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I'm going all right besties I think that was another epic discussion people love the
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interviews I could hear him talk for hours absolutely we crush your questions ad minute we are giving people ground
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truth data to underwrite your own opinion what you guys think that was fun pal all right everybody welcome back to
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the Allin podcast we're trying something new today you all love when we do interviews you love the great content
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that came out of the all-in summit but you also want to not miss an episode of the four of us talking about the news of
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the week so today we are doing our first episode of what we're calling the all-in
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interview what is the all-in interview well it's two of us interviewing one guest as opposed to 4V one which is
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quite unfair sometimes and a little bit unruly and so we're planning on doing these as an experiment maybe 10 times a
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year since we know you love interviews and today we are really excited because we have Jonathan height with us he is a
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Fearless author of some really amazing books freeberg you have read all four of them I have read two of them so why
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don't you give us your take on these four books Dave and then we'll kick it off to John it's great to have you John
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thanks for joining us I know you've done a lot of media lately and a lot of it has focused on the anxious generation
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which has obviously got some really important topical conversations embedded within it that people are now having
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because of it I first read the happiness hypothesis years ago in fact in one of our first episodes on of the all-in Pod
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back in 2020 I referenced it and I referenced some material from the happiness hypothesis my general take on
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the themes of your work is evolutionary biology meets modernity does that sound like a reasonable take that that the
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nature of the human being in a modern age causes these really interesting kind of points of tension conflict and
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behavioral shifts that maybe are undesirable or that are different than what we've had as a species in the past
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and so much of like how we're wired how our our brains work in the context of modern technology modern society is
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causing some behavioral system changes that maybe are a bit scary yeah yeah I does that sound like a fair a fair way
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to describe the art if you can just do two terms I'd say yeah evolutionary biology meets the problems of modernity
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but if we can add in evolutionary psychology meets anthropology and cultural psychology um with a little
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smattering of Sociology in the head of a guy who is just really bothered when he
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sees systems and institutions screwing up messing up and he thinks to himself wait if we just did this it would work
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better and so I get deeply involved in in what's going wrong with our democracy and that's that's the Righteous Mind
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what's going wrong with our universities that's the codling the American mind and
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my project at herox Academy and now what's going wrong with family life and and children and people born after 1995
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so I would just put a few more terms in there but yeah so from from an Institutional perspective fair enough
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yeah I thought about this deeply like outside of the context of your book that you know humans in the last kind of
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century and a half have had this kind of industrial production thrust upon us then digital media thrust upon us and
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then open markets and globalization thrust upon us all of which give us kind of instant access to knowledge about the
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state of the world in a way that we've never had historically humans maybe saw a family maybe their Village you know it
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wasn't like mass communication but with digital media I can see the good life of
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someone on a private jet a thousand miles away and I can live stream their their private jet experience I can
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theoretically order a Louis vuon bag and have it arrive in a couple of hours if only I had the means uh that creates
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this kind of like tension I can have any experience I I I want to because of the
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system of of markets that that have kind of put in place and I think like historically took generations for things
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like the Bible or the Quran or monarchical systems to kind of permeate and and you know kind of make Society
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believe a certain system but now you can kind of pump the right message to someone and shift their their brain and
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and things change quite considerably no that's right I mean things change at different speeds and of
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course Evolution um works extremely slowly unless you are a plant biologist who has a company that is making it
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happen very quickly but until you know until very recently you know our our psychological Evolution or the evolution
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of our minds happened at the level of tens of Millennia um and then culture changes more slowly and you know really
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the the origin the origin of sociology is really in the huge changes in the 19th century um rought by the Industrial
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Revolution and some the first Industrial Revolution yeah I guess sure for you guys it's the first Industrial right
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yeah a lot of people discard it they don't they don't pay as much attention to it yeah it's not that big compared to
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what's happening now right and you know because often we can see that we can see
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changes on the surface like oh people will now have more access to information that's great but a lot of the early
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sociologists like you know vber and durkheim and Tunis and all these you know German European guys they could see
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that something something very deep about the way we live together is changing in
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ways that we don't really understand and you know one of my concerns again we'll
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talk a lot about this I love technology I love my phone I love all the convenience you know I'm not anti-tech
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but one thing that I'm thinking a lot about is how you how you guys whatever the the tech industry out in the west
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coast you do employ a bunch of social psychologists like especially meta a few other companies not necessarily for good
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I think sometimes for manipulation but you do employ some social psychologist I've never heard of any company that
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employs a sociologist and what I mean by that is the changes that are coming to us because of tech are so Earth
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shattering um and so fast that they are changing the basic conditions of America's liberal democracy in ways that
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I think it may not survive that is all the assumptions made by the founding fathers about how we live together how
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news travels why passions affect the legisl all all those assumptions might now be rendered moot in ways that we do
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not understand and no one is studying and so anyway that's just one of my causes for concern and to to bring this
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from a graduate school class and you know the 40,000 foot view you guys are talking about and bring it down to the
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the reality of today maybe 20 years ago 25 years ago a lot of folks were building mobile social applications and
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they figured out hey games gamification levels being in martial arts going from white belt to yellow belt scoring
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becoming in Dungeons and Dragons 19th level Wizard or whatever this becomes highly addicting and they
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built it into these products and then once they built it into the products we then passed another Rubicon which was
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hey let's just hand this to machine learning or Ai and have them do the gamification without it being explicit
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and that's really Tik Tock so you had the gamification of Twitter and Facebook which was likes retweets follower count
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Instagram and then now it's transitioned into something even more pricious which is some Black Box on in
