Latest / Question Everything / A Gen Z Reporter Questions Jonathan Haidt, author of ‘The Anxious Generation’

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A Gen Z Reporter Questions Jonathan Haidt, author of ‘The Anxious Generation’ · Question Everything

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hey, y'all. So as you know, if you're a regular
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: around these parts, we've been covering the major trials that
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: have been decided this year against social media companies in
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: California and in New Mexico. If you haven't heard these
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: stories from over the past few months, I really encourage
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you to go check them out. I'm proud of the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: reporting we've been doing. We'll link to a short list
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of them in the show notes, including our story last
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: week from the second phase of New Mexico's case against Meta.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: My colleagues Zach St. Louis and Robin Simeon went to
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: watch part of the trial and confronted Meta's lawyers in
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: fancy suits in the hallways of the courthouse, trying to
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: ask them why they were so adamantly fighting the state's
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: recommendations to make kids safer. And for this week, I
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: wanted to share a special interview with you that I
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: heard on another podcast that deals with these issues of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: child safety and of liability for social media companies from
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a really unique perspective. It's between Ava Smithing, a podcast
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: host and advocate for tech safety, and NYU social psychologist
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Haidt, who wrote that massively popular book, The Anxious Generation,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: where he argued for limitations on screen time and social
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: media for kids. It's played a huge part in the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: movement to ban smartphones.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: And social media.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I've heard a bunch of people interview Jonathan Haidt over
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the years. New Yorker editor David Remnick, Bill Maher on HBO,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Stephen Bartlett on Diary of a CEO. But I've never
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: heard an interview like this one with Ava. Ava is
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Gen Z. She's in her 20s and had her own
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: dark experience with Instagram, starting when she was 12. She
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: blames it for contributing to the development of an eating disorder.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: And about a year ago, Ava put out an excellent
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: podcast series with the Toronto Star and a production company
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: called Paradigms about social media addiction called Left to Their
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Own Devices. It was so excellent, it was nominated for
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: a Peabody Award. And in late March, just days after
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the big jury verdicts against Meta in New Mexico and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Meta and YouTube in California... Ava interviewed Jonathan Haidt in
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: front of a live audience of academics, parents, young people,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: and social media activists in New York. The energy was
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: palpable after the big legal victories, but also it was
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: interesting to hear Ava question Jonathan. So many of Jonathan
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Haidt's criticisms of social media and his policy recommendations for
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: what to do about them are aimed squarely at young people,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: people of the age Ava recently was. And she has
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: some critiques of his approaches and thinking that she puts
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to Haidt. I hadn't heard him ask these questions by
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: someone close to that age before. Given all the coverage
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: we've been doing, I wanted to share this interview with
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you while we keep putting together more stories and also
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: take a little vacation time. So stick around for this
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: special live taping of Left to Their Own Devices with
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Ava Smithing and Jonathan Haidt. And I really suggest that
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: you listen to the entire Left to Their Own Devices series.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: You can find that wherever you get your podcasts.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: This version of Community.
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: is the only version of community that Gen Z has
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: ever known. What does it do to the mental health
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: of the generation to tell them that the social norms
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: they grew up experiencing are flawed, incredibly dangerous, and wrong?
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: How might that affect them?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Well, what I've found, and we have a lot of
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: survey evidence, is when you talk to older Gen Z
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and you ask them, was this good for you or
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: bad for you? It's much more likely to say bad.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Stick around.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: Hey y'all, it's Ava. So I have a lot to
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: catch you up on. In late March, New Mexico's Attorney
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: General Raul Torres won his state's lawsuit against Meta. A
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: jury found that Meta had engaged in unconscionable trade practices
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: that took advantage of children. And they found tens of
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: thousands of violations. which added up to a $ 375 million
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: penalty against Meta.
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: The first time in American history that a case against
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: a big social media company has gotten all the way
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: to a jury, and they delivered a resounding message. They
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: think this is a dangerous product. They think that Meta's
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: executives lied and mis.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: Then, just a few days later, a jury in a
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: very different case in California determined that Meta and YouTube
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: had addicted a young girl to their platforms.
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: Regardless of whether the children are getting sent pornographic pictures,
• 4:20
  Speaker 6: regardless of whether they're being sexploitated, regardless of those types
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: of issues, just because of the features alone that drive addiction,
• 4:30
  Speaker 6: these companies can be held accountable.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: The lawyer behind that suit was my friend, Laura Marquez Garrett.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: If you haven't heard it yet, we profiled both Raul
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: and Laura in our seventh episode, See You in Court. Now,
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: the tech companies have already said they're going to appeal
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: these decisions.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: So this is far from over.
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: But the fact that two different juries in two different
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: states stood up to big tech like this is a
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: massive first step. But maybe the most important bit of
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: news is that Australia is now four months into their
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: social media ban. And Canada and the U.S. are thinking
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: about following suit. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: that the person behind these bans is Jonathan Haidt. Restricting
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: social media access for kids under 16 is something he
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: explicitly called for in his best-selling book, The Anxious Generation.
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: And governments all around the world are clearly listening. I
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: have mixed feelings about John's work. On the one hand,
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: I don't think anyone has done more for the kids'
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: online safety movement than he has. And for that, I
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: am so beyond grateful. But I think this movement, as
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: it continues to grow, needs laws that address the problem
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: at the root. and that make these platforms safer for everyone.
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: I never got a chance to talk to John about
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: this on the podcast, but a couple of weeks ago,
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: he agreed to chat. So in front of a packed
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: house at the Bollinger Forum at Columbia University, filled with parents, kids,
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: and online safety groups, I sat down with John to
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: talk about whether a better version of social media might
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: be possible.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for coming, John.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: I'm so excited to be here with you, especially in
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: this moment. You've always proposed solutions in your books, specifically
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: a restriction for kids who are under 16 on social media.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: When we have Australia, who is implementing the ban, France
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: implementing the ban, and now the United States and Canada
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: who are considering it, what does this feel like for
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: you to be here, having those ideas you explicitly outlined
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: in The Anxious Generation come to fruition?
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Ava. Well, let me start by saying how it
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: feels to be here in this room. I didn't understand
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: what this event was until like five minutes ago when
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: it was made clear to me that like this isn't
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: just like, oh, people can come here and talk. Like
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: how many of you are actually members of a group
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: that is working to reclaim attention, childhood, anything else? Raise
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: your hand if you're a member of any. OK, so
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: this is amazing. This is basically the Woodstock for the
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: reform movement, for the reclaim movement. And so now I understand,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: you know, my team was like, they were like, they
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: kept wanting to prep me. I was like, what's the
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: big deal? You know, I met Ava, like, we're going
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: to talk. Like, no, this is really, really important because
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: this is the movement of a generation coming to change
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: what I think is the biggest threat to the generation.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: And when I wrote The Righteous, The Anxious Generation, I
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: was thinking of having a chapter addressed to Gen Z,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: but I just felt I couldn't pull it off in
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the right voice. And I realized this is so urgent.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: I just have to reach the teachers, the parents, the legislature.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: I have to reach the adults because we got to
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: get policy change quick. And I was focused on kids,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: especially through puberty. And I wasn't thinking that much about
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: people in their 20s. And so that's why this is
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: so exciting for me, because you're them like you're like
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: you are the most credible people in the whole space,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: because otherwise it's like, you know, 62 year old guy saying,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: you know, kids these days, they know we need to
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: reform them. So anyway, so that's what it feels like
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: to be sitting here in this room. That's what it
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: feels like to be sitting here in this moment. It
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: is beyond thrilling. It is, you know, I've done a
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: lot of social change work in my life. When I
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: was in college, I ran a gun control group in
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: the state of Connecticut, which was completely hopeless. Like we
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: didn't get anything done. And then to be part of
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: this movement where we have changed the world in the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: last couple of years, and especially in the last three months.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So it's like we're right. there, like it is taking off.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: So I, it's like, I walk around thinking like, wow,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: like we did it, but there's so much more to go.
