The Anxious Generation with Jonathan Haidt | What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast

We've created a world where. the barrier to entry for some of the things that we've agreed on. as some of the most harmful to younger kids, the barrier to entry is zero. It's literally you click a button that says, I am a title holder. And I remember the first time I saw that button when I wasn't 18. It was on a computer game called Leisure Suit Larry. I don't know if you've ever heard. No I haven't. So it was a story of this man, Leisure Suit Larry, who was only goal. was to have sex. That's what he was trying to do. What a premise. And you get points for the numbers, and you played this game.

I remember the first one. You were just at a. like a bar and you type on the computer like open door, knock on door, and the bouncer would be like, what's the code? And you're like, what is the code? But like when I think about, like this world, I think about the option. is like in the game, it was say to you at the beginning, are you 18 or older? And I said, I said, no, I was honest. I was like, no. And then the game was like, you're not old enough to play. I remember being off and you know what I. did? And then I went, I am 18. and I was like, welcome to the game.

Something is happening to our kids. Anxiety, depression and loneliness were on the rise. and it looks like it's not just a phase. Parents overwhelmed. Young people feel lost and no one's quite sure what or who is to blame. But today's guest has spent years trying to answer just that question. Jonathan Heights is a leading social psychologist, a professor at NYU, and the author of The Anxious Generation, a book.

that's sparking urgent conversations around the world today. In this episode, we unpack what's going wrong. and what we might still be able to do to get it right. And this is what Mao with Trevor Noah. Asks. So when you wrote.

Anxious Generation, did you think you were tapping into the. I mean, arguably like one of the the most. What would you call it, the most pertinent moments of, of this generation did. Because, I mean, you've written a few books and every author. who's writing about something, especially someone who's learned as you, is thinking about the world, but this feels like a tapped. into every single parent and everyone who's in it completely. I mean, it's still, you know, the last I checked, it's.

still on the New York Times bestsellers list. It's it's it just stays there. Mom is still talking about. Yes. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. What what do you what do you think it is about the topic. that connected with people as much as it has? Yeah. Well, what? You know what I discovered. once, I once the book came out and even before it came out. was that. there is a desperation among mothers in particular, that all over the world, family life is turned into a fight over screen time. Everyone hates it. We didn't ask for it wasn't like this in 2010.

I mean, of course there are always arguments over TV. But once kids got touch screen devices which are much more addictive, you have a stimulus response loop, which is much more addictive than watching a story on a screen. And so family life changed and people couldn't like, what the hell is going on? And my sense is that mothers felt their kids being pulled away. much more than fathers did. Fathers were often like, oh, you know, cool video game. Hey, let's play. But mothers really felt it. And so that's what's driven. The success of the book is that it's mothers around the world.

and all the political changes, all the laws that are being introduced. Oftentimes it's either a female governor like Sarah Huckabee Sanders in, in Arkansas, or it's the governor or prime minister's wife. who reads the book and says, you know, and this is what happened in Australia. The wife of one of the of the premier of South Australia read the book, and she said she was reading in bed and she turns to me, says, Peter, you've got to read this book and you've got. gotta fucking do something about it. Wow. So he did. And that's what started the process in Australia.

You know, there's probably some people listening. now who haven't read the book, and I've read the book. So is Trevor. And one thing that you do in the book, you make the distinguish. between a play based childhood and a phone based childhood. And you said there's been a rupture. And we went from having a play based childhood, but kids were outside. unsupervised breaking bones, doing crazy stuff. that parents get really afraid of, these things. that maybe aren't things we should necessarily be that scared about.

And children go back into the home, and it coincides. with them having phones and having this phone based childhood. Tell us more about that. I can summarize the whole book by saying that we've overprotected our children. in the real world, and we've under protected them online. Another way to say it is the book is a tragedy in two acts. At one, we lose the play based childhood and this really kicks in in the 1990s. So older millennials, people who grew up in the 70s and 80s,

they were there was a huge crime wave at that time in America at least. But all kids played outside. It was just you just go outside and play. And then it's the 90s, which is actually when crime is dropping. and life is getting safer and drunk driving is going down. We freak out in the 90s. And we start to sandwich. Too dangerous out there. Too dangerous, you know, stay home. You have to always be supervised or you'll be abducted. We freaked out about child abduction. And so that's at one of the tragedies. We pull the kids into us. We don't let them have play. And free play is crucial for development.

And then act two is very, very sudden. It's between 2010 and 2015. In 2010, kids are going through puberty with a flip phone. and a flip phone or basic phone. You can text your friends, you can call your friends. And there was a game called snake. I think that's okay, but that's about it. Yeah, you weren't talking to groups of 50 strangers. You weren't talking to strange men who wanted sex from you. I mean, it was like the, you know, it was a communication device. So if you're born in 1995, it's last year. The millennials suppose you're a girl born 1995.

In 2010, your 15 years through early puberty, but you did it on a flip phone without Instagram. But suppose you were born in the year 2000, so now you turn 15 in 2015, which means that your first phone was probably a smartphone. with a front facing camera, because that comes out 2010. with Instagram, because that becomes popular in 2012 with high speed internet. So you went through early puberty constantly on your phone, taking photographs of yourself, people talking about you, communicating. with strangers. The phone moves to the center, your life.

So anyway, in all these ways, we had this five year period. where childhood is transformed into a screen based or phone. based childhood. that I believe, and I argue in the book is just not conducive to human development. And I, I what I do love that you do in the book is that you really. you kind of preempt any. arguments because there's some people say, well, the world was always bad. They had we had TVs and you actually pin it down. and you say the depression and the anxiety and the loneliness, we saying,

I believe it's due to the smartphones. Can you talk more about that? Because that's I was I'm one of these people, I say to travel all the time. Hitler didn't have screen time. I mean, like turn out to be a great, horrible person. So like, I think there's been some moral panic. around phones and screens, but you make the case that, no, you don't think these things are really dangerous. Yeah. So the main criticism I get is that this is a moral panic. Just like we freaked out about television and comic books. and radio and everything else. And there is some truth to that that the older generation always thinks.

the younger generation is being harmed by whatever they're doing. And sometimes that's wrong, like with comic books. and sometimes it's right, like with smoking or, you know, you know, in drug use where we think, you know, kids shouldn't be doing this. So the question is, am I am I warning people, am I raising an alarm. that doesn't need to be raised. and I'm just frightening people, and there's really no problem? Or am I calling attention to what I think is the biggest threat to. to mental health, human children's mental health in modern history?

So that's the question am I right or am I wrong? And some people say, oh, you know, correlation doesn't equal causation. The fact that mental illness rates all go up around 2012, 2013. It could be because of. school shootings. They say, like. because we had this horrible school shooting, 2012, the Newtown massacre. And after that, our kids had these lockdown drills. Okay. So 2012, that does fit the timing. But then why did girls. in Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, across Europe,

why did they start cutting themselves in 2012, 2013? Why did they start checking into psychiatric emergency wards? And so the fact that it happens all over the developed world, we don't have good data from the developing world, but. all over the developed world these rates go up. And they were pretty stable for the years before. I don't know if another explanation for that. Let's talk a little bit about the two different worlds, because I. you know, to Christina's point, I actually love that you broke them down on the play side. Cristiano will tell you, I don't have any kids,

but I I'm vehemently against the way I see kids living now. And one of the big ones for me was just like when I moved to New York. I don't know why I've been so like, I'll be, I'll be at like, playgrounds. No, I won't be like at the playground. Let me not say it that way. I'll be walking past a playground. You walk in New York, you know, and every time I'm. there, I see every every parent with a kid. or every child minder with a kid or every nanny with a kid or every see.

And I look at this thing with each other. Exactly. The parents are playing with the kids. Exactly. And often they're on their phones. It's the monitoring, the surveillance. Yeah, that's what it is. And I go, guys, this is a prison yard. I keep seeing it. I go, I go find me. The difference between this and a prison yard. You I'll tell you the difference. Federal prisoners, they're guaranteed two hours a day of outdoor time. Hahahahahahahaha. But but I watch this, and I think to myself, where are the kids. learning how to resolve conflicts amongst themselves? Where are they learning. what games they do and don't want to play amongst each other?

Where are they learning? None of this one kid cries. Parents swoop in, one kid falls. Parents swoop in. Kids argue with each other. Parents swoop in like it's the dogs at the dog park. have more freedom than the children do at a children's park. And the thing is to actually wrestle and bite each other. It really it really is interesting. And I see this and the parents would say to me, oh, but you don't know what it's like to have a kid. And and I go, yeah, but I remember being a kid. That's right. And those parents were kids. All of those parents had free range childhoods. Yes.

All of them got to play outside. And the most excited I was do this with, you know, older, older audiences. Think of the most exciting things in childhood. Call them to your mind. Remember what it was like to be a kid with your parents there? We watching a screen? No, it's oh, it's outdoors, running around with friends, hanging out. And that's exactly what we sucked out a child. and replaced it with mindless entertainment. 15 second videos. One of my core memories is, I'm the eldest of four girls, but my youngest sister's, like, 11 years. younger than me, so there was a bit of distance between us.