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Tik Tok knows this is going to maximize the dopamine hits so this is kind of gone this is an experiment that's gone
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ay I think so and just to build on that you know there was a lot of research on television television came in relatively
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slowly compared to what's happening now and uh you know television was kind of hypnotic and some kids could watch for
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hours you know I did sometimes um but just as like the move from from heroin to fentel kills lots and lots of people
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cuz fentel is so incredibly concentrated the move from television to algorithm driven social media where it's not just
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like massar marketed we think this show you know neelon ratings say this show is
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popular it's we have ai targeting this at you targeting feed at you so what happens when you have a society in which
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kids are consuming media they're playing sports they're reading books they're doing all sorts of things what happen if
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the media consumption suddenly gets a 100 times more attractive or addictive or short-term dopamine focused and I
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think there are huge broad societal implications that we don't understand and I'm very concerned by them and what
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you're speaking to is the velocity here I think uh as well huh free BG Andel targeting is is just I think your TV an
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knowledge is really interesting because we're both I think we're all three of us
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gen xers here I'm baby boomer by two years I'm the end of the baby boom 63 got it I think fre BR you're the tal end
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of Gen X uh we we would certainly take in the Gen X Draft when you look at this the the TV analogy is so good because we
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did have a moment in time where TV got faster and was gamified it was called MTV and they were like hey let's make
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this a lot faster you're right now you're just going to watch three minutes it's called a music video so we're
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taking your 30 minutes down to three and then in that video the directors of V music videos became the
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directors of movies and TV shows later that's where they cut their teeth on little
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$50,000 projects but because they had to do so many Cuts in those projects to tell the story in three minutes or four
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minutes of a Michael Jackson video that made its way into things like The Sopranos which had a much greater
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density of characters or Game of Thrones today and then that's giv way now to whatever the hell is going on on Tik
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Tock through our brain so I'm curious what you think that final jump the Tik Tok jump is doing to kids brains yeah I
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think this is the right way to look at things that to look at how the changes in technology even if they seem to be
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gradual they can have just really outsize effects um when I wrote I turned in the manuscript for the book in um
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last August of 2023 and I'd only taught this undergrad class on flourishing once
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I've taught it as a grad class for a long time but uh I teach at NYU Stern and in the fall I taught it again after
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I turned in the book and one thing I really learned from my students is is that Tik Tok and then YouTube shorts so
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the ones copying it you know Instagrams they're uniquely horrible and the reason
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there are many reasons why they're horrible and let's start with the the contrast so um as a little experiment I
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said to my class how many of you watch Netflix every week at least once a week almost every hand goes up how many of
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you wish that Netflix was never invented nobody no hands go up because stories are wonderful humans live in stories we
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tell stories we've always told stories the stories on TV are so much better today than were when I was a kid I'm
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older than you guys but I remember like I Dream of Genie and you know um the Brady butt they were stupid shows very
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flat yeah very flat yeah yeah so stories are great there's no problem with stories no problem with Netflix and then
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I say how many of you use Tik Tok or one of those programs at least once a week the great not everybody but the great
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majority of hands go up how many of you wish that it was never invented the great majority of hands go up and what's
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happening to and these are 19-year-old they're smart kids they're you know they're mostly sophomores at New York
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University Stern School of Business um but these things aren't stories a story is entertaining but it
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doesn't give you a huge hit of dopamine it's it's it's if it's really well told it can be an aesthetic experience you
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lose yourself but it's not about the quick dopamine reward system um whereas Tik Tok and those that short form it's
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really you know it's able to optimize for whatever whatever gives you the U that little bit of dopamine in your
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reinforcement Pathways and because there's a behavior response Loop which you didn't have with television with
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television you could raise the volume lower the volume or change the channel that's it those were your options there
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was not like a feedback loop where the television is rewarding you for certain actions whereas what Tik Tok pioneered
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is we don't care who you know we only care what makes you pause what makes you click what makes you react so um Tik Tok
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is basically if BF Skinner could come back to life one of the founders of behaviorism and observe tick and observe
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Tik Tok you'd say this is brilliant this is so brilliant yeah variable rewards yeah exactly very can you just hit on
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why from an evolutionary biology perspective we are wired this way what what what caused what is the wiring
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that's being tapped into here so we have to go back before humans because the brains change very slowly and whatever
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was built in by the time you get to mammals and primates is the basic architecture of our minds so we have a
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reinforcement system which has worked really really well for other animals and it is when certain things happen when
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there are signals that this is advancing your evolutionary project which is survive eat have sex leave Offspring um
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so if if something happens you're making progress towards say finding a mate you
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get a reward and it feels good and that doesn't make you say ah I got my reward I'm done the way dopamine works is is
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the the the the neurons I think it's in the nucleus cumbent is one of the main reward areas um those circuits that use
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dopamine the dopamine says oh that was good keep going get more and that's why potato chips are the way they are
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because you don't eat when say oh that was good you eat one say now I want one more than I wanted the first one so this
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worked really well for other animals and by the time you get to humans that's what we're stuck with is this it's very
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much based on a few kind of a few sort of imperatives um another but another thing which is a
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little more uniquely human is the need for reputation and so chanes do have a whole lot going on about status I mean
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so these systems go back before humans um and status is is is life or death it certainly is who get among males
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especially it's who gets to mate um so maintaining High status is extremely important and we certainly see this in
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adolescence adolescence are they you know they would gladly do something that knocked a few years off of their life at
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the end of their life if they could be more popular today again it's the short term we we've got to do the thing that
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seems so imperative to us now and that's reputation so we have all so you know I
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guess uh Dave you started off that I'm something about evolutionary biology yeah I love Evolution it is it's like
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it's like what is the what is the design manual for humans and then it's customizable but what is the design
