy. But we had all these conversations which I think was good for my daughter to see. And so then I just implemented a rule. We're going to make our house a place for your friends. And so they had to turn in their cell phones when they walked through the door, which is still a practice that they do today, even though I've lifted that practice because now they're all in their 20s. But it's so weird how some of their friends will come in and they'll go turn their cell phone in at the little beverage center. But we ate good food, we told good stories, we played games, we did things together.
Phil Robertson
Community.
Al Robertson
That was a community. And that's just what our house became. To fight this in our world. There are so many arguments about pro choice and pro life, but I think the key thing that's missed is one. Yes, we agree as believers in God that babies are born in the image of God, but they're also born as humans to image God. And you do that through life because God is life.
Phil Robertson
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Jase Robertson
So, Jace, that is a beautiful story because you basically figured out intuitively the conclusions I came to in the book after all this research. The problem is that each of us as parents, acting alone, if we say, no, you can't have Snapchat. And I said that to my daughter. She's 15. She says, dad, but everybody in my school has it. Everybody else has it except for me. So if you're acting alone, your kid's isolated. Yeah, but the solution is that we act together. And so here are the four norms. This is the last third of the book. Even though this problem is gigantic, we can actually solve it if we do these four things together. Most of us, we don't need everybody. But if most people do this, we solve the problem. The first, no smartphone before high school or age 14. You can give your kid a flip phone if you want to communicate with them, but nothing with a browser. Browser or, or social media platforms. No smartphone before 14. Let them get through early puberty first. The second is no social media until 16. Social media is designed to introduce your children to strangers. They will be talking to strangers. That's what it's there for. It's insane. Children shouldn't be talking to strangers. Okay, so, so it's just, you know, really, it should be 18. But I'm just trying to argue. Can we just agree on a floor of 16? Just nobody should be on it until 16, and then nobody feels the pressure to be on it. The third is phone free schools. If you can text your kids during the school day, I guarantee you they're checking their texts, they're sending texts, everybody's texting everybody. They're not listening to the teacher. They're not even talking to each other. School hallways and schools are very quiet these days because all the kids are on their phone all the time. But if you have a phone free school, you turn in the phone in the morning, they get it back in the afternoon, amazing things happen. What, what the schools always say is they hear laughter in the hallways again. The kids are paying attention to the teachers. They're flirting, talking, joking with each other. So you got to have phone free schools. And the fourth norm, and this is the hardest, this is the one that you got, the fourth norm is far more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. Because if we're going to take them off of screens, if they're not, I mean, not all screens, they can watch some television, but if we're going to. But if they're not going to be growing up on screens. We have to give them back a fun child. My book isn't about screens, it's about childhood. You got to give back a fun childhood. And even though the phone will suck them away, because it seems so interesting when you actually put kids together without phones, they have a lot of fun and they laugh and they invent games. But if you do all four and if you have a community, it's hard to do it by yourself. But if you get a community and a church, parish or a school, those are the two best units where you really have people, you have adults who care about kids, you have kids who want to play, play with each other. And so if you do that in a community, boom, you roll it back. And within a few weeks, within a certain month or two, the kids are going to be happier having fun. They'll adjust to not being on their phones and everyone's better off.
Al Robertson
I think we should, I think we should put, put that into law.
Zach Dasher
In Europe. They, I mean, I think I just read recently, didn't they, in England they passed a law with a minimum age mandate for.
Jase Robertson
In Australia. Yes. Australia is the first country in the world to do it. The tech companies say that they can' it, but of course they can do it. They know everything about us. They know how old we are. So they can figure it out. And Australia is the first country with the guts to say, you know what, you've been, you've been trashing our children for so long. We're going to raise the age to 16 and you guys have to enforce it. You figure it out. Doesn't have to be perfect, but you got to make an effort. Right now they're making no effort.
Zach Dasher
Yeah. So it'd be interesting to see if this ends up being like, you know, smoking. Like we'll look back in 50 years and think like this would be the equivalent of smoking in our grandparents generation.
Jase Robertson
That's going to be in five or 10 years, I guarantee. Well, I believe that within five or 10 years we're going to look back on this and think what the hell were we doing? Thank God we're not doing that anymore. I just read 40% of 2 year olds in the United States have their own iPad. 40%. That means they're growing up 40%. Because we've all discovered, we all discovered what? You know what, what you said, Chase, you just, you give them, you give them a device and they're quiet. It's great. It seems to work great. They're happy you're happy, but, you know, you're kind of blocking their brain development.