But it's taking my two younger sisters to school. I was like nine years old. I have one in each hand and we woke up. This thing, this computer hill, was a big hill. And then we'd walk back with other friends. and their siblings, and it's one of like, I always recall it when I think of like. a certain time in my life. It's just the image of me and my sisters walking up the hill with our friends, you know? So now let's talk about what it robs you of. Because when I say this to people who have kids, people think I'm doing the grumpy old man thing. In my day, you ran around and you scraped your knee and it didn't.

You know, and I'm not trying to say that I believe that it's helping you assess risk. I believe that it's helping you understand, you know, hierarchies. It's helping you understand social dynamics. It's it's preparing you for the world. that you're going to live in, is what I always say. But but you've actually done the work and you've done the research. So if a parent out there saying to you, oh, Jonathan, I, I don't want my kid. being bullied at a playground, I don't want them being punched by someone. or getting hurt. They're going to fall off the bars and they're going to be like,

they're going to hurt their new how can I allow this? What are they losing by not allowing this? Yeah. Well, let's start with the big picture, which is what is childhood for. and what is play for. And because we're mammals, mammals have this. really interesting evolution of, of having much more investment in the child. I mean, our women literally make food off of the skin of their chest and eat. I know, you know, I know.

So so it's a huge sacrifice. It's a it's a huge gift to the kids. And so mammals have this long childhood. And the reason what it does is it makes possible having a large brain. and especially really social mammals like like chimpanzees and humans. How do you wire up that brain? And that's why we have this very long childhood. And the way you wire up a brain is by exploring, trying things and failing. Explore, try, fail over and over and over again. So when a kid tries to build a block tower, it falls over. They do it again. So, play build bench.

It's all the things you just said. Once they master their, you know, building block towers and running and that stuff, then it becomes social. And it's exactly that. It's basically these are the skills of democracy. In a democracy, the whole idea is we are self-governing. We make the rules ourselves. We enforce them ourselves. That was the amazing innovation of the American experiment. It's called. And how do you learn to be self-governing? By being self-governing as a child and so interesting. So when the kids are on the playground, it's the things you said.

they have to choose what to do. Like what game should we play? Well, some of us want to play that well. Let's work it out. Okay. We'll do yours today. We'll do that one tomorrow. You have to make the rules and you have to enforce the rules. But that was out of bounds. No it wasn't. And you adjudicate it. But what we've been training our kids. to do since the 90s, since we got them hyper supervised. all the time, is we're training them to report each other to the adult. So there's a conflict. He hit me. Yeah. And that's training for authoritarianism. There's always there's always an authority who will enforce things.

We don't have to work it out ourselves. Damn. Wow. We're training kids. That's like a primary relationship. We really are. It sounds like we're priming them, right? That that's a wild way to think of it, actually is. Like you're not teaching them to be a part of a society. You're teaching them to be a part of a monitored power. Investiture. Yeah. Authority. That's right. Travis. But you say that you also bring up in the book, Jonathan, is that, this kind of rising intensive parenting, like these super scheduled kids, right? I'm. I'm guilty of this myself. Right?

So I don't want to pull myself out of the equation. Like I think about my eldest son schedule right now, I'm like, well, he's got something on Monday. He's got piano on Wednesday. Yeah, he swims three, four times a week, fortunately in the school. And I'm a parent that's trying to not over schedule this child. Right. And then I'm like, and then my daughter, who's like 19 months, she's got a mom. One day she's got music class lessons. You know, they just singing songs in a circle. She's got that on Tuesday, she's got park dates on Wednesday.

And it's like, these are kids that have like sometimes my parents try and FaceTime me. They're like weather kids. And I'm like, oh, they're at their thing. So my mom was like, what things do children have? I miss? And I'm like, and then when I'm nights, I want them to play with other friends. Their friends also have their schedules, the schedules, a classroom. You listen when they get to a. and they get into ballet and they get into stuff like, baseball, which is into and then the travel team, even if I wanted to break out of the schedule. I'm already creating for for my kids,

there'd be no other kids for them to play for, because I think culturally, all parents are over scheduling their children. That's right. There are two parenting styles they've been discovering. They used to be class differentiated, but now they're not so much. Yeah, and this is unequal childhoods. I've forgotten the name of the sociologist who, who did this, but she put. she found in the 90s that sort of, you know, college educated cultures. They did what she called concerted cultivation, parenting, concerted. cultivation. Yeah. Like you're a little plant, and I'm going to do all these things.

I'm going to give you these experiences. I'm going to, you know, make, you know, make you grow. Whereas a working class families had what she called natural growth parenting, which is, you know, the kids are running around, they get into some trouble, they get out of trouble. And so there used to be that class difference. But what has been found in more recent research. is that now even middle class and working class were all doing. the concerted cultivation. And it's a constant race group. That's right. Yes as well. That's right. There's not any big race difference I found. That's right.

Yeah. So we're basically denying children the main training they need in childhood. And that's actually how I first got into this, was noticing. that the students who arrived on campus in 2014, 2015, were different than anything we'd ever seen. What was what were you noticed like, what was the different? Very high rates of anxiety and depression. They filled up the mental health centers. They would sometimes be, very anxious or, or even, get upset if there was a speaker coming to campus that they didn't like.

They thought this could be dangerous. And we're like, what do you mean, dangerous? Like, what do you mean? You need a safe space. But so this was so this was a distinct shift that you noticed. So it wasn't like a gradual thing. It was like all of a sudden, bam! That's right, that's right. Because we thought at the time that the students coming were millennials. We thought the millennial generation starts in 1981. We'll go maybe to 2000, we thought, but it turns out that if you're. born in 1996, you just on average, of course, there's huge difference. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. On average, you're more anxious. And so you come to school and now you see, like. someone has a very different opinion and you're like, you know, this is dangerous. This is terrible. I don't I don't want to engage with this person. And so that's how I first noticed it. And so this is, it's, you know, just the things you guys are talking about. It's like if you block the kids from having these interpersonal skills, you put them into a space where they see more things as threatening. They're not going to thrive in college. In college, you need to be in discover module chapter on discover mode versus. defend mode.

And it's a very sudden switch. Kids born in 1996 and later were more likely to be in defend mode. It's interesting that you bring that up because I've often wondered. how much we devalue exposing children. to, you know, for lack of a better term, adverse events in life, you know, and I think to myself, like when we're at the playground, when we're kids and that they were they were kids, I didn't want to see. there were people you didn't. You were like, oh God forbid that kid is there on the swing. They're not going to let anyone swing or let them catch you swing.

They're going to start coming. and swinging you, and you won't be able to get off. And then you have to jump and you might hurt yourself going to be a whole thing. But what I didn't joy about it afterwards. was the fact that it taught me how to navigate these situations in life. Right? Because life is going to be filled. with people you don't agree with, or people who are making your life. adverse, or people who are you get I'm saying, yeah, it just creates it. It creates a realistic expectation of what life is going to be, whether you like it or not. And it actually, I'm sure you've seen this.

I think it was Canada who you sort of like the surgeon general or something, who said they're going to switch it up when it comes to children now. They are now, encouraging. school rules and playgrounds and everything. to allow kids to engage in what they call, quote unquote, dangerous play. Yeah. So they said they've sanitized playgrounds too much. You know, like even. in America, for instance, there's playgrounds. that have like a soft, spongy ground, right? A lot of them have that soft. Do you know, they found that that's not good for kids. Oh yeah. You know, I mean the crunchy pipeline. Yeah. It's like it's terrible. It's terrible for you. Yeah.

This is because it's like falling is something that you need to learn. You need to understand the consequences of falling. Yeah. Exactly. And it also this is the part I didn't realize. I knew I would have thought intuitively. Oh, yeah, it's good for kids to fall and know that falling can hurt them. But what I didn't know was it encourages them to take risks and to. and to think of what risk means exactly. Also learn how to fall well, which is oh yeah, to teach my son to do, like, take your hands. Brace yourself. Yeah, yeah. So Canada was able to do this because they have a wonderful researcher.

professor at the university British Columbia named Mariana Personi. And I talk about her work in, in chapter three of The Anxious Generation. And she's been she's been pushing this for a long time, that kids need risky play risk as a feature, not a bug of childhood. And as she says, playgrounds should be as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible. Whereas in America, in part. because we have so many lawyers, everyone's afraid of being sued. And so playground guidelines will say things like. there must not be exposed routes of a tree near the playground.