• 8:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: It's amazing.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: And you had a little Freudian slip there where you
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: said the righteous mind. I told you yesterday that that
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: was the book that actually got me into your work.
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: You haven't always been a social media guy. You used
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: to study democracy, but now you say, this is what
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: you're going to spend the rest of your life doing.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: Why is that?
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So first my, my original research is in moral
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: development and moral psychology and then political psychology. So my
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: dissertation was actually on moral development of adolescents. So I
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: actually have been studying adolescent development for my whole career.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: But then I shifted over to democracy. We've got so
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: many problems in this country and social media is a
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: big cause of them. And I wrote this Atlantic article
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: in a book called The Coddling of the American Mind.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: It was about overprotection. That's a big part of the
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: story is just the fact that if you were born
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: after 1995 in the United States, you probably didn't get
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: the freedom that previous generations got. So that's a big
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: piece of this is reclaiming life in the real world.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: So I wrote that book with Greg Lukianoff about overprotection.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: And at the time, we didn't have the data in 2016, 20s.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: We did not have the data to say it's the phones,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: like as a big part of it. But I kept
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: working on it with Gene Twenge and we kept getting
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: data and we kept saying, you know what? Here, so
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: many different kinds of evidence. So once it became clear,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: it was kind of like if you were like the
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: first person on earth to diagnose, you know, this like
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: killer virus that was going to spread. And you're like,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: hey people, this thing is, you know, this is coming.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And everyone's like, nah, you know, it's just a correlation.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: going to pay attention. So Jean and I, and a
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: few others really just, we just sort of geared up for,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: for battle in a sense. I mean, research isn't a battle,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: but the debates and the more I got into it,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: the more I saw what it was doing, the more
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I talked to parents, survivor parents, and young people, the
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: more I realized, of course, democracy is important. I wish
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: I could help make that better, but I don't really
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: know what to do there. But on this issue, we
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: actually have pretty good ideas of what to do and
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: people are doing it. We're doing it. So this is
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: where I can make the most difference in my remaining
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: years on this planet.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: And I really appreciate that urgency. I feel the same
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: necessity with this work.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: I came into it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: I spent a lot of my teenage years with an
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: eating disorder that I largely contribute to Instagram. And I
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: definitely want to come back to what you're talking about
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: with overprotection of kids online. But just to catch everyone
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: up who might has not read The Anxious Generation, Can
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: you outline your core argument for me?
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the core argument is that there's been a great
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: rewiring of childhood. Childhood for millions of years was unsupervised
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: play and activity and kids doing things independently. That's how
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: you learn to be self-governing, self-supervising, how you learn to
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: work out conflicts. And that all ended in the 1990s
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: for interesting sociological reasons. And so we began overprotecting our
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: kids in the real world as though if we let
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: them out of our sight, they will be kidnapped. And
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: At the same time in the 90s, the Internet was
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: coming in. Personal computers were coming in. Kids loved them.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: And we all looked at the, you know, we looked
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: at them and said, oh, well, OK, she's spending her
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: afternoon on a computer. Maybe she'll be the next Bill Gates. Well,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I maybe shouldn't say that anymore, but I'm sorry. I shouldn't. Oh,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: this is all being recorded. I need to be more careful.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: My point is, my point is we all thought, well,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: this is OK. Computers are good for them. And back
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: in the 90s, you know, Steve Jobs phrased a bicycle
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: for the mind. A computer was something a lot of
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: kids spent time on. They learned a lot. They developed skills.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: But we didn't realize gradually it became not programming a computer.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: It became apps that were designed to put you in
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: a soporific, hypnotized state and just keep you scrolling through
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: images of other girls with perfect lives and all the
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: sorts of things that are just so bad for teenagers,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: for anyone.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I absolutely agree with your diagnosis there. I mean,
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: I'm anxious.
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: We were talking earlier about how we're anxious, so we
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: can't really say we're not the anxious generation. But while
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: we were investigating for left to their own devices, we
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: talked to a lot of people who didn't necessarily agree.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: And I want to name two examples for you. Ethan
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: Zuckerman at UMass said, quote, for the vast majority of people,
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: social media has had no effect on their overall happiness
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: and mental health, end quote. And Sarah Coyne at BYU said, quote,
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: after doing an eight-year longitudinal study that, quote, time spent
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: on social media was not related to either depression or anxiety,
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: end quote. I just want to know why you think
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: there isn't more consensus in the research community given how
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: evident it is.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So a big part of it is that when
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: you use correlation coefficients and you look at the overall relationship,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: you usually find correlations around r equals 0.1 to 0.2.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And some people learned in a statistics class that's called
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: a small effect. But it turns out it totally depends
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: on the area of research. If you can measure things precisely,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: then 0.1, 0.2 is small. But we have terrible data,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: just people saying, how many hours do you spend a day?
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: How is your mental health? This is very, very weak data.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: So the fact that we get a correlation of 0.1
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: is in itself remarkable. Now, the other thing that they
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: miss is in epidemiology, they use odds ratios. people are
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: heavy users, how mentally ill are they compared to light users?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: And there it's 50 to 150% more generally. So Sarah
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Coyne's point, she might be saying the correlation is low,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: but I guarantee you, if you look at the heavy users,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: they're doing much worse than other people. And the World
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Happiness Report just came out, they found this in every
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: single country. So I don't accept the claim that, oh,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: time online doesn't matter. Obviously what you're doing is more
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: important than the total time. But if you're, look, The
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: average kid spend in America, teen spends five hours a
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: day on social media. A lot are spending seven. That's
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: going to push out everything that matters in life. So
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: I just don't, I don't, I think that's wrong.
• 14:13
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: I felt bad today when I was talking to probably
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: a 13 year old on the street and he said
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: he used his phone four hours a day.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, two months. He was like, what?
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: I said, I'm sorry.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: I had to drop that on you.
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: Anyway, how has your research evolved over the past couple
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: of years?
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, the book came out two years ago.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually, so here's the major change. So when I
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: started the book, it was all about social media causing
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: internalizing disorders, that is anxiety and depression and eating disorders,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: for teenage girls. Because that was the first real clear
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: evidence that we found. And so I'm very confident that
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: that was at the heart of the book, was social
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: media is bad for girls' mental health. Now, it does
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: things to boys and challenges and all kinds of things,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: but That's what we are focusing on. And the majority
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: of people, their mental health is not worse. That's true.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: So if it's only ruining 20 or 30% of our kids' lives,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: that's not a big deal, right?
• 15:09
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: But what I've learned since the book came out is
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: that the mental health damage is not the biggest damage.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: I have a little section in Chapter 5 on attention
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: fragmentation and addiction and sleep deprivation. Attention fragmentation, which is
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: also related to addiction, that I believe is the biggest
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: damage because this, I believe, is literally affecting the majority
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: of all of us to some degree. And it's especially
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: the TikTok generation. So you're part of the Instagram. How
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: old are you, if I may ask? 25.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: 25.