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manual um and so once you start looking at things like you know reward reputation you know we we like outdoor
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spaces that look like savanas and golf course I mean there's all kinds of stuff you can learn from Evolution and then
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you can understand what some of these guys hacked and we have actually chath I think is one of the ones who talked to
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there's a great quote I think I might even you know what I think I even quote him in the book there's all you know a
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lot of the guys who were in there early they could see they could see exactly what was being done to hack into young
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people's concerns for their reputation and the prolonged dopamine release this is not good for your brain it's one
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thing to find a right or a mate and have sex and like have this dopamine release like okay yeah
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let's find some more right peirs eat a couple more till we're full this kind of a A system that gets shut off naturally
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in nature and with sex like okay yeah we we've had this orgasmic release we don't
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need to do it again for some period of time not to get too graphic here about Pairs and right pairs but you know when
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you're doing Tik Tock there is an addiction here that to Skinner to your Skinner Point variable interal and its
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variable reward something could be the HW Tua girl and everybody in the world is like oh my God sex and you know she's
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spicy or whatever but then there's another person on the other side of that and a
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society so you have the dopamine you know very primal thing happening but then you also have this next layer
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you're talking about socially which is now what happens to that girl what happens to her family is she going to
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kill herself is she going to become a reality TV star I don't know I mean we're in Uncharted Territory no human in
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evolution did not anticipate a billion people a million people understanding one person's or digesting one person's
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most candid worst embarrassing or thrilling moment did it no that's right we we evolved for small group
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interactions with a lot of Gossip um and when you you know so when kids are talking in small groups and someone says
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something stupid and others make fun of them people laugh and then you move on but when you put kids on a stage where
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potentially millions of people could be laughing at them and they could be the internet topic of the day and it might
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last for the whole week um a lot of those kids are considering suicide because when you are being shamed and it
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seems like you're out um a lot of kids will think of killing themselves because that's a way to relieve the pain um so
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however and the thing is look almost all of us as adults we see this stuff we you
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know you if if you post stuff on social media and then you read the comments and
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then you know you you can be upset by the comments imagine if you were 12 or 13 your brain is not developed you don't
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have any foundation uh yeah and then some permanent solution for a temporary problem seems like a fine idea that's
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right and so I just you know I really want to emphasize puberty as that's puberty is one of the key ideas in my
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book so in the anxious generation I really focused on well the subtitle is how the great rewiring of childhood is
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is causing an epidemic of mental illness so while it's childhood that got rewired
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from 2010 to 2015 it is unrecognizable the change that happened in those five years is beyond what what anyone could
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have ever imagined um and the Millennials are fine because they were already done with puberty by 2010
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largely and so they had flip phones um when they were going through puberty let's say ages 11 to 12 it begins
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typically little earlier for girls uh to you know 156 is sort of the peak that's
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like the ma you know it goes on until your early 20s but it's especially early puberty the early teens the mid- teens
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that is the period where your brain is literally rewiring it is literally from Back to Front changing over from the
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child form to the adult form which is much more competent but much less flexible we don't respond to brain
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damage as flexibly as we did when we were children because everything's locked in and so the difference between the
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Millennials and gen Z is that the Millennials went through puberty on flip phones um and they actually and they Ed
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those phones to meet up with each other and they saw each other and they got together in person they made eye contact
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they laughed together they had a recognizably human childhood by 2015 that's not happening anymore I mean
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things have changed and so if j z suppose you're born uh in 1990 let's say born in 2000 um so you're seven when the
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iPhone comes out but that's not so important because the iPhone doesn't change things for the first few years uh
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you're nine when social media goes Super viral when you get the retweet button the share button the like button the
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gamification yes exactly that's right social media changes radically beginning of 2009 the status aspect well that's
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right because then it's it's not about me connecting with your page it's now about the news feed and likes and what
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goes I I want to accumulate likes and Views and I think that like and I want to come back to this point about status
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that you made earlier because uh and I want to kind of relate it to human history as well because it's really
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important to understand where that where that comes from where does status as a desire come from yeah absolutely let me
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just finish up the narration of j z and we'll go right to that um so Jen Z had the bad luck that they went through all
00:20:05
of puberties if you're born in 2000 you are and let's say you're a girl 2011 2012 is when everyone is changing in
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their flip phones for smartphones 2010 you get the first front-facing camera on the iPhone and then Samsung copies that
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right away so 2010 you get the front-facing camera 2009 we got super viral social media of 2012 Facebook buys
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Instagram and that's when it really becomes popular in this period is when everyone's getting high-speed internet
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in 2010 most people didn't have it so the point is the Millennials in 2010 on their flip phones could not spend all
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day on their flip phones what are you going to do texting like that difficult texting on the number pad all day long
00:20:43
nobody did that um but by 2015 gen Z you can be on your phone all day long like and half of them say literally half of
00:20:51
American teenagers say that they are online almost constantly so if they seem to be talking to you they're thinking
00:20:57
about what's going on their phone if they're on the bus next to other kids they're on their phone if they're in
00:21:02
class the teacher's talking they're on their phone which let's be candid watching the funniest thing that
00:21:07
happened on planet Earth in the last hour yeah yeah is by definition going to be funnier or more entertaining than the
00:21:14
three of us having a burger that is a great way to put it I'm going to take that line and try to remember to credit
00:21:20
you for it watching the funniest thing okay watching the funniest thing that's great yeah yeah and so can you blame
00:21:27
them right it's it was kind this is my point about like instant access I've always had this belief that the Zen
00:21:32
Buddhists got it right like they always had it right there are two key aspects of human nature that if you can address
00:21:38
those you solve all the world's problems which is desire and dualism dualistic thinking tell me more what do you mean
00:21:46
do if you solve those two things so desire yes Bud's all about cutting off desire and and the aspect of Desire that
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plays out in this context is I at any given moment now have access or can can see can create a desire for something
00:22:01
that I would if I was sitting in a village without a phone I wouldn't have a desire to be on a private jet but now
00:22:06
I'm sitting on this phone I'm seeing this funniest moment or this most beautiful person or this incredible
00:22:10
experience that I am not a part of I am not in I don't get instant desire creation for me so the do the dopamine
00:22:16
aspect I also question as anticipatory because I I I think I don't know if it was your book or some other research
