"The smartphone is stealing young people's childhood," Prince Harry said.
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00:00Jonathan Haidt, very nice to meet you on this World Mental Health Day.
00:03Oh, Prince Harry, what an honor to meet you.
00:05Thank you for spending time with me and having this discussion about your book, The Anxious
00:08Generation, which, funny enough, aligns very well with the insight sessions that we've
00:15been doing with young people in numerous different countries.
00:19Perhaps the best way to start is for the people that haven't heard of your book or haven't
00:22even had a chance to read your book, what is The Anxious Generation about and what is
00:27the clearest, most important message and takeaway from it?
00:31The Anxious Generation is about a big change that happened for young people born after
00:361995.
00:37There's never been such a sharp generational shift.
00:41Those who were born in the late 90s and afterwards, it turned out when they hit puberty, they
00:45had very, very high rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide.
00:49All of those went up.
00:50And they all went up right around 2012, 2010 to 2012, in that region, everything goes up.
00:55Not just in America, but all over the English-speaking world and in Scandinavia and some other parts
00:58as well.
01:00And then what happens is between 2010 and 2015, the technology changes such that young
01:05people, they trade in their flip phones for smartphones.
01:09And now with a front-facing camera, high-speed internet, a million apps that are competing
01:15with each other to hook kids' attention.
01:17And so if you went through puberty in the early 2010s, your brain was influenced in
01:24early puberty in ways that set you up for worse mental health, especially depression
01:28and anxiety.
01:30Whereas the millennials were basically done with puberty.
01:32They didn't get all this stuff until they were in college, until they were at least
01:3518.
01:36So they went through that critical period of puberty, and they came out okay.
01:39So the Anxious Generation is helping us understand the incredible destructive force of this transformation
01:45of childhood between 2010 and 2015, and then what we can do now to stop that from happening
01:51and to help those who already have been through it.
01:54So in many cases, the smartphone has and is stealing young people's childhood.
02:01Exactly.
02:02We are overprotecting our children in the real world and underprotecting them online.
02:06And both of those moves are mistakes.
02:08They're bad for development.
02:10For social media companies, there's a lot of finger-pointing.
02:13It's very easy for social media companies to point the finger at parents and say, well,
02:17this is down to you.
02:18This is down to your parenting.
02:19What do you say to that?
02:21So if there were some parents who were getting this wrong, and most parents were getting
02:24it right, then I'd be very receptive to that argument.
02:27But once kids get a phone and social media, the rest of family life turns into a fight
02:33over screen time.
02:34And this is happening everywhere.
02:35This is happening in Silicon Valley, where the parents know what's going on.
02:39In fact, in Silicon Valley, you're much more likely to find parents who say, no, you cannot
02:43have this, because we know how bad it is.
02:45Why do we give our 10-year-olds a phone?
02:47The main reason is because everyone else did.
02:49We don't want our daughter to be the only one who's left out.
02:52I'm facing this now with my 14-year-old daughter on Snapchat.
02:56So the tech companies put us in a bind, and then they're trying to blame us for what they
03:00did.
03:01They, a few companies, three or four companies, largely own childhood now.
03:05They have far more influence on our children than we do, at least in terms of the amount
03:08of time they can spend influencing.
03:11They vastly exceed the power of parents.
03:13And then they want to say, oh, but it's your fault.
03:16No, it's their fault.
03:17I've said in the past that, at least to a certain extent, families and parents used
03:24to know that your kids were safe under your own roof.
03:28They would go walking to school, coming back from school, go to the shops, whatever it
03:31was.
03:32And no matter what age, of course, they get to a certain age where they can do those walks
03:35themselves.
03:36And then you know that once they're under your own roof, that they are presumably safe.
03:41We can't say that anymore.
03:43A lot of the parents that we've spoken to, some of the stories are obviously incredibly
03:48harrowing, but they also talk about the banning of phones and the fact that a lot of the conflict
03:54that that creates between parents and their children themselves.
