Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Phones and the Importance of Play: Are phones really to blame for the decline in kids’ mental health?

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Phones and the Importance of Play: Are phones really to blame for the decline in kids’ mental health? · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

0:01
Speaker 1: This is parent Data. I'm Emily Oster.
0:07
Speaker 2: If you're a.
0:08
Speaker 1: Parent who reads the news, who listens to this podcast.
0:11
Speaker 1: Over the summer, you probably heard a lot about screens,
0:15
Speaker 1: and even now as kids go back to school, we're
0:17
Speaker 1: hearing a lot about phones.
0:18
Speaker 2: No phones in schools.
0:19
Speaker 1: Put your phone in a yonder pouch, hide your phone
0:22
Speaker 1: in your backpack. People are doing tiktoks in the bathroom,
0:24
Speaker 1: take their phones away. And at the forefront of many
0:29
Speaker 1: of these conversations is Jonathan Hype. Jonathan Heighte's new book,
0:33
Speaker 1: The Anxious Generation has really galvanized a lot of these conversations,
0:37
Speaker 1: and even though there are other people who've contributed to this,
0:40
Speaker 1: he's really at the front of talking about changes that
0:43
Speaker 1: he thinks we need to make around kids and phones
0:47
Speaker 1: and schools and their mental health. On today's podcast, I'm
0:51
Speaker 1: talking to John Hype. A lot of what John says
0:54
Speaker 1: makes sense to a lot of people, but he's also
0:57
Speaker 1: gotten a fair amount of pushback, particularly around the question
1:00
Speaker 1: of whether phones are really the boogeyman for teen mental health.
1:05
Speaker 1: In this conversation, John and I get into that there
1:09
Speaker 1: are a lot of things on which we agree, and
1:11
Speaker 1: there are some things where we don't necessarily agree, and
1:15
Speaker 1: I think that having conversations like this with people who
1:19
Speaker 1: respect each other but don't agree on everything is part
1:22
Speaker 1: of how we really figure out these hard and thorny
1:24
Speaker 1: questions in parenting and in general. If you're a listener
1:29
Speaker 1: to this podcast, you will remember that we've had many
1:32
Speaker 1: conversations over the past few months about these issues of
1:36
Speaker 1: screens and phones, and they've come from a bunch of
1:39
Speaker 1: different angles, and incorporating John into this conversation is really
1:43
Speaker 1: important because of how central his voice has been in
1:49
Speaker 1: talking through these issues.
1:52
Speaker 2: This podcast is a little.
1:53
Speaker 1: Different than usual. We did it as a live virtual event,
1:57
Speaker 1: so you'll hear us talk for a bit at the beginning,
1:59
Speaker 1: and then you'll hear some listener questions after the break.
2:04
Speaker 1: John Hype, I am absolutely delighted to have John Hyde
2:19
Speaker 1: join me for this Office Hours podcast recording. John's a
2:23
Speaker 1: social psychologist at NYU's Stern School of Business. He received
2:27
Speaker 1: his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in nineteen ninety two,
2:30
Speaker 1: and he taught for sixteen years in the Department of
2:33
Speaker 1: Psychology at the University of Virginia. John is the author
2:37
Speaker 1: of many best selling books, including his most recent book
2:40
Speaker 1: which we are here to talk about the Anxious Generation,
2:43
Speaker 1: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic
2:47
Speaker 1: of mental illness. I think it's fair to say this
2:50
Speaker 1: is the book of the summer and I can't wait
2:55
Speaker 1: to I can't wait to talk about it.
2:56
Speaker 3: So let's bring John on here.
2:59
Speaker 1: I am hi John, how are you? Thanks so much
3:02
Speaker 1: for being here.
3:03
Speaker 3: Oh my pleasure.
3:04
Speaker 4: Now it's you know, I've been engaged in debates over
3:07
Speaker 4: the data and the experiments, and so it's going to
3:09
Speaker 4: be a real pleasure to talk with someone like you
3:11
Speaker 4: who just loves to really, you know, go deep into
3:14
Speaker 4: what's going on, but also can talk about it in
3:16
Speaker 4: a way that's interesting to regular people.
3:18
Speaker 3: So I hope, I hope that's what we'll be doing.
3:21
Speaker 1: That is what we will be doing, all right. So
3:23
Speaker 1: I want to start with the most basic sort of short,
3:27
Speaker 1: short answer question, which is why did you write this book?
3:31
Speaker 3: Oh? Wow?
3:32
Speaker 4: Short answer, I guess is because I had all this
3:35
Speaker 4: research that I did after writing The Coddling of the
3:37
Speaker 4: American Mind, in which that was really about the overprotection
3:41
Speaker 4: and how kids need to grow up and become independent
3:44
Speaker 4: and have a lot of play, and I speculated in
3:46
Speaker 4: that book with Greg Lukianov, we have a couple of
3:49
Speaker 4: paragraphs and you know, maybe social media has something to
3:51
Speaker 4: do with it too, but we don't know, you know,
3:52
Speaker 4: it's just correlational data. We don't really know. And that
3:55
Speaker 4: book came out in twenty seventeen. Well, in the years afterwards,
3:59
Speaker 4: I got into with other researchers, Oh there's no evidence. Oh,
4:02
Speaker 4: I said, well, wait a sect, there's some evidence. So
4:04
Speaker 4: I just started collecting all the studies I could find,
4:07
Speaker 4: like on all sides, organizing them. I put them in
4:09
Speaker 4: these big Google documents. We call them collaborative review documents.
4:12
Speaker 4: And what emerged is a very interesting story where there
4:15
Speaker 4: are some studies that seem to suggest there's no relationship,
4:18
Speaker 4: but when you dig into them, what you always find
4:20
Speaker 4: is that there is a relationship.
4:22
Speaker 3: It's just buried.
4:23
Speaker 4: And that's true in the correlational studies and the experimental studies.
4:26
Speaker 4: So it began to be clear, Wait, something big is
4:29
Speaker 4: going on. That was clear from my experience as a professor,
4:33
Speaker 4: probably yours. We all know our undergrads from about twenty
4:36
Speaker 4: seventeen twenty eighteen rates of depression were extremely high. So
4:40
Speaker 4: what was going on? With that anyway, that wasn't a
4:43
Speaker 4: short answer. I'm sorry, but you're.
4:45
Speaker 1: Like you fail the academic elevator pitch argument. No job
4:50
Speaker 1: for you.
4:50
Speaker 4: But it's all right, Well, our elevators at Stern are
4:53
Speaker 4: very slow.
4:57
Speaker 1: So I actually, you know, the book is really a
5:00
Speaker 1: about kind of thinking about this decline in mental health
5:04
Speaker 1: among teenagers, about the role of phones, about how phones
5:08
Speaker 1: have changed and digital media has changed the landscape for
5:12
Speaker 1: our kids in a bunch of different ways. But I
5:14
Speaker 1: basically want to talk through sort of three pieces of this,
5:17
Speaker 1: and I will say sort of full disclosure. The first
5:19
Speaker 1: two are places where I think we really agree and
5:21
Speaker 1: I want to kind of talk about solutions. And then
5:23
Speaker 1: I want to get into this question about the relationship
5:26
Speaker 1: between phones and mental health and where there is more
5:30
Speaker 1: complicated disagreement in the data, which I'm sure you have heard.
5:37
Speaker 1: So first I want to talk about the issue of
5:39
Speaker 1: decline in play, because one of the points of the
5:43
Speaker 1: book is the idea that one of the things you
5:45
Speaker 1: talk about is the change from a kind of play
5:48
Speaker 1: based childhood to a phone based childhood. And can you,
5:52
Speaker 1: for the people on this call, paint a little bit
5:54
Speaker 1: of a picture of what you mean when you say
5:57
Speaker 1: play based childhood.
5:59
Speaker 4: Sure, so thank you, because that's the central argument of
6:02
Speaker 4: the book, that there was a play based childhood from
6:06
Speaker 4: maybe two or three hundred million BC whenever it is
6:09
Speaker 4: that mammals evolved, because if you're a mammal, it means
6:11
Speaker 4: that you have this long, longer childhood than previous animals,
6:15
Speaker 4: and part of that long childhood allows you to have
6:17
Speaker 4: a bigger brain that developed slowly. And from writing The
6:20
Speaker 4: American Mind, I reviewed all the research I could find
6:23
Speaker 4: on the importance of play. All young mammals play, and
6:27
Speaker 4: they do that in order to give their brain feedback
6:30
Speaker 4: from the world continuously that allows it to wire up
6:32
Speaker 4: into a competent, capable adult pattern. So play is a
6:36
Speaker 4: biological necessity. And what Greg and I observed from writing
6:41
Speaker 4: the previous book was that free play has been declining
6:44
Speaker 4: since the seventies or eighties. Kids are spending a lot
6:47
Speaker 4: more time in parents supervised or adult supervised activities, more
6:50
Speaker 4: time in school, and just plummeting time for play, including
6:54
Speaker 4: recess and time after school and on weekends. So this
6:57
Speaker 4: is likely to have some bad effects. Anyway, That's where
6:59
Speaker 4: I was before I started this book. Once I really
7:03
Speaker 4: dug into what the hell happened between twenty ten and
7:05
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen?