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: Recently.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: So you're... So you were shaped by Instagram, as you said.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: You were shaped primarily by Instagram because in middle school,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: you were not on TikTok.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: No.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Okay. Thank God. Younger Gen Z, they went through puberty
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: on TikTok. Now, TikTok is not as depressogenic as Instagram,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: but it is much more attentionally destructive, I believe. And
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: now we're getting a lot more studies just in the
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: last year or two. showing that short form video damages
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the development of executive function, makes it harder to pay attention,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: which means you won't be able to think well, which
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: means you won't be able to create value for future employers,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: which means you won't be able to pay full attention
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: to another person when you're talking or courting or flirting.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: So it's the attentional destruction, I believe, is bigger than
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: all industrial accidents in all of history combined. Nothing has
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: ever affected hundreds of millions of people. Right.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: And they showed that the other week in L.A., literally
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: less than a week ago, we had a crazy verdict.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: How has that informed your research that Meta was found
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: not only negligent, but also having acted in malice, Meta
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: and Google, to addict young people?
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Well, we knew that all along.
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Because, you know, all of those of us who are
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: active in this and who are supporting, doing the research
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: and supporting, you know, thank God for Francis Haugen. What
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I learned, I was on a call today, a Zoom
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: call with Laura Marquez Garrett, who is the main attorney
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: who really drove this forward. at the Social Media Victims
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Law Center. And, you know, I'd heard that, okay, this
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: was the first time they'd faced a jury. What I
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: didn't fully understand is when you have a trial and
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: there's going to be a jury, then the lawyers can
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: request documents. That's called discovery. And Meta in particular, but
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: all of them, Meta has been doing its own research
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: and they know it's addictive and they've tuned it for addiction.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: They've been doing this for decades and we've never gotten
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a look. until Francis Haugen brought out some screenshots. And
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: that's what really got the ball rolling. That allowed us
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: to see, oh, those bastards, they knew it all along,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: they did it deliberately. And then that got the first
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: case through the door. I forget which one it was,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: but it was the first case where a judge said, yes,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: you can bring them to court. Section 230 covers what
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: people post, but it doesn't cover their design decisions. And
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: so once a case was allowed in, then the lawyers
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: can request documents. And what we're seeing is a flood
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: of stuff you cannot believe. You cannot believe what they
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: did knowingly because the incentives were all wrong. The incentives
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: that they put on their engineers were, you maximize engagement,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: we pay you more. And we don't have to worry
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: about getting sued. We got a complete shield from Section 230.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: We can do whatever the hell we want to kids.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: You can't touch us. And not surprisingly, their behavior was monstrous.
• 18:36
  Speaker 8: Absolutely.
• 18:36
  Speaker 7: Absolutely.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: Your book has two arguments, as you mentioned earlier. We're
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: overprotecting kids in the real world, underprotecting them online. For
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: better or for worse, a lot of the conversation right
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: now is about that online thing. That's where a lot
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: of this attention is. What happens if we don't address
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: the core real-life problem?
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: So because I was focused on kids and all the
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: way through puberty, the real world was most pressing. Now, obviously,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: older Gen Z, you're out in the world. It's not
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: like your parents are saying you can't go out anymore.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: So for younger Gen Z, they've got to be unsupervised.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: They've got to be responsible for each other. So I
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: really pushed on that. But as we were saying in
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: our discussion yesterday, I've been so focused on the younger
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: kids because that's the low-hanging fruit. That's where we can
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: add a huge effect very quickly. And I haven't thought
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: as much about how to help Older kids, young adults
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: thrive in the real world. Now, I do teach a
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: course at NYU called Flourishing, and my students are generally sophomores,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: so they are 19 years old. And one of the themes,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: you know, a lot of it is on device use,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: device regulation. But one of the themes is go out
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: and have experiences. You've been deprived of experience. experiences. Put
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: yourself in difficult situations. You're going to school in New
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: York City. Go explore. Go out with a friend. Go
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: to some new neighborhood that you've never been to. Go
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: to a rave. Go to a museum. So, you know,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: young people, there's a quest, there's a hunger to experience
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: the world. But yet in your generation, there's a fear
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: of going out into the world. And so I think
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: we need to address that fear and turn it into
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: more of a desire. And then I think you will flourish.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: If you agree that your generation is anxious, what's the
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: cure for anxiety? We know this in psychology. It's not
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: protecting you from the things that make you anxious. It's
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: the exact opposite. It's exposure. That is the cure for anxiety.
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: Right now, so much of the conversation, as I mentioned,
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: that we're having is about the online part. So seemingly
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: the easier solution to the problem is to focus on
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: regulating the digital technologies. Can you tell me the moment
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: you realized this problem is so bad, the only way
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: to solve it is to restrict those kids under 16
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: from being on these platforms?
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Well, so there were several moments. One was when Zach
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Roush made the graphs for other countries. I said, Zach,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: we hear different things about what's happening elsewhere. We know
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: what's happening in the US. We've got very good data.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Go find out what's happening in other countries. And he
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: came back with graphs, especially in English speaking countries and
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Western Europe. And it's the same thing everywhere. And once
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: I saw that, it's like, oh my God, this is
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: not caused by anything we're doing just in the US.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: This is happening to human children. This is happening certainly
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: in the Western world. So that was one, like this is,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: you know, it was like this, there's like a, A
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: scene in Jurassic Park where they first see the dinosaurs.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: It's like, I can't believe this is happening. So that
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: was one. But early on, I thought it was just
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: social media. I wasn't paying attention to all the other stuff.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And it was once I just kept hearing stories from
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: parents of how their kids are just lost. And especially
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: from mothers of boys who have a porn addiction and
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: they're so ashamed. And they don't know what to do.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: The kid is just completely hooked to his device. It's
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: not just porn. He's doing all sorts of things, but
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: he's always on his device. They don't, they're at their
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: wits end. And once I realized it's like, this is like,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: this is like a trap that's luring kids in. And yes,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: they don't all get caught, but 10 to 20% of
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: them are. That again is, you know, to lose 10
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: to 20% of our kids is unthinkable. And so as
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I began to talk to more parents and especially survivor
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: parents about what their kids went through, that's when I
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: think I was really faced with the full horror of it. Right.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: And, Earlier, I really appreciated what you said about the
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: anxious generation leaning in to what makes them anxious offline.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: Do you think that there's any way for us to
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: lean in to what is making us anxious online?
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure there is. But the thing I want
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: to stress is there's a really important concept called anti-fragility
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: where you need to have stressors and challenges and setbacks
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: in order to grow. And 10 years ago, when I
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: started doing this work, You know, people said, well, why
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: can't you just take risks online? You know, say something stupid,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: you'll learn your lesson. But it turns out, it turns
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: out that, you know, if you fall on a bicycle
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: or you fall out of a tree or you say
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: something dumb to a friend and they're offended, like we
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: evolved to learn from those experiences. But something happens when
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: you make a mistake online, which is the entire world
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: turns against you and jokes about you and laughs at you.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: It is unlike anything that we can experience offline. I mean,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: there are cases of severe bullying, but this is a
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: common thing that happens to a lot of young people.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: And I've talked to a lot of people about that.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: And I asked my students. So, you know, when you're
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: publicly shamed and humiliated and everyone's against you, does that
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: toughen you? Does that make you feel like, you know what?