00:22:22
I've read about dopamine being released in anticipation not necessarily in the satisfaction of AC
00:22:29
that the acquisition of something always feels a little bit okay I got it whereas
00:22:34
the moment right before you get it it's when you get the best opening like that that anticipation is really it is the
00:22:40
experience of taking a scoop of ice cream and John just to as as a fellow East Coast where I grew up in Brooklyn
00:22:46
and went to forom and spent my first 30 years in Manhattan in Brooklyn what you're experiencing here is also the two
00:22:52
most important things to Silicon Valley people private Aviation and then the next greatest height owning a sports
00:22:58
team so this is this is our version of sex and ripe fruit oh wow yeah private Aviation and then owning the Knicks the
00:23:08
two things I'm working towards we could s here and talk about the dopamine release of this but it is true that
00:23:14
there is an end state to all of this private Aviation and owning team apparently but I but I do think like
00:23:22
this point about is status a point of desire right so um I don't know that I want something until I see someone else
00:23:29
with it like that becomes the notion of desire for me absolutely absolutely that
00:23:34
and that plays in like I see someone with a million likes on their photo I don't have a million likes on my photo
00:23:40
so I suddenly want that like that creates a new a new emptiness in my spirit that didn't exist before or in my
00:23:46
brain that didn't exist before that then I'm on this constant circuit looking for
00:23:50
how do I do something that creates a million likes because that's something that others have that I don't have yeah
00:23:55
that's right the there's a there's a a great thinker who I I know is was talked about in Silicon Valley Rene Gerard
00:24:01
French men who taught at Stanford uh I read I read some of the chapters of one of his books and you know I read some
00:24:06
summaries of his work I think it's it's brilliant and the key thing is this we kind of naively assume that young people
00:24:12
copy what they see other people doing but that's not true you know if my if my kid sees me doing something they're not
00:24:20
going to copy me I mean when they're two they do but not older um if they see some other kid doing something they're
00:24:25
not necessarily going to copy that just because the kid is doing it Gerard's point is what we copy is what
00:24:31
they want so if someone we don't know what to want I mean yes we you know we're hot we want cool but beyond that
00:24:39
we don't know what we want and so we're incredibly attuned to what everyone else
00:24:44
in our reference group is wanting and that's always been the case and of course advertisers in the in the
00:24:50
19th century began to pick up on that how do you make it seem like everybody wants this product so advertising has
00:24:57
always been about about trying to hack trying to really activate this Rene jard mechanism that we're copying each
00:25:02
other's wants and um and that's where I think influencer culture represents the what not redu the like take it to its
00:25:11
extreme conclusion where I speak to young people they come to ask me for advice on how to be successful and some
00:25:19
of them have not even thought about what they can do that would be of Worth to anyone all they're focus on is how to
00:25:26
get more followers right so you know like everybody wants likes so and followers so I want likes and followers
00:25:34
well you know in the world before this you had to do something to get Prestige you had to have a skill you had to play
00:25:41
guitar you had to be rock singer Etc and I think kids have actually I give kids a
00:25:46
lot of credit I think they've put it together pretty wisely they watched Kim Kardashian during this period of time
00:25:51
we're talking about release a a sex tape uh or you know whatever participate in the release a sex I'm not sure exactly
00:25:59
the details of it get a bunch of likes get a bunch of followers get a private jet get a TV show and to their point
00:26:06
this does actually make sense it is a sequence of events that other people have now done they're not wrong there is
00:26:13
a clear path that's right and that's a trap that's a trap that leads to unhappiness that's right but there's
00:26:18
there's always been this notion of celebrity and kind of you know like this there there the celebrity replaced the
00:26:27
monarchy replaced the church whatever right um but nowadays with the the influencer culture the celebrity is
00:26:36
accessible meaning I have access to being in that state so it creates this deep dark hole for me at least this is
00:26:42
my my read on it that I can't I'm not in that state but I should be I could be therefore I have this deep like
00:26:49
emptiness because I theoretically I could be that person it's not like there's a cast system it's not like
00:26:55
there's a monarchy where your blood determines whether or not you get to be a king or or the church where the Lord
00:27:00
determines whether you get to be in charge in this case someone got there but I'm not there so I get to see and
00:27:06
not only that but my reference library historically was like four to six sitcoms a week now my reference library
00:27:12
is four to six Tik Tok videos a minute and you know I'm just like suddenly there's all these different things that
00:27:18
I don't have as status statuses that I don't that I hav an accumulated should we talk about thoughtful uh proposals in
00:27:26
your book in the latest book uh the anxious generation i i i two things struck me as absolute Nob brainers and
00:27:34
you are currently in a war with people trying to um I think maybe who got to these topics before you and maybe feel
00:27:43
some ownership of them and they you've basically become I don't know the lightning rod
00:27:50
for all of this discussion now and people are coming to you as the expert I get the sense some of these sociologists
00:27:55
are a little upset that you've taken their uh their their shine putting it aside because you do reference them and
00:28:01
you give them a lot of credit in the book The pouches at school for and the phone lockers uh maybe you could touch
00:28:09
on that and then what's the proper age for kids to get a phone those two things to me seem like
00:28:16
the most pragmatic proposals in the book okay so let me just set this up by by sort of jumping ahead to the notion of
00:28:24
collective action problems and the four Norms that I suggest in the book to break out of collection Collective
00:28:28
action problems so uh the clearest Collective action problem is any kid who doesn't get a phone is left out and so
00:28:36
the kid says Mom I'm the only one without a phone I'm in fifth grade everyone else has a phone they're making
00:28:42
fun of me and this hurts us as parents so we say okay I'll give you I'll get I have an old phone here we'll reactivate
00:28:48
it for you and so we can you can end up in a situation where everyone has a bad outcome which is you get to the point
00:28:55
where now you know in third and fourth great kids are all getting phones um but and you sort of get there because
00:29:02
everyone else is doing it and uh j z feels trapped on social media I talk to my students why are you on why are you
00:29:09
spending so much time on Tik Tok and Instagram and five other platforms every day you have no time to do anything of
00:29:15
any use to anyone and they say well I have to because I need to know what people are talking about I don't want to
00:29:20
be left out so this whole thing is a set of collective action traps that's how we
00:29:24
got so deep into this and so the solution is collective action uh so in my book I kind of assume that we might
00:29:33
never get any real help from the federal government that there is a chance that coost of the kids online safety act will
00:29:38
will pass that is the one thing that really could pass but I really wrote the book assuming there's not going to be a
00:29:43
legislative solution to this we have to do this ourselves and by changing norms and so in the book I propose I mean have
00:29:50
like 50 suggestions 50 ideas for parents and teachers and schools but but I realized wait four of these are just
00:29:56
really foundational things that we can do together and they're really powerful so in order they are no smartphone
00:30:02
before high school we have just clear this all out of middle school middle schoolers should not be having the
00:30:06
internet in their pocket give them a flip phone give them a phone watch give them something else but not a smartphone
00:30:11
no uh social media till 16 social media is wildly inappropriate for minors it's full of extreme sex violence uh you know
00:30:21
men from all over the world reaching out to you because they want sex I mean it's
00:30:24
insane that we have children talking with men all over the world so no social media 16 the third Norm is phone free
00:30:30
schools lock up the phones in a Yonder pouch or in a phone Locker in the morning they get it back at the end of
00:30:35
the day and the fourth Norm is far more Independence free play and responsibility in the real world because
00:30:41
until the 1990s kids had a childhood they were outside a lot they had Adventures they learned to be
00:30:46
self-governing self-supervised we took that away from them beginning of the 90s totally gone by 2015 so our kids never
00:30:53
get any fun or Adventure so all they have is their screens so if we do those four things we break out of these
00:30:59
Collective action problems we restore childhood we delay the full social media immersion until age 16 when they're you
00:31:06
know halfway or more than halfway through puberty that's my basic proposal so those are the four what's the
00:31:12
reaction been to this proposal amazing it's not like it's not like met is gonna wake up someday and Zuckerberg's gonna
00:31:18
have this Epiphany that he's done more damage to Children than the toac well I've got to imagine that the reaction
00:31:24
has been amazing to anyone that's not gone through this problem as children right like you if you have you have you
00:31:32
talked to the um the Gen Z about the proposal my good I think yeah yeah that's what's so exciting about this is
00:31:40
that so I propose these four Norms I have this analysis of what happened at gen Z I paint gen Z as a generation
00:31:46
that's been damaged that's going to be less than they would have been they're less ambitious they're less successful
00:31:50
they're less happy they're less competent and I've given this I've given versions of this talk in middle schools
00:31:55
in high schools in universities I always ask at the end of it what do you think did I get your generation wrong and I
00:32:03
and I usually try if I remember I usually say Okay question time if you think I got something wrong please raise