7:06
Speaker 3: Why is it you? Graph out?
7:07
Speaker 4: Chapter one has all these graphs. I have hundreds of
7:10
Speaker 4: graphs on my Google docs. There's really no trend in
7:14
Speaker 4: mental health data from the late nineties to the early
7:17
Speaker 4: twenty tens.
7:17
Speaker 3: It's pretty flat.
7:18
Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden, it's like someone turned
7:20
Speaker 4: down a light switch around twenty twelve and girls all
7:23
Speaker 4: over the developed world begin checking into psychiatric emergency wards.
7:26
Speaker 4: So what happened? Why did things change so quickly? And
7:30
Speaker 4: so my argument in the book is that it was
7:33
Speaker 4: the gradual loss of the play based childhood, which was
7:35
Speaker 4: really from the eighties and especially the nineties a trust.
7:38
Speaker 4: So you're taking away this thing that kids need to
7:40
Speaker 4: be stronger.
7:41
Speaker 3: They don't get.
7:41
Speaker 4: Depressed yet, they're actually hanging out on the internet. And
7:44
Speaker 4: the early Internet wasn't so bad. But it's between twenty
7:47
Speaker 4: ten and twenty fifteen that everything changes. When they go
7:50
Speaker 4: from flip phones. You can't spend eight hours a day
7:52
Speaker 4: on a flip phone. They go from flip phones in
7:54
Speaker 4: twenty ten to smartphones with front facing cameras, unlimited data
7:59
Speaker 4: plan and now you can be on your phone literally
8:02
Speaker 4: all day long, and some kids are so twenty fifteen,
8:05
Speaker 4: everything changes. The phone based childhood is gone, I mean sorry,
8:08
Speaker 4: the play based chilhood is gone, and now most kids
8:12
Speaker 4: have a phone based childhood. And I picked that term
8:14
Speaker 4: to sound kind of creepy. I used to like Star
8:16
Speaker 4: Trek when I was young, like, oh is it carbon no, captain,
8:19
Speaker 4: it's silicon based life, like you know, it's a play
8:21
Speaker 4: based university to a phone based childhood, Like it's creepy.
8:25
Speaker 1: So it's interesting because the argument is sort of that,
8:28
Speaker 1: like the phones came in at a time in which
8:30
Speaker 1: we were almost primed to replace the kind of this
8:35
Speaker 1: type of socialization kids have been doing earlier with this,
8:37
Speaker 1: and it's almost as if we hadn't had that decline earlier,
8:41
Speaker 1: that maybe phones would have the experience with phones would
8:43
Speaker 1: have been maybe less appealing. I don't know, but so
8:46
Speaker 1: interested in this decline piece because I think it's something
8:49
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about this. It's it's a
8:51
Speaker 1: decline that it's a decline. I remember because or at
8:54
Speaker 1: least I think about my own childhood, which was a
8:56
Speaker 1: lot of like running around and being throwing sticks at
8:59
Speaker 1: peeple and so on, which has has is really not
9:04
Speaker 1: there anymore, and I think partly because parents are afraid
9:08
Speaker 1: of the outdoors.
9:10
Speaker 4: Well, that's right. So the way we tell the story
9:13
Speaker 4: in the book, and by way I mean especially Zach Rausch,
9:15
Speaker 4: my research partner, who helped me with a lot of this,
9:17
Speaker 4: and also which are on the work of Gene Twangy
9:20
Speaker 4: and also on Leonoro Skenes, who.
9:22
Speaker 3: Wrote Free Range Kids.
9:24
Speaker 4: And so the story that we tell in the book
9:25
Speaker 4: is as a tragedy in two acts. But it turns
9:28
Speaker 4: out there's a third act which actually comes first, which
9:32
Speaker 4: is the decline of community. So why did we suddenly
9:35
Speaker 4: freak out in the nineties and think that our kids
9:36
Speaker 4: will be abducted if we ever You know, Americans, if
9:39
Speaker 4: you let your kid go to another aisle in the supermarket,
9:42
Speaker 4: we think.
9:43
Speaker 1: That people and they're like, your child's lost, that's what
9:47
Speaker 1: child's like.
9:47
Speaker 4: How is a kidnapper going to get a screaming child
9:50
Speaker 4: out of a supermark? I don't know, but we suddenly
9:52
Speaker 4: I can't even do that. Yeah, that's right, we can't
9:56
Speaker 4: even get a screen child out of the supermarket. So
10:00
Speaker 4: so the story, the full story now is act one
10:03
Speaker 4: is actually the loss of adult solidarity, adult trust. When
10:07
Speaker 4: you and I were kids, we were out on our bicycles.
10:09
Speaker 4: Sometimes you'd fall down, and if you really got hurt,
10:12
Speaker 4: like your friend would go like ring up, just knock
10:14
Speaker 4: on someone's door. Hey, can you call my mother? And
10:16
Speaker 4: they'll call your mother.
10:17
Speaker 3: Okay.
10:18
Speaker 4: But we don't trust our neighbors anymore. And this is
10:20
Speaker 4: all the Robert Putnam stuff bowling alone, the decline of
10:22
Speaker 4: social capital, So that really is kicking in the seventies
10:25
Speaker 4: and eighties, setting us up for declining trust. Now I'm
10:27
Speaker 4: a little older than you, but if you grew up
10:29
Speaker 4: in the seventies, remember the seventies, it was insane. I mean,
10:32
Speaker 4: there was a lot of crime and crazy stuff happening,
10:35
Speaker 4: but we all went out to play. In the nineties,
10:38
Speaker 4: it gets much safer. Drunk driving plummets. We're locking up
10:41
Speaker 4: the sexual predators, which we didn't do in the seventies.
10:44
Speaker 4: So life gets really safe for kids, and deaths from
10:47
Speaker 4: all sources are plummeting in the nineties. But that's when
10:49
Speaker 4: we freak out because we don't trust each other anymore.
10:52
Speaker 4: And that's when we start saying, no, you can't go out,
10:54
Speaker 4: but oh hey, here's a computer. Computers are good for you, right,
10:56
Speaker 4: so play on a computer, all right.
11:00
Speaker 1: So we have this this piece, this sort of decline
11:03
Speaker 1: in play based sort of rise in in phone based childhood,
11:07
Speaker 1: and and then your view and actually, now I want
11:14
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about this core argument about
11:17
Speaker 1: mental health, because the crux of the book is kind
11:20
Speaker 1: of we see this decline in mental health. And then
11:26
Speaker 1: your position is that it is about phones or like
11:29
Speaker 1: a lot of it is.
11:29
Speaker 4: About it's the loss of the play based childhood and
11:32
Speaker 4: it transfering it to a phone based is my argument.
11:35
Speaker 1: And so I think there my sense is that there
11:39
Speaker 1: is a fairly widespread agreement that there's been a decline
11:43
Speaker 1: in teen mental health over the past fifteen years. I mean,
11:45
Speaker 1: I you know, it's not that some of the pushback
11:48
Speaker 1: to your book, people say, well, it hasn't really happened.
11:50
Speaker 1: But I think if you look.
11:51
Speaker 3: Out in it, all right, no, they're not right.
11:54
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, one could argue abauck the
11:56
Speaker 1: magnitude that a lot of people would say, like something
11:58
Speaker 1: has gone a bit with mental health for kids. And
12:03
Speaker 1: then I think the question is how much is it
12:06
Speaker 1: linked to phones? And one of the pieces of your
12:10
Speaker 1: evidence is literally time trends. So can you talk a
12:14
Speaker 1: little bit about how you are seeing how important you
12:17
Speaker 1: think these time trends are, and how almost definitive you
12:20
Speaker 1: think the time trend is as everance.
12:23
Speaker 4: For those Okay, sure, so first let me make a
12:25
Speaker 4: major distinction that is almost never made. The researchers talk
12:29
Speaker 4: about population level effects, which is, did we have a
12:33
Speaker 4: giant increase of really a doubling on many measures of
12:36
Speaker 4: mental illness, including a doubling of suicide for younger teen girls.