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I've been shamed before. I don't care what people say. No,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: it makes people feel like they're living in a minefield
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: and they're careful about what they say. And that's a shame.
• 24:08
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: So it's a scale issue here.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Well, it's, it's, so let's talk. So what do you mean?
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: So you tell me, what do you mean by leaning
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: in online? Let's work, let's work through that. Because as
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: we talked about yesterday, I haven't been, I've been thinking,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: we've just got to have age limits, keep the young
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: kids off, let them get through puberty. And I haven't
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: really thought as much about how to make it better
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: for the, for young adults. What do you, what would
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: leaning in look like for you?
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: I think that's a really interesting question. And it's something
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: I really wanted to talk to you about when we're
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: looking at the design features that are currently on social media.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: And I think that we can lean in at some
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: point if those design features were gone, right? So we
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: have a lot of design feature legislation out there right now.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: Age-appropriate design codes, you know, let's take away light counts.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Let's take away the infinite scroll. Let's make sure.
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: That algorithms aren't wired for engagement, but rather to show
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: you real things. Do you think if we had the
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: design legislation of our dreams... you would still push for
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: the restriction of kids under 16?
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Oh my God, absolutely. Yes. Because you have to get
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: through puberty. You have to develop executive function. You have
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: to develop attentional capacities. And as long as you have
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: a multifunction device, as long as there's always going to
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: be quick dopamine to be had, yes, you'll bring it down.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: It won't be a million quarts of quick dopamine. It'll
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: be a thousand or whatever. That's the wrong units. But
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: you can bring it down. But But kids before 16
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: are still going to get hooked. There is no way
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: to make scrolling through stuff and touching and getting reinforced.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: There is no way to make hours of that okay
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: for a developing brain. So I don't care what you
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: offer me. There is just no way it's going to
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: work for under 16s. Now, the question is, what about
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: 16 to 19-year-olds, let's say? So 16 and 17-year-olds are
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: still minors. And so they still need all kinds of
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: legal protections because there are a lot of men out
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: there who are looking for them. There are a lot
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: of predatory men online. And so we still need all
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: kinds of protection because these are still minors. So, okay,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: let's imagine a world. Okay, let's go back. Let's go
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: back to, say, 2005 or 2006. So everyone has a phone, texting, email.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: I forget when Zoom came out, but there was Skype.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: So we have all kinds of ways to communicate. It's amazing.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: You can find anything you want instantly. I mean, I
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: cannot convey to you what it was like in the
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: 90s to discover the internet. It was magical. And so
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: we come into this period really optimistic. Now, back then,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Facebook was just, here's my page, here's what I like,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: you know, MySpace before then. You know, here's me. Oh,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: there's you. Okay, you know, let me learn about you.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: That was all great, right? So if we could go
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: back to that, I think that would be pretty good.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Now you tell me, does that sound good to you
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: or was there anything else you would long for?
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: That's a really good question.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: And I have an answer for you at the very
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: end of the conversation.
• 27:04
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: But for now, I want to dig into what you're
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: saying on a philosophical level to make sure that I
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: understand you. So for 14 year olds, for 15 year olds,
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: having the ability to put something out into the world
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: that can be received by everyone.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: That is too dangerous for them? Are you saying that
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: that is.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Something that can't happen? The internet is great. They can
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: write things. They can post things on a blog. There's
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: all kinds of ways to get to the world. What
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: we're talking about here is a special innovation in the
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: attention economy, which is rather than just letting everyone connect
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: with everyone, that was the idea of the early internet,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: that was MySpace, that was early Facebook. Social media said,
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: instead of that, we're going to centralize things. We're going
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: to give you a feed because when Facebook adds the
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: news feed and the like button and the share button,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: and now you have all kinds of data for the algorithm,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: and now you can deliver all this stuff, it's that
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: which allows predatory people to get to you. It's that
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: which puts every kid in the attention economy. When we
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: throw our 11-year-olds into Instagram and they're all aware, you know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: why does, you know, she has 50 followers, you know,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: she got 50 likes, I only got seven and they're
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: all anxious because they're not rising. There is no way
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: to make this safe. Even if you hide the like count,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: even if you hide the, you're still going to know
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: some people are getting noticed and I'm not. Now that's
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: part of adolescent life, but it has to be on
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: a local level. So this is why there is a
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: savagery to life online now that was not there in
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: the 90s. Yes, there were corners, but people's overall experience
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: was really humane. And now it's savage. I mean, the
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: number of young people who have seen beheading videos. In fact,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: let me ask you in this audience, young men in
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the audience, how many of you have you see the
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: moment of a person's death, like beheading or being run
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: over by a car? You see it like at least
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: several times a year. You see that. Raise your hand,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: men in the room. Okay, and men in the room,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: raise your hand if you don't see that. You almost
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: never see it. Okay, so the men are kind of split.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: More of you do see it, but there are some
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: who don't see it every year. But my point is,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: younger people, the numbers are higher. It's very common now.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: And so there's just a savagery. to what happens when
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: you put people into these dynamics. And again, my argument
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: is puberty is the most sensitive period of brain development.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Let people get through puberty. Stop throwing all this stuff
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: at them. They still have the rest of the internet.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: They can call, they can text, they can phone, they
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: can go over to friends. houses. They're not disconnected. Sorry,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: I get kind of worked up about this.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Me too.
• 29:44
  Speaker 8: You're not alone.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: I totally understand. It's so urgent.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, there are people out here that are losing
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: years and years of their lives, that are losing their
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: lives to this.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: So, okay. But I do want to press though, what
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: feature of Instagram would you want to, if we had
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: the world I described, which is the internet circa 2005,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and all kinds of ways to communicate, you can find anything.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: What would you still want from Instagram or TikTok? Right.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: So I come from a generation that feels pretty voiceless overall.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: I think to set the scene here, we were the
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: generation that was in middle school, high school, elementary school,
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: growing up while school shootings seemed to skyrocket in America.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: And so we grew up watching our peers get shot online.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: And we took to the streets, and we protested about it,
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: and we were upset about it, and nothing happened. And
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: still to this day, absolutely nothing has happened. The only
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: place where we can feel really truly validated and understood,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: I think for a lot of people, is online.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Online, but is it Instagram?
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: You said really, truly understood and validated. Is that your
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: experience on Instagram?
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: It's not my experience on Instagram.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: It's a lot of people in Gen Z's experience on
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: Instagram to have a universal inside joke, to put something
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: out there and have it be understood. That's the platform
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: that we have right now in the world that we
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: exist in to communicate with one another. I mean, I'm
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: from Tennessee, right? Hope Lab did excellent research that found
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: By a 10% margin. Young people from Tennessee, young people
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: from the Southeast are going to find that social media
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: is crucial to their mental health because they're not around.
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: Wait, wait, wait.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: What does that mean? What do you mean it's crucial
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: to their mental health?