00:32:09
your hand now you know or or or or please be the first up to the microphone and maybe one time someone said I think
00:32:16
you got this wrong the other you know thousands and thousands and thousands of times they say yep that's basically
00:32:21
right now maybe some of them are too shy to speak up but my point is young kids like you know 9 10 they
00:32:29
desperately want phone Tik Tok everything but by the time they're in late high school or certainly College
00:32:35
the overwhelming view I find among gen Z is wow did this mess us up U not that I'm going to quit because I don't want
00:32:42
to be alone but man did this mess us up and that's why when you ask them do you wish social media was never invented
00:32:48
most of them say yes I wish it was never invented so gen z um gen Z is incredibly
00:32:55
supportive if you go to the website for the book anxious generation.com we have all kinds of activities for you know
00:33:00
parents and teachers and genz we we have writing on my substack after babel.com by gen Z that's why this is so different
00:33:07
from any previous Tech Panic is that the kids themselves see the problem what is
00:33:12
the connection between beams and coddling of the American mind and the anxious generation
00:33:19
and what we see on college campuses recently so um can you comment on the the protests MH the
00:33:36
continuation yeah so my previous book The cing of the American mind began when my by the way I I I gave a copy to
00:33:42
everyone at our Summit last year so we gave away 1800 of it was my pick yeah yeah so began when Greg lukanov who is
00:33:48
the president of the foundation for individual rights and education noticed that all of a sudden around 2013 2014 it
00:33:55
was actually the students who were demanding protections from speech from books from speakers shut this down ban
00:34:00
this stop this person from speaking and he came to me and said something's go something's wrong something's really
00:34:06
different about students today it wasn't like this in 2012 um something's changed
00:34:11
uh and they are more fragile they want more protection from words books speakers they think speech is violence
00:34:16
and at the time we thought that these were Millennials because that's was the name for the Young Generation
00:34:20
Millennials um uh but and so we wrote an article on this in the Atlantic like laying out what we think is happening
00:34:26
something is teaching the students to think in these distorted ways that are like cognitive distortions um and then
00:34:32
in 2015 so the article comes out August 2015 in October 2015 or November 2015 everything blows up beginning at Yale
00:34:39
the Halloween costume protest all sorts of things universities undergo a kind of
00:34:43
a cultural revolution really some very similar a lot of similarities to the Chinese Cultural Revolution of pulling
00:34:49
down everything High pulling down everything old a kind of a revolutionary young people's movement shaming
00:34:54
professors spitting on professors all that sort of stuff um now so what's the continuity today the one of the worst
00:35:01
things that the leaders did back then the university presidents is they did nothing uh students would shout down
00:35:07
speakers no one was ever ever punished for shouting down speakers even when they used intimidation I should clar
00:35:14
McKenna 20 there was one clar McKenna did punish some students in 2018 but hundreds and hundreds of shout Downs no
00:35:20
one ever punished the message was oh as long as you're protesting for social justice you know you can break the rules
00:35:25
you can use intimidation you can shout people down you can bang on glass and make people afraid for their lives you
00:35:30
can do those things cuz it's for a good cause and besides we're actually kind of
00:35:33
afraid of you too so that was the precedent that was set and that I believe was the beginning of one of the
00:35:38
greatest brand destructions in American history highered used to have one of the
00:35:42
greatest brands in the world Elite highered was the Envy of the world now it's a laughing stock it's a you know
00:35:46
Harvard is a punchline in jokes around the world certainly in America um and so it's because there was fear there was
00:35:51
lack of leadership and we permitted intimidation rather than persuasion universities must be about persu equ you
00:35:58
can never win an argument by saying if if you don't agree with me I'm going to hurt you I'm going to destroy you
00:36:02
socially we can't allow that but we did uh and so now Along come the protests um
00:36:08
so of course the October 7th the the massacre was horrific the Israeli response has
00:36:16
produced horrific suffering and death yes it's normal and expectable that there would be debates on a college
00:36:22
campus there's no and nobody that I know of is saying people shouldn't be protesting in favor of the pales Ians
00:36:28
and but the question is really about the encampments and other efforts to disrupt
00:36:34
the functioning of the university to pressure the university to make a statement pro- Palestine or anti-israel
00:36:42
or to divest from Israel so this is the use of intimidation and disruption which
00:36:49
they allowed for nine years before they said since 2015 as long as you're protesting for social justice you can do
00:36:55
whatever the hell you want we're not going to punish for anything so now the sort of the intersectional social
00:37:00
justice protests that are pro Palestine and often anti-israel and often shading at
00:37:05
anti-Semitism um the presidents don't know what to say and that was the spectacle we observed on December 5th in
00:37:11
that uh house hearing room of the three presidents who could not explain why it was against their policies for people to
00:37:19
call for death to the Jews like they couldn't they had been so tied in a not with their hypocrisy they couldn't even
00:37:26
explain it so yeah there's there's a very direct continuity and In fairness if the protesters were simply doing a
00:37:33
Sittin they got a long history of people sitting in in the 60s and 70s protesting
00:37:37
different things is virtuous it's this sort of tipping over into intimidation when five or six people surround a
00:37:45
student and or chase them into a library or bang on the doors I mean if you were
00:37:50
to just I always use uh my friend Sam Harris's you know technique which is just replace you know go through through
00:37:58
each uh you know person on the victim Olympics and the identity politics bingo card yeah and just replace it okay now
00:38:05
white students are chasing black students black students are chasing Hispanic students Hispanic students are
00:38:10
chasing Japanese students lesbians or chasing hetero people whatever it is pick your from the bingo card and and
00:38:19
then just see if this stands up and if it had been black students being surrounded by white students like people
00:38:24
would be like what that's right exactly this is my point about like dualistic thinking like the whole core of like the
00:38:31
Zen Buddhist approaches to get rid of the sides in a in a system but but can you talk a little bit about this
00:38:39
oppressor oppressed yes concept and how critical it is to social behavior and now social Evolution I've thought a lot
00:38:49
about this over the last year and I feel like so much of human societal development politics purchasing behavior
00:38:58
is all driven by this concept of oppressor and oppressed which can be approximated as the Hales and the
00:39:04
have-nots and at any given moment I can feel like a have not to some other have and theoretically I'm a have to someone
00:39:12
else who's a have not my have not identity drives me to purchasing to getting likes on Facebook to changing
00:39:21
who's in office to deciding which company I should spend money on and which company I should not spend money
00:39:27
on and that this notion extends its way into feeling oppressed meaning there's a
00:39:32
system in place that's keeping me from having something that someone else has and maybe you can talk a little bit
00:39:37
about has this changed has this always been in human psychology is this changing because of modernity and why
00:39:44
would be would be great no good no that's right that's another point of continuity from the codling uh so the
00:39:49
the central idea of the coddling was that there are three great untruths ideas that are so bad that if any young
00:39:55
person believes all three they're almost certain to be depressed anxious um not amount to much in life and those three
00:40:03
are what doesn't kill you makes you weaker so avoid stressful experiences avoid speakers who are going to say
00:40:09
things that you hate don't don't expose yourself always trust your feelings your
00:40:13
feelings are right if you feel offended by something that someone has offended you um and and someone has to do
00:40:19
something about someone has to punish that person and the third to your point about Duality is life is a battle
00:40:25
between good people and evil people and this is the Distortion that's caused the
00:40:30
most human misery I mean this is a normal thing people do this is part of being a tribal species we're very very
00:40:35
good at coming together to say our side has been hurt or cheated or defiled by their side um they're the evil ones
00:40:42
we're you know they're perfectly bad we're perfectly good uh so it's that third Distortion is
00:40:47
really the most pernicious from a for societal level now what you just said before about the Haves and the Have Nots
00:40:53
that's what the left used to be about from the time of marks or the French re ution even um until the 1950s or 60s it
00:41:01
was about the haves versus the have knots and the left uh was the one that stood up for the have knots and the left
00:41:07
uh you know stood up for the poor and the people uh but we go through a period in the 60s and 70s of the conversion
00:41:13
away from away from a a sort of a Marxist idea based on economics to something is it a little bit Marx is it
00:41:21
Michelle Fuko there's different intellectual heritages here where now it's all about power it's not or Have
00:41:27
Nots it's power and power is such that whatever you look at in society you will see that some people have power and
00:41:39
privilege and they use that to oppress the opposite and this is what intersectional intersectionality is
00:41:46
about it starts with a perfectly legitimate point that there are multiple dimensions of identity and um you know
00:41:52
to be a black woman is not just the sum of being black or being woman they're unique indignities that hit black women
00:41:57
that you don't notice unless you are tuned into this so intersectionality begins you know Kimberly crer with a
00:42:02
very good Insight which I think is absolutely right but the way it plays out on campus what what Greg and I