12:41
Speaker 4: Did we have a big increase? And the answer is yes,
12:43
Speaker 4: And then the question is what caused that big increase?
12:46
Speaker 4: That's one set of that's one set of causal relationships
12:49
Speaker 4: that we can study, and that's very hard to answer
12:51
Speaker 4: because we can't do experiments to know what happened twenty
12:54
Speaker 4: years ago. But that's a big one. Now, there was
12:57
Speaker 4: a report put up by the National Academies of Science.
12:59
Speaker 4: It said, well, we can't know that. You know, we
13:01
Speaker 4: don't find evidence that the phones caused this population level
13:04
Speaker 4: of it. But there's a very different set of questions,
13:06
Speaker 4: which is is this thing hurting children? And might it
13:09
Speaker 4: hurt my child? That's very different and there there's a
13:13
Speaker 4: lot more evidence of direct harm through ten or fifteen
13:16
Speaker 4: different routes to kids. So, uh wait, what was your
13:20
Speaker 4: question again?
13:23
Speaker 1: So the question there's this idea about the time trends,
13:28
Speaker 1: and that basically like there's this sort of hit in
13:31
Speaker 1: the time. And I think in some ways, like from
13:34
Speaker 1: a social science standpoint, there are many different explanations one
13:36
Speaker 1: could have for a decline in mental health, and I
13:39
Speaker 1: think the idea that it is about phones, or that
13:41
Speaker 1: phones are a major portion of it does in some
13:45
Speaker 1: ways like rely in your argument on the idea that
13:49
Speaker 1: there is this sort of sharp time trend or maybe I'm.
13:52
Speaker 4: Not right about good let's talk about that. So what
13:56
Speaker 4: do we see. We see these hockey stick shaped curves
13:58
Speaker 4: in the US, and the inflection point is twenty twelve.
14:02
Speaker 4: It's very clear, especially in the girls date twenty eleven,
14:05
Speaker 4: no sign of a problem in twenty thirteen. Almost all
14:07
Speaker 4: the indicators are going towards problems. It's very very sharp,
14:10
Speaker 4: especially in the US, and so a lot of people
14:12
Speaker 4: say twenty twelve, well, that was the Newtown massacre, and
14:16
Speaker 4: then kids had all these scary lockdown drills, and so
14:19
Speaker 4: that might be why it is Okay, fine, that's perfectly plausible.
14:23
Speaker 4: It does fit the timing. But why did the exact
14:25
Speaker 4: same thing happen in Canada, UK, Australia, Scandinavie. I mean no,
14:29
Speaker 4: there's no way that Newtown affected mental health of girls
14:32
Speaker 4: all over the developed world. Other people say, oh, twenty twelve,
14:35
Speaker 4: I mean that was in the way cause the financial crisis,
14:37
Speaker 4: Like no, because mental health was actually unaffected by kids
14:41
Speaker 4: at all. There's no sign of a problem during the
14:43
Speaker 4: worst days of the financial crisis, and then basically throughout
14:47
Speaker 4: the twenty tens, life is getting better and better economically,
14:50
Speaker 4: but the kids are getting worse and worse. So we
14:52
Speaker 4: can go through and we have this in our Google docs.
14:54
Speaker 4: We have got like fifteen different alternate hypotheses people have
14:57
Speaker 4: told us, and none of them can explain both the
15:00
Speaker 4: timing around twenty twelve and the international scope. So you
15:03
Speaker 4: got to start thinking when you have a global change,
15:06
Speaker 4: either it's something about the sun, and I literally have
15:09
Speaker 4: looked into sunspots, like was there a huge increase in sunspots?
15:13
Speaker 3: You know?
15:13
Speaker 4: Or it would be some chemical that somehow was released
15:17
Speaker 4: into the atmosphere over North America, Europe, Australia and New
15:20
Speaker 4: Zealand at the same time, unlikely, it's not going to
15:24
Speaker 4: be the food supply because you know, even if we
15:25
Speaker 4: use GMOs here, they didn't use them in Europe and
15:27
Speaker 4: New Zealand. So if we're just looking at the correlations, granted,
15:31
Speaker 4: correlations don't prove causation, but something huge happened to the
15:36
Speaker 4: mental health of our species. Practically there is no other
15:40
Speaker 4: explanation for it. I've got an explanation. It fits perfectly,
15:44
Speaker 4: and I keep waiting for someone to say, no, it
15:46
Speaker 4: was something else.
15:47
Speaker 3: No one's come up with anything. Do you have one? Seriously?
15:50
Speaker 3: Have you heard one that you think.
15:51
Speaker 2: Is so sure?
15:52
Speaker 1: I have so the one argument I've heard people make,
15:56
Speaker 1: timing wise, is about diagnosis and the Affordable Care Act. Okay,
16:02
Speaker 1: that is the one other kind of a like direct
16:05
Speaker 1: kind of here is something that happened at the same
16:08
Speaker 1: time or almost exactly the same time that might have changed.
16:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, okay, good. So I go to our document.
16:14
Speaker 4: We have a DOCUMENTE called the State of the Debate.
16:16
Speaker 4: I go that argument is argument number one point one
16:20
Speaker 4: point two, which is it's just changes in screening and
16:23
Speaker 4: diagnostic criteria, and yes, it fits the Affordable Care Act
16:27
Speaker 4: You're right, it could be that's just in America. We
16:31
Speaker 4: just changed the insurance codes and that caused lots of
16:34
Speaker 4: kids to be diagnosed with something that a year ago
16:37
Speaker 4: they wouldn't have been. Okay, fits the timing. Why did
16:40
Speaker 4: that happen in Australia, New Zealand everywhere else at the
16:42
Speaker 4: same time.
16:43
Speaker 3: Again, it just doesn't work.
16:44
Speaker 4: The other one people point to, the one that could
16:46
Speaker 4: be global is the ICD, the International Classification of Diseases.
16:50
Speaker 3: They did do.
16:51
Speaker 4: A major update between ICD nine and ten in twenty fifteen,
16:55
Speaker 4: so and that would be global because it would affect
16:58
Speaker 4: mental health professionals in all the country. But the numbers
17:02
Speaker 4: didn't go up in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen. They went
17:04
Speaker 4: up in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, and then they go
17:06
Speaker 4: up again around twenty eighteen. There's another maybe an acceleration.
17:09
Speaker 4: So we don't see any sign in the data of
17:11
Speaker 4: a twenty fifteen twenty sixteen change. So yeah, okay, hit
17:15
Speaker 4: me with another one.
17:17
Speaker 1: No, no, that that was the only one I had. Okay,
17:19
Speaker 1: But then I want to get into the second, the
17:21
Speaker 1: second piece of this, which is like, so we could
17:23
Speaker 1: sort of say, okay, we have these time trends, but
17:26
Speaker 1: I think time trends as a piece of evidence are
17:29
Speaker 1: always a little tricky because of course sufficient, they're not sufficient.
17:34
Speaker 1: And so then I think we had to go to like, Okay,
17:36
Speaker 1: what do the studies look like? And there are a
17:38
Speaker 1: billion correlational studies. I think we let's just set the
17:41
Speaker 1: stage that, like, there are a lot of correlational studies
17:45
Speaker 1: that show that kids who use the internet all the time,
17:47
Speaker 1: are you know, like that are on their phones. If
17:50
Speaker 1: you're on your phone for twenty three hours a day,
17:52
Speaker 1: that you're way more likely to be depressed than if
17:54
Speaker 1: you're not. But like, are you on your phone because
17:56
Speaker 1: you're depressed? I mean this is like, you know, the time,
17:59
Speaker 1: if you do happyess studies, the time people are least
18:01
Speaker 1: likely to be happy is when they're like watching television
18:04
Speaker 1: eating Ben and Jerry's in their underwear. But like that's
18:06
Speaker 1: the reason they're watching television eating Ben and jerrys their
18:09
Speaker 1: underwear is because they got dumped. And so I think
18:12
Speaker 1: the question here is, like all of these studies put
18:16
Speaker 1: aside all the correlation. Let's just say let's say that
18:19
Speaker 1: I want to tell you, I think every one of
18:21
Speaker 1: the studies is just like hot garbage. I learn nothing
18:24
Speaker 1: from it. What do you see as the compelling causal evidence?
18:29
Speaker 3: Okay?