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: They find a community on social media that they haven't
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: found anywhere else.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Okay. So let's go through this because I think the
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: way that I find many people are thinking about this
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: is here's my life. Everything is on these three platforms, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Here's my life. Now let me imagine my life if
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I took all those away and didn't replace it with anything.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: That would be a lonely life. I wouldn't have community. Right.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: But there's no such world like that. Because the world
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: before these platforms came in was, I have so many
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: ways to connect with my friends, even my friends who
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: are far apart. You know how people feel understood and validated?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: By a long conversation with a real friend. And when
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: people had real friends, they didn't have as many mental
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: health problems. People used to have a lot of real friends.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: And after 2012, they have many fewer real friends. They
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: have thousands and thousands of friends. So when young people say,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: it's how I find community, inside I'm like, That is
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: so tragic because this is not real community. This is
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: me putting stuff out for strangers and the world and
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: people I barely know or never met. And then I
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: will feel validated if I get a lot of likes.
• 32:41
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: No, that is not. That is fake community. understanding, and validation.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: And if you're LGBTQ, and we talked about this in
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: our essay, if you're LGBTQ, yes, you were isolated before
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the internet. The internet was a godsend for LGBTQ kids.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: And they found all kinds of ways in the 90s
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: to use it.
• 33:00
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: And then, and I don't doubt that early Facebook would
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: help because you could have interest groups. That's good to
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: have interest groups. That's fine. But it morphed into a
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: system of maximizing attentional pull, channeling. So again, when young
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: people say it's how we find community, we should not
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: be saying, oh, well, therefore we need to let you
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: have it. We need to be saying, let's think about
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: what real community is. People need real friends. And if
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: you have Quantity pushes out quality, and it's not quantity
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: that makes you happy, it's quality.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: This version of community is the only version of community
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: that Gen Z has ever known. What does it do
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: to the mental health of the generation to tell them
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: that the social norms they grew up experiencing are flawed,
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: incredibly dangerous, and wrong?
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: How might that affect them?
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Well, what I've found in my conversations, and we have
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: a lot of survey evidence, is when you talk to
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: older Gen Z... And you ask them, was this good
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: for you or bad for you? It's much more likely
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: to say bad. When you say, do you wish you'd
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: gotten your phone and social media earlier or later? Overwhelmingly later.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Almost nobody says they wish they got it earlier. So
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I don't agree that they love it. It's the only
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: thing they know. So they're afraid to lose it. And
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: that's why you get this really interesting finding in multiple studies.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: When you say, how much would we have to pay
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: you to get off Instagram or TikTok for a month?
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: People say some number, you know, $ 50, $ 100. You have
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: to pay me to get off. because now I'm separated,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: now I'm deprived. But when they change it, so they say,
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: you know, we're gonna do a thing at your school
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: and we're gonna try to get everybody off for a month.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: How much would we have to pay you to take part?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Now suddenly everyone's saying, oh, I'd pay you. I would
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: pay you to have everybody off. So this is a trap.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: And the thing I've always said about Gen Z is
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: that they are not in denial. They see what's happening.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: I've seen no defensiveness. I have not seen any members
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: of Gen Z saying, you know, oh, no, this is
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: great for us. And you're trying to take it away
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: from us. So now if you have or if people
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: in the room, if you feel that way, or if
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: this is a common sentiment, please tell me. I want
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: to know where I'm wrong or where I've made assumptions.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: But I don't think, I don't see Gen Z people
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: like taking offense and saying, how dare you say that?
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: You know, this has been so good for us. They
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: recognize that it was bad, but they feel they have
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: to be on it anyway. But do you agree with that?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Or do you think I misunderstand it?
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: I think there's a slight misunderstanding. I think there's two
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: things I want to bring up here. I think one
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: of the things that Gen Z thinks is this is
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: impacting everyone. This is bad for parents. It's addictive to parents.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Why can the parent have the smartphone? I can't have
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: a smartphone. Why can the parent be on social media?
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: I can't be on social media. And also a lot
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: of us as Gen Z growing up in this, we've
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: aged out. None of this legislation would impact me anymore.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: So I think a lot of us are saying, why
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: not do something that could include us? And that's where
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: the business model conversation comes back in, which is why
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: aren't we making our number one priority design-based legislation, a
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: safety by design? So I guess that would be my
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: two questions for you is why not prioritize safety by design?
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: And then also why not prioritize having safer platforms for
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: older people too?
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I certainly agree that it would be great to
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: have those. Legislatively, it's very, very difficult. There are some
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: techniques that have been done to try to make algorithms
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: less predatory. But we do live in a country which
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: is very pro-free market. It's very hard to, you can't
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: say this business model is illegal. There's no constitutional justification
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: for saying you can't use this business model. So there's
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: always going to be that pressure, that competition. So I'll
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: give a couple of suggestions and I want to hear
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: yours for what that would look like. Here are the
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: only two thoughts I've had. I teach in a business school.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: I'm very aware of of the pressures on these companies
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: that are mostly full of good people who don't want
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: to hurt children. And they are having a terrible moral
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: bind because the company kind of like to be successful,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: they have to hurt children. They have to addict children.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: And so I've had two thoughts that I think would
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: really help. And these don't require legislation. One is what
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: if someone invented a platform that had know your customer rules?
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: That is, there are, so there's an important word in shitification.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: All these programs, all these platforms were amazing at first
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: and they all get, they all turn to shit. And
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: there's a very clear reason. The nature, this industry is
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: different from anything previous. It's all about scale. If you're the,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: the value of a network increases according to the cube
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: of the number of people on it. So it's a
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: race to get as many as you can. You have
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: to be really nice, appealing. It's just girls dancing for strangers.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: What could go wrong with that? And so everyone rushes on,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: but now you've raised $ 20 million from investors. You got
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: to pay that back. So now you got to start
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: squeezing them, putting them more advertising. You got to monetize things.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: So that's why everything starts off good, but everything turns
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: to shit on the internet that uses this model. Okay.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: So here's two ways around that model. One, The platforms
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: that don't get and shitified are those that have know
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: your customer laws. So, you know, Airbnb or eBay was
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: the original one. You don't know the name of the
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: person you're transacting with, but the company does. The company
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: knows exactly who everyone is. So if someone extorts someone
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: else or sells drugs or threatens violence, they can lose
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: their account and they can't open another. Whereas all the
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: platforms you're on are full of strangers, bots, Russian agents, perverts.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: And there's no way to get them off. I mean,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, that's not true. Of course, Meta could get 95%
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: of them off. They easily could do that. They just
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: choose not to. So that's the first thing is imagine
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: there was a platform that said, we have a new
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: business model. This is about actually connecting you to real people.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: And people who behave badly, you know, will be kicked off.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: So that's the first thing. Know your customer laws. That
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: removes most of the really horrible stuff that happens.
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: Second.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Because if the economics don't work You wouldn't be able
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: to scale compared to the others So what I'm hoping
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: for is a philanthropic part philanthropic model. There is so
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: much philanthropic money that wants to address this problem And
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: so I keep suggesting this to my students at Stern
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: I hope one will take me up someday come up
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: with a model in which you raise you raise a
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: lot of philanthropic money you commit to never doing the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: attention economy stuff, and this is just about real connection
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: and validation. And so if you start from that basis,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: I think you could build a humane platform. But without
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: those two, I don't know that it's possible. Okay, what
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: are your ideas? What would you do?
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: So I'll paint you, here's my ideal version. We're both
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: Postman people, which I absolutely love. And something that Postman
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: talks about is the tool that has a lot of
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: jobs is not a very good tool at all.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: It doesn't do any of those jobs very, very well.