Oh wow. Because the kids might trip, which of course teaches them to expect no obstacles. Everything should be clear and easy and safe. And then you go out into the world and it's full of obstacles. And so that's part of the reason, we think, why the kids began to freak out. Those who were born in 1995, they weren't prepared for life. I often think that when I when I look at dating. for younger generations now and I'm often intrigued by how. they'll see dating and not all of them, but oftentimes.

they'll see dating as a, you know, it's like a binary. that's failed. It was bad and it was good. Like, you know, red flags like that type of thing. And then I always say to people, I go, well, I think. because dating is still interpersonal communication. and interpersonal relationships, they're going to be bumps. You know, there's going to be bumps. So when people are that's a red flag. Yeah. Everyone is a red flag. There are no no red flags. Did you give them saying. But the red flag does not mean that you shouldn't be doing the thing.

It just means that this is something that you might need to be aware of. It's the roots. And I love. I love that you said that because it's like, do we want kids to live in a world where there are no roots, which isn't going to be the world, or do we want to prepare them for a world where there may be roots? And so they learn what tripping means, they learn what falling means, and they learn what getting back up means. That's right. And this is the dilemma that we're in as parents, because we love our children, we see something bad happened to them. We see kids picking on them or excluding them. We want to swoop in. And it used to be when we were out away from our home,

they couldn't swoop in because they weren't there. But now either they're there or they're we're all connected by text. or they're tracking us. And so a question I would. ask is for everybody to think that, okay, you've got three young kids. What is the ideal number of times that you want each of your children. to be excluded socially by the time they reach 18. Is it zero? Do you hope that they're never excluded. from anything and suffer the pain of exclusion? Or would you like it to happen, you know, several times a month or. I mean, it depends who's excluding them. Honestly, there's some people I don't want my kids around.

It's like, if people don't want to hang with you. because you don't want to do the things that they're doing that. are perhaps not very good, I'd be like, oh, I'm doing a good job. You should probably be. It's a good lesson. If it's consequences of maybe somebody hitting. or being mean, I would, I would want that to be an occurrence. Do you know what I mean? So I wouldn't want it to happen all the time. I don't know, one of my kids was struggling with, making friends. And I remember really they were they were into parallel play. for a longer time than they should be.

They were struggling with cooperative. Okay. When I'd go and pick them up and the teacher would say, oh, they played alone today. It really but I like I yeah, maybe it's my ego, but I was like, I don't know, I don't want to play in a lonely way. How old were they at the time? They were, they'd just turn three. And so like the the thought of my kids being alone does scare me a bit. So of course it scares me. So when you say how many times. you want them to be excluded, not so much that it would give them a complex,

but enough that they would know that, oh, you have a responsibility. to other people. That's right. So the principle of inoculation is really powerful here. We all understand the immune system now, especially since Covid, that if you're. exposed to a little bit of something, your body then develops antibodies to it. It learns how to how to defend against it. And so that's this is called anti fragility. There's a couple of words from anti fragility. If we think our kids are fragile then we're going to protect them. We don't want them excluded. It'll hurt. They might traumatize them. But if we realize that they're the opposite of fragile,

that they actually they need to fall down. They need to be excluded sometimes to feel the pain of exclusion. This then causes in them first a better understanding. of how to be included and excluded, and sympathy. for the other kids who are excluded because they know what that pain is like. So in all these ways, these negative childhood experiences are essential. Not to be clear, bullying, especially if it goes on for multiple days, that's the most horrible thing. And there's no evidence that that's beneficial. But conflict is normal. The kids have to learn how to conflict and cooperation.

They go together. We're going to continue this conversation right after this short. break. And Jonathan, I want to ask, and this is. maybe a controversial question, but like me and my sisters, we were kids. We used to fight, like me, I have two sisters. We we day who has scratch hunt. Oh my God, we were they used to call us the the Jungle girls. Yes. Yeah. Hope these were not white people. Know what you didn't know? It was like my. It was.

It was my uncle not. Yeah. Because otherwise he's like yeah. Oh man. We were in trouble. We would have these like what? You took my top bow. I was, it was. I mean now that doesn't happen right. And I think about this like role of violence among children. Now if a child hits another child like it's. you can be suspended, you can be excluded and you're on the track to occupational. and behavioral therapy. Yeah. Which is a it's a very normal primal response. What do you think about like the role of violence. And now that like the absence of even like pushing and pulling.

and things that kids just used to do to land limits. Yeah. Is that something you think it's good that we've lost it completely? Well, what do you think is so has a place you describe it as violence? I'm not going to say that. Oh, there's a kids need violence. I would never say that. But we're mammals. We love rough and tumble play. When I was a kid, one of the, you know, like, what do you want to do? She play this with you? You want to wrestle? Sure. Let's wrestle. And you just, like, go at it and we try to pin each other, and and, you know, so kids are physical and if you ban, you know, some schools, I've heard you have to have a no touch policy.

You can't touch another child. Yeah. And it's for boys. I think it's affecting a lot of boys. That's right. And I don't want to be stereotypical, but like the roughhousing. that a lot of boys want to engage in is being really demonized. And boys don't know how to like, I think especially between like three and 11, they don't know how to engage in play with other kids right now. That's right. So when so you have a son and then two boys, the son and the two daughters. Okay. So when we look across mammal species, especially across.

primates, the young males do a lot more rough and tumble play. They wrestle more. That's just a, you know, it's a biological differences, in effect. that prenatal testosterone has on the brain. And what we've done in our schools is in the 1980s, we freaked out. about how American test scores were behind those of some other nations. There was a report, Nation at Risk. Oh, we need to get rid of most of, you know, recess and art and. and summer vacation. Let's, you know, lengthen the school year, give them more math, more science. And this was especially bad for boys. And this is when boys began to drop out.

Yeah. Boys don't do well just sitting and listening. They they're they're more physical. They they're more, more subject to ADHD, for one thing. And so schools are becoming increasingly non receptive or hostile to boys even. And I would say having an absolute ban on any sort of pushing or physical, that would be really bad for boys. I think we're seeing the consequences. of that with like boys not really being a big feature on college campuses. Yeah. But just seeing like education attainment and employment attainment is going down,

especially for Gen Z men. Exactly. They seem like almost like a lost generation. That's right. So so much the attention is on girls and in the book I focused especially. on the data showing that social media is particularly harmful for girls. And that's actually what got me into the book, was that was the. those were the scientific findings that were most solid. That sort of got me studying that. And I thought the story of the book was going to be especially social media's. Hurting Girls, and I didn't know what the story was for boys. When I started the book, I thought, is it going to be video games? Is that going to be the same thing for and what we learned,

and this is work I did with Zach Roush, the lead researcher on the book. We drew on a wonderful book by Richard Reid. There's a book called Of Boys and Men. Okay. And he is really leading the charge, for a totally non politicized, effort to help boys because, of course, you know, everything gets in this country, every, every culture war, every kid. Anyway, the point is. the story that we took from Richard and adding on a lot more about technology. is that boys, of course, used to dominate the world, was made for boys and men.

But as as societies change, as physical strength. no longer matters so much as America shifts to a service economy. That's bad for men, good for women. So that's great that women are rising up. But but, as schools and workplaces are becoming. less hospitable to men, they're investing less of their effort. And boys are about six months. to a year behind girls anyway, especially for emotional development. And so girls are, are outperforming boys. at every level from kindergarten through PhD. Wow. There's more girls who are succeeding.

More girls going on at every level. So boys are dropping out. But at the same time that they were dropping out in the 80s. and 90s, the technological world was getting amazing. So when I was a kid in the 70s, the only video game that you could play. at home was pong was when you, you know, you're younger than me, what video games that you have on you. So the first games I was playing, I would say was around like, what was it was asteroid, I think was what I was playing with. That was an old one. Yeah, yeah. Asteroids were the thing. And then I was stepping. into the generation of, let's say, when I was at a gaming age,

like, that's when it's like Mario, Super Mario Brothers, you know, Street Fight, all of all of these things are happening. Mortal Kombat. Yeah, contra, Mortal Kombat, Sonic, etc. that's now you in like the the prime time of images. moving across a screen in a way that looks quote unquote, real. That's right. So so the video games are getting better and better now at this. When you were growing up, the porn was still on paper. There wasn't porn on your computer. Could you find it anywhere? You just you've just tapped into my childhood.

You could not find it anywhere. This was because he didn't have an older brother anything? Oh, no, I was the older brother. I was the pioneer you couldn't find. Let me tell you something. I try to explain this to my younger brothers now, and I often say to them, I go, I am not against porn. I think the porn industry is terrible in many ways, but against. porn itself, I think it's as old as time. However, I think we have too much porn now and I think we have too much access. to porn. Right? So for me, porn was like this magical thing you would bump into it.

Was this unattainable? There would be a. magazine in a random store somewhere that had it on a shelf wrapped in plastic, so you couldn't even see what was happening. That that was porn. So yes, to your point, video games? Yes. Porn. No. Okay. Right. But let's trace it out. now for people younger than you, suppose you're born in the late 90s. Well, the multiplayer video games only come in after we get high speed internet. So it's only the late 2000, 2008, 2009 that you really beginning. to get these incredible multiplayer games where you're in your house.

with your headset and this avatar on the screen with, you're amazing, and they go through many product iterations, cycles to figure out. what can we do, what's the point structure to keep boys on the longest? Because if we keep them on, they don't go to another platform. So, you know, the dose makes the poison. So when you get these incredibly immersive games that are designed. to keep you on you and for boys, if you, you know, after school, if you want to play with your friends, you can't go over to their house. No, you have to go home so that you can be on your headset.

