Jonathan Haidt - "The Anxious Generation" | The Daily Show

Jonathan, I see people walking all over Brooklyn holding this book. This is the great rewiring. Tell me. What's the big rewiring? Then something happened to young people born after 1995. Suddenly, in the early 2010s, their mental health collapsed and rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketed. Self-harm has increased by 150% among younger adolescent girls. Suicide has increased by 50%. Something happened in the early 2010s and my plot in the book is a tragedy in two acts. The first act is the loss of playful childhood. It's what anyone over 40 in this audience had. You went out with your friends after school.

There was no one supervising. You had to learn to resolve conflicts, to face adversity. That's what children have had for tens of hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being a mammal. You play. You develop skills. We started cracking down on that, locking kids up in the '90s, not letting them out. So we are restricting what they need most, which is gambling, from the 90s to the 2000s, but mental health does not collapse then. It's actually quite stable. Then we get to the second act, which is the arrival of telephone-based childhood. And the thing is, in 2010, everyone had a flip phone.

The iPhone had come out, but most teens had a flip phone, no front camera, no social media on the phone, no high-speed data. And by 2015, everyone will have all those other things. Now, suddenly, everyone has a smartphone, a front camera, high-speed Internet, and social media, especially Instagram, on the phone. And almost as if someone flipped a switch in 2013, girls in the United States and many other countries suddenly become very

anxious

, depressed, and self-destructive. And that's what the book is about. Something changed between 2010 and 2015 and I'm trying to explain what it is. You're saying that in the second act, they introduced Chekhov's cell phone and...

Yeah. And we know what ends up happening after that. We look at the teenage brain. Yes. How dumb and stupid is a 13 year old's brain? I would say it's not dumb or stupid at all. I would say it is in the process of being remodeled and is still in the early phases. So children have a brain, which is actually almost full size. By age six, the brain reaches almost its full size. In fact I'll check it out. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right, but continue. You must be right. Yes, thanks. The rest of childhood is not about growth.

It's about choosing which neurons survive and which are eliminated. It's about connecting, and that happens slowly in childhood. But then, around age 11 or 12 for girls, puberty begins, a couple of years later for boys, and there is this massive, rapid rewiring of the brain to sort of lock into an adult configuration. It starts more in the back of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is the last part to develop. And so, around age 13, children's emotional areas are being reconfigured. They have the beginnings of sexual impulses and lust. They are very emotional, passionate, but they don't have the self-control to say: no, I'm not going to spend even a fifth hour on TikTok.

I'm going to keep going because I can't stop. JORDAN: When is that going to end, because I'm looking forward to that happening soon? At 47, 48? When does that part of my brain shut down and I can hang up the phone? Well, in your case, I can't really say, but for most people... Buy the sequel. I understand. I understand. Smart, smart. 25 is when the frontal cortex finishes rewiring. OK. I'll tell you when that happens. Well, it's interesting how there's a lot of talk about not only are these phones coming and changing the way children think and the way society thinks, but there's talk about raising a child, an antifragile child.

And in this book he makes some bold claims, one of which is here. You claim that this rotating playground carousel is the best playground equipment ever invented. Defend yourself. JONATHAN HAIDT: Okay. JORDAN: First of all... - Okay. - How come you don't...? What is better? I mean, a wobbler. It's just a metaphor of you're up, you're down, you know? That's what life is about, you know? Work with someone else. One is up. One is down. There is no way to stay in the middle. Yes Yes Yes. The key... - Wow. OK. Well, I don't have any citations to prove my claim.

The psychological thing I'm trying to get at is emotion. This is something I talk a lot about in chapter three: that children need to play, but above all they need risky games. Children literally need to face risks. If you don't give them risk, they will find a way to get it. They will climb the walls. They will climb trees. If they skateboard, they will skateboard down the stairs. Children need to have some real risk. And so yes, you are right. A seesaw, if it is very large and you could collapse, there is a risk. JORDAN: Why are you trying to hurt these children?

Well, because you have to put children in a situation where they can get hurt because only then do they learn, every day, not to get hurt. And what we've done since the '90s is put them in places so safe that there's no chance of getting hurt, which means they don't learn not to get hurt. The human program of evolution is that children face risks. They're a little scared. They have to be a little scared. They get over it and then they're more confident the next time, and that's the path to adulthood, but we stopped that in the '90s.