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: So in my ideal world, we have a network of
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: hundreds of social media platforms that each have little jobs.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: If you want to consume content, you can go consume content.
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: If you want to connect with your local community, you
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: can go connect with your local community. If you want
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: to find an influencer who's going.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: To teach you how to do a meditation, you can
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: But there's a lot of incentive structures that need to
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: change in order for us to get there. And I
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: definitely think that can be done through safety by design,
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: passing data privacy, which would make their entire business model,
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: which we've been talking about this entire time, that's causing
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: all these problems, virtually obsolete.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: I'm curious if.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: If you could work with me then on a version
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: of the internet that isn't necessarily based around restricting social
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: media access, but reclaiming that word social media and coming
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: over here and focusing on how we're going to build
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: that and understanding the narrative moment we're at right now,
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: where so much of that a narrative is this is
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: about free speech. And when we talk about restrictions, people
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: immediately go free speech. So what I'm thinking is how
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: can we adjust our language and how can we adjust
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: our policies to not buy into that narrative, but rather
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: to come over here and paint a more positive picture
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: for people and allow them to see that end goal
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: of a social media that does work for them.
• 41:18
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot in what you just said. I'll just,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: first of all, just the free speech point, because that's
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: what seems to be emerging as the main criticism. And
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: anytime a country passes laws that say what can and
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: can't be said, there are risks there. And because hate
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: speech is a complicated thing, and I wish there wasn't
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: any online, but once you start to find saying, you know,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: our regulations say you can say this, you can't say that,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: then there's going to be political maneuvering. One side's going
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: to feel. So content-based stuff is a real challenge. Of course,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: we have laws against child sexual abuse. Like there is
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: some stuff we all agree, this must not be online.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: And then how much further do you go? That's an
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: interesting question. That's a good question to discuss. But my
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: view is if a state or a country wants to
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: say that these companies can't collect data from nine-year-olds, that
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: is already the law. What's wrong with enforcing it? That's
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: not free speech. That's a design decision based on contract law.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: You can't sign a contract with 12-year-olds. Insisting on policies,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Meta had a 17 strikes and you're out policy for
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: sexual trafficking. So if you're reported 17 times, then they
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: would close your account and then you have to open
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: another one. What's wrong with a state or a government saying, no,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: you have to close their accounts? Is that a free
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: speech issue? So I think that what we're all talking
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: about in the movement are design decisions. And that's what's
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: so important about the case in LA. That's why it
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: is transformative. Because until last week, the legal system treated
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: any question of regulation is going to be a violation.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: It'll have the free speech thing in section 230 and
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: That's why these companies have free reign for 20 years
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: to do what they wanted to children. So that that
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: is ending now. So, again, the free speech seems a
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: lot to be said. But I think design design choices
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: are not free speech issues in almost all cases.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it would be really ironic if we
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: ended up striking down certain design based legislation because companies
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: have commercial speech rights to exploit us. And then also
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: going and restricting minors from social media because they don't
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: have the same expression, right?
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: So as those companies even do. So I'm curious now,
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: what would success look like for you?
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, success is the photos that I get sent now
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: on a weekly basis of a group of kids on bicycles.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: That's success. It's kids living in the real world. It's
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: kids having a childhood. That's success. Again, I'm focused on
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: the younger kids. Okay, the other thing about success is
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: my class at NYU. And it's the most gratifying class
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: because the task is you have to improve yourself in
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: the course of the semester and you have to take measurements.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: You have to show what you did. And I used
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: to let them make up anything they wanted, but it
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: became clear. Most people have a device addiction. Most people
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: are struggling with that. And now I say, if you're
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: on social media for three hours a day or more,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: you have to start there because there is no point
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: in trying to improve yourself if you're on for three
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: hours a day or more. So you got to start there.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: And especially when they go from like five to seven hours,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: which some of them are on, down to one or
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: two or zero, it's the most amazing thing. Because it's
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: this whole cascade. They discover that now they have so
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: much time to do their homework. And they can focus.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: And so they can do their homework in two hours
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: a night. And now they're not at all stressed. And
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: they have no time pressure. Whereas before, it was always,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I have too much work because I'm on social media
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: and I'm interrupting. So they get their attention back. And
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: that's why I'm so glad that you're focused on attention.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: I didn't finish the thought before. Mental illness is affecting 20, 30%,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: let's say, but the attentional destruction is affecting everyone. So
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: when you get your attention back, then they say, and
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: then I was able to focus on what I wanted.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: I began exercising. I approached a girl that I liked
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: and I said hello to her and now we're dating.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Like it's just like amazing stuff happens when you get
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: your attention back and reclaim your life. So for the older,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: for the older, for young adults, I think we have
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: the exact same vision here in that it's reclaiming your attention.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Without your attention, you can't do anything.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: Well, John, your work has changed my life in so
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: many ways. It's changed a lot of the lives of
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: people in here and millions of children across the entire world.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: And you should feel a lot of pride in that.
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: And I really, really look forward to continuing this conversation
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: and to working with you to take that attention for everybody.
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: and give them online spaces where they can use it
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: with agency and to go after these companies that have
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: taken this idea and this word of social media from
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: us and take it back from them.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Well, thank you, Ava. This has been a
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: thrilling conversation. And again, I didn't know what I was
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: getting into, but now I see you guys are, you know,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: this is like, you know, as you exchange ideas and, and,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I was going to say business cards, but obviously you
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: don't do that anymore. We tap phones. Bring them back.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Bring them back. So, yeah. So I'm really excited to
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: work with you. Let's invent the humane social media platform.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I think there will be a market for it.
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: And then we handed the mic around the room for
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: audience questions.
• 46:31
  Speaker 8: I'm Helen Hayes, and I'm the Associate Director of Policy
• 46:34
  Speaker 8: at the Centre for Media Technology and Democracy. So today,
• 46:39
  Speaker 8: some research came out about Australia's social media ban, and
• 46:43
  Speaker 8: it indicated that about 7 of 10 under-16s are still
• 46:48
  Speaker 8: accessing social media platforms, which to me obviously speaks to
• 46:53
  Speaker 8: difficulties in age verification and social media bans generally. So
• 46:57
  Speaker 8: my question is... how you make sense of this and
• 47:01
  Speaker 8: how you make sense of age verification technologies that clearly
• 47:05
  Speaker 8: aren't doing the work that we might want them to
• 47:07
  Speaker 8: be doing.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: So Australia did the world a giant favor. They took
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: a gamble. They just said enough is enough. We're just
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: going to do it. And age verification that preserves privacy
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: is difficult. Until now, the industry has had really no
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: incentive to pursue it. But this industry, once they have
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: an incentive, they can do anything. they already know how
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: old everybody is. So I don't think it's going to
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: be very hard for them to actually do it, but
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: they don't want to. So 7 out of 10 are
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: still on. That means that in just three months, 30%
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: are off. A lot of people used a VPN to
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: get around. But Jeff Hancock, the professor at Stanford who's
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: studying it, he said VPN uses shot up at first
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: and then it went way back down because it's a
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: little bit of friction. It's a little bit annoying to
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: have to load the VPN every time. So use is
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: going down. So The Australia– the rollout was incredibly successful
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: in that almost nobody was blocked who was old enough.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: They erred on the side of letting more people through.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: And now the companies are in danger of being fined.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: It's not much of a fine, but it'll look bad
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: for PR, especially when they're all facing a lot of lawsuits.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: So this is going to be a several-year process as
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: the industry figures out how to do this difficult thing.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Here we are, 20 years into the social media era.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: They've had no incentive to do it. Now, for three
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: months now, they've had an incentive. Are they done? No.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: But let's talk again in a year or two, and
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a lot better.