18:29
Speaker 4: Sure, So in the Google docs that we started creating,
18:33
Speaker 4: we organized them by correlational studies, and yes there are thousands,
18:36
Speaker 4: because you know, any intro psych teacher in Singapore can
18:39
Speaker 4: just give their kids a questionnaire and they go, look,
18:42
Speaker 4: there's a point to correlation like so that's right. Correlational
18:44
Speaker 4: studies like that are not very compelling, but there are
18:47
Speaker 4: a lot of them, and they tend to actually come
18:50
Speaker 4: in on the fact that the correlations are larger for
18:52
Speaker 4: girls than boys in the ballpark OFO point one to
18:54
Speaker 4: point two. That's we find them correlational studies. But that's
18:57
Speaker 4: just section one. Section two is more telling. It's longitudinal studies.
19:02
Speaker 4: So if you have a population of thousands of kids
19:05
Speaker 4: that you're tracking over time, you can look and you
19:08
Speaker 4: can see what's their mental health over time. Then you
19:10
Speaker 4: can see, did this kid bump up her social media
19:13
Speaker 4: use at time three? Okay, yes, well let's what happened
19:17
Speaker 4: for mental health at oh, then her mental health got
19:19
Speaker 4: worse at time four. Conversely, if some kids mental health
19:23
Speaker 4: got worse at time three and then you can see,
19:25
Speaker 4: oh did her social media use bump up at time four? Oh?
19:27
Speaker 3: Yes, that would be reverse correlation.
19:29
Speaker 4: So that's theoretically possible, and there are some studies that
19:31
Speaker 4: find it, but there are a lot more that find
19:33
Speaker 4: the forward correlation. So I'm not doubting that when once
19:36
Speaker 4: you're depressed and anxious, many of the kids, especially girls,
19:39
Speaker 4: will spend more time on social media. But there are many,
19:42
Speaker 4: many studies we have again we have a whole section.
19:45
Speaker 4: There are many, many more studies that find forward core
19:48
Speaker 4: and when you do a time leg study, they find
19:50
Speaker 4: that the increases in phone use or social media use specifically,
19:54
Speaker 4: I should say, are they are leading indicators of mental
19:58
Speaker 4: health problems, not the other way around. Candae Audres, who's
20:01
Speaker 4: one of the one of the skeptics, claims that it's
20:03
Speaker 4: all reverse correlation, and sure, there are a couple of
20:05
Speaker 4: studies that show that, but there are many more studies
20:07
Speaker 4: that are showing forward correlation.
20:10
Speaker 1: What about my favorite study about Facebook introduction in college?
20:15
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a few things that look a
20:18
Speaker 1: little more randomized, right.
20:21
Speaker 4: That's right, right, So okay, so good. So let's get
20:23
Speaker 4: to the third section of our review, and you can
20:25
Speaker 4: find all my reviews. If you go to Anxious generation
20:27
Speaker 4: dot com slash reviews, we've got more than it does
20:31
Speaker 4: in the MAGA. We you know, we've worked, we've worn't
20:35
Speaker 4: as thousands of studies, and we're not cherry picking. We're
20:37
Speaker 4: not saying, look these studies, supporters. We're saying, let's get
20:39
Speaker 4: all the studies on both here's both here, no, here's SIDEA,
20:42
Speaker 4: here's ibs. So we're collecting everything we can find. If
20:44
Speaker 4: there are other researchers out there, if you know of
20:46
Speaker 4: other studies, please you can put them in the comments.
20:48
Speaker 4: You can get commenting access. Please add these are collaborative
20:51
Speaker 4: review documents. So we did the correlational studies in section one,
20:54
Speaker 4: the perspective or time leg studies in section two, and
20:57
Speaker 4: section three is the experiments. There are two kinds of experiments.
21:00
Speaker 4: There are sort of standard experiments where you use random assignment.
21:03
Speaker 4: Those are hard to do, especially with under eighteen, because
21:05
Speaker 4: it's hard to get access to kids under eighteen. And
21:09
Speaker 4: then there are quasi experiments where the world kind of
21:13
Speaker 4: randomly assigned let's say different towns or different cities to
21:17
Speaker 4: get high speed intenet at a different time or the
21:19
Speaker 4: one you referred to.
21:21
Speaker 3: I think it was by all cod I we can't remember.
21:22
Speaker 3: The first author was.
21:25
Speaker 4: Facebook O against cut that's right against Matt Matthew Genska.
21:29
Speaker 4: The you know, Facebook, of course, originally was just for
21:31
Speaker 4: you know, elite college students. That was part of the strategy,
21:34
Speaker 4: just the ivy leagues. Well, and then we'll expand it
21:35
Speaker 4: to other schools and other schools, and so you see
21:38
Speaker 4: whether when a school got it, what happens to the
21:42
Speaker 4: mental health of the students in the following six months
21:45
Speaker 4: compared to schools that didn't get it until say the
21:47
Speaker 4: next year. And so now this study was done at
21:50
Speaker 4: a time when Facebook wasn't that toxic. I mean it
21:53
Speaker 4: was new in that now sub it was really boring.
21:55
Speaker 1: It was just like pictures of people and you guys
21:57
Speaker 1: did decide if they were attractive.
21:58
Speaker 4: That's right, Well, that very very well. It was at
22:04
Speaker 4: that time. There was no news feed, there were no algorithms,
22:07
Speaker 4: but it was you would look at photos of your
22:10
Speaker 4: friends from high school who went to some different college,
22:12
Speaker 4: let's say or something, and they're all having a great
22:14
Speaker 4: time and you're like, oh, my life sucks compared to their. So,
22:17
Speaker 4: you know, people talked about it, how it would make
22:19
Speaker 4: you depressed and anyway, the authors found some evidence of that.
22:23
Speaker 4: I forget the exact dependent variables they use, but that
22:25
Speaker 4: was one of the We have about seven or eight
22:27
Speaker 4: prospective quasi experiments like that. There are also several where
22:31
Speaker 4: you look at so high speed internet gets rolled out
22:33
Speaker 4: in Canada to different parts of British Columbia at different times,
22:37
Speaker 4: and so Canadian researcher looked, and sure enough she finds
22:40
Speaker 4: that that preseat whenever it comes, you find an increase
22:44
Speaker 4: mostly for girls. It's really the young women whose mental
22:47
Speaker 4: health collapses when they start spending all day on the internet,
22:51
Speaker 4: on high speed internet through their phone. So there's correlational studies,
22:55
Speaker 4: there are time lag studies, there are lab experiments, there
22:57
Speaker 4: are there are quasi experiments. So I'm like, you keep
23:01
Speaker 4: saying it's just correlational, but it's not. What else can
23:03
Speaker 4: I do?
23:05
Speaker 1: Okay? So I actually think we could talk about this
23:10
Speaker 1: for like an hour, and I think that you know,
23:13
Speaker 1: it would be I would enjoy it. I'm not sure
23:16
Speaker 1: everybody would stay on the call, but I mean, I
23:19
Speaker 1: think let me ask you one other question before we
23:22
Speaker 1: talk about phones in schools, which I actually do want
23:25
Speaker 1: to make sure easy? Yeah, that's an easy one. But
23:29
Speaker 1: I want to ask one more question about this.
23:31
Speaker 4: One of the.
23:31
Speaker 1: Pieces of one of the things I see when a
23:33
Speaker 1: piece of pushback is you know, let's say, on average,
23:38
Speaker 1: this is bad for kids' mental health, but some kids
23:41
Speaker 1: benefit from it. There are some kids particularly maybe they're
23:44
Speaker 1: particularly kids in marginalized groups, or maybe they're not just
23:46
Speaker 1: in general, Like, there are some kids who really benefit
23:50
Speaker 1: from the access that they get on social media. And
23:52
Speaker 1: I think the truth is there has to be some
23:55
Speaker 1: of those people, right, It seems implausible to me that
23:58
Speaker 1: every child would be hurt by social media. I think
24:01
Speaker 1: it's likely some of them are helped. Now, maybe you
24:03
Speaker 1: disagree with that, but I wonder then how we think
24:07
Speaker 1: about that trade off. Like maybe your answer is all
24:10
Speaker 1: kids are harmed.
24:12
Speaker 4: Yep, no, no, go, let's go Okay, So, first, there's
24:15
Speaker 4: an incredible double standard where I have to jump through
24:18
Speaker 4: hoops and face incredible opposition to show causality of harms.
