Jonathan Haidt (3:14)

Thanks very much, Jane. Great to be here.

Jane Coaston (3:16)

There were two major cases this week where juries found Meta liable for harm to children who use their platforms. To start off, what was the question at the center of the lawsuit in California?

Jonathan Haidt (3:27)

So the background that's crucial to understand here is that any normal consumer product, a company that makes money off of kids, if their product has defective design and it hurts kids, they can be sued for damage. That's just common sense. That's tort law. That's everything. But in the US because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency act, which gives platforms protection from being sued for, for what someone else posted, that has been interpreted so broadly as to give them blanket immunity so that they can't be sued for whatever a kid sees on the platform, for whatever happens to the kid. And that's why here we are, 20 years into the social media era, and these companies have never, ever faced a jury. They've never been held responsible. They've never had to pay damages for what they've done to, I believe, literally millions of kids. And so that's the background. So what happened was a group of lawyers worked very hard to come up with a very specific claim that they were looking for young people who weren't harmed because somebody posted something that upset them or told them to kill themselves. They were harmed because the platform was designed such that they were addicted. And that was what the case turned on. Was it really addiction or was it just, yeah, you know, she used it a lot, like, you know, I eat too much chocolate or whatever. And the jury had to decide was, was Caylee addicted? Kayleigh, is the, this, the one plaintiff in this one particular case, was she addicted? They had to decide, did they know that it was addictive? Did they fail to protect or take protective actions? So it was a series of questions like that. And the jury decided that, yes, on all these questions, Meta and Google were both, you can't say guilty, but the jury found for the plaintiff that the platform's predictive. They knew it. There's all kinds of internal memos showing it. And therefore, they are partly responsible for the various mental disorders that she developed due to her addiction.

Jane Coaston (5:33)

Now, we're gonna get to the section 230 conversation in a minute, because I am one of Section 230's greatest offenders. I love Section 230, greatest law ever written, but we're gonna get to that. All right, but you've long been campaigning against the use of social media by young people, and you've written about how other countries like Australia are taking action on that front. What do you think these rulings against Meta, against YouTube, Snap, which owns Snapchat and TikTok, had already settled with the California plaintiff. What do you think those rulings mean for both these companies and for efforts to limit access by children?

Jonathan Haidt (6:06)

So I think the meaning is a gigantic reversal of the burden of proof. So the way this all happened was, you know, the early Internet in the 90s was amazing. And so we start with this early open Internet. People get very idealistic. We all thought, oh, it's open. People are being creative. They're putting content out just from the goodness of their heart. So we all start off very positive. And of course, free speech advocates, libertarians, are thrilled by the possibility of, of this utopian dream of a place where people can just create their own societies. So we start off that way, and anybody wants to argue, oh, no, wait a second, wait. We shouldn't be letting kids do this. The burden of proof was entirely on them. So that was going on for really 20 years was the idea that people like me, researchers who are saying that there's a problem, or gene twenge, we have to climb mountains to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was harmful. And I think what we're seeing now is now that almost everybody sees it. Almost everybody who's a parent who has teenagers has seen what these platforms do, if not to their own child and to their kids friends. So what we've seen in the last year is a huge reversal where it was like the Emperor's New Clothes moment, where it's like everyone sees that. Everyone sees that this is harming kids at an industrial scale. So I think we're in a new world. And now the burden of proof has shifted and new technologies like AI, I think people will be more receptive to the idea that we shouldn't just put chatbots in teddy bears and give them to kids, and then we'll wait 20 years and see what happens to them. I think we're going to see a lot more pressure for companies to prove that their product is safe before they're spread out to all of humanity.

Jane Coaston (7:42)

Let's back up A bit. Because I want to get at your bigger point about the work that you do. What do you think social media is doing to young people?