We said, no more of that. We will keep you overprotected forever and then send you to universities like mine, where you will enter not yet ready for an independent life. JORDAN: Now, we take that and then we also... fast forward to this modern era where kids are obsessed with phones. They are on the internet. They are on social networking sites. Is there an argument, though, that the antifragile way that kids need to... is not to get away from this, but that they need to be exposed to the risk that comes with the Internet? I mean, this is the world they're going to be born into anyway.

Shouldn't they learn to handle this at a young age? In theory, yes, but let's analyze, say, sexuality. We want them to learn to have sex. Does that mean we should give them a head start at eight years old? There are certain things that are not appropriate at that time. To be clear, I didn't say that. This wasn't... This is... that's theoretically. That was me. JORDAN: Yes, in theory. Hypothetically. JORDAN: Okay. Yes Yes. Boy. Oh. I've heard this before. In theory, why do you say we need to protect them less in the real world, but you say we need to protect them more in the virtual world?

Isn't that contradictory? You are welcome. You are welcome. Children... we are mammals. Children need to go out to play, fight, hug and touch each other in nature. That's how many of us grew up. You play outside. And when you put children in an environment where everything happens through the phone, as soon as you give your child a phone, they will use it, now the latest statistics are about nine hours a day, they are on their phone, and many Of them, he is there almost all the time because they are always checking. That blocks time in nature, time with friends.

Time with friends has decreased 65% since 2010. Kids need time with friends. Sending text messages and emojis doesn't pay. It's done instead of spending time with friends, and I think that's why as soon as they moved on to social media and the kids moved on to multiplayer video games, they felt so alone. Loneliness emerged along with depression and anxiety. JORDAN: It's interesting. You talk a little bit about, in childhood, discovery mode versus defensive mode. And even in a world of arts. I've always done improv comedy, and I think the mentality of that is a mentality of discovery, right?

And that's why you are constantly looking for something. It was interesting to read this in terms of how to raise a child and how to put him in that open mindset, but it seems remarkably reflective of how society feels right now, and I don't know if that's partly due to our connection to the networks. social and anxiety that exists there. But do you also see a parallel there: that, without realizing it, we also become defensive because of these devices that we carry in our pockets and in our hands? Well, right now it seems like everything is going to hell because it really is.

Oh, it's fine. Yes. It's not just my phone telling me that. But it was not like that. JORDAN: It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that in 2012. So the fact that this happened in so many countries at the same time, and a lot of people say, oh, well, the global financial crisis. That must be what it was. There were real economic difficulties. Yes, that was in 2008. Why don't the numbers start going up until 2012, 2013, when the economy is getting better and better? So you can't say that things were so terrible in Obama's second term compared to his first that suddenly teenagers, especially teenage girls, fell off a cliff.

That just doesn't work. So if all of this had started in 2020, we could say, well, yeah, you know, COVID and all the craziness that's going on, but this started in 2012. There's no other explanation that anyone has proposed for why it happened in so many countries. and they are the ones that affect girls the most. JORDAN: It was interesting. You have a chapter here that also discusses faith, and I'm an atheist. I know you mentioned you're also an atheist, but you're talking to this god-shaped hole. I think it's a quote from Blaise Pascal. A god-shaped hole in everyone's heart.

In every human heart. In every human heart, right? And that this lack of religion is something that is affecting childhood in some way. And again, as an atheist, I always have my strength up when that happens. You said you were one. Then you earned a pass. JONATHAN HAIDT: Okay. But this lack of religious institutions in this modern media landscape, how do you see it as something that is affecting childhood? So the way to think about this as an atheist without getting defensive is... JORDAN: Good luck. No. I have been working on this professionally for many years.

Finally I got it. - Let's see it. OK. If we look at it descriptively and psychologically, religious people are a little happier than non-religious people. This has been the case for a long time, just as married people are happier than single people. On average, your mileage may vary. But people need to be linked, locked into a community. I am a great admirer of Emile Durkheim, the sociologist. He is my favorite thinker of all time. When we are not tied, locked up, we are free, but that does not make us happy. We have nothing to oppose. We have no sense of meaning.

It is as if you are trying to raise a plant, not in the ground, but simply in the air. It simply cannot be done. And so, religious children are rooted in traditions, faith, rituals and community. They go to church every Sunday. Jewish children have Shabbat. They literally can't use electronic devices for a day. They were always happier than the secular kids, but what happens after 2012 is pretty noticeable on all the charts. Religious children become a little more

anxious

and depressed. Secular children become much more anxious and depressed. So what I'm saying is that, especially if you're an atheist, you're going to have to work a lot harder.