So the boys are having fun, they're enjoying the video games, and once you get high speed internet, you get porn. Not just pictures, but video. Anyone can go on Pornhub. There's no identification. You click a button, you click a button that says you are over 80, which I know I'll take it. By the way, I love that you pointed out. how flimsy and fake. the checks and the protections are, which is a paradox to, you know, to what you're saying. It's the same generation that won't let their child go down a slide.

that is beyond a certain degree of angle because they've deemed it unsafe. and there's no roots of a tree. But then at the same time, your child can go into a world. that can completely obliterate their brain and the way that they see themselves. if they just click a button. Yeah. That's right. The way to understand how we got into this insane situation. is to trace it out from the 90s on. So when the internet came out in 1994 was when I first saw a web browser, it was miraculous.

I mean, it. was like God came down to us and said, do you want to know everything instantly? Type it in, you get an answer. We're like, are you kidding me? This is amazing. And so the early internet really was amazing and your generation grew up, you, you know, you were a kid when the first internet came out. and you played on in all sorts of ways. I'm sure some bad stuff happened, but your day wasn't. dominated by a few companies that were experts at addicting you. Yeah. They did. Yeah. So you could wander around. You saw a lot of stuff. You saw some bad stuff, but it was mostly good stuff.

And it was also really slow. Yes, I think web browsing would be like friction, you know, forget it. That's right. And the other thing that happened in the 90s was, as you get the fall of the Berlin Wall and the spread of democracy, and then you get the rise of the internet, we're all convinced. that the internet is going to be the best thing ever to happen to democracy. You know what dictator could possibly oppose the people connected in this way? And you go all the way from, you know, the 90s all the way through the Arab Spring. We still think that, we still think by 2011, 2012, we still think oh the internet's amazing.

It's great for democracy. And we're still thinking, I think it's good for kids. I mean, it's the future. I mean, the kids need to be on it because like, that's the technology. So as late as 2012, 2013, we're still all techno optimists. And so, you know, we kind of know that our kids, all you have to do is click a button and you can be talking to strange men. There was this did you ever see a Omegle? It was. There was a site. It was like it was motto was talk to strangers. Oh, wow. Yeah. And a lot of them were naked men masturbating. and trying to find kids to talk to, to masturbate.

And so a lot of, you know, 11, 12 year old girls remember these experiences. Yeah. And the fact that we're so careful about letting our kids to a place. where maybe some men. will molest them, like Boy Scouts or anything else, we're so afraid, you know, or the playground. The child molesters are not at the playground. That's too dangerous. They're all on Instagram. They're all on Snapchat. That's where you can use a fake name, find kids, get them to send you a photograph. And once they send you a photograph, you've got them. You can now extort them. So terrible things are happening to our kids online.

And you know, I think we're finally it's finally coming to us. The internet is actually overall a pretty risky place. We let adults do what they want and take the risks. But my God, how the hell are these companies able to get to. my kids and your kids without our knowledge or consent? We need to have some age getting on the internet. or we can't just let kids wander on it. Yeah, I just want to go back to the boys piece. because I feel very invested because one, I have a son. and two, I have two daughters, and this affects the husband market.

Yeah. 20 something years from now. Yes. Right. No it does. It's like everything. Yeah, yeah. Just being true. And I'm like, you know. So it's just going to be a seller's market. It's going to be the boys that are functional. I don't know what's going to happen. What did that pornography exposure. and the excessive gaming and the use of social media. Yeah. And the absence of play due to boys in particular. in a way that it didn't do to go. Yeah. Because girls also can watch porn. Yeah. You know what I mean. But there are almost no girls who are having a porn problem.

They're almost no girls who are addicted are watching it every day. Do we know why? Yeah. I mean, you know, the evolutionary speculation is there's a whole bunch. of research on on differences in mate searching and selection. And, you know, men are more attracted to youth and visual. And so there's all kinds of reasons why this would be. But you find this over and over again. It's just the nature of male sexual and female sexual. Whether you're gay or straight doesn't really matter. It's males, you know, it's a male female is just different about visual stuff. In any case, the way to understand what's happening to boys.

I've come to see really more since writing the book is imagine your. your boy is out there in the world, and these sort of these fishhooks. come down from the sky and they've got all kinds of bait on them. So the first hook is video games. And then your little older down comes incredible porn. And so I get, you know, some boys can just enjoy it with no problem. But again you find usually between 5 and 15% for each of these get addicted. They have a behavioral addiction. And then they get a little older. They find ways to gamble even before they're 18. And that's all set up to catch. Boys.

You got the crypto investing. You got stock investing. All of this gamified for boys. And when you got the vaping and the marijuana pins and all of that. And so imagine a boy whose day is filled mostly with video games, porn, you know, watching, TikTok and YouTube videos, especially the very short videos. and a lot of the For the boys, their feeds often have a lot of violence. They often have, you know, funny videos of people falling out a window, like ten stories and dying. Yeah, like, or being run over by a car, things like that. And so imagine if that's what your boy does for half the day.

His brain, his dopamine system, the route, the reward, motivation, pathways respond by by dampening down. so that they require more stimulation just to be normal. Which is why if you take your if your son is is playing. a lot of video games, you take him away. If he becomes anxious and irritable and possibly even violent, that's a definite sign of dopamine change that your boy's brain has been change. Now it'll change back. But what happens if boys are doing this from the age of five through 18?

Those might be permanent. We don't know. But there's a good reason to think that if you go through puberty. with these distortions of your dopamine system, that it could. well change the way you are for the rest of your life. And the way you'd see it. is that everything off of the screen is more boring. So the you boy comes into class now, half of the school day. or third of the school day is on a screen nowadays, which is horrible. And that's a Covid thing. But what we're finding is. that kids are having a lot of trouble paying attention to anything. It's not on the screen, and it's because their brains have been gamified.

and the dopamine circuits have been changed. You know, I think of, you know, personal anecdotes. I, I've played video games my whole life, and our version of multiplayer used to be. you'd have to be at somebody's house and there were splits next to each other. Yeah, but it's socially you it so much farther. That's for the screen. And you hung out together and you literally were in the same room, and they would find a way to put you all on that. You know, I think Mario Kart still does it, like Nintendo, in my opinion. Might be the healthiest gaming company out there.

So I didn't play these games. Covid hits. We all locked up, and then a few friends of mine said, hey, we played this game. Call of Duty Warzone. I was like, I haven't played Call of Duty in years. I'm not really a big first person shooter guy. What have I got on? Let me tell you something. Even say now it's like my friends, because I. I've made friends from around the world because of this game. But many of them who are a little bit younger will go like, hey, where are you. now? Where am I go, guys, the only reason I'm not addicted to this game the way you are, the only saving grace.

was that I've experienced grass in my life before this game came, but I don't understand how anyone would not be fully addicted to this. That's right. Because I come from a hybrid childhood, half of my childhood. is swing, seesaw, jungle, gym, adventure, merry go round. That in my brain is still like a lot of fun. even when I walk past playgrounds now, which I don't dare. You want to spin? I just look at it. I actually think it's terrible that adults can't just go and swing on things. I'm just going to put it out there. But anyway, I still look at that with like a oh man, that's a fun place.

But if you as you're saying, Jonathan, if you if you're the now generation, let me tell you something. I sat on that console. I've spent an embarrassing amount of money playing these games. because to what you're saying, they use the they use a drug dealer model. Brilliant. First and foremost, the game's free now. They never used to do that in my day to pay for the game. So you just download the game games free. A cool fortnight. Free for free. Go, go. Take it. Oh what was on free? Every one of it. Take it. Take the game, play it. And then what?

They do. is they just like, sort of like just give you these little drops of dopamine, as you say. It sounds upgrades, levels and you're trying to get. some when you're trying to unlock a new gun or skin a pack. And then they deny it all the time, but some of them are better than others. And so now you're going, I'm getting left behind and you're competitive. So you want. And the amount of time and money that young boys will spend in this world, where now to your point, your whole community exists. Yeah. That's right. If you're not in that world, you don't have a community now. Yeah. You know, but now if you if you get left behind in that world,

you also don't have a community. So now you have to pay to stay a part of your community. And so now these kids, who I can only imagine are raiding their parents. credit cards or like finding ways to get money. because the game perpetually wants from you. And if you talk to game companies now, they'll say, oh no, but it's free to play. And it's like, yeah, that's the same thing. Just give us your soul. Exactly. But Jonathan, you say something in the book about the importance. of communities that have a cost to join and a cost to leave and are also embodied.