Jonathan Haidt (7:51)

There are many, many different avenues of harm. So the most basic is just that it pushes everything else out because it is addictive. It tends to take up. The average kid watches five hours of social media a day. If you include YouTube, most of that is short videos. So just by pushing out sleep, sunshine, exercise time with friends, eye contact, just by pushing that out for all of the kids, I mean, most of the kids in the country, the average is five hours. A lot are on seven hours a day. And then there's lots of other activities that bring it up to around 12 for a lot of K. So that's the simplest one that's undeniable, that if you're spending five to ten hours a day on this stuff, it pushes everything else out, including sleep. And then there's the area that all the academic debate is about is does heavy use of this cause depression and anxiety or is it just correlated? So that's where almost all the debate is among the researchers. But there are so many other harms that we're not even talking about. So that's why it's so important to have an age limit. This is not even close. The question of should 11 year olds be on Instagram? This is not close.

Jane Coaston (8:59)

I want to go back actually to section 230, which you mentioned. And I think that one of the challenges is that section 230 does a lot of different things. It's not about platforms or websites. It's about third party content. It provides social media companies with legal cover, but it also provides you, Jonathan, with legal cover. You have a substack called after Babel and you could not be sued if someone came into the comments of your substack and threatened to kill someone else.

Jonathan Haidt (9:26)

I'm totally down with that. We totally agree. Love it. Love it.

Jane Coaston (9:30)

So I think the challenge is, and I'm interested because you're sounding on board with my good friend section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The challenge is that among the aspects of the California suit was aspects of these sites like Infinite scroll, or algorithms that make websites more appealing or they start pushing things to you. Now, if you talk to libertarians and free speech advocates, they say, like section 230 is critical to protecting not just the rights of Internet users, but basically how the Internet functions. What do you think should happen to Section 230 given that Congress wasn't ready for algorithms or Infinite scroll and given all of these lawsuits. Right.

Jonathan Haidt (10:14)

So I think that's very well framed because this was created at a time when we thought the Internet was a big bulletin board. I think, look, you and I agree, Section 230 in its original design was essential. We can't get rid of section 230 and not replace it with a different version of section 230. So maybe you know the history better than I do. As I understand it, as the Internet developed and then the courts had to Decide, does Section 230 offer protection for this case? This case, this case, this case, it was interpreted very, very broadly. So what I would like to see is, again, I'm not a legal expert, so this might not be right. But what I would like to see is Congress should just Specify, here's section 230. There's been ambiguity about how it's interpreted. We mean it to mean this. And it does not protect you from decisions, business decisions, design decisions. Just let's get back to the original, a narrower view of the original reading.

Jane Coaston (11:09)

Now, something that's always been interesting to me is that it was Meta that put forward a big campaign saying, yeah, we want changes to section 230 because they were the company that was large enough to be able to fund whatever those changes would look like other companies could not. Meta, in response to these suits, has said that they are going to appeal in New Mexico and that they will likely do so in California. And they have said, you know, we have these protections. Obviously they're not Fail safe, but we do have these protections. And I believe YouTube has as well. They've also argued they're not a social media site. In your ideal world, how would you like to see tech companies like Meta change their policies to protect kids moving forward?

Jonathan Haidt (11:48)

Well, I mean, something as basic as their own policies say, and Coppa, you know, the Children's Online Privacy Protection act says they shouldn't be having kids under 13. But we know that they know. I mean, this is what all the internal documents show. So I just want to ask you, do you think that Meta's decision to go after preteens is protected by section230?

Jane Coaston (12:08)

I think that Meadow's decision to do a lot of things is not protected by section 230. Again, because section 230 has to do with third party content. It does not have to do with recruiting users. Again, this is why this issue is so complicated. Because the rest of the Communications Decency act of 1996 was struck down by the Supreme Court. Section 230 was not. But again, it was written for bulletin boards. Yeah, that's right. And so you're saying if Meta enforced its actual policies, stop trying to market to preteens. But what are additional policies? Because clearly, okay, it's fine if you're 14 isn't going to work for you, I'm going to guess.