00:42:08
argued in our book is 18year olds coming on to campus they're easily lured into this incredibly simplistic and exciting
00:42:17
way of looking at the world which is I don't have to know anything about you I can just look at you and I can say oh
00:42:23
you're a man oh you're a white man oh that means that you're an oppressor um and I can feel virtuous to the extent
00:42:29
that I am not that and this puts a lot of pressure especially on white kids to try to develop some identity as a victim
00:42:37
um and which is incredibly disempowering um and just you know not good for the development and what we end
00:42:44
up with is a movement that that thinks in these binary terms and this is what brings us to today is of course you know
00:42:52
Jews I'm I'm Jewish we always thought that we were among history's victims and certainly you can't understand the
00:42:57
creation of the state of Israel without understanding what happened in the Holocaust um but because of the way
00:43:03
intersection played out because whiteness is so quintessentially evil like whiteness is the thing that is
00:43:10
ruining everything whiteness is the you know so everything that's not whiteness unites together to to fight whiteness
00:43:17
now most Jews as I understand it most Jews in Israel are actually spartic uh they're not from Europe uh but but in
00:43:24
America Jews are quoted as white and therefore if there's a conflict between the Jews and the Palestinians then
00:43:31
obviously one is the one is the oppressor one is the oppressed now obviously economically Israel is wealthy
00:43:36
Israel is powerful so it's not that that there's no legitimacy to that view obviously there's a huge power
00:43:41
differential in Israel versus Gaza um but the mindset that says everything is about power is so narrowing incorrect
00:43:52
boring and offensive I I you know I spent so many years trying to help the left using moral psychology so they
00:43:58
would stop losing elections and I finally decided they're beyond hope the right's Beyond hope too but um you know
00:44:05
the left is losing Asians it's losing black men it's losing Hispanics in the time of Donald Trump
00:44:12
why is this happening a big piece of it seems to be this oppressor victim mindset pushes policies that are so
00:44:18
offensive to most people of every race that they're like I've had it with the left I don't like this so sorry that was
00:44:24
a rant that was more of a rant than an answer to your question but I hope it was entertaining no I it it seems
00:44:30
accurate do you think the pendulum is is Shifting what do you see broadly socially right now are we still in this
00:44:37
Loop where we are creating oppressor oppressed kind of construct perpetuating policy or are folks in the
00:44:48
left saying it's gone too far it's time to make a change now folks are feeling because I've seen a lot of folks that
00:44:54
have traditionally been I'm not I'm not a politics guy and I'm not a in a political party or anything but um I've
00:45:01
seen like a lot of folks who I know who are traditionally Democratic voters Democrat voters who are now Republican
00:45:07
voters after what's happened over the last couple of years surprisingly shockingly would have never sworn that
00:45:12
would have been the case 10 years ago are things changing now is that is that sort of shift GNA be what what pulls
00:45:19
things policy-wise the other way yeah I I think things are changing um so at least on you have to look institution by
00:45:25
institution and so at least on campus things got insane in 2015 I mean it was again it was like the cultural
00:45:31
revolution began in 2015 it wasn't like this in 2012 and and I started a group called
00:45:36
heterodox Academy if there are any professors listening to this please join heterodox Academy we advocate for
00:45:41
Viewpoint diversity among professors we think that we shouldn't all think the same we shouldn't all be on the left and
00:45:45
Progressive and every year since 2015 things got worse and worse and worse and especially 2020 with Co then especially
00:45:51
George Floyd a lot of progressive ideas got supercharged ibram kendi became the patron saint everything was about
00:45:57
anti-racism so that's when things really became completely Bonkers um not just on
00:46:03
campus but in journalism in museums you know firing all the white guides and you
00:46:08
know all just crazy stuff was happening 2021 uh 22 uh business went many businesses went that way but businesses
00:46:16
have to actually make money and so by 2022 a lot of businesses were rolling it back they're saying whoa this stuff is
00:46:20
terrible this is not making life better for for for members of minorities this is actually just turning everyone
00:46:26
against everyone we all hate this um so business has begun definitely moving away from all this stuff um universities
00:46:34
were not doing we're not really moving away until December 5th I think December 5th that that court that hearing was so
00:46:40
humiliating for higher ed I think a lot of us feel much Freer now we feel like you know what you know the
00:46:45
intersectional you know the the sort of the the people who will destroy your reputation if you question them they're
00:46:51
on the defensive now you know we don't hear much from IAM kendi anymore we don't hear him referred to very much
00:46:56
anymore um so I think that at least even on campus the pendulum is swinging I I was afraid it wasn't a pendulum I was
00:47:02
afraid it's more like a tower that just Falls faster and faster but I do think because the great majority of professors
00:47:08
and presidents are true liberals they're on the left but they believe in free speech they're not illiberal what I
00:47:13
think has happened on the far left and the far right we have illiberalism so if the far left is not liberal the far
00:47:20
right is not conservative um and most of us the 70% in the middle are actually pretty reasonable people who could live
00:47:27
together but we're all afraid of the extremes but we're less afraid of the extremes now than we were a year ago
00:47:32
because Cano culture has ended essentially and like the left took it too far and the right took it too far is
00:47:39
that what's you have to look institution by institution and so in institutions that are governed that are dominated by
00:47:45
the left and that is all the knowledge creating institutions so it's journalism the arts media universities most of the
00:47:51
scientific establishment other than the hard Sciences um in all those areas yes I think the left took it too far you
00:47:57
know we went into a point where everything like chemistry has to be about anti-racism and and you know
00:48:02
everything has to be about race and that was just kind of nuts and and um so I I
00:48:07
I think there is a kind of a move to Common more Comm konium very racist element very racist element yeah just
00:48:16
subtly racist can you talk a little bit about what traditional liberalism and conservatism should look looks like
00:48:23
because a lot of people in our public audience a lot of people I talk to confused now about the terms because so
00:48:29
much of traditional liberalism feels illiberal because of your point about far-left Behavior traditional
00:48:34
conservatism feels illiberal because of far-right behavior what is the difference between the two and kind of
00:48:41
help us bring balance to the force you know like so I'll answer your question as a as a psychologist which is um one
00:48:48
of the amazing discoveries in Psychology since the 80s is that is that almost everything about our personality is
00:48:55
partly heritable and if you have an identical twin separated at Birth you never met but if you're very much on the
00:49:02
left your twin probably is too something about our brains make us predisposed to
00:49:06
the right or the left and it goes back to openness to experience and conscientiousness a few personality
00:49:11
traits but basically there's a there's a liberal or Progressive sentiment that says it's captured by this Robert F
00:49:18
Kennedy quote some men see things as they are and say why I dream things that never were and say why not so
00:49:25
progressives hisor are the people who look at existing institutions and say you know why do we you know why don't we
00:49:31
change this like why don't we have some other thing uh which might be more just so progress is always pushing for
00:49:38
Progress for change U but then the the um the wisdom of the right is to say you know what we may not understand our
00:49:47
institutions but if we just go changing them willy-nilly it's going to be a disaster because we don't understand
00:49:53
what we're doing in fact I opened our conversation with that that's actually a conser one something I learned from
00:49:57
reading the the conservative intellectuals uh going back to Edmund Burke um you can't just go messing with
00:50:03
institutions and expect it to work out well so a good liberal democracy is when in which you have some people pushing
00:50:08
for change you got other people saying slow down like not so fast like let's be careful about this and that's William F
00:50:14
Buckley's famous quote about National Review is going to stand a th history yelling stop or least slow down so
00:50:21
that's great like you have a car with a gas pedal and a Brak like you need that and what happens when there are no
00:50:25
conservatives what happens when there's no one to say slow down you know Progressive revolutions have an almost
00:50:31
perfect record of disaster I mean it always descends into chaos and economic chaos and and and cruelty and what
00:50:38
happens when there are no progressives when it's all conservative you tend to get much more repressive you know
00:50:44
certainly lgbtq rights I mean you get you get very predictable pathologies on either
00:50:49
side and part of my analysis what I think has gone wrong in in our country what you know I'm very focused on what
00:50:55
social media has done to society as well as to gen Z is there always was a distribution where most people on the
00:51:01
left are reasonable left they're progressives I sorry they're they're true liberals they they believe in a
00:51:07
John Stewart Mill vision of a society in which people are maximally free to construct lives that they want to live
00:51:13
that I think is the heart of the liberal Vision a liberal society and on the right you have conservatives who
00:51:19
generally believe in Tradition family group loyalty religion the things that bind us together and and and limit bad
00:51:28
behavior this is Thomas Soul talking about the uh the constrained vision of humanity right so so that's all healthy
00:51:35
and then you always have some far-left radicals who they become maist in one generation they become robes peer in
00:51:41
another you know they chop off heads prone to violence on the far left you got a group prone to violence on the far