So you need to physically be there. And these video games are the opposite of that because it's free to. Yeah, it's free to join, to join free. And it's not embodied. And those things are really, really terrible for like a growing and emerging. Yeah. So what does what does that do. So let's say you are a parent of boys listening to this right now. Or you may be one of those boys tell us why it's so bad. because I, I in Covid, for instance, I loved it. And then now because it's not in my life in the same way, like literally.

I think this morning. a friend sent me a link, one of the crew, and he was like, oh, they bring him back. Verdansk, are you coming? And I was like, we'll see. I don't know, but but for somebody who's really in it and they go, no, Jonathan, this is my community, my life, I have fun, I enjoy myself, I see nothing wrong. What is the wrong that we may not be seeing? So, so girls really thrive. If they have a couple of close friends, they tend to get together in small groups and talk. Boys tend to choose larger groups, and then they'll break up into teams. to do sports or competition.

That's what kids do when they can do what they want. And with the girls, what happened was once. they all got onto Instagram, now it's not just you and a couple friends. Now you're communicating with all these so many more people. And we thought maybe ten, 15 years. Well, maybe this is good. They're super connected, but it turns out that if you if you're having hundreds. and hundreds of communications each day with lots of people, then there's no time for you to have those close friendships. And so for the girls, social media seems to connect them virtually, but at the cost of connecting them in real life.

And so the girls got lonely. Even the social media supposed to be. So, you know, it's supposed to help you find community. But the girls get lonely, lonelier once they get on it. With boys, the video games are better. than social media in that at least it's synchronous. That is, if you know. So me and my son, we finally let them have Fortnite when Covid started. I'm very glad we did because that was the only way. that the boys were getting together. Yeah, and I would hear him laughing his head off with his headphones on. So at least for the boys,

what they're doing is at least synchronous. And so that's good. And they're laughing, which is good. But what we're seeing now. is that there's really something special about being together in person. A lot of us, we've seen this since Covid. Now, you know, like what we're doing now. Like I've done a lot of interviews on zoom. Like, this is so much more fun to be sitting. Yeah. You say that. Yeah. That's what we've been talking about. That's why we did this. Because we go like you. Nobody we haven't been able to quantify it. Right. And I you know, I know people be like, oh but we can do it over zoom.

And it's efficient. And I think this is what I think people have missed. And I know I was guilty of it at some point as well. Yes, it is more efficient. It is way more efficient to have a meeting over zoom. or to run your whole business day from zoom. It is more efficient. However, there's something we forget. Life is not only about efficiency. Life is not only about getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Yeah, life is about sharing connections with other human beings, sharing a vibrancy, sharing a resonance, sharing a frequency. It's literally about that. And people don't realize this and I'm sure you've experienced it.

Think of all the zoom meetings you've had. and think of how little connection you you share with the people, right? There's very little fluff. And I think we forget. and I've often said this, look, I think most of us work is fake and it's fine. I don't care about that. I think it's good that it's fake, because I think. people just need to come together and have a purpose. But the thing that makes the meeting, the meeting. is, yes, there's a little bit of work, but it's more just about these people. coming together, looking into each other's eyes, which I think helps us as people.

Yeah. And we see microexpressions and we, we regulate each other. and we laugh together and we get sad together, and then we think together. And that collective ness of people, I think we lose. And so if you're right, if we were having this conversation over zoom, you give us information, but you give us no feeling and we give you no feeling, and we don't, you know, and I think we have yet it's almost impossible to quantify. But I love that you said that. So now my my brain is going really fast here because I'm making connections.

I wish I had this in the book in, in in my book The Righteous Mind, I cover the work of Michael Tomasello on joint attention. And he, Tomasello did this amazing work with children and chimpanzees, and he found that even though chimpanzees are really smart, and when you compare. a chimpanzee to a two year old child, it's solving physical task like using tools. Three equal. But when you have a social task about like the experimenter.

gives you a signal like open, like look at that cup, it's there. The reward is under that cup, not that one. The monkeys have no clue that the apes have no clue. They don't take signals, whereas the kids are communicating. even before they can speak. They understand what is being communicated. And he points out, and I think this is really important here. He points out that we have this ability to do joint attention, which is where like. right now, we are all totally aware that we are doing a podcast together. Yes. And we all kind of know we're dividing the labor and we're taking turns.

Yes, all of that is happening like so. Tomasello says it is inconceivable that you would ever see two chimps. carrying a log together. so they could easily escape from their enclosure. if they could pick up a log and go. And they're brilliant as individual, but they can't do things together. So we humans, we have this magical ability. and you know this, if you know you traveled a lot. Sometimes you're in a country, you don't speak the language, but you can still kind of like, yes, you can still kind of. Yeah. Because we're all we are all. Yeah. I think he probably is trying to find out what do you. Yeah.

So we just joint attention. And it just occurred to me now is you were talking about zoom. Zoom that kills that like you don't. Yeah. I mean, you don't you don't. At least you don't have it as much. And then you bring it back to the kids. You know, my son is laughing his head off, but he wasn't in the room with anyone else. And so I think there's really something missing. You don't have the joint attention and the share. The shared laughter is not as good. Yeah, not in the room. Now it's time for a. segment we call where in the world brought to you by Uber.

Whether it's your best friend's wedding or your niece's first ballet recital, UVA is on their way so you can show up for what matters most. So, Trevor, where are you right now? I'm in South Africa, South Africa, Johannesburg, Jozi, Maboneng. I want to call it. I want to whistle. Yeah, you should. You probably need to do that.

Some people say Joburg don't ever do that. Whoever you are, whoever started Joburg. If I find you, I'm going to hurt you. There's a random I don't know. How do you say Jose Joe? But you say Jose, you say Johannesburg. Don't say Joburg. Whoever this person is, just please don't do that. It's like saying. It's like saying, are you from NY city? Don't do that. Just don't do that. Yeah. I was like, if ChatGPT became a human, are you nice?

Oh yeah. Yeah. You like this is weird. Yeah, but it's been good. I've been with my people, eating my food. I started cooking. Have you ever heard of Bob? I started cooking, Bob. What is that? It's like our version. Our maize dish. I it's I am right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but then we use maize meal for hours. So I've been doing that. I've become, like fufu. It's exactly fufu actually for food. Yeah. It's the same thing. Yeah. It's pretty much exactly food. So you been, like, on the stove, like pounding? No, I found it.

I found, I found an automatic, Oh, my God. Trevor, Trevor, come on, you're not making it. Then you're not making it. That's no real. Wow. No, there's no real. How quickly we went from joy to judgment. No. You need to make it the way the grandmothers made it outside. the real deal. Yeah. And then I don't know. I mean, you're right, but I don't know. I don't have the forearm strength that my grandmother had. You have like, you have to have, like a specific technique. when you're making any type of maize related.

You. Yeah. It's I know, you know what? I'll try. I feel like you've guilted me enough, and now I'll try. In fact, right off to this, I'm going to try. Well, that was today's where in the world brought to you by Uber. with is your best friend's wedding or your niece's first ballet recital? UVA is on their way so you can show up for what matters most. Uber on our way. Can I tell you, the most fun we had during Covid. was, you know, like everyone was in the bubble phase.

The most fun we had and this I stole from. my younger days was they used to be, what they called internet cafes when I was growing up. And these were little stores that had a bunch of computers. connected to the internet because you couldn't get internet at home. And what would happen is people would host gaming tournaments there. And that I found was the perfect hybrid. Right? So but what I did for the Covid thing was because we were already in a bubble, okay? And my bubble people, we put all our PlayStations.

in the same room in the same room, and we connected them up. Let me tell you some. All that laughter. You you thought you were laughing before. Yeah. And I will encourage any parent who has kids who play these games. like don't kill the thing. Don't try and find the hybrid. I know it's going to be work. I know it's going to be a mission. But I promise you now put these kids in the same room, still with them screens, little monitors and the video game consoles. Put them in the same room doing the same thing. Yeah, the exponential gain in connection, laughter, love,

joy, everything that you experience, I can't even like I can't because. Because what this is what I realized it does is. it reminds you that the connection is not coming from. the game, it's coming from the people you are playing the game with. That's what the game should be, a sort of a thing. that brings you together in person. That's what I felt every time I took off the headset and I turned off the console. There was a deep sadness I felt because I was like, my community's gone because they were during Covid.

But when I had the bubble and we did that, it was like over the Christmas period, you turn off the console and now you went and sat on the couch together. You people I know, we laughed and we talk and it reminded me that no, no, no, no the community was the thing. The game was just something we did together. Okay. So let's let's bring in Bob Putnam because I listened to your conversation. Yeah, yeah. You're right. I was so good. I mean, he is he is absolutely. He's phenomenal. So so for everybody listening, he wrote the famous book Bowling Alone. And so, you know, we social science, we all love his work.