03:58And obviously, a lot of parents, you know, give their kids phones at a younger age to
04:04keep them safe.
04:05Right?
04:06It's a double-edged sword.
04:07They want them to have their phone at school in case of an emergency.
04:09But once, like any kid, if you have your phone, even if you're told you're not allowed to
04:13download that app, you know, kids have a way of working around.
04:17But at the same time, you have the tech companies say that they can't verify age because of
04:22privacy concerns.
04:23Well, first, in terms of safety, I understand the parental need for safety.
04:27So if you're actually sending your kid out independently to go around town, to walk over
04:31to friends' houses, well, that's great.
04:32I applaud you.
04:34If you want to give your kid a phone so that if anything goes wrong, they can call you.
04:37Great.
04:38Give them a phone.
04:39Just don't give them a supercomputer connected to everyone in the world.
04:42Like they don't need that.
04:43The millennials had flip phones.
04:44They went through puberty with flip phones to call each other, text each other, meet
04:47up.
04:48They came out fine.
04:49Gen Z went through puberty with a supercomputer blocking out almost everything else in life.
04:54Everything goes down.
04:55Much less time with friends.
04:56Much less sunlight.
04:57Many fewer books.
04:58Many fewer hobbies.
04:59You take almost everything out of childhood.
05:01You replace it with this and a bunch of million short videos.
05:05It's not much of a childhood.
05:06Talk to me about the statistics that are all over your book and they're probably ingrained
05:12in your brain when it comes to suicide, depression, lack of sleep amongst adolescents and the
05:17differences between girls and boys and the effect that social media is having to them.
05:21For older teen girls, I think it's around 80% in America.
05:25But for the younger teen girls, it's something like 180%.
05:28It's nearly tripling.
05:29So 10 to 14-year-old girls did not used to cut themselves before 2010.
05:34They did not used to kill themselves.
05:35Their rates were extremely low.
05:36Now, they're still low, thank God.
05:38But the overall suicide rate is up 50% for American teens since 2010.
05:45And it's up, I think, 120% for younger teens.
05:50So this is not a change in self-report.
05:52This is a change in behavior.
05:54Something is driving our kids mad and especially the girls.
05:57Actually, the boys in the long run are doing worse.
06:00The story for girls does focus on social media.
06:03Now, of course, they also lose all this time together talking.
06:07Even talking on the telephone would be good.
06:09So the girls' story is about what it does to their social networks.
06:13The boys' story is very different.
06:15Boys are a little more physical.
06:18They need to run around.
06:19They need to climb and build things and break things.
06:23Boys are just a little more rambunctious.
06:25And so when you suppress them and you say, no more recess and shorter recess and sit
06:29in your chair, that's really bad for them.
06:31Boys have been checking out of school for decades.
06:34Richard Reeve's work shows this in his book of Boys and Men.
06:37And as they were checking out from school, girls have been going up.
06:40Boys are going down since the 80s.
06:43But the internet comes in.
06:44The boys go to it first.
06:45The boys love it.
06:46They love computers.
06:47So boys are getting hooked on video games and their programming, which is good.
06:52Programming is great.
06:53And their mental health is stable in the 90s and early 2000s.
06:57But once you get to the high-speed internet, the amazing multiplayer games, which are much
07:02more addictive than, you know, I remember when Pong came out, like a ping pong game.
07:07If you check in on the kids at 14, the boys are doing better.
07:10The girls, a lot of them are very anxious.
07:13They're very diminished.
07:14They're unhappy.
07:16The boys are playing video games.
07:17They're actually enjoying those.
07:19But for that reason, they're failing to do anything that will turn them into men.
07:23They're not having the growing or toughening experiences.
07:26They're not developing the social skills.
07:28This is what a lot of employers say.
07:29The boys won't make eye contact.
07:32So the boys are really having their social development interfered with.
07:36The loss of the play-based childhood and the move on to a phone-based childhood might be
07:41doing more harm to the boys than the girls.