24:23
Speaker 4: But what's the evidence for benefits. It's basically on some
24:26
Speaker 4: surveys more kids say oh, yeah, you know, I'm it
24:30
Speaker 4: makes me happier versus sadder. Really, that's your evidence for
24:33
Speaker 4: benefits no one. I've not seen any studies that show
24:36
Speaker 4: any sort of anything beyond just like, yes, I it
24:38
Speaker 4: makes me feel better. So there's the evidence for benefits
24:41
Speaker 4: extremely weak. Secondly, the benefits that are supposed to come
24:46
Speaker 4: from social media can come from the Internet. You don't
24:49
Speaker 4: need social media. So META is trying to control the
24:52
Speaker 4: narrative here. Meta is trying to put out the line
24:55
Speaker 4: that KOSA hurts LGBTQ kids. COSA is the Kids Online
24:58
Speaker 4: Safety Act or really doesn't want any regulation. And their
25:02
Speaker 4: main argument to the left. They speak to the right
25:05
Speaker 4: by saying, oh, it's you know, free speech violations. To
25:07
Speaker 4: the left they say, don't regulate us because social media
25:10
Speaker 4: is a lifeline for LGBTQ, it's other kids from marginalized communities. Well,
25:15
Speaker 4: guess what to say that it's a lifeline. The early
25:20
Speaker 4: Internet was so if you're a gay or trans kid
25:23
Speaker 4: in a rural area in nineteen ninety eight, yeah, the
25:27
Speaker 4: Internet was a lifeline, Like you could get information, you
25:30
Speaker 4: could meet people, you didn't feel alone. So the Internet
25:33
Speaker 4: solved that problem. Now the Internet evolves, and it used
25:37
Speaker 4: to be this open internet. It was all nonprofit and
25:40
Speaker 4: the Internet evolves into three or four giant companies that
25:43
Speaker 4: suck up everyone's attention. How did they do this by
25:46
Speaker 4: using a newsfeed that was algorithmicized and engineered to keep
25:50
Speaker 4: you on it? Now do lgbtkids need that? Is that
25:55
Speaker 4: what they need to find information?
25:57
Speaker 3: Hell?
25:57
Speaker 4: No, is that what they need to find community? No?
26:02
Speaker 4: There are so many other ways. So that's my second
26:04
Speaker 4: point is that the purported benefits are almost all available.
26:09
Speaker 4: If we were to raise the age to eighteen, I
26:12
Speaker 4: argue for sixteen. Were raised the age to sixteen for
26:15
Speaker 4: opening a social media account, no kid would suddenly be like,
26:18
Speaker 4: how can I find information? I would never think to
26:22
Speaker 4: go to Google like you know? Or how could I
26:24
Speaker 4: find other people? I would never think to go to
26:26
Speaker 4: all sorts of other ways that people can connect. So,
26:28
Speaker 4: and here's the third and here's the kicker, and it
26:32
Speaker 4: is that when you actually look at the evidence, when
26:37
Speaker 4: you look at young teens generally have a lot of regret.
26:40
Speaker 4: A lot of them say that it's harmed them, a
26:42
Speaker 4: lot of them say that they wish it was about
26:45
Speaker 4: half of them say they wish it was never invented.
26:47
Speaker 4: On all those measures of regret, LGBTQ kids are higher
26:52
Speaker 4: than non LGBTQ. In other words, it's the LGBTQ kids
26:56
Speaker 4: who are especially on exploring interactions with strange around the
27:00
Speaker 4: world who are sextorting them and humiliating them. So it's
27:04
Speaker 4: the LGBTQ kids who are really getting harmed by this
27:08
Speaker 4: insane open online world where you're interacting with strangers who
27:12
Speaker 4: want sex from you, Like, how can we be doing
27:14
Speaker 4: this to the kids. So again, sure, I'm sure some
27:18
Speaker 4: kids are benefiting, but the harms are enormous. The harms
27:21
Speaker 4: are intrinsic to social media, and the benefits are not
27:26
Speaker 4: very well documented and easily available, even if we were
27:29
Speaker 4: to raise the age to sixteen.
27:36
Speaker 1: More of my conversation with Jonathan Hyde, including whether there's
27:39
Speaker 1: any value to phones in schools, are disagreements about how
27:43
Speaker 1: much Coco Melan is too much Coco Melan, and an
27:45
Speaker 1: audience Q and A after the break, let's talk about
28:03
Speaker 1: phones at school, because I actually my view on this
28:06
Speaker 1: is that that we got a little like we could
28:09
Speaker 1: debate this and you could get on here with someone
28:12
Speaker 1: who is probably more skeptical than I am about these
28:14
Speaker 1: harms and talk and talk and talk and talk about
28:16
Speaker 1: this study and that study and whatever. When we come
28:18
Speaker 1: to phones in schools, this is a very basic thing,
28:21
Speaker 1: which is phones are distracting at school and school is
28:26
Speaker 1: for learning. And so even if you thought that kids
28:29
Speaker 1: should have phones at the end of the day so
28:31
Speaker 1: they can interact with their friends on Snapchat or whatever,
28:34
Speaker 1: it is the idea that they need them in third
28:36
Speaker 1: period during math I have yet to see. I have
28:39
Speaker 1: yet to speak to an expert, and I have talked
28:41
Speaker 1: to a lot of people about this. I've yet to
28:43
Speaker 1: talk to someone who thinks it is a good idea
28:45
Speaker 1: for people to have phones in math class. Have you
28:47
Speaker 1: spoken to anyone who thinks people should have phones in
28:49
Speaker 1: math class there.
28:51
Speaker 4: I've once heard of someone who said, well, you know,
28:53
Speaker 4: I can do lesson plans that have them take.
28:55
Speaker 3: Out their phones.
28:56
Speaker 4: So that's the only thing I've ever heard, But of
28:57
Speaker 4: course they could do all sorts of other things. I
29:00
Speaker 4: think it's important to understand. So first big picture here
29:03
Speaker 4: is in my book, I propose four norms by which
29:05
Speaker 4: we can roll back the phone based childhood. They're very simple.
29:08
Speaker 4: No smartphone till high school, no social media till sixteen,
29:12
Speaker 4: phone free schools, far more independence, freeplay, and responsibility in
29:15
Speaker 4: the real four norms. On the more free play, there's
29:19
Speaker 4: been zero pushback, zero point zero. Nobody has said no,
29:22
Speaker 4: kids don't need more play. On the phone free schools,
29:25
Speaker 4: there's been pretty much zero pushback. You always get the thing, oh,
29:28
Speaker 4: but what about a school shooter, to which the answer is,
29:31
Speaker 4: you know, if there's an emergency in your kids' school,
29:33
Speaker 4: do you want to be in a school where the
29:35
Speaker 4: teachers have phones and the kids are doing what they're
29:37
Speaker 4: supposed to do? Or do you want to be in
29:38
Speaker 4: a school whe as soon as there's an emergency, everyone's
29:40
Speaker 4: on their phone crying to their parents. Like, that's not
29:42
Speaker 4: going to that, you know, school security experts say that
29:44
Speaker 4: is not helpful. It is not safe for everyone to
29:47
Speaker 4: be on their phones. So phone free schools. Other than
29:50
Speaker 4: that argument, there is no pushback at all, and amazing
29:54
Speaker 4: not amazingly. A month ago, two surveys come out, one
29:57
Speaker 4: from teachers and it's like overnight, you know, over ninety
30:00
Speaker 4: say they don't want phones in class. But here's the
30:03
Speaker 4: big thing. People don't understand. They think, oh, you know,
30:06
Speaker 4: don't let your kids use phones in class, but they
30:08
Speaker 4: can use them in between classes and at lunch. Hell no, because,
30:12
Speaker 4: first of all, they're missing out on socializing, on talking
30:16
Speaker 4: with their friends, on playing, on touching. There's very little
30:18
Speaker 4: touch anymore. Kids don't touch each other because they're always
30:21
Speaker 4: on their phone. So the phone policy has to be
30:25
Speaker 4: bell to bell. I've been advocating for phone free schools
30:28
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the day. You know, it's useful
30:30
Speaker 4: to get to school at the beginning. You put it
30:32
Speaker 4: in a Yonder pouch, or you put it in a
30:33
Speaker 4: phone lock, or you put it in a bathroom you.
30:35
Speaker 1: Want, like, I mean, I think here, I almost think
30:37
Speaker 1: we get into like what is the way to fix this?
30:40
Speaker 1: So you like the Yonder pouch, Like, which is one
30:42
Speaker 1: of these? Like you dump your phone in?
30:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's there are a couple of main ways. So
30:48
Speaker 4: Yonder is the most popular because it's the easiest in
30:50
Speaker 4: that there's very little parent there's much less parent pushback
30:54
Speaker 4: because the kids literally have their phones with them all
30:56
Speaker 4: the time. So my daughter, my kids go to New
30:58
Speaker 4: York City public schools. When my daughter started seventh grade,
31:01
Speaker 4: her school went to Yonder pouches. You get it, you know,
31:03
Speaker 4: you get it. I think you had to buy it
31:05
Speaker 4: for fifteen dollars or something. You get a yellow pouch
31:07
Speaker 4: with a magnetic lock, like the anti theft devices in
31:10
Speaker 4: clothing stores, and so you lock it at the beginning
31:12
Speaker 4: the day, but you'll keep it with you. So in
31:14
Speaker 4: theory it's perfect. In theory, it's the ideal system. The
31:17
Speaker 4: problem is that you go on YouTube. Here are five
31:20
Speaker 4: ways to open it. Now, all the ways damage the pouch.