Jonathan Haidt (12:48)

Well, yeah. So look, if these companies had been responsible all along, like say, Pinterest. Pinterest has been responsible once Bill Ready took it over. Pinterest, like every platform, had a problem with men trying to get naked pictures of girls. And Bill Ready put a stop to it by saying, you know what, how about no social features if you're under 16, like, you cannot communicate with people. So if all the companies were like that, like they're actively looking to protect kids, they're trying to run a business. Well, if that was the case, then I'd be much more open to the idea of, well, let's work with the companies. Let's get some design changes. But Meta in particular, but also Snapchat and to some extent Google and certainly TikTok, all of these companies have shown over and over again, it's clear they do everything they can to get around the rules, to get to kids, to beat their competitors. And if these are the kind of predatory companies that own our children's childhood, these four or five companies literally own most of our kids day. Even when they're not looking at the screen, they're thinking about the drama. How did it happen that these companies were given a free pass? As a psychologist, we know if you incentivize one sort of behavior and you free people from consequences, you're going to get a lot of bad behavior. And that's what happened.

Jane Coaston (14:04)

Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to join me.

Jonathan Haidt (14:08)

My pleasure, Jane.

Jane Coaston (14:09)

That was my conversation with Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of the Anxious Generation. Thanks so much for listening to our show and yes, thank you for recommending our show on social media. You can also subscribe, leave a 5 star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads.

Matt Berg (14:27)

Foreign.

Jane Coaston (14:34)

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Stacey Abrams (16:57)

In moments like these, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and even easier to feel powerless. But we are neither. I'm Stacey Abrams and on my podcast Assembly Required, I take on each executive action legislative battle and breaking news moment by asking three questions. What's really happening? What can we do about it? And how do we keep going together? This is a space for clarity, strategy and hope rooted in action, not denial. New episodes of Assembly Required Drop Tuesdays. Tune in wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube, it's the original HBIC here.

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Jane Coaston (18:08)

Here's what else we're following today.

Jonathan Haidt (18:10)

Head of Lines

Jane Coaston (18:14)

Joining me is Crooked's Washington correspondent Matt Berg to talk about the big stories. Hey, Matt.

Matt Berg (18:19)

Hey, Jane.

Jane Coaston (18:20)

I hear you have something that's actually fun and good to tell us about.

Matt Berg (18:24)

I do. Here's part of my conversation with Emily Gregory, who just flipped a Florida state representative seat.

Jane Coaston (18:32)

I encourage anyone thinking about running for office. If you think you should and people tell you you're bonkers, maybe you still should. Because I can tell you, nobody thought that this was within reach. Myself, my husband, and like two friends at a kitchen table was like a handful of freedom fighters that were like, I don't know, I think we can just do it. Like, let's just do it. Gregory just flipped the Florida state House seat in a district that contains Trump's home and safe space. Mar A Lago, can you tell me more about her and about this race?

Matt Berg (19:02)

Yeah, it's a stunning win that no one saw coming. She had never even run for public office before. She owns a fitness studio in Palm beach that is focused on helping pregnant women. Her predecessor was a Republican who won the seat by 19 points in 2024. She won by more than two points. Running on an agenda on affordability and really focusing on local issues that residents there care about, such as property insurance reform. It's also a warning sign for Trump ahead of the midterms. There's been this trend lately that you've probably seen in which Democrats in small local races are just outperforming Republicans by a lot on the national scale. It's not a huge deal, but it is a bellwether for how Republicans might fare in the midterms as Trump keeps doing increasingly unpopular things.

Jane Coaston (19:54)

Yeah, I would be very curious how many members of Mar A Lago voted for her. It is also worth noting that Trump endorsed Gregory's opponent and voted by mail. After spending years railing against voting by mail. He frequently votes by mail, which is this funny thing, like a level of cognitive dissonance in which he will continue to do this thing while he declares it to be the most fraudulent thing in the entire world, which it would be funnier if he wasn't trying to eliminate. Vote by mail.

Matt Berg (20:22)

That's right. And it also just goes to show that his opinion in his own hometown doesn't really matter all that much, it seems, which is pretty shocking. And I mean, speaking of Trump being unpopular, there's news regarding Iran today and how the majority of Americans think that the US Military has gone too far in its strikes on Iran, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, there was a report in NBC News that's making a lot of waves about how Trump's aides reportedly show him video montages of successful big strikes on Iran every morning. One official described the montage as stuff blowing up, which explains a lot.