07:43This is one of the problems that I have.
07:46We're both dads.
07:47You know, these apps have been specifically designed to hook and keep children online
07:53for as long as possible.
07:54That's right.
07:55Mindless scrolling.
07:56And during that scrolling, they have content that is pushed to them, content that they
08:00wouldn't otherwise go looking for, to keep them online for longer.
08:03And some of that content ends up suggesting suicide.
08:07That's right.
08:08So how do we fix this at the source?
08:10So fixing at the source means we recognize that social media should be in a category
08:15with casino gambling, smoking cigarettes, buying a gun, driving a car.
08:22There are a lot of things in this world where we've decided, you know what, these are things
08:26that adults have a right to do, but they're really bad for kids.
08:28And it's actually pretty simple.
08:30When do we have age limits?
08:32When do we say that kids can't do something?
08:34Parents could see this happening.
08:35I think the discomfort was beginning to register in 2019.
08:39This was all baked in before COVID.
08:41Nobody can tell me, oh, well, it's COVID.
08:43No.
08:44This was...
08:45COVID accelerated it.
08:46COVID accelerated it, yeah.
08:48What kids really needed in 2019, I was saying this back then, was they need a lot more time
08:53outside playing independently, and they need a lot less time on their screens.
08:57And that's especially when TikTok roars in to become the center of younger teens' lives.
09:02And that's really been catastrophic.
09:04From a parental standpoint, we want the best for our kids.
09:09And social media, we know to a large extent, is giving an outlet, an added resource to
09:15kids that perhaps don't feel comfortable coming to us to talk about their issues and their
09:19troubles and their worries.
09:21And therefore, it's far easier, as we know, even for adults, to go and speak to complete
09:26strangers.
09:27So kids online will be feeling more connected with complete strangers on social media.
09:32So how do you, if you're a parent, that you know that your kid is getting good out of
09:38social media, how do you have that conversation with them?
09:43Or how do you, not keep tabs, but perhaps, certainly from the Parents Network and the
09:48group of parents that we have now formed, from their perspective, the advice that they've
09:56been given is to follow your children.
10:00So you at least have a good understanding of, a better understanding of what world they
10:05are in and what they're being exposed to on a day-to-day basis.
10:09So what you're saying there is, to some extent, one of Meta's favorite talking points, which
10:14is that social media is a lifeline for LGBTQ kids, for kids from marginalized communities.
10:23And that's just not true.
10:24What's true is that the internet was great for them.
10:28The internet solved all these problems in the 90s.
10:30If you're a gay kid, you're not out to anyone in a rural part of America or England, the
10:37internet was amazing.
10:38You could find information, you could find people who are like you, and you could communicate.
10:41There were a lot of ways.
10:42There were a lot of groups that you could talk to.
10:46When social media changes so that it's no longer even about just me connecting to you,
10:51it's now about the newsfeed and an algorithm-driven newsfeed that sends content to you.
10:58This is not what they need.
11:00If you have any special interest, you can find that with Google.
11:03You don't need an algorithm to feed you stuff.
11:05Well, now most of these kids are going to TikTok because they want to see someone of
11:08their own generation.
11:09That's what makes it even worse.
11:10Yeah, that's right.
11:11It's a myth that this stuff is a lifeline.
11:13It's a myth that this stuff is good for kids.
11:16Connectivity often is, but there are different kinds of connectivity.
11:20The research I think is very clear.
11:21When kids have a best friend, or I think especially a small group, that's super fun, they generally
11:27do well.
11:28When kids don't have a close friend or a close group, they're much less likely to do well.
11:34When you have 300 connections, you don't have time for anyone.
11:38You're less likely to have a best friend.
11:41Social media takes over our kids' social lives in the early 2010s.
11:44It's not like, oh, now they've got lots of friends.
11:46No, it's like now they have no room for a best friend.
11:48They just have all these shallow connections.