31:23
Speaker 4: And so when I talk to the Yonder people about this,
31:25
Speaker 4: I said, you know, look, this is what's happening. My
31:27
Speaker 4: daughter says, most of the kids can get their phones out.
31:29
Speaker 4: They said, well, yes, but it damages the pouch, and
31:32
Speaker 4: so if the school will do inspections, then that cuts
31:34
Speaker 4: it way down. Bottom line is that schools that use
31:37
Speaker 4: Yonder seem to really like it, but they do need
31:39
Speaker 4: to enforce it. It requires you have to do some
31:41
Speaker 4: pouch inspections, but it works. It's pretty straightforward. A better way,
31:45
Speaker 4: I think would be phone lockers, but I don't actually
31:48
Speaker 4: hear of many schools that are use them, so I
31:49
Speaker 4: don't really know. But iny a phone locker, you lock
31:52
Speaker 4: it in the morning in your homeroom or the front
31:54
Speaker 4: and then you get it back at the end of
31:55
Speaker 4: the day. That would be the most reliable.
31:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it seems to me like basically the
32:01
Speaker 1: if we can get people to accept that this is
32:04
Speaker 1: the right solution, then we are up against the technology problem.
32:08
Speaker 1: And like this feels like something where we could you know,
32:13
Speaker 1: probably figure out some kind of technology or ask you know,
32:17
Speaker 1: Meta to pay for Yonder pouches for all sixty million,
32:20
Speaker 1: like American told children, which I would be fine with doing.
32:22
Speaker 4: And if they lose the if they lose the lawsuits,
32:25
Speaker 4: maybe that's something that.
32:26
Speaker 1: Will that should be that should be the that should
32:29
Speaker 1: be the remedy. Everybody gets a Yonder pouch. Uh, And
32:32
Speaker 1: we'll we'll see do you see much push only ask
32:34
Speaker 1: you the last question and then I will and then
32:36
Speaker 1: we're going to move to people's questions, So put your
32:38
Speaker 1: questions in the Q and A.
32:39
Speaker 4: But do you.
32:42
Speaker 1: H do you think? I think the biggest pushback here
32:47
Speaker 1: is from parents, and you know, there's the school shooting thing,
32:51
Speaker 1: but then there's also just the general sense of like
32:53
Speaker 1: I want to be able to get in touch with
32:55
Speaker 1: my kid, what if my kid needs me? What if
32:56
Speaker 1: I need to change something during that? I mean that
32:59
Speaker 1: that is the only constituency other than kids themselves, where
33:02
Speaker 1: I really see much pushback and I almost feel like
33:05
Speaker 1: it's like a responsibility as parents to accept that, like,
33:10
Speaker 1: this is better for our children.
33:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
33:13
Speaker 4: So it's not just that this is better for their
33:15
Speaker 4: mental health, it's that childhood is a gradual increase in freedom, responsibility,
33:22
Speaker 4: and competence. And by the time your kid is in
33:26
Speaker 4: high school, they should be able to go six hours
33:28
Speaker 4: without you, especially if they're caring adults all around them
33:31
Speaker 4: in school. And you know, until five minutes ago in
33:35
Speaker 4: world history, we couldn't talk to our kids while they
33:37
Speaker 4: were in school. I mean, it's insane. It was insane
33:39
Speaker 4: to think, like, why should parents be able to be
33:41
Speaker 4: asking their kids what do you want for lunch? To
33:44
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, what do you want for dinner?
33:46
Speaker 1: Yeah?
33:46
Speaker 4: What do you want for dinner tonight? And so a
33:49
Speaker 4: lot of parents have gotten in the habit of that
33:51
Speaker 4: since twenty ten or even before, since they had flip phones.
33:55
Speaker 3: But that's a problem. It's not an audience we need
33:57
Speaker 3: to cater to. It's actually a problem. And the kids.
34:01
Speaker 4: You know, kids already have so much trouble focusing, they
34:03
Speaker 4: always do, and they don't have they don't have developed
34:06
Speaker 4: prefrontal courtesies. They don't have full executive control, so they
34:09
Speaker 4: if they're in class, they need to be focusing on
34:11
Speaker 4: the teacher, and okay, if they're flirting with the person
34:13
Speaker 4: next to them, that's okay because.
34:15
Speaker 3: That's social skills.
34:16
Speaker 4: They don't need to be texting with their mother or
34:18
Speaker 4: other kids or strangers in other countries. So yeah, I
34:23
Speaker 4: think the parents, those parents just have to get over it.
34:25
Speaker 3: Again.
34:25
Speaker 4: I understand the concern. I have two kids in New
34:27
Speaker 4: York City public schools, but we you know, this is
34:30
Speaker 4: where we have to overcome our anxieties. And it's the
34:32
Speaker 4: same for letting them out to play. It's really yeah,
34:36
Speaker 4: it's really frightening when you do it. Like the first
34:37
Speaker 4: time I let my son walk to school in New
34:39
Speaker 4: York City in fourth grade. Uh into fourth grade, he
34:42
Speaker 4: was uh, I guess nine. You know, my wife and
34:45
Speaker 4: I it was really scary. Now, and we try. We
34:48
Speaker 4: gave my old iPhone. We try, you know, we got
34:50
Speaker 4: a data plant so we could track him. We didn't
34:52
Speaker 4: realize there's a lot of simple phones that you can track.
34:54
Speaker 4: We didn't know that we gave him an iPhone we
34:56
Speaker 4: could track them. And our hearts were in our throats
34:59
Speaker 4: the first day or two watching his dot walk to
35:03
Speaker 4: PS three in New York City. But by the third
35:06
Speaker 4: day it was actually much better, because that's what happens
35:08
Speaker 4: with anxiety. You habituate and you realize, hey, I was
35:12
Speaker 4: out at seven. You know what, My son can walk
35:15
Speaker 4: to school at nine. He's able to do that.
35:18
Speaker 1: All right. So I'm going to answer a few of
35:20
Speaker 1: your questions. Now, I'm not John's gonna answer a few
35:22
Speaker 1: of your of your questions. So let's start with Let's
35:25
Speaker 1: start with this one. So is there anything in the
35:28
Speaker 1: data regarding phone use in childhood and attention span? They
35:32
Speaker 1: go on to point out, this is harder impossible to study,
35:36
Speaker 1: but I wonder if we can talk a little bit
35:39
Speaker 1: about that sort of that direct possible link.
35:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
35:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it seems plausible that there would be, and
35:45
Speaker 4: I suspect that there is. Now, when I was writing
35:48
Speaker 4: the book, I had to find clear evidence, and so
35:50
Speaker 4: I spent I spent a couple of days looking into that,
35:53
Speaker 4: and my recollection of what I found this would be
35:55
Speaker 4: in chapter five of the book, which is on the
35:57
Speaker 4: five the foundational harms. The foundational harms of having a
36:01
Speaker 4: phone based childhood are social deprivation, sleep, deprivation, attention fragmentation,
36:06
Speaker 4: which is this one an addiction? And what I found
36:10
Speaker 4: because I was thinking, like all this time, you know,
36:13
Speaker 4: on devices and the scattering and all the interruptions, is
36:15
Speaker 4: this going to increase ADHD? And I wasn't able to
36:18
Speaker 4: find evidence that it literally will cause a kid to
36:21
Speaker 4: have HDA ADHD who didn't have it before. That could
36:23
Speaker 4: be true, but I didn't find evidence of that. What
36:25
Speaker 4: I did find evidence of is that for kids who
36:28
Speaker 4: have ADHD, this makes it a lot worse, the constant interruptions,
36:32
Speaker 4: the fragmenting of attention. Now, I should point out that
36:37
Speaker 4: the way that you really learn something here would be
36:40
Speaker 4: an experiment where we randomly assign a bunch of kids
36:43
Speaker 4: to be constantly interrupted, to always, to never have thirty
36:46
Speaker 4: seconds free to think, you know, to be constantly pinged,
36:50
Speaker 4: and we do that for two or three years, from
36:51
Speaker 4: say age twelve to fifteen, and then we test them
36:55
Speaker 4: at age fifteen who's got better concentration. Of course, you
36:57
Speaker 4: could never do that experiment. That would be the most
36:59
Speaker 4: unethical experiment. And so in the absence of that, I
37:02
Speaker 4: can't tell you that, oh, yes, we've proven this, But
37:05
Speaker 4: you know, I think most teachers see it, so actually
37:09
Speaker 4: we bring addiction. One of the things about addiction here,
37:11
Speaker 4: we're especially talking for the boys. So the girls are
37:14
Speaker 4: their lives are getting messed up in a dozen ways
37:16
Speaker 4: through social media. I have a whole chapter on that.