00:51:46
right that are reactionary that are authoritarian and let's say there was some distribution now then Along Comes
00:51:53
Twitter Along Comes Facebook Along Comes social media what happens uh Mark Zuckerberg used to
00:51:59
say how could it be wrong to give more people more voice that sounds great but what if you're not giving the
00:52:06
disempowered more voice what if you're not giving everyone voice what if you're bringing everyone into the Roman
00:52:11
Coliseum and saying okay let's fight it out for the for the entertainment of the
00:52:16
people in the stands and the great majority of people don't want to fight with swords they just go quiet and some
00:52:22
people pick up the swords like yes let's go um and and so the far left becomes super empowered the far right becomes
00:52:29
super empowered and the center left and the center right go silent and that's what I think is you know that's I think
00:52:34
a real disaster for for our country I think that was like such an excellent like commentary for for people to hear I
00:52:43
want to ask one follow on which is why has liberalism and conservatism in some aspects switched so one one of the
00:52:51
things I think a lot of folks observe is that modern liberalism is a lot of um uh
00:52:58
redistribution equality for the oppressed bring everyone up to the same outcome the same level on an outcome
00:53:05
basis which limits the freedom and flexibility of others it limits free markets for example you know more taxes
00:53:13
more regulations is one way to characterize that that that conservatives will say more taxes and
00:53:18
more regulation is not John Stewart Mill it's not more free market enablement and
00:53:24
then on the flip side this idea of conservatives want to have less government less regulation less taxes um
00:53:31
uh which you know can drive more inequality of outcome Etc could drive in fact fundamentally and I believe this
00:53:37
very deeply free markets Drive progress technological progress and social progress and as a result by getting
00:53:44
technology out the most disempowered benefit the most by new technology they can they can progress more than the
00:53:51
wealthy can progress and so why has that flipped why is conservatism and liberalism in some aspects
00:53:56
flipped and when does that when did that happen yeah so don't think of it as though liberalism and conservatism have
00:54:03
flipped think of it as though the left and the right have really changed one thing I learned from studying
00:54:08
conservatism from the intellectual historian Jerry Mueller is that conservatism in every era is a reaction
00:54:14
to the excesses of the left I see so if the left was the revolutionaries in the French Revolution the right were
00:54:21
monarchists they they wanted the restoration of the King right if the left in America is about you know
00:54:30
pulling down the founding fathers because they were slave owners the right is going to be no we're going to get
00:54:35
extra patriotic we're going to wear funny hats like the you know 18th century Americans so you you always have to
00:54:41
understand the right as a reaction to what they perceive to be the excesses of the left now a lot of what's happened is
00:54:47
as I said the the left is a political Coalition that that votes similarly in elections same with the right it's made
00:54:55
of ax of different kinds of people um there's a wonderful study from Mor common that talked about the seven
00:55:01
tribes of seven groups of Americans um the the progressive activists which is the group on the furthest left they were
00:55:08
never liberal in fact they're really illiberal they're not even about bringing up the bottom they're much more
00:55:14
focused on pulling down the top uh that's a kind of a that's like the the ugly side of egalitarianism so they're
00:55:20
very focused on restraining rich people pulling down privilege they don't seem as concerned about bringing up poor
00:55:25
people so that's the far that's the the far left they're not liberal but now but
00:55:31
for a while they were really dominant not in the Democratic party this is an important point the Democratic party has
00:55:35
two Wings which one usually wins the the liberal the moderate Wing not the not the squad not the so if you just look at
00:55:43
the parties the Democrats are a functioning center-left party with a you know an outspoken Progressive Way that's
00:55:50
great that's Viewpoint diversity I love that the right is different if you just look at the party you used to have all
00:55:57
kinds of true conservatives you know George HW Bush through Mitt Romney they were true conservatives very decent men
00:56:05
they believed in decency family Val I mean these you know I have a lot of respect for traditional conservatives
00:56:11
but now it's the party of Donald Trump and the Republican party has gotten rid of nearly all its moderates the
00:56:16
Democrats pulled some dirty tricks that actually wiped out a few of those moderates which I I think they really
00:56:21
have a lot to answer for but my point is if you just look at the parties the Republican part has been gutted of its
00:56:27
moderates now they do crazy insane things like let's work really hard to solve the immigration problem Oh Donald
00:56:34
Trump says let's not do it okay let's thread out the window I mean insane stuff that is really hurting the country
00:56:39
so I just want to make it clear I talk a lot about universities where the villain
00:56:42
is the left there really is no right to speak of on University campuses but in Washington you I think the Republican
00:56:48
party is the party that's really gone farther off the reservation or if one can still say that today uh whatever you
00:56:55
know that's gone can we do some quick lightning round questions on sure on on parenting so my kids are I got three
00:57:02
daughters under seven there's a conversation amongst the parents when do you let the kids get get phones when do
00:57:08
you let them get on social media and some of the parents don't listen so then the kid you got a couple kids in the
00:57:14
class that are on social media they're on iPhones it's fifth grade fourth grade whatever and the kids that aren't are
00:57:20
the Have Nots they're left out they're they're not able to be on the text streen with the kids that are so they're
00:57:25
not cool they're so disengaged they're angry at their parents they're sad how do you address that as a parent where
00:57:32
you've got some of the kids in the class that are doing this given the the framing you provided earlier on the best
00:57:36
rules yeah so the answer is collective action so for each each kid feels left out but what if you so I assume you
00:57:45
you're in contact with the parents of your kids friends right because you got to drop them off pick them up you do all
00:57:49
sorts of things so what if you were to talk with the parents of a few of the friends who don't have haven't given
00:57:55
phones yet and you say hey we don't want our kids to have a phone based childhood um you
00:58:01
know do you do you agree with me on that should we work you know if we work together you know John height says if we
00:58:05
work together we can actually give our kids a fun childhood um are you in on that and what that means is we're going
00:58:11
to follow the for nors we're not giving we are not giving our child a smartphone
00:58:15
until High School let's just commit to that now you know we should be sending our kids out in which case like like I
00:58:22
bought my daughter a phone watch a gizmo it could call three numbers that was it
00:58:25
right that was was enough for two or three years that was all she needed she could go out and do errands she could go
00:58:29
get bagels she could go you know bring food to my office across the park so it's okay to give kids a way to contact
00:58:36
you but you just all agree no smartphone and you all agree no social media until
00:58:40
16 and that even includes Snapchat um which is what the kids are using to communicate but just lots of bad stuff
00:58:45
happens on Snapchat but then if some of the parents don't agree and then you've got this
00:58:50
class system that forms amongst the social you know groups of the kids you got some kids that are that
00:58:56
you just hold the line H well but yes if you you can it's hard to hold the line on on your own
00:59:04
it's much easier if you have three of you holding the line but it's even better if it's not holding a line it's
00:59:10
offering a more positive vision of childhood so you and the kid so your kid and the other kids who who your parents
00:59:16
all agree you make extra efforts to give your kids an exciting fun childhood where they do exciting things together
00:59:23
the other kids can be home on their bed swiping all day long let do that they're
00:59:26
going to end up basically anxious and never having really done anything to grow up whereas your kids are getting
00:59:34
together for four-way sleepovers or you're taking them you know bowling and you just you know you just well to the
00:59:39
extent that you're allowed to you step back like you let them be self-governing you know you give them money or give
00:59:46
them an allowance I I suggest in the book be really clear about chores allowance and encourage them go ride
00:59:50
your go ride your bicycles down and go get ice cream you know go get ice cream just before dinner for all I care be a
00:59:56
little rebellious so if you you know we've really taken almost all the fun out of
01:00:01
childhood there's very little Adventure left in child I've leaned into that my kids love the fact that I told them my
01:00:05
Dad would kick us out of the house in the morning in the summer and we could come back on when the street lights came
01:00:10
on that's the common rule that's right so tell me how you tell me how you do it because that's there's a lot of
01:00:14
questions how do you do today and then um I just had them leave the house and I told them I'm locking the doors for 3
01:00:21
hours go have fun outside and then sometimes when we're in town I'll have them walk around I'll give them the 20
01:00:26
bucks I'll say you're going to meet me at the Apple Store at this time if you need to another time you can go ask them
01:00:32
but we're going to meet at the Apple Store in two hours have fun anything goes wrong just go into any store and
01:00:37
talk to an adult boom I'm just giving them those kind of like free range things yes that's beautiful and do they
01:00:43
see this as punishment or are they excited they enjoy they love it of course they love it of course they love
01:00:48
it they ran around the house found one of the doors open and say you forgot to lock this one lock it great and they
01:00:54
said what if we have to go to the or we need a drink of water I said there's the hose and there's a tree yeah
01:01:02