Phil Robertson
And it's a little bit of a double whammy here, because Jace mentioned this, and he's mentioned it before, many times on the podcast is a lot of times parents themselves become so engrossed in social media that they're distracted by that. And then you don't realize what your kid is doing. You noticed it in airports. You know, I mean, it was.
Al Robertson
It became a problem like Little League baseball, where you realize at some point, after a couple of years of this, the problem is not the kids.
Zach Dasher
Yeah.
Al Robertson
Okay. You know, because even the parents, I'm like, look, I've revealed this information, and they're like, well, that. You know, that. That's just. I'll run my house like I want to.
Phil Robertson
Well, what I love about what you're doing, John, is you're. You're saying as parents, we can start something that then goes into pressure onto schools to do the right thing, and that's get phones out. I'm hearing more and more politicians say this now out loud. Our. Our schools need to be phone free, which is good to hear, but that's because that's coming pressure from us. You know, it's supposed to be we the people.
Jase Robertson
Well, and the te. The teachers have hated the phones. The teachers have desperately wanted to get rid of the phones, but there are always some parents who said, no, I need to call my child. And whenever.
Al Robertson
Anything. Which goes into your overprotection point.
Jase Robertson
Yep, exactly.
Zach Dasher
But I want to say. I want to say that I personally learned the value of democracy as a child in child play. I had a particular cousin that was a brutal dictator. His name is Jace Robertson. So I realized that, like this. Whatever this political setup is and our child play, I don't want that. I want to have a voice.
Al Robertson
That was a nice way for Zach, saying that I trained him to be the man he is today, and we're strong men.
Phil Robertson
That's exactly.
Al Robertson
You're welcome, Zach.
Phil Robertson
We left our thin skins at the door. All right. We're out of time, John. Dr. Jonathan Height, thank you so much for coming on. The book is called the Anxious Generation. How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. We see this. We know it. I love what Zach said. We feel it as a people, and we know something's not right. And you've laid out some very practical things, but also a very scholarly approach to see that this is all backed up, your worldwide view of it, and it's Very, very powerful. And so immediately I read it, I started sending quotes to my kids. My kids are in their late 30s and now they are having teenagers. And I'm like, let's start implementing this today. Start telling your friends. So I think it's a movement that Unashamed Nation can be a part of. I know you guys are struggling with this because we get your emails all the time. So this is something we can get behind. Thank you for writing the book and for coming over to tell us about it.
Jase Robertson
Well, thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. I hope your listeners will go to anxiousgeneration.com we have a lot of resources for parents, for teachers, for legislators. This is a movement. And when you get millions and millions of parents, and especially the moms, I mean the mothers around the world are just up in arms about this, this, you get a movement of parents. I don't think we can be stopped.
Phil Robertson
I agree.
Zach Dasher
Encouraging.
Phil Robertson
Thank you, John. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by leaving a rating and review on Apple podcast and don't miss an episode by subscribing on YouTube. And be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode.
Podcast Summary: Unashamed with the Robertson Family – Ep 1062 | How Parents Can FIGHT Big Tech’s Damage to Our Kids with the Robertsons & Dr. Jonathan Haidt
Release Date: March 24, 2025
In Episode 1062 of Unashamed with the Robertson Family, host Tread Lively welcomes Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a renowned professor from NYU School of Business and author of "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness." The episode delves deep into the pervasive impact of big tech on today's youth, exploring the mental health crisis linked to excessive smartphone and social media usage.
Dr. Haidt presents groundbreaking research illustrating a sharp increase in anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues among Generation Z—kids born from 1996 onwards. He attributes this surge to the significant shift in childhood experiences starting around 2012, coinciding with the widespread adoption of smartphones and social media platforms.
“[03:22] Dr. Haidt: If you were born in 1995, you're the last of the millennials. You went through puberty with a flip phone... But if you were born in 2000, you're Gen Z and you turned 15 in 2015, when smartphones revolutionized your childhood.”
This period marked a fundamental transformation in how children interact, learn, and develop, moving from real-world socialization to screen-based interactions.
A critical aspect of Haidt's findings is the differential impact on boys and girls:
Girls: Social media platforms like Instagram exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and anxiety due to constant social comparisons and cyberbullying. Girls engaged heavily in social media are two to three times more likely to experience depression and anxiety.