37:18
Speaker 4: Chapter six. The boys' story is a little different, and
37:21
Speaker 4: it's much more about video games and pornography. The boys
37:24
Speaker 4: are spending huge amounts of time on video games and pornographies.
37:27
Speaker 4: They're not as depressed as the girls. They're actually having fun.
37:30
Speaker 4: They're enjoying the video games, they're enjoying the pornography. But
37:33
Speaker 4: what happens over time is the quick, cheap dopamine hits
37:37
Speaker 4: the you know, the incredible beauty of these games and
37:39
Speaker 4: the eroticism of the porn. I mean, it's beyond anything
37:42
Speaker 4: that we could have imagined when I was a kid.
37:44
Speaker 4: It conditions them to quick dopamine, which means that dopaine
37:48
Speaker 4: circuits down regulate. You need more dopamine to get to
37:50
Speaker 4: feel normal, which means and when they're not on video
37:52
Speaker 4: games or porn everything's kind of just like boring and uncomfortable,
37:57
Speaker 4: and it's very hard to focus or concentrate or enjoy
37:59
Speaker 4: anything because it's not video games important, it's not exciting,
38:02
Speaker 4: so I think you know. So my belief is that
38:05
Speaker 4: just looking at the nature of addiction, we see enough
38:08
Speaker 4: that it is affecting the way the kids are thinking.
38:13
Speaker 1: So let me ask this is an interesting question. So
38:17
Speaker 1: is it advisable to treat social media like drugs basically
38:21
Speaker 1: tell your kids about the danger and the whope they
38:23
Speaker 1: won't use it, having not while you're a child and
38:25
Speaker 1: living in my house mentality? Like, is this another way
38:30
Speaker 1: I would sort of think about this question as is like,
38:34
Speaker 1: is this something where we want to just like be like,
38:37
Speaker 1: do not use cocaine? Like no, there's no like I'm
38:41
Speaker 1: not going to help you learn how to use cocaine.
38:42
Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk about a responsible way to
38:44
Speaker 1: use just like we don't use that. Or is this
38:47
Speaker 1: like something where we'd want our kids to maybe like
38:53
Speaker 1: alcohol or like driving, or something where we want our
38:56
Speaker 1: kids to we want to be able to sort of
38:58
Speaker 1: mentor them into doing it in a safe way because
39:01
Speaker 1: it is part of adulthood.
39:03
Speaker 4: Or is it just I know, yeah, so this is
39:05
Speaker 4: like nothing we've ever experienced. The reason why is because
39:08
Speaker 4: it is socially addictive, Whereas there's other things like cigarettes
39:13
Speaker 4: and you know heroin. Those are biologically addictive. Now there's
39:17
Speaker 4: some biological addiction for heavy users. But in the peak
39:21
Speaker 4: year of teens smoking in the United States was nineteen
39:24
Speaker 4: ninety seven, thirty seven percent of high school kids smoked,
39:27
Speaker 4: which means that two thirds didn't. So you didn't have
39:29
Speaker 4: to smoke when you were in high school.
39:31
Speaker 3: I didn't. I never smoked.
39:32
Speaker 4: Some kids did, most of us didn't. You could do that.
39:35
Speaker 4: Social media is not like that. Social media is as
39:37
Speaker 4: soon as a few kids are using it in fifth
39:39
Speaker 4: grade or sixth grade, there's pressure on everyone to use it,
39:42
Speaker 4: and then each parent faces the same dilemma do I
39:46
Speaker 4: say no, in which case my kids says, well, I'm
39:48
Speaker 4: the only one. I'm left out. I'm alone. Everyone's having
39:52
Speaker 4: fun without me. And then it breaks our heart and
39:54
Speaker 4: we say yes, and that puts pressure on everyone else,
39:56
Speaker 4: and so before you know it, ninety five percent of
39:58
Speaker 4: kids by the age of eleven or twelve. I don't
40:00
Speaker 4: know the exact numbers now, but it's around there. You know,
40:02
Speaker 4: the vast majority of kids in middle school have it,
40:06
Speaker 4: and so it's not up to individual families in a sense.
40:08
Speaker 4: I mean, yes, if you're a very strong parent. You
40:10
Speaker 4: want to set boundaries. You can do it, but it's
40:12
Speaker 4: going to be a struggle. But if you can do
40:14
Speaker 4: it with the parents of your kid's three or four
40:17
Speaker 4: best friends, and you say, sweetheart, I know you're going
40:20
Speaker 4: into sixth grade next year, and some of the kids
40:21
Speaker 4: already have iPhones in fifth grade. But you know what,
40:25
Speaker 4: me and the parents of you know, Billy and Tommy
40:28
Speaker 4: and whatever, we've all decided you're going to get a
40:30
Speaker 4: flip phone. We want you to be able to communicate
40:33
Speaker 4: with each other, we want to be able to context
40:35
Speaker 4: with you. But you're not getting a smartphone until high school.
40:38
Speaker 4: Well then it becomes much easier. So this is not
40:40
Speaker 4: like any of those other things. Now, it's like driving
40:42
Speaker 4: in the sense that driving is very, very useful, and
40:45
Speaker 4: adults need cars in this country to do their adult things.
40:49
Speaker 3: We need them.
40:50
Speaker 4: But you know, nine year old's ten year olds like,
40:52
Speaker 4: they'd love to drive, it would be fun, but they
40:54
Speaker 4: don't need it.
40:54
Speaker 3: They don't.
40:55
Speaker 4: It's not like we have to.
40:56
Speaker 3: Get it to them.
40:57
Speaker 4: And so for driving, we say, how about nobody drives
40:59
Speaker 4: with or sixteen Havebut we just say that. And I
41:02
Speaker 4: think social media needs to be the same way, because
41:04
Speaker 4: as long as some kids are on it, there's pressure
41:05
Speaker 4: on all of them to be on it.
41:07
Speaker 1: So somebody asked, I'm not going to put it up
41:09
Speaker 1: because it's long, and to lock the whole thing. But
41:11
Speaker 1: it's best related to this question how it is our
41:17
Speaker 1: society and this gets back to the issues of press.
41:19
Speaker 1: But we're actually quite fragmented and this idea of like
41:22
Speaker 1: I'm going to get together with the other other parents
41:24
Speaker 1: of the kids in my elementary school, Like I may
41:26
Speaker 1: not know those people, and the school is not giving
41:28
Speaker 1: out a directory so I can call the other parents
41:30
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, let's all you know, not give
41:33
Speaker 1: our kids phones. So is there a sort of practical
41:36
Speaker 1: way that you expect that that you would suggest people
41:39
Speaker 1: try to coordinate across this?
41:42
Speaker 3: Oh?
41:43
Speaker 4: Yes, So the wait until eighth pledge was brilliantly designed.
41:47
Speaker 4: The only issue is that you shouldn't wait until the
41:50
Speaker 4: beginning of eight because that's middle school. We got to
41:51
Speaker 4: get this out of middle school. But brook Shann and
41:53
Speaker 4: the founder of it, she's changed it to wait until
41:55
Speaker 4: the end of eighth. So it was it was brilliant
41:58
Speaker 4: original idea, which is parents sign up from all over
42:01
Speaker 4: the country, all over the world, and as soon as
42:03
Speaker 4: ten families in a grade in a school have signed
42:07
Speaker 4: the pledge. Now there's ten other families in your kid's
42:09
Speaker 4: grade that are doing this, and then the pledge goes
42:12
Speaker 4: live and you all learn each other's email addresses.
42:14
Speaker 3: That's the first thing.
42:15
Speaker 4: Second thing is we do know the other parents because
42:18
Speaker 4: we had to arrange pickups at birthday parties, so we
42:20
Speaker 4: all know who's Tommy's mom and who's you know, so
42:23
Speaker 4: we already are connected by text or other devices. And
42:28
Speaker 4: then the third thing is schools are the logical place
42:32
Speaker 4: to start this. Schools are the center of parents and
42:36
Speaker 4: teachers attention on a defined group of kids who know
42:38
Speaker 4: each other. And so that's why phone free schools is
42:41
Speaker 4: so important, so powerful. If your kid listen to every
42:45
Speaker 4: one in the audience, If your kid's school allows them
42:48
Speaker 4: to keep a phone in their pocket during the day,
42:50
Speaker 4: it is probably going to reduce what your child learns
42:53
Speaker 4: and it is going to increase the odds that your
42:55
Speaker 4: child will have anxiety and depression later, especially if they're
42:57
Speaker 4: a girl. So if you're will allows that organized with
43:01
Speaker 4: other parents, I promise you the teachers hate the phones.