11:49It's not good for them.
11:51Like any amount of research and data, especially given this topic, there's been criticisms
11:56and pushback.
11:57Do you want to talk to some of that?
11:59I'd love to.
12:00There are about six or eight researchers who strongly disagree with me.
12:05They say that there's no evidence of causality.
12:08There's no evidence that this stuff is causing harm.
12:10Sure, kids got on social media at the same time that the depression rates went up, but
12:14that's just a coincidence.
12:15It's just a correlation.
12:17They say the correlations are very small.
12:21The correlations are actually much bigger when you look at social media and girls.
12:26What happens is they often bury the effects by looking at all digital media use in boys
12:31and girls.
12:33When you look at the correlation between hours of use of social media and girls, you do find
12:37clear correlations that are substantially larger.
12:40More importantly, there are a few dozen experiments, experiments where you have random assignment
12:45of subjects to a condition.
12:47That does allow you to infer causality.
12:51If you take kids off of social media for three weeks or longer, in every study we found,
12:57there's about 15 of those, in every single study they get better.
13:00Their mental health improves.
13:01Now, it's mostly done with college students.
13:03There's not that many because it's harder to work with preteens.
13:06But the claim that I only have correlational evidence is just flat out false.
13:11I've gathered all the experiments I can find, and all of the experiments that go for two
13:16or three weeks or longer, they show benefits to getting off.
13:20The ones where they get kids off for one day, those backfire.
13:23Of course they do.
13:25If you're addicted and you get rid of your phone for one day, you're anxious the first
13:28day.
13:29What some researchers have done is they just merge all the studies together, and they say,
13:33look, overall there's no benefit.
13:35No.
13:36If you keep the kid off to get past withdrawal effects, there's a benefit.
13:39So that's the game.
13:41That's the difference between correlation and causation.
13:43There's evidence of causation.
13:44But we also hear that from the kids.
13:46As I said, the insight sessions that we're having, no one from these companies is actually
13:50speaking to the children.
13:53Well, they are.
13:54As we know from MEDA's study, the one that Frances Haugen leaked, they commissioned a
13:58qualitative study of teens in the US and the UK, and a quote was something like, teens
14:04blame Instagram for making body image problems and social comparison worse.
14:10This response was consistent and unbidden.
14:13Something like that.
14:14They didn't ask the question, but in these open-ended sessions, these girls especially
14:18in both of our countries are saying, yeah, Instagram really is messing me up.
14:22So that's another kind of evidence.
14:24Evidence isn't just experiments in a lab.
14:27If almost all, if the teens themselves see the harm, and I challenge anyone, find me
14:34stories of teens who got a smartphone and social media, and their lives just flowered,
14:41and they were healthier and happier, and everything was happy.
14:45Find me stories of parents who are so glad they gave their kid a phone and social media
14:49early.
14:50They're very hard to find.
14:51Well, that was the point I was getting at, was the fact that these companies can't find
14:54any young people to come out and speak like that, and the kids that we speak to, yes,
14:59of course, there are benefits of being connected online.
15:03But the harm that's being caused, and they recognize it as well, and they want to be
15:07part of the conversation.
15:08They want to be part of redesigning these tools and having safety at the central part
15:15of it.
15:16How hard is that to actually do?
15:19Can they actually be fixed?
15:20Can they be changed?
15:21Well, Meta has shown very little sign of being willing to change.
15:25They did just improve some features on Instagram.
15:28That's at least a step forward.
15:29But their business model commits them to grabbing eyeballs and never letting go.
15:34But there are many companies out there.
15:37I've been talking with Pinterest, the CEO, Bill Reddy.
15:41They just, on their own, they cut off the social features for kids under 16.
15:46They said, come to Pinterest.
15:47Look for patterns.
15:48Look for ideas.
15:49You're welcome to come look around.
15:51But no, we're not going to let strangers talk to you when you're 14 or 13.
15:55So companies can do this.