We've been citing him for, you know, certainly for 25 years. His work is really important here because, you know, Putnam describes. how up through the mid 70s, America had a lot of social capital, a lot of trust. So even though there's a lot of crime, we all played outside. Yeah. And you know, we all knew like if I wipe out on my bicycle. and badly hurt, my friend could knock on any door and say, can you call his mom? Yeah. But after the 70s begins declining our trust in each other. And so the reason we don't let. our kids out in the 90s is not because the world is getting more dangerous. and safer. It's because we're losing trust in our neighbors.

We're losing the sense of community. And once we lose the sense of community, the sense that all of us are. at least a little bit responsible for other people's kids. now, it's like as we just as we joked about, like, you know, you say, I walk by a playground like, oh no, you, you're a man. You can't go near a playground, you're going to molest a child. Yes. Yeah. So as we all freaked out about that, and it's not that there was nothing to freak out about, but boy, did we overdo it by saying, like, let's just not get involved. in anyone else's child. Now it falls all on the mother. Now the responsibility falls, especially on the mother.

And if a kid is seen playing outside without supervision, all the blame goes to the mother. How dare you? How so? He could be. That was a recent case where a woman sent her child to get miss or something. Yeah, and I think she was arrested. Yeah. She was always put in jail, which was insane. The boy was ten. Yeah. And she didn't even send him. The boy was ten, and he decided to walk, you know, a little bit to a store, which someone said it to her, by the way. That's like, oh, I'm going to go to the store. Yeah. That's right.

So, so a lot of the fear in America is not just of abduction. Some people are afraid of abduction, which is almost unheard of in this country. But others of us are afraid that a neighbor will call the police. So it's safer. It's safer. It just seems right. But it's funny you say this, I. And I'm always cautious in how I say this, but I. But I feel like Americans really need to be aware of this. So much of what America is experiencing and doing right now. is akin to what you would hear in like, communist,

like Soviet, you know, USSR times, like it was like. it was like neighbor might call the police on you and your it was all about that. It was all about like it wasn't just that the public was surveilling you, it was that you didn't know who even your family was surveilling you. It was. And I literally think about what you're saying, and I go, if we live in a world, if you call the police. to tell your neighbor that their music is too loud. That's right. Then like, you don't understand that you are furthering a society.

where you are destined to be governed by some autocratic power. and something because you can just knock. Yeah, you can literally knock and say, hey, the music is very loud, or you guys are going to turn it. Just because I don't think your neighbor. is trying to destroy your life by playing music, you get them saying, but if we don't know each other, we're afraid they'll yell at us. They might be armed. Who knows? Yes, yes, it becomes, it will. But now, to your point. Now the next generation hasn't even met people in person. They haven't even. They've never had a conflict in person. Yeah.

And so they live in a world where they go, oh, no, you just report. for offensive content, report for, you know, report, report, report. But they themselves have never actually said to. another human being, hey, would you mind not doing that? That's right. There's a really interesting observation about America from Alexis de Tocqueville, you know, the French sociologist or aristocrat, but he, who traveled in America in the 1830s and he wrote Democracy in America, which many American kids used to read in middle school.

And de Tocqueville observes that in America, it's the most amazing thing when a town when they need. to build a bridge over the stream, they need to build a school or a hospital. The townspeople get together and somebody figures is going to lead it, and they figure out how to raise the money and then they do it. Whereas in France we wait for the king to do it. And in Britain, you know, they wait for the nobles to do it. And this is an amazing thing about America. And this is why the whole, the whole Ben Franklin. thing, like, let's start institutions, there's a problem.

Let's let's solve it. And this is part of what made America amazing and special and different. is that we had such a vast country and such a weak central government. that you couldn't really count on government. So that was part of the American character. But now we're we're blocking children from developing that. We're blocking children from having the ability to say, hey, we've got a problem. Let's figure out how to solve this. Yeah, let's just call on the authorities. So again, once again, we're preparing our kids for authoritarianism, not for democracy. I wanted to, talk more about girls.

Yeah. Please go back to that. And the thing that really leapt out to me, and I knew this into it intuitively, because I think social media has destroyed millennial women's sense of self-esteem. And the reason a lot of us are getting certain surgeries and Botox. and because we're like when our kids were like, oh, I feel like I look bad, let me fix it. We have the disposable income to fix it. I want to talk a lot about the self-harm that we're seeing about. with girls, and their exposure to certain. images on social media is affecting their body image.

And you mentioned another thing about role models, basically, like what. were you telling girls to look to via Instagram, etc.. Can you talk more about that? Because I was really struck by it. Yeah, yeah. So for girls, the central harm, the most important harm comes through social media. And so one way to think about this is if you're a company and you want to trap. girls, what you would do is you would say, hey, here's social information. Do you want to see what so-and-so said about so-and-so? Do you want to see who's friends with who, who's dating who?

So that's much more appealing to girls, right? That's right. Girls, girls and women have a more developed sense of social relationships. They have a map in their head, you know? So a common joke was like, you know, a lot of men have to, you know, say, honey, how do I know that person like my friend? I know so so girls, they're more interested in it. They're more socially savvy. And so they all rush onto Instagram, especially around 2012. And now they're in it. Okay. But once they're in it and this is pushing out. real relationships, it's pushing out gossiping with two friends in person.

What are they looking at? They're looking at photos of each other who are often enhanced. or at least carefully selected to look at their best. So they so on average, the average woman is below average, at least compared to what she sees. Yeah. And so and that's the healthy stuff. Just seeing your friends. Okay. Then there's all the influencers. Kids need role models. I have a whole chapter in the book on puberty. Part of what's happening at puberty. is you're making the transition from child to adult. And so you're looking desperately for role models. I'm a girl.

How do I become a woman? Oh, I should, you know, I dress this way, I wear makeup, and if girls are. exposed to inappropriate influencers, this is why we now have nine and ten year. old girls going to Sephora buying, euthanizing, anti-aging. Yeah. That's right. So completely insane. So, so just exposing girls to all these models that show them. what matters about you is your looks, what matters about you, your skin, your hair, your breasts. That's what matters. And that's what you have to be conscious of. This is a terrible thing.

to do to girls during the most difficult period of their lives. But it gets darker. So suppose a girl wants to be thin because there's so much pressure to be thin. So she types in something about dieting on Instagram or TikTok, and many reporters and attorneys general and law enforcement agents have done this. You create an account, you say you're a 13 year old girl. You say, give me up on dieting, and before you know it, you're getting eating disorder stuff. You know, like no food tastes as good as being thin. Yeah. The new mantra is lean is law, which is coming.

This law, that's what they say. What does that mean? Lean is law like being lean is the thing that you have to adhere to. That's the that's the new thing. They say. Yeah, right. Oh yeah. So one is the what is it. Nothing. Taste as good as skin. You feel that. Thank you. That's when I was trying to remember. Yeah. So this is a really sick thing to do to girls. And at the same time, the screen based life is causing them to be more obese. So we have a whole generation that I think the average is 12 minutes. of vigorous exercise. a day and 8 to 10 hours of screen time a day, not including school.

Yeah, the phone based child is making them heavier, while at the same time. telling the girls you have to be thinner, which is almost impossible to do. The other thing that is important about girls. is that they're more emotionally connected. They're more emotionally savvy. They, they pick up more when someone is feeling. something but doesn't express it, whereas boys are a little more clueless. So the point is, boys are on together. They're not really picking up each other's emotions, they're just laughing about, you know, sports or war or sex or funny videos.

When girls get on, they're just much more sensitive to the emotions. being expressed, and they take on each other's emotions more. And I think this can explain a mystery in the data. When we graph out all of these mental illness stats, the boys are doing worse too, no question about it. But the boys curves are gradual with the girls. It's stable from the 90s on most things through 2011 and then 2012. Is it like a hockey stick? And it goes up very sharply. Yeah. And I think it's because before then the girls.

were connecting on their flip phones and then getting together in person. And it's perfectly healthy when you get a sudden movement. of everyone onto social media, and now you've got all this social comparison, all this people expressing anxiety, and if you're expressing anxiety, I'm going to be more anxious. So I think that's why we see such a sudden change for the girls. Is the is the contagion of emotions. don't go anywhere because we got more. What now after this?

The mums. and dads listening to this at home, they're panicking now. They're looking at. They can't be like everyone. This kid, the boy is never going to get a job. And the girls are going to have an eating disorder. What can they do? Like what? What are the protective measures? Thank you for pulling me back from the doom and gloom. Because I can go on forever. Oh, no. I like doing fine, but you know. Okay, so let's hope that nobody tuned out before this point of the conversation. So here's here's what I can say with some confidence. The brain is still pretty plastic until the early 20s.

Okay. In puberty. So the brain is changing. very rapidly in the first couple of years, and it's growing very rapidly, but then it reaches full size, almost full size by about age six. And after that the game is not growth. The game is like which neurons. are going to wire up to which which neurons are going to disappear. And so they're tuning up, with cultural input. And so, and especially speeds up in early puberty, I want everybody. to really focus on early puberty, try to protect your kids during that period.