43:04
Speaker 4: They want to get rid of them. The principals hate
43:06
Speaker 4: the phones. They want to get rid of them. The
43:08
Speaker 4: only reason they're not acting is because some parents are objecting.
43:12
Speaker 4: So but if you coordinate, you will get that. And
43:14
Speaker 4: if we get our kids going six hours a day
43:16
Speaker 4: without phones, imagine if they had six hours a day
43:18
Speaker 4: to listen to a teacher and to talk with other kids.
43:21
Speaker 4: They've never had that before. But imagine if they did well, now,
43:25
Speaker 4: it's gonna be a lot easier to have them do
43:27
Speaker 4: other activities in the afternoon. They won't be as addicted
43:30
Speaker 4: if they just went six hours without it.
43:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, I have two more, two more questions. So
43:36
Speaker 1: this one because I know a lot of the audience
43:39
Speaker 1: here is parents of young kids, and I actually don't
43:42
Speaker 1: know your answer to this question, which is how you
43:44
Speaker 1: feel about non social media screen time for little kids.
43:47
Speaker 1: So how do you think about, you know, like whether
43:50
Speaker 1: your kid can watch Doctor Rachel, Miss Rachel or Coco
43:55
Speaker 1: Melan or you know, Sessame or whatever. What's your feeling
43:59
Speaker 1: on that.
44:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm not an expert in that.
44:02
Speaker 4: I really focused on what was happening to adolescence and
44:04
Speaker 4: mental health, but I did do some reading on it,
44:06
Speaker 4: and it seems pretty clear that for young kids, especially
44:10
Speaker 4: in the first eighteen months or two years, there is
44:14
Speaker 4: no benefit and possible harm to spending a lot of
44:17
Speaker 4: time on screens. So FaceTime with your grandparent totally fine.
44:21
Speaker 4: It's not that the screen is going to be poison
44:24
Speaker 4: watching cartoons or stories. There's no reason to do that,
44:27
Speaker 4: there's no benefit. Probably don't do that in the first
44:29
Speaker 4: two years.
44:30
Speaker 1: What about for parents? No, no, wait, now, okay, now
44:32
Speaker 1: we're gonna do to something where I know a lot
44:33
Speaker 1: about this, Like, what about the benefit for parents?
44:37
Speaker 4: You mean of having a babysitter that keeps the kid quiet.
44:40
Speaker 1: I'm having a half and I was thinking about it
44:41
Speaker 1: using it as a babysitter. But like, I'd like to
44:43
Speaker 1: take a shower, and I haven't gone a chance to
44:45
Speaker 1: take a shower, And I'm going to be a much
44:46
Speaker 1: better parent if I get a chance to take a
44:48
Speaker 1: shower and my kid's gonna watch twenty minutes of cocoa melon.
44:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, if your kid is ten or twelve months old, again,
44:54
Speaker 4: I don't maybe you know more than me, but if
44:56
Speaker 4: it's you know, if we're talking in the first year,
44:58
Speaker 4: I mean, I think the research is showing that any
45:00
Speaker 4: amount of screen time, now the correlations is very small.
45:02
Speaker 4: It's not like if you let your kid watch.
45:03
Speaker 1: Them a very small correlations that.
45:05
Speaker 4: Are yeah yeah, yeah, no, that's right. So so look,
45:08
Speaker 4: if you do it occasionally, that's fine. What I'm really about,
45:10
Speaker 4: what I'm what I'm really coming to see, it's not
45:12
Speaker 4: the occasional thing that's going to matter. It's the daily thing.
45:15
Speaker 4: So if your kid has an hour of screen time
45:17
Speaker 4: a day at the age of two, that is probably
45:19
Speaker 4: not a good idea. Now by three or four, you know,
45:23
Speaker 4: by three or four it's it's much more acceptable.
45:25
Speaker 3: I think.
45:26
Speaker 4: Again, again not my area of expertise, but the but
45:29
Speaker 4: from the from the things I read, and there's this
45:31
Speaker 4: French French researcher Desmergay.
45:34
Speaker 3: Oh shit, I've got the title of his book.
45:35
Speaker 4: At any rate, he lays out all kinds of evidence
45:38
Speaker 4: that at every age you at least find the correlations.
45:40
Speaker 4: The kids with heavy use have worse cognitive outcomes. But
45:45
Speaker 4: I had one other comment, because it really is the
45:48
Speaker 4: day the day. Oh yes, final point is stories are
45:53
Speaker 4: good things. Human beings evolved with stories. We tell stories
45:56
Speaker 4: all over the world. We raise kids with stories. So
45:59
Speaker 4: if you're fo or five six year old is watching
46:02
Speaker 4: the cartoon. If you're a nine year old is watching
46:05
Speaker 4: things on Netflix, those are stories.
46:06
Speaker 3: Those are good.
46:07
Speaker 4: You pay attention to a story for you know, fifteen minutes,
46:10
Speaker 4: forty minutes, two hours, that's okay. It's the short form videos.
46:14
Speaker 4: It's TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts. Those are terrible. There's
46:18
Speaker 4: no benefit. And my students, a lot of them are.
46:20
Speaker 4: There's a nineteen year old student, undergrads, they're hooked on it.
46:23
Speaker 4: They waste four to six hours a day, a lot
46:24
Speaker 4: of them on it. There's no benefit. They're not stories.
46:27
Speaker 4: So don't let your kids start on TikTok, like till
46:29
Speaker 4: they leave your home.
46:30
Speaker 3: I'd say, till they're out.
46:32
Speaker 2: Of your house.
46:33
Speaker 1: All right, here's my last question. I got this. I'm
46:34
Speaker 1: not even This isn't even from here. This is from
46:37
Speaker 1: somebody ask me this on Instagram today. I want to
46:40
Speaker 1: raise our sun somewhere that all the parents agree to
46:43
Speaker 1: no smartphones until they're sixteen. Do these communities exist?
46:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, move to Utah. Utah is fantastic. Utah really is
46:50
Speaker 4: becoming a you know, a family friendly place. The governor
46:53
Speaker 4: Spencer Cox, that's been one of his one of his goals,
46:58
Speaker 4: So there are certainly plays. So also, let me say this,
47:01
Speaker 4: if you ask that question a year ago, I'd say, well,
47:03
Speaker 4: you better move to Utah because that's the only place
47:04
Speaker 4: I know of where this is happening. But guess what,
47:07
Speaker 4: all over not just America, but all over the world now,
47:10
Speaker 4: adult adults, teachers, everybody sees the problem now, and it's
47:14
Speaker 4: changing very quickly. So I think you're going to find
47:17
Speaker 4: a lot more options other than Utah. As of today,
47:21
Speaker 4: there are going to be a lot of communities where
47:22
Speaker 4: the parents are acting now. It's especially certainly in the
47:25
Speaker 4: you know, the elite, wealthy areas where all you know,
47:27
Speaker 4: you've got these intensive parents focused on their kids private school.
47:31
Speaker 4: Those are all acting. They might have other problems in
47:33
Speaker 4: the culture there, but those are pretty quickly going phone free. Oh,
47:37
Speaker 4: move to Silicon Valley. If you move to Silicon Valley,
47:39
Speaker 4: the people who made the stuff, they know how bad
47:41
Speaker 4: it is for kids, they don't know if the kids
47:42
Speaker 4: use it.
47:43
Speaker 3: They want your kids to use.
47:44
Speaker 1: Totally fascinating aspects, You're probably likely to get a phone
47:47
Speaker 1: free school in in Silicon Valley.
47:50
Speaker 4: That's right, exactly. The Waldorf School of the Peninsula. That
47:53
Speaker 4: it's right between goods, very in your Google and Apple
47:55
Speaker 4: they send their kids there no technology, no computers. That
47:58
Speaker 4: there's a computer in a separate rooms so you learn
48:00
Speaker 4: to program, but in the classroom nothing, no screens.
48:07
Speaker 1: John, thank you so much for joining me. This was
48:09
Speaker 1: absolutely fantastic. I so appreciate you being here.
48:12
Speaker 4: Oh well, thank you Emily, thanks for having me on,
48:14
Speaker 4: and thanks for your great work bringing research out to
48:16
Speaker 4: the world.
48:17
Speaker 1: And thank you everybody for joining us.
48:19
Speaker 2: It was a treat.
48:30
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