• 48:33
  Speaker 11: So, John, you had talked about community and having an
• 48:37
  Speaker 11: online community and how that wasn't real. I've been in
• 48:41
  Speaker 11: a number of different online communities with my work, with
• 48:45
  Speaker 11: this community. I mean, I struggle to see how this
• 48:47
  Speaker 11: community would be around if it wasn't for the kind
• 48:50
  Speaker 11: of tech that we had available. I'm curious, like you
• 48:52
  Speaker 11: had mentioned around not hearing feedback from Gen Z, like
• 48:56
  Speaker 11: resistance around that.
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: I have.
• 48:59
  Speaker 11: So I'm curious, like, how do you take to that,
• 49:01
  Speaker 11: this idea that this community wouldn't be able to be here.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: If it wasn't for these platforms? First, let's just look
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: at this. Part of your first point was that you
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: actually can develop a deep friendship online.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure that that is true. And people have
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: done it for hundreds of years with letters. And so
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: it is possible but it takes round after round of
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: private communication.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: Agreed.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Or was this all done in front of an audience?
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Like you put it out there and they liked your tweet, your, your, your,
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: and then you commented it Was it? No, not at all.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: So when tech helps us connect and form enduring relationships
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: in which we open up and we come to trust,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: that's wonderful. And that's not what kids' lives are like now.
• 49:44
  Speaker 11: I guess the question then is, how do we make
• 49:46
  Speaker 11: that connection? The person I've been dating for three years,
• 49:49
  Speaker 11: she lived in Portland, and I was in North Carolina.
• 49:53
  Speaker 11: And I wasn't in D.C.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: When I heard of Ava.
• 49:55
  Speaker 11: So I was able to use the internet and social
• 49:57
  Speaker 11: media and these other platforms like news and YouTube and
• 50:02
  Speaker 11: these kinds of things to hear about your work, to
• 50:03
  Speaker 11: hear about you on YouTube, for example. That's how I
• 50:05
  Speaker 11: heard about you.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Then we connected.
• 50:08
  Speaker 11: So how can we, if we remove this ability to
• 50:12
  Speaker 11: have feeds and these kinds of things, how do people
• 50:13
  Speaker 11: find one another?
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: Okay. So I think what's going on here, so I
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: just want to point out, Ben was one of the
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: super editors of The Anxious Generation. He's an incredible writer, editor, thinker.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: And this is the thing, I want the pushback and
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: you're good at pushing back. This is great.
• 50:28
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: So I think what's going on here is something which
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: I really see in Gen Z, which is you're really,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: really sensitive to missing out on something. And you don't
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: want to miss out on something you could have. That's normal.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: That's a human thing. But you've got to get the
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: balance because, as you know from Chapter 5, there's the
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: concept of opportunity cost. And so, like, you want lots
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: of things, but if you buy one thing, that means
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: you don't have the money to buy everything. And so
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: we make choices.
• 50:56
  Speaker 10: Okay?
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: So now we all want relationships. And... You could develop
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: a relationship on TikTok. You could develop one on Tumblr.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: You could develop, and I don't want to miss any
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: of those. So I'm going to be on all of them.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: What's the opportunity cost? You have no time for anyone
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: or anything, especially the people physically near you. So yes,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: you're saying, you know, several of you are saying, but
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: good things could happen and good things do sometimes happen. Yes.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: But at what opportunity cost? Hi. Hi.
• 51:26
  Speaker 10: So I'm a mother, and as a mother, I know
• 51:29
  Speaker 10: that when you bend things, it creates more craving. So
• 51:34
  Speaker 10: the question is, the component that I'm missing is the
• 51:37
  Speaker 10: conversation with the children. And how do we make this conversation?
• 51:42
  Speaker 10: Because otherwise, you know, we're bending alcohol until they're 21,
• 51:46
  Speaker 10: and then.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: They get fake IDs.
• 51:48
  Speaker 10: How do we have a conversation with them? And how
• 51:51
  Speaker 10: is this conversation... not only on the parents, so it's equitable.
• 51:56
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: So what you're talking about is what's called the forbidden
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: fruit phenomenon. If you forbid a fruit, there's more interest
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: in it. I think that goes back a long way,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: I'd say, to the Bible. And so that's a real
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: psychological phenomena. But why do kids traditionally pursue things that
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: are banned? It's to show that they're cool. They don't
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: care about these rules. And there's a lot to be
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: gained by flouting rules and getting away with it. If
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: you ban social media for your child, they desperately want
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: to be on because you've given them a social death
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: sentence because that's the way the kids connect. But if
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: you ban it for everyone, I don't think there's a
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: forbidden fruit phenomenon. If everyone was off, no one's going
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: to be desperate to be on. And as we saw,
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: according to the surveys and according to these experiments about
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: willingness to pay, they would love to all be off.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: So I don't think it's really forbidden fruit. I think
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: it's an age limit on an addictive product that the
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: kids themselves wish they could get off, but they can't
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: because they're trapped because that's how it was designed.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: I love that question a lot.
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: And I think that it brings me back to my
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: main point of this conversation, which is it's cool to
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: do things that aren't allowed. And I think my biggest
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: fear right now is that while pushing restrictions, the counterculture
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: is not going to be reclaiming your attention. The cool
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: rebellious thing to do is going to be to stay
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: on social media. And that we might have this moment
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: where Gen Z is carrying.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Tech's water for them.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: And Gen Z is pushing to stay on social media
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: instead of doing the cool rebellious thing of being offline.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: So is Gen Z pushing to stay on social media?
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: So one thing that I've always wondered about is when
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: there was the TikTok ban, it was looming. I was
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: waiting to see Gen Z groups rising up saying, no,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: don't do this. Now, I know TikTok did organize some people,
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: but I haven't seen a lot of Gen Z groups
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: opposing the bans. What I'm saying is we didn't get
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: like the way, look, all of you have come together,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: not out of self-interest. You've all come together because you
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: think the world is hurting young people and you want
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: to do something about it. I'm not seeing a lot
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: of Gen Z opposition to what you're doing. Are you?
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: I don't want to wait and see if we bring
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: this conversation to the U.S., Who is next?
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: Right here. Hi.
• 54:10
  Speaker 12: So there seems to be a lot of focus just
• 54:12
  Speaker 12: on social media, but I'm wondering about phones in general,
• 54:16
  Speaker 12: because if it's the attention that's being divided, you know,
• 54:19
  Speaker 12: I'm sorry, my cell phone just rang a few minutes ago.
• 54:21
  Speaker 6: Sorry.
• 54:22
  Speaker 12: But, you know, but it's the text messages and then
• 54:25
  Speaker 12: it's interfering with that attention. And then in addition to that,
• 54:28
  Speaker 12: this generation, my daughter's right here, she always says to me, well,
• 54:32
  Speaker 12: if you don't know something, just look it up.
• 54:34
  Speaker 10: Right.