But suppose your kid is 15. She or he has already been on the video games. The the the social media. You know, one possibility is that the changes could be long lasting. It is possible that if you went through puberty this way, it could change things in ways that are lasting. We don't we don't know. But here's what I can say for sure. When kids take steps. to regain control of their attention, they get miraculous results. And I know this because I teach a class at New York University. I'm a professor in the business school there, and I teach.

one of my classes called flourishing, and it's 35 undergraduates. They're mostly sophomores, around 19 years old. They all spend too much time on their phones. And the project is you have to over the course of the semester, you have to change yourself in a way that will improve your happiness. and flourishing by the end of the semester. So a lot of them work on their phone habits. And I say, if you're spending three hours a day. or more on social media, you have to work on this one. because there's no point doing anything else. And the ones who are doing a lot of social media. and some of like 5 or 6 hours just on TikTok,

when they move it off their phone. and onto their computer, they get a lot of relief because way down. And then if they take it off the computer and just stop, especially for TikTok, they get they tell these miraculous stories like, I can do my homework now. I have. the it's not just that I have enough time is that I can actually focus on it. And I have more time with my friends, and we're doing fun things. and I'm sleeping better. And so what I can say for sure to parents whose kids are late teens is it's. not too late, but they have to regain control of their attention.

They have to largely get off of social media. I'm not going to say that boys shouldn't play video games at all, but I any just keep an eye on their dopamine circuits. Anything they're doing every day for an hour or two, there's a risk. that it's changing them in ways that make everything else more boring. So do not give up hope. It's hard to do it yourself. So, you know, to say to your 17 year old daughter, you need to get off social media even though all your friends are still on it. That's a social death sentence. Can be very hard to persuade your girl to do that.

So the trick is do it in a group. And that's why the class is so successful, because they're all supporting it. They're all doing it. And then they sometimes they go out together. So is that like connecting with other parents and being like, hey, whether it's at your school, at the gymnastics club, being like, hey, I'm doing this experiment, will you join me? That's right. Especially when you kids are younger. You know, we all know the parents of our kids friends. because we arrange pick ups and birthday parties and all that. So if you get a group of friends, the parents all agree to do this, we're going to follow the four norms. that I lay out in the book.

Then it's actually much easier. It's a lot more fun. Yeah. Can you say before norms because we haven't yet got into that. So the four norms to roll back the phone based childhood are pretty simple. They are first, no smartphone before high school or age 14. You want to communicate with your kid, give them a flip phone. Give them a basic phone. Give them a gab phone, a pinwheel phone. There's all kinds of options that are. that don't have a browser or don't have social media. I think the way to think about is this across the Western world, we all have our previous iPhone in a drawer someplace,

and we all give that to our two year old. I just saw an incredible study. It found that 40% of American two year olds have their own iPad. And so we're just giving. this advanced technology to two year olds. Don't you know why that is? Because if they use your iPad, it gets grubby. They crack the screen. Guys, there's a reason for it, but it's terrible. Okay, but we do it. We do it. I think a large part of it is because we all discovered just given the iPad. Yeah, it's the it's a digital pacifier.

It's a pacifier. Yes. It's like giving them a little bit of okay, sometimes the iPad babysitter. That's right. So it's very effective. But I think it's also very damaging. So my point is don't start with that stuff. I mean they're going to have that eventually. You know, give them, you know, if they're in third. or fourth grade, you want to send them out into the world, give them a phone watch, not an Apple Watch that has too much stuff on it, but just a phone watch I gave my daughter, I think was called the Gizmo Gadget. She could call three phone numbers. That was it. And that was great for sending around the world. So start real simple now in high school then,

you know many will want to wait later, but I'm just trying to propose a norm. What if there's a norm that we all adopt as a minimum. that would have so much benefit for all of us. So again, the first norm. No smartphone for high school, second norm, no social media till 16. And here's where what we really need is a law implementing a minimum age. And Australia has done that for us. It's it'll it'll take effect November and let's hope it works smoothly. And then a lot of countries will follow it. But anyway, try to keep your kids off from opening a social media account, especially TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat, until they're 16.

The third norm is phone free schools. If you can text your child during the day during class, that's a problem. That means that all the kids are texting each other and everyone has to check. because nobody wants to be the one kid at lunch. you didn't know about the thing that happened in the third period. So, phone schools must take the phone in the morning, put it in a locker or a locked pouch, a laundry pouch, or just a manila envelope in a in the front of homeroom. Where? By the teacher's desk.

But take the phones away in the morning and phone watches and AirPods, everything. Give it back when they leave. And that way they pay attention to the teacher and the other kids. That's what we want. The fourth norm is the hardest, and we've already been talking about the fourth. norm is far more free play, independence and responsibility in the real world. Because the point here isn't just, you know, let's take away the screens. The point is, let's give them back an amazing childhood. They need fun. They need interaction. They need to wrestle, put their arms around each other,

laugh together, eat together. So we've got to give them back more time together. And that's hard because we don't trust our neighbors anymore. It's hard to just say, go out and play and we don't have third spaces. I, you know, we don't have spaces with a lot of cities, don't. have public transportation, I think like, but but can I tell you a secret, though? Yeah. And I agree with you on this. Because I like, really like trying to figure out how we can solve this issue, especially after we talk to to to Robert Putnam on the podcast. I think.

the truth is that we think we don't have the third spaces, but we it's it's just because we've made every space a private space. Like, I was just thinking this, walking around like part of Brooklyn. the other day, I've noticed a dip in how many block parties there are. Yeah, just that was a simple event where you close the streets. Yeah. You agreed neighbor and the end neighbor at the end. We all agree. On Saturdays we are going to close our block. and everyone's going to just open their door and like,

walk out and the kids can kick a ball and can hit the ball. Great. And I've seen a few parts of New York where they do it now. Like this is like in Manhattan by the way, like Chelsea somewhere there. Okay. I remember. driving one day and I was irritated because I was in the car. trying to get to an airport and the road was closed. But I love the fact that, like, I saw someone hitting a ball, a baseball, and then people running the whole street was just closed and I was like, oh, we've been tricked into thinking the thing that's right outside. our door is not a third space. No, but that's not is that space? Why is it third spaces are like actual.

I'm talking about parks. Yes. They have decimated. I'm with you. And I'm telling you that when I grew up, they didn't exist. Yeah, black kids couldn't go to a library. Oh, yeah. There was no park. Yeah, there was not during apartheid. None of this exists. But I have the full childhood that you're talking about. Okay. Because the third space was the street. Street? Okay, I get you. if your grandmother travel around the world, sometimes you don't see girls, but you always see boys playing in the street. Yes. The third space is the street. Yes. That's right. So you go, you tell the kids to get rid of these moves.

I would let my son play in the street if Americans. Exactly. Cause, you know. And like, if he runs in front of the car. Yes, but that's what I mean by closed the street. Yeah, yeah. So I go, I would love to live in a society where we go like we used to do this on. I wish I could, like, take you to the picture in my brain. We as the kids ran the streets as if we were adults. So we would close the street with you. Take the responsibility. Yeah, we would take bricks. and we would put them at the beginning of each road and close each road.

Yeah. And then when a car would need to turn into the street. because this is like a road, you know, it's not a public. I'm not like main roads. So if you're listening to the highways and informal thing. Yes. I'm not I'm not a highway. I'm not I'm not a main road. I'm talking about like your neighborhood. Yeah. Your neighborhood. It was a township, but it was still a neighborhood. We put bricks there. A car would need to turn. There would be kids stationed at every corner. And you'd shout, you know, car. And then you'd run there together. You'd move the bricks everywhere.

We had the road. Yeah. The car would drive either through where it needs to go to. or it would, like stop at the house that is stopping it. And then we'd put the bricks back on the road. and then we'd continue playing. And because I agree with you, I'm not saying. like go play in the street, but I'm saying sometimes we look at problems in life. and they they seem insurmountable because we're looking at them the wrong way. Okay. No phones and no this and no. And where now? Are we going to build third speed? How much is a third space? Where do you get it? How do we build a park? How do we get permits to guys? Everyone, if you are lucky enough to have a house,

if you're lucky enough to be renting a space, if you. you literally have the third space right outside your door. That's right. You just have to claim it back. Yeah, you literally. just have to claim it back collectively, I think I think that's really good. because what you're saying is we have to be much more deliberate about this. Might parents grew up in New York City, which is very similar. They play stickball in the street, the cars coming a step back. Exactly. So we can't just say to our kids, you know, you're nine years old, get out of here. Don't come back till the streetlights come on. Don't come back till dinner. In some parts of America, you can. You can do that.