“[22:20] Jase Robertson: Girls who spend a lot of time on social media are two or three times more likely to be depressed or anxious.”
Boys: The shift towards digital entertainment and away from physical activities has led to reduced opportunities for risk-taking and real-world problem-solving. This lack of physical engagement contributes to delayed maturation and fewer opportunities to develop essential life skills.
“[22:20] Jase Robertson: Teenage boys aren't doing anything that's risky. They need to take more risks to learn how to manage them.”
Dr. Haidt employs compelling metaphors to illustrate the disconnection caused by technology:
Sending Kids to Mars: Represents how children are being detached from real-world interactions and traditional developmental experiences.
“[18:19] Dr. Haidt: Imagine your child signs up for a trip to Mars. They’re isolated from the essential social interactions needed for healthy development. That’s what social media is doing.”
Babel vs. Acts Chapter 2: Comparing the Tower of Babel’s language confusion to modern-day fragmented communities due to social media, contrasted with the biblical Acts' vision of unified communication and community.
“[39:25] Jase Robertson: The Babel story shows how language confusion shatters community, much like how social media fragments our interactions today.”
Dr. Haidt outlines a four-pronged approach to combat the detrimental effects of big tech on children’s mental health:
No Smartphones Before Age 14:
“[52:24] Jase Robertson: No smartphone before high school or age 14.”
No Social Media Until Age 16:
“[52:24] Jase Robertson: Social media is designed to introduce your children to strangers... A floor of 16 should be the agreed minimum.”
Phone-Free Schools:
“[52:24] Jase Robertson: Phone-free schools lead to laughter in hallways and improved focus in classrooms.”
Enhanced Real-World Play and Responsibility:
“[52:24] Jase Robertson: Kids need to play together without screens to develop essential social and cognitive skills.”
The Robertson family shares personal anecdotes to illustrate the practical application of Dr. Haidt’s recommendations:
Al Robertson’s Experience:
Al recounts removing his daughter's phone to discover her involvement with predatory adults on platforms like Snapchat. By engaging directly and implementing house rules—such as phone-free zones—he was able to foster a healthier environment for his children.
“[45:22] Al Robertson: When I removed my daughter's phone, I uncovered her interactions with older predators. Implementing phone-free rules transformed our home into a community focused on real interactions.”
Phil Robertson’s Initiative:
Inspired by Haidt’s research, Phil began sharing insightful quotes with his adult children, encouraging a unified front in addressing the issue among peers and within their community.
“[37:13] Phil Robertson: I started sending quotes from the book to my kids and encouraging them to implement the strategies immediately.”
Emphasizing the necessity of collective action, Dr. Haidt and the Robertsons advocate for community-based solutions and legislative measures:
Local Communities and Churches:
Building supportive, engaged communities through local parish model churches and schools to provide safe, interactive environments for children.
“[51:07] Jase Robertson: If you implement the four norms within a community, children quickly adjust and flourish without excessive screen time.”
Legislation and Policy Changes:
Advocating for laws that set minimum ages for smartphone and social media usage, similar to Australia’s recent legislation, to protect children on a broader scale.
“[52:29] Zach Dasher: Australia is leading the way by enforcing minimum age regulations for social media. We need similar actions globally.”
The episode culminates with a strong call to action, urging parents, educators, and community leaders to adopt the proposed norms collectively. By fostering phone-free environments, encouraging real-world interactions, and supporting legislative efforts, society can mitigate the adverse effects of big tech on the younger generation.
“[56:46] Jase Robertson: The solution is collective action. Implement these four norms within your community, and together, we can ensure healthier, happier children.”
Dr. Haidt’s insights, combined with the Robertson family's personal experiences, provide a comprehensive roadmap for parents seeking to protect their children from the pervasive influence of big tech, ultimately aiming to restore healthy childhood development and robust mental well-being.
Dr. Jonathan Haidt:
Jase Robertson:
Phil Robertson:
For more insights and resources on combating the negative impacts of technology on children, listeners are encouraged to visit anxiousgeneration.com and explore Dr. Haidt’s comprehensive materials designed to support parents, educators, and legislators in fostering healthier environments for the next generation.
This summary captures the essence of Episode 1062, highlighting the critical discussions on the mental health crisis among youth due to technological influences and offering actionable solutions to counteract these challenges.