• 54:34
  Speaker 12: And it's that instant gratification message. I can't imagine is
• 54:38
  Speaker 12: necessarily a good thing. And how does this integrate into
• 54:43
  Speaker 12: the fact that even though the cultural norms have changed,
• 54:47
  Speaker 12: our physiology and our biology has not?
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, we've talked mostly about social media because that's where
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: the focus is right now. And that was my focus
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: four years ago when I started working on the book.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: But what's become clear is it's a hydra. The technology
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: is a hydra and it just keeps growing new snakes.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: And I cannot believe... I mean, what gambling has done.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, the fact that our young men, they used
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: to enjoy talking about sports. That's not going to happen anymore.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: It's now all about the betting. And the house takes 7%.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: And we're condemning a lot of young, as Scott Galloway says,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: as soon as gambling is legalized in a state, bankruptcies
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: go up. A lot of young men are going to
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: be ruined. They will have no resources. They're not going
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: to be eligible for marriage. Practically, they have no resources. Um,
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: so it's, it's the gambling, it's the porn, it's the,
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: it's the online shopping, it's, it's everything. And so that's why,
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: you know, my theory is not about like smartphones and
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: social media. It's about the phone-based childhood, the phone-based adulthood.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: Once moving onto these devices that allow every company to
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: get to us, and a lot of them use the
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: same business model, it's not just social media. You're right.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: And again, that's why the first norm is no smartphone
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: till high school. Ideally, it should be 16, but I
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: need to just, what's a minimum? What's a floor? High school.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Hi, Ava, Jonathan.
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having us.
• 56:06
  Speaker 9: I think the person who just asked a question, this
• 56:08
  Speaker 9: is like a natural progression because I heard you all
• 56:12
  Speaker 9: speak a lot about addressing these challenges within the smartphone itself.
• 56:18
  Speaker 9: But I'd love to hear a little bit more about
• 56:22
  Speaker 9: your thoughts around addressing these challenges by pivoting away from
• 56:26
  Speaker 9: the smartphone and towards dumber devices.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: Towards what?
• 56:30
  Speaker 9: Dumber devices. Different devices that are not smartphones and dumber devices.
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: I got a dumb phone five days ago. And my
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: life is exponentially better. That's where I'll leave that. And
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: I'll let you take it, John.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I promise.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Way better. So once we're in the realm of self-control strategies,
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: then there are lots of things you can do. And
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: with junk food, we all face this. We have to
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: have degrees of self-control. We have methods of dealing with it.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: What I can maybe contribute here is that I actually
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: have no problem at all with my phones. I have
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: no addiction issues. My phone is a tool. I use
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: it for all sorts of things. And the reason is
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: because I never put any slot machine apps on my phone.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: So I understand the dynamic, but because I never put
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: it on my phone, for me, my phone is still
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: a Swiss Army knife. And that's what the original iPhone was,
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: just a Swiss Army knife. There was no app store,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: no push notifications, maps, music, phone, flashlight. So multifunction, a
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Swiss Army knife is a good thing. And if you
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: can turn your iPhone into a Swiss Army knife with
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: no addictive apps, no quick dopamine apps, then it's actually
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: a pretty good tool. But since most of us can't
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: do that, I think we need to then go to
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: a self-control strategy of making your phone black and white,
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: certainly getting a dumb phone. So yeah, I think that
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: is an important part of the self-control strategy. But keep
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: your eye on the key psychology, which is the quick dopamine.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: And somebody asked why in the front I said that
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: my life got a lot better when I got a
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: dumb phone. It's because now when I pick up my
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: phone to do something, because for me it's not necessarily
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: the apps on the phone that are the slot machine,
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: but it's the phone itself.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: Who's going to email me? Who's going to text me?
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: Do I have any missed calls?
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: And when I have the dumb phone and I open
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: my phone, first of all, notifications are off. So I
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: have control over where I'm going and looking. Am I
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: checking my text messages? Am I checking my missed calls?
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: And second of all, when I pick up my phone
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: and start a task, There's nothing else to distract me.
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: I'm not getting a drop-down notification. Nobody's calling me. I'm
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: not seeing the icon of Depop. I'm addicted to online shopping.
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: Look at this dress.
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: Like, let's be honest.
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: But it's just, for me, it's focus on what I'm
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: doing and not getting distracted. The amount of times I
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: picked up my smartphone and went to accomplish a task
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: and put my smartphone down before I even opened the
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: app that that task was on, there's none of that anymore.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: It's focus.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: Hi, thank you so much.
• 58:57
  Speaker 7: My name is Emily. I'm actually a student at NYU
• 58:59
  Speaker 7: studying politics. So it's super amazing to be here. And
• 59:02
  Speaker 7: I want to say thank you for this thoughtful conversation.
• 59:04
  Speaker 7: I do have a question about restricting device access to
• 59:08
  Speaker 7: children under 16. So owing to structural and socioeconomic inequities,
• 59:14
  Speaker 7: which Ava briefly raised, I'm curious about your ideas for
• 59:17
  Speaker 7: younger children with less access to structured outlets like sports
• 59:21
  Speaker 7: clubs and supervised or safe communal spaces. How can we
• 59:25
  Speaker 7: support their well-being while restricting device access, considering how we
• 59:28
  Speaker 7: oftentimes turn to our phones to compensate for our lack
• 59:32
  Speaker 7: of outside resources.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Sure. So first, part of the reason that we put
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: computers on every kid's desk is we thought it was
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: an equity issue. We thought the rich kids have computers,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: so we need to give computers to the poor kids.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: It turns out that when you put computers on kids' desks,
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: it's those who have less executive function, they're more likely
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: to be harmed by it, When we look at social
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: class differences in phone time, social media time, it's huge.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Rich kids have parents who are trying to restrict their
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: device use. There are limits. In Silicon Valley, they make
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: their nanny sign a contract that they won't let the
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: kids see a screen. So you're absolutely right that in
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: working class and poor families, they don't have the resources.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: And therefore, it's almost universal. that every kid has their
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: own device because it's an incredibly effective pacifier and babysitter.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Mom is busy. She's got two jobs. She doesn't have time.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: So if every kid has a device, they're quiet. And
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: that's why I think what's happening is the biggest counter
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: equity move ever, which is that everything we're talking about
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: here is hurting poor kids more than everybody else. Time
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: on device, I saw the average is five hours a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: day on social media. For black kids, especially black girls,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: it's way higher. They're the heaviest users of social media.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: So if you're concerned about structural inequalities, the current environment is,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: I think, the biggest magnifier of social class differences. I
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: can't say ever, but it certainly is up there. But
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: part of your question was about other opportunities, and that's
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: a very good point. Kids who live in a gated community, yeah,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: the parents will say, yeah, go free range, run around.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Whereas kids in dangerous neighborhoods, they don't say that. Now,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: I should point out, we're all still affected by a
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: period where there were very high crime rates and crime
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: rates are way down. So there are still some neighborhoods.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: It's true. But the vast majority, even of urban neighborhoods,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: are not dangerous for kids to be out on the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: sidewalk or, you know, playing a game outside.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: This conversation took place at the Bollinger Forum at Columbia
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: University and was organized by Paradigms, the Center for Media, Technology,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: and Democracy, and the Attention Sphere. It was sponsored by
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: the Walton's Trust and Hope Lab. For Paradigms, our executive
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: producers are Mitchell Stewart, Helen Hayes, James Milward, and Taylor Owen.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: The executive producer for the Toronto Star is J.P. Fozzo.