You will have to be much more intentional about rooting your child in stable social relationships. If you give them an iPad, then it goes to a phone, and it's this whole network, that network, interacting with strangers, weirdos, robots and AI. That's not a community. That's crazy. Maybe it's easier to make them believe in angels. So take away the iPad? Yes. JORDAN: I was going to say. That iPad is there. I want... You have written many very interesting books. The book you wrote before, The Coddling of the American Mind, which you co-wrote, sort of looked at securityism.

He looked at the university landscape. And now, what we see on college campuses, are these protests that are breaking out. I wonder, as someone who closely observed that and the ways in which students moved through it, what you see now on these campuses. Yes. So, you know, I don't want to comment on the substance of the protest. This is a complicated matter. I respect people everywhere. We all agree: On campus, we all agree that students have a constitutionally protected right to protest, but I see two things happening. One is protest, and this is what Greg Lukianoff, my co-author, first noticed in 2014: the shouting of speakers, the activism on campus that was really illiberal, intimidating, and prevented people from speaking.

It was based on arguments about fragility, about my mental health or her mental health. We cannot allow this person on campus because it would be dangerous. It will be harmful. Speech is violence. So that's a new idea that's coming up with Generation Z because they haven't been given an antifragile childhood. They have been given too much therapy. They believe everything is trauma. So we see that from 2014,20... it wasn't there in 2012. It was very new in 2014, 2015. And then the protesters now... I don't know the details, but just one thing I read this tomorrow. Someone sent me a quote from a student at Harvard where she was at camps, and she said, if Harvard cares so much about my mental health, why don't they just divest themselves and do all the things we're demanding?

Yes, Harvard, do this because our mental health is at stake. That's something new, and it simply won't get them very far in political life in the future once they leave campus. I read this book. I want to do this right. How can I raise my helicopter child correctly? What are some tactical things I can take away from this? Well, you just take them out of the helicopter. No. JORDAN: That's what it is. OK. I'm sorry. Learn to fly, right? That's how antifragile. That's how it is. For birds, it works. I guess not for us. OK. Then the key to the solution.

Although a lot of my books, a lot of my writing is very dark about things going to hell in a lot of ways, but this one, we can figure it out in a year or two because the reason it got so bad quickly is because We are caught in what is called a social trap. It is a collective action trap. The reason we all feel like we have to give our kid a smartphone when he's 10 is because everyone else did it, and your kid says, you know, dad, I'm the only one. I'm staying out. We're all doing that, and the reason my students spend so much time on TikTok, they say, is because everyone else is doing it and I have to keep up.

I have to know what's happening. So we're all caught up in this. What that means is that if we decide to escape, we can escape together. That's why I propose in the book: there are many suggestions, but four rules that will break these traps of collective action. First, no smartphones before high school. Just eliminate this from the lives of elementary and middle school kids. Send them. Give them a flip phone, a dumb phone, a watch phone so you can text them, but don't give them the entire internet, including strangers all over the world, trying to access them sexually.

This is just crazy. So no smartphones until high school. The second is not using social media until you're 16. The things that are posted on social media, the things that you're exposed to, like I just found out about the cat in a blender video that was popular a while ago. JORDAN: I don't know. It's exactly... it's exactly what it seems. This is just part of childhood. It's hardcore porn, animal cruelty and beheading videos. So let's at least wait until they're 16 before they see those things. JORDAN: I was going to say that's the right age to be looking at a cat in a blender.

Is that 16? It's like, oh, you can drive a car and, hey, why don't you look at this? Yes. - Yes. What I'm looking for here is not the optimal age. It is the minimum age that we could all really reach together, because that is the key. If most of us do this, we will solve the problem. The third norm is schools without telephones. This is the most powerful one we can do instantly. So if you're watching this and you have kids who go to a school that allows them to carry their phone in their pocket, pick up a copy of my book for the principal.

I do not have videos. Send them a video of my talks on schools without phones. All schools must stop free phone calls by September. Phones don't just make children feel anxious and alone. They make them less intelligent. Test scores have been falling around the world since 2012. Once kids bring a phone to school, they do this. They are not listening to the teacher. So get rid of phones in schools. And then the fourth rule is a lot more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world. We have to... so it's not just about removing, removing. They have to be given a real childhood, the kind of childhood that we older people remember.

So if we love our children, the best we can give them is a truly human childhood. And if we do it together, we can achieve it in a year or two. JORDAN: I love it. Just give your kids some space, a beer, and a glass bag, and they'll be fine. It is a fascinating and important read. The Anxious Generation is now available. Jonathan Haidt.