There are rural parts or places where people trust their neighbors. But especially for those of us in cities, we're going to have to be. a lot more deliberate. What you're saying is an example of of a community or a couple of leaders. taking a step to make something happen, right, right here in Chelsea. So that's great. I want to bring in here an organization that I co-founded called Let Grow. If you have young kids, go to Let Grow, dawg. It's it's run. by a wonderful woman named Lenore Skenazy, who wrote a book called Free-range kids. It's all about how do we help Americans actually let go and let their kids grow.

with these sorts of experiences. And and so we have two really simple programs. The simplest of all is called play Club. And what it is, is a sports based around schools and school playgrounds. In a lot of places, parents don't trust anything, but they do trust the school playground. That's the one place that they will let their kids hang out after school. And so it's so simple. A school just says, okay, one after school activity that you can choose is play club. And so let's say your eldest son, you sign him up for Fridays, let's say.

So he's part of Play Club on Friday, along with 10 or 20 other kids who are always there on Friday. And there's an adult nearby. There is an adult around if someone gets hurt, but there's nobody blowing a whistle, there's nobody supervising, there's nobody directing. And so you were talking about your kid, your one year, one year of being overscheduled. Yeah. Luna has, you know, a diva. She's got a lot going on. Okay. But when she starts, when she starts school, especially, say, kindergarten, first grade, they love running around in the playground. So.

So play club is so simple. It doesn't cost anything. Okay? You need to have, like, one staff person stay after. Yeah. If the results are so amazing, teachers often volunteer to do it because it's so wonderful to watch. So just using the local school playground. Now some schools in New York City, I talk with a principal, up in the Bronx. He said there is no outdoor space, so there are. It's not that. Well, that's a lot of New York City in general, even the fancy schools, by the way. They usually have a little sense. They have they have some. Yeah, they'll have some. Yeah. But I'm saying like a lot of them, you'll be shocked at how.

this is just like it's the city's the curse of a city. Yeah, but but so we have to be intentional and clever. We've got to find spaces for our kids to play without adults directing them. And it's going to be tricky, but we can do it. And there's a you know, this is an enormous need. I teach in a business school and I really come to see, you know, entrepreneurs are not saying, how can I get rich, rich, rich. They're saying, what? Where something that needs doing. Where's the where's there a market for something? Where's there a desire? One of the biggest desires in the world is parents who want to give their kids.

a better childhood, but they don't know where to do it. There's there's no third space. So, in Britain, there's a company. I think it's called the Den. And they have. They have these, I suppose it's for, I dunno if it's for profit or nonprofit. I should look that up. But, it's a place that routines can hang out, and there are games and there's food and there are adults around. We used to call that a youth club. Do you remember something like like, but those can come back. I'll come back. You. Just so I think we have to really double down on. that community is not going to happen naturally the way it used to.

And we have to be more deliberate. Some of the things ideas you had made me like vibrate a little, vibrating. I know which ideas made you vibrate. I'm realizing that a lot of the things I like critique other parents for. Like I have myself as a projection and I really need to surrender. and be less fearful and anxious about my children in the wild. Like fear of them having an accident or something happening to them. Like, yeah, because you know, when you're.

talking about that unsupervised play, I'm like, oh my God, this kid is going to swing off something in that one, right? That's what we all think is power. And then I'm like, well, you take the swing of something. and they do break their arm and like you wouldn't because I think. a lot of parents are catastrophic catastrophizing. Yes. Because we are in this world of my father and his brothers survived a civil war, the Biafra war, they had far more danger and risk than I can ever imagine. And I'm afraid to let my five year old play with his Legos alone, because I'm not.

I'm worried the 19 month old is going to swallow it. You know, I'm like. And so I think that because my world is so our worlds are really so safe. and sanitized. They really are. We don't have that sense of proportion. Yeah. And then because of that I'm afraid of like the thing. that's really basic and like, I actually got a therapy for you. Okay, I've got so this is our second program at Life Grow Again. It's so simple. It's called the let grow experience. Okay. Here's all it is. It's made for schools. But you can do it by yourself at home. So imagine you've got an elementary school.

And imagine that you say. all the third graders are going to do the let grow experience. You give me a piece of paper with instructions to take it home. It says, work with it. Work with your parents. to pick something. that you think you can do by yourself that you've never done before. You're going to do it with your parent's permission, but without your parents. Let me give you some examples, like maybe you think that you have a dog and you've never walked it by yourself. You know, your eight years old, you've never been like around the block. with the dog. But mama, I think I can do that. It's so funny you said that thing about the dog.

when I was like, right, great, I'll let you do it. But I'll put an AirTag in your shoes, right? Yeah. You know what? If it takes that to let you do it, do it. start that way or make make breakfast for the family. Yeah. Because one of the things that happened around 2011 is teenagers began much more, to likely to agree with this statement. My life feels useless. Our kids are they feel useless. All they do is consume content. They don't do anything. And so the Lego experiences do something new, useful.

And, two amazing things happen. The first is, you know, let's say you send your kid out, there's a store three blocks away. Your your 8 or 9 year old can go get a quart of milk and come back. The first thing is they are jumping up and down when they return. They are so excited. You know, they did something and it's. And the key is that it's a little scary at first. because they've never done it before. But that's how we get over our fears. We you get over your fears by experiencing a stimulus.

Nothing bad happens. And then the next time you have less fear. So the kids are changed and the kids have a sense of competence and capability. But the unexpected effect or maybe actually this was planned by the. by Lenore and others who invented it is the parents fear goes down. because and you know, because like the first time we had my wife. and I, the first time we let our son walk to school, I tell this story in the book. We only let our son walk to school in fourth grade, meets nine. because we were friends with the Norse Kid.

Easy other you know, kids were walking to school at nine. Even at ten, even fifth grade. It started in New York City. It starts more at sixth grade. But we were a little. early on it, but the first time we did it was terrifying. And, you know, we tracked him. We gave him my old iPhone because he didn't know any better. And we tracked him and we were like, oh my God, is he going to make it anywhere? We're watching it. He must. He's at Seventh Avenue. But that's a really complicated intersection. because you can make it is going to make it. We were really nervous. Yeah. You know, and even I know all this stuff, but this is, you know, I'm a parent. Like, this is what we feel. And so.

So then the second day we were just a little nervous. And the third day not at all. And that was it. We never tracked them again. Yeah. So the let go experience it. So if you do it in a school. imagine all the third graders in a town are doing this. So beginning September. you see a whole bunch of eight year olds walking to the store, and maybe they're together and laughing, or maybe they're alone. And once you see a lot, but you realize like, oh, okay, I guess eight year olds. walk to stores now. Nobody's seen that since 1992. Yeah, yeah. You know, but. but if you do it as a community, suddenly you change the arms of the community.

I love that you're saying that because I was thinking about. how can I do it with my friends, like the people who are in my community, but it's like a collaboration between not just the parents, but schools. Is the shopkeeper saying, by the way, oh, there's gonna be some eight year. olds coming in. They may still oh, but they're going to buy some. Some of the eight year olds are not going to know. But what I think I think shoplifting is a good experience to have and to be. I think being caught to be cool. Yeah. I think that being cool, I mean, you learn like,

yeah, it's punitive and then you don't you don't eventually steal a car one day. Right. But like whatever it is you do, you say you tell the shopkeeper. there's going to be some kids coming in like it just requires you to speak to. That's different stakeholders. That's right. We have to be more deliberate. And so that's a good point. I was emphasizing like, you can do it yourself as one family. It's better if you do it with a few families. It's best if you do it by the whole school. However you do it. I, I had thought before and I sometimes say you might even go. talk to the chief of police and say, what do you think about this?

We want to do this. Do you think this is okay? Because if the. because if he warned the police ahead of time. and they're probably going to be supportive. if you talk to him ahead of time, then there's not much risk. You know, if some nosy neighbor calls the police, they're going to say, it's okay, we know about this. But I hadn't thought of stopping the shopkeepers, so that's a great idea. If there's a store that your kid can walk to, talk to them and say, is it okay if I send my kid and he are, they're going to love it. Yeah. This is amazing. This is really. and I mean, there's. so many more we could speak about, but luckily that's why there's a book. Yeah. And I really encourage everyone to read it because I think if you don't have kids,

I think it's still applies to you as somebody who does have a phone, who might struggle with community, who might have anxiety, who might not even realize how much these latent effects have affected them. If I could just say just first, if you don't have kids, there's a whole chapter in the book. on spiritual degradation. Yeah. All of us are feeling it's affecting us all. So the book, I hope, does speak to all ages. Yeah. So there is a movement brewing around the world. I love it. Parents are sick and tired of this. They are revolting. Gen Z is sick and tired of it.

They see what's happening. They are revolting. So even though this problem seemed insurmountable a year ago, what we're finding is the will to solve it is so widespread. that people are coordinating, people are acting together. So if we act together, I think we can beat this. I think we can restore. a fun, exciting, play based childhood in time for your kids. Oh, amazing. And the husbands. I Jonathan Heights, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Great to see you both.

What now with Trevor. Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show was executive produced by Trevor Noah, Thomas Yamin and Jody Avigan. Our senior producer is just Heckel. Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music mixing and mastering by Hannah Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now?