15:57Tech companies, some are behaving responsibly.
16:00It's really Meta, TikTok, and Snap are the three that own our children's childhood and
16:05that I think are behaving irresponsibly and that really aren't going to reform unless
16:09they're forced to by legislation or by massive parent outcry.
16:13Optimism.
16:14I'm extremely optimistic.
16:16Let's be optimistic.
16:19Where is the optimism?
16:20Where is the hope?
16:21And where is the guidance?
16:22You have four rules in your book.
16:24Feel free to touch on those as well.
16:26So in my book, I propose four norms by which we break out of these collective action traps
16:30and if we work together, it's actually easy to do.
16:34If you're the only parent who's not giving your kid a phone, it hurts and it hurts your
16:37kid and your kid is lonely.
16:39But if you can get a group to do it with you, well then, actually, it's much easier and
16:44more fun.
16:45So the four norms are no smartphone before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free
16:52schools and far more independence and free play in the real world.
16:57And those four norms, any town or school or community that does those, I guarantee you,
17:02you're going to see improving mental health within two years because we know these things
17:06work.
17:07We know phone-free schools make kids have more friends.
17:10They like school more.
17:11They're happier.
17:12We know that kids who get a smartphone really early turn out more depressed and anxious,
17:16more mental illness than those who got it later.
17:18So we know that these work and I'm hopeful in the UK and Australia, you've got a lot
17:23of good legislation coming out.
17:25So I'm hopeful that if Australia, the UK, the EU are pushing for changes, ultimately,
17:31Meta and Snap and TikTok are going to have to make changes.
17:34But again, the optimism and hope piece that you're talking about and that I recognize
17:40is the fact that more and more people are standing up to these companies, parents included,
17:45parents mostly, and saying, no, this needs to change.
17:48Not with my child.
17:49That's right.
17:50This needs to change.
17:51And it is changing.
17:52And that's really the key.
17:53We're in a new era of networks.
17:56And the few companies that figured that out first got there first and took over our child's
18:00attention.
18:01They're very hard to dislodge now.
18:04But people connecting, and I got to say, especially mothers, there's a ferocity among mothers
18:09that I'm seeing.
18:10When you threaten their children, they want to do something.
18:13And they are.
18:14That's the most important point.
18:17With your book, with our Parents Network, with all the other bits and pieces that people
18:19are pouring their hearts into and pouring their time into, we are creating the awareness
18:24for the families to go, you know what?
18:26It didn't feel right.
18:27It's not right.
18:28That's right.
18:29And we've now got the data, the research, the conversations, and the proof points to
18:31prove to you that your gut instinct was right.
18:35This is not normal.
18:36That's what's happening all around the world.
18:38That's why this year, 2024, is the turning point.
18:42Terrible things have happened to our kids.
18:44We see that now.
18:45I don't want to blame any parents, because we didn't know 10 years ago.
18:47We didn't know.
18:49We thought, oh, the internet was marvelous.
18:50Oh, computers.
18:51It's making our kids smarter.
18:52Oh, OK.
18:53Now they're on these platforms.
18:54Oh, they're sharing ID.
18:55We all thought it was good.
18:56We were wrong, but we just didn't know.
18:58Well, now we know.
18:59And we're rising up, and we're putting a stop to it.
19:02But Lars, it is going to take a collective effort.
19:04Yep.
19:05That's right.
19:06And that's why the more that there are organizations like Archwell and your parents group, and
19:11my organization, based at theanxiousgeneration.com, and Let Grow, which is resources for parents
19:17to help give their kids more of a play-based childhood, the more we stand up, link up,
19:23sync up, and act together, the quicker we're going to change this.
19:26Great.
19:27Jonathan, thank you very much.
19:28This has been an enlightening conversation.
19:29What a pleasure.
19:30And it's, yeah, after a conversation, now the action needs to be deployed.
19:35Let's go.
19:36Let's go, he says.
19:37Thank you very much.
19:38My pleasure.