Jane Coaston (21:02)

Stuff going boom. Seems to contrast with Trump's alleged peace talks with Iran over the past few days. And I keep saying alleged, and we're learning more now. And now I wouldn't really call them talks. The Iranian foreign minister also said that, quote, we do not plan on any negotiations with the United States. That came after Iran rejected a 15 point ceasefire proposal from the United States. The key points reportedly focused on sanctions relief, rolling back Iran's nuclear program, which I thought we obliterated, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz oil transit route, which, for the record, again, it's closed because we went to war.

Matt Berg (21:36)

Right. And Iran has a few words to say about this proposal. They offered their own counterpoints, which included the US Recognizing that Iran has control over the strait. And more notably, Iran is asking for reparations for war damages that the US has caused in their campaign.

Jane Coaston (21:55)

Yeah, and I don't think Trump would give Iran wads of cash as an apology, but apparently he will do that to lift sanctions on Iranian oil, which, you know, what a time we're all living in. And those sanctions being lifted would be worth about $14 billion, which is sort of like wads of cash. But speaking of cash, Trump also apparently doesn't want cash from Elon Musk. The tech gazillionaire recently offered to cover TSA agents pay during the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which is in its fifth week. But the White House said no, according to CBS News, because they believe the shutdown will be over soon. Though I sneakily also suspect that they don't want TSA agents to get paid in order to make life even harder for Democrats.

Matt Berg (22:42)

Yeah, this is a pretty bold thing for the White House to believe. You might remember on Tuesday, there was a lot of talk about how there's going to be a deal at any moment about DHS and how Republicans and Democrats were about to sign something to reopen the government. That did not happen. And it still does not seem like Republicans and Democrats are that close to a deal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, we thought there had been some progress, but then Republicans sent us their counteroffer yesterday and it contained nothing that had been talked about. So things don't seem to be going so great in the talks in Congress. And at the same time, the acting TSA administrator is issuing a lot of warnings about what the shutdown could mean for air airports and tsa. The shutdown has caused, quote, the highest wait times in history at airports, according to the TSA acting administrator. And those shortages could even cause airports to close.

Jane Coaston (23:37)

It's also worth noting that Trump doesn't seem to want to end the shutdown in the first place. According to Politico, Trump said, quote, I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it. It's really hard to negotiate when one person just doesn't want to. But Matt, I always want to hang out with you.

Matt Berg (23:56)

I will negotiate with you anytime.

Jane Coaston (23:58)

Thanks, Matt.

Matt Berg (23:59)

Thanks for having me.

Jane Coaston (24:00)

And that's the news. Before we go. This week on Hysteria, Erin and Alyssa are joined by comedian Megan Gailey to break down everything from ICE showing up at airports to the Internet losing its mind over Ms. Rachel. They also get into the MAGA dream girl discourse and yes, have a conversation about polyamory, because nothing says 2026 like that mix of chaos. If you want smart takes on the stories shaping culture and the ones spiraling online, don't miss it. New episodes of Hysteria drop every week wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Celebrate the fact that you're not insane. Most Americans oppose the war in Iran and think Trump is doing a bad job. And tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, I'm not. Just about how new polling from Fox News found that 64% of Americans think Trump is screwing up in Iran and 59% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is doing overall, the lowest in either of his terms in the White House. Like me What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe@crooked.com subscribe I'm Jane Costenet, and finally, I have the majority opinion. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Foer. Our producer is Kaitlyn Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We have production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg and Ethan Oberman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our senior vice vice president of news and politics is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Stacey Abrams (26:05)

In moments like these, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and even easier to feel powerless. But we are neither. I'm Stacey Abrams and on my podcast Assembly Required, I take on each executive action, legislative battle and breaking news moment by asking three what's really happening? What can we do about it? And how do we keep going together? This is a space for clarity, strategy and hope rooted in action, not denial. New episodes of Assembly Required. Drop Tuesdays. Tune in wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.

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Jonathan Haidt (27:16)

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