The Kids Are Not Alright

This week on the Next Big Idea podcast, Jonathan Haidt and I discuss what social media is doing to our kids. Listen to Part 1 of my conversation with Jonathan on Apple or Spotify, and let’s discuss in the comments below.

In Part 2 of our conversation, we talk about the practical steps we can take to help our kids and ourselves. Part 2 will be released wherever you listen to podcasts on Thursday. If you don’t want to wait that long, you can access the full audio and video of our conversation here.

Friends, 

If you have kids, you’ve probably struggled with the question of how best to manage their relationship with technology. We have chosen to be relatively permissive with our three boys, now 14, 16 and 19, because as entrepreneurs in the digital space, we’ve always thought of technology as creatively empowering.

Now that I have read Jonathan Haidt’s much-talked-about new book, The Anxious Generation, I can tell you that I was wrong. If I had read this book ten years ago, I would have managed our kids digital access much differently. If you are a parent, you’ve probably heard about this book – it’s been the talk of the town, dominating the New York Times bestseller list for 6 consecutive months now. 

You may be wondering, are iPhones and Instagram really that bad for our kids? Consider these statistics:  the incidence of major depression among teens is up 150% since 2010, when social media first became available on smartphones. In the case of American boys, over 10% now report a “major depressive episode” in the last year, and in the case of girls, that number is almost 30%. This is scary stuff. According to the CDC, “in 2021, almost 60% of female students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and nearly 25% made a suicide plan.”

The phone-based childhood, as Jonathan calls it, is leading to alarming rates of anxiety, sleep deprivation, loneliness, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts for girls and boys. It is changing our children's ability to concentrate, impacting how well they learn, convincing them they need to chase unattainable beauty standards.

How did we get here? How did this happen? And what can we do about it? There is no better person to ask than Jonathan Haidt, a renowned social psychologist now based at NYU, who has spent the last several years studying the great rewiring of childhood — the harmful shift in how our kids' brains and social skills develop. He's also been sounding the alarm, urging lawmakers, educators, and parents to come together not only to hold social media platforms accountable, but to make changes at home, at school, and at large that will help kids unplug so they can have the kind of childhoods they deserve.

If there are kids in your life, I think you will find this conversation eye opening.

This reminds me of two of my favorite NBI conversations from the last couple years, both of which have permanently altered in small but persistent ways how I see the world. The first was a conversation with Will Storr about his extraordinary book, The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play it.

Why is the digital world so powerful? Because it hijacks our deeply ingrained aspiration for social status — likes, if you will. 

Will writes,

"We play for status, if only subtly, with every social interaction, every contribution we make to work, love or family life and every internet post. We play with how we dress, how we speak and what we believe. We play with our lives – with the story we tell of our past  and our dreams and plans for the future. … Life is not a journey towards a perfect destination. It’s a game that never ends."

You can listen to that conversation with Will Storr about the status games we all play, consciously or unconsciously, here, and let's discuss below.

The second worldview-altering conversation this reminds me of was with Anna Lembke, a scientist with expertise in addiction, about her influential book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.

When Jonathan Haidt says in our conversation that video games are problematic because they are too much fun – delivering a dopamine reward cycle with which the physical world cannot compete, resulting in withdrawal and eventually depression – he is referring to the work of Dr. Lembke. This conversation changed not only how I interact with my phone, but also how I think about the experience of jumping in cold bodies of water … and sweating in saunas … and experiencing sustained periods of quiet. Listen to my conversation with Anna, and let's discuss.

Enjoy! I look forward to discussing any of the above with those so inclined in the comments below. 

p.s. We've put a lot of love into our new daily Book of the Day newsletter and website on Substack. What do you think? You will find a video of my full conversation with Jonathan there.