excellent that's how we did it inly yeah got the host and that's they think it's
01:01:06
hilarious uh and they love it and then the other thing I do as a tip is I you know if they want to do screen time I
01:01:13
tell them great uh come up with a creative project and uh one hour of creative project you can do one hour of
01:01:19
TV or 1 hour of iPad or something so I just do one for one with them they have to earn it by doing something creative
01:01:26
and they're like we don't know what to do and I'm like figure it out and then boredom I explained to them equals
01:01:30
creativity you have to be bored your mind clears and then you come up with a great creative idea now they're writing
01:01:37
movies they're writing stories they're making books they're writing songs like they literally will complain it's like
01:01:44
you mentioned Skinner when you extinguish a behavior like an addiction yeah to devices the bad behavior spikes
01:01:50
they scream they cry and then boom it drops down to zero and you're fine you just have to weather that like brief
01:01:57
storm it's the withdraw that's right because when you've had hyper stimulation of quick easy dopamine those
01:02:03
systems uh downregulate they react they try to restore homeostasis now it takes more stimulation to get them to the
01:02:10
normal level you now you take away the video gam you take away the phones and for you know Anna lmy says it's you know
01:02:17
two or three weeks to overcome withdrawal symptoms for especially for more serious drugs but in my experience
01:02:23
is more like your it's like a few days it's you know the first three but by we actually most it that's like
01:02:29
summer camp so your kids to summer camp and never your child to a camp that allows kids to keep phones on them never
01:02:35
do that that's a wasted opportunity for detox this is what kids want by the way kids want to have a childhood they don't
01:02:42
you you asked them you pulled the students and they they told you we don't want to be addicted to the stuff that's
01:02:46
like if you were to ask Philip Seymour Hoffman you want to be addicted to heroin and you wish heroin was never
01:02:50
existed he'd be like yeah I'm dead of course I wish heroin didn't exist yeah that's right this thing ruin my life
01:02:56
like that they know they're on heroin what' you say that that was a PLL like the whatever just I'm thinking about New
01:03:03
York and just I mean I used to work out in the same gym as in Chelsea Piers and I'm every time I see Philip sore Hoffman
01:03:09
in like the master or long came poly I just think this is what we're doing to our kids they get addicted to these
01:03:15
things and then fent and all and like Talented Mr Ripley wasn't he just so many great artists gone and I think
01:03:22
that's what's happening to these kids brains I think their brains are being melted and all their creativity their
01:03:26
ability to learn an instrument to interact with each other we stealing their childhoods and replacing them with
01:03:31
Zuckerberg's payday yeah for the heavy users especially I mean I try to avoid saying brain melted I try to be a little
01:03:38
you know a little more precise for the heavy users for the you know and and this is the thing about five depending
01:03:43
how you measure it about 5 to 12% of the boys do get do become problematic users
01:03:48
of video games so for most Boys video games are okay they're they're a lot of fun and I wouldn't say video games are
01:03:53
melting most boys brains but 5 to 12% is a lot of boys to lose and these are boys
01:03:59
who are spending you know three four five hours a day on video games for years and years and years they don't
01:04:05
develop social skills they don't develop dating skills these boys I think are that's right exactly exactly it's just I
01:04:12
mean it is you may not like to say you're an M Professor it makes these kids really weird these I watch these
01:04:18
kids who are addicted to Tik Tock and addicted to video games they get really socially weird they can't make eye
01:04:23
contact they can't have a conversation and then they become young adults they don't know how to go on a date they
01:04:28
don't know how to talk to adults I mean they don't know how to work yeah tell me
01:04:33
more about what you're seeing in in Silicon Valley in the tech industry are you talking only about boys or are you
01:04:37
saying girls are this way girls aren't making eye contact no I think it's the boys mainly the girls seem to be a
01:04:44
different subset of behaviors which is like um uh maybe more social pressure and
01:04:54
more Depression more disorders self harm all that collection where maybe it's directed you know in some way of um
01:05:03
harming yourself which is really internalizing disorders that's right internalizing disorders yeah yeah so and
01:05:10
and tell me how gen Z employees are working out in general in your in your they're terrible and that's that's what
01:05:16
I hear very widely yeah you just hire people in Canada or the Philippines and well Canada is almost as bad as America
01:05:22
Canada has problems too they're very much like us but I agree immigrants from non- English speaking countries that's
01:05:28
right they have a they have a better work ethic um and I'm G to you know what I'm hoping that will get to is because
01:05:35
this problem is so w like this is what I you know I work in a business school I talk to a lot of people in business I
01:05:38
always ask that question I always hear the same thing I've never heard anyone say oh yeah young people are so
01:05:42
wonderful people are having problems integrating genz employees into their companies they're they're fragile they
01:05:47
the top 20% are fantastic the majority are do not have the wherewithal the resiliency the Cal confidence the
01:05:56
communication skills to operate in a business environment period full stop so what you know what what what do you
01:06:02
think about this what about like instead of like don't hire American kids saying
01:06:07
look for signs that this person can be a team player and work with other people so especially go for anybody who's
01:06:14
ex-military anybody who is Major team sports yeah no people do hire based on that they always did in sales like the
01:06:21
sales department you wanted military people you wanted discipline because it's a numbers game have to just grind
01:06:26
it out but I do think like even for what what people don't realize is when everybody went home for covid managers
01:06:35
learned how to manage remote workers once they figured out I can manage a remote worker dealing with somebody who
01:06:41
has too much anxiety to come to work today or be in a meeting and told they did a job and like you need to Buck up
01:06:47
and do a better job like people will quit on the spot people will start crying people will drop off the zoom
01:06:53
because there's too much anxiety to be told you did a bad job now you tell that to somebody who's working in India or
01:07:00
South America or Portugal or Manila hey this is not the standard at which we operate they're like can you tell me how
01:07:07
to do better is there a is let me go look online I'll go find some way to do my job better thank you for letting me
01:07:13
know that I could do better on my job this generation can't handle even the modest amount of I shouldn't say all of
01:07:20
them but a large percentage of them have so much anxiety they cannot operate in the workplace okay so that that is
01:07:26
similar to what I hear a lot from from people who are hiring young people but let me suggest one slight variation that
01:07:33
you might try because a really good thing about jensi is that they're not in denial all the things you say about them
01:07:37
agree with what I say in the book I think that's basically true but what I'm finding in my teaching what I find in
01:07:43
general is that if you approach them in the right way and you first of all they have to understand the concept of
01:07:49
antifragility very easy to explain chapter one of the codling American mind if you go to the coding.com I have
01:07:55
chapter one we put it up there so that everybody can use it send it around to all your employees you know it's what
01:08:00
doesn't kill you actually makes you stronger and you grow through adversity and it's stoic wisdom and it's wisdom
01:08:06
around the world so if you have that concept you're talking about it and then you say to your new genz employees okay
01:08:11
now we can do this in two ways um one is um since I really want you to be successful in this job so I'm going to
01:08:19
tell you everything I think you're doing wrong and I'm going to try to make you better that's option one
01:08:26
option two is I can be really sensitive about your feelings and really try to make everything gentle and try never to
01:08:31
upset you which one do you want and I guarantee you the great majority are going to pick option one because they do
01:08:39
want to grow they recog they're not in denial they're not defensive they're not like no I'm not like that no like so so
01:08:46
um I especially would not I'm I'm not giving up on on genz especially those who are still in the early 20s um you
01:08:53
know because that's what I'm teaching at NYU and they show incredible growth now
01:08:56
there it's exciting because they're doing it together I have a class of 35 students we're doing it together but if
01:09:00
you have a a cohort you know if you if you if you're selective in your hiring and you try to avoid the ones who are
01:09:06
most you know showing the signs of the the sort of you know the extreme activism and the the um extreme
01:09:12
emotionality um if you have a group and and you and you're explicit that you want them to get stronger you want them
01:09:19
to succeed and that's why I'm going to give you some harsh feedback I think actually they they generally love it I I
01:09:26
I do think some number will rise to the occasion I think it's really good advice
01:09:30
the other advice you know I'll just tell you what people do practically in the real world please hire three people
01:09:36
expect that one's going to be fired in the first six weeks because they present well in an interview but they're going
01:09:42
to have a panic attack uh where they're just going to be don't have the work ethic to be successful in an intense
01:09:49
field like venture capital or a venture back startup so and then one will leave um
01:09:55
because they're got rich parents and they don't need to have the stress of the job whatever and then whoever's left
01:10:01
that's the winner and so that's how people are approaching this now is hiring people on Project basis let's see
01:10:06
them do the work let's see if they can maintain the intensity and that's really is like if you weren't allowed if you
01:10:13
were monitored and helicopter parented and you didn't go to the store on your own and you didn't get lost and you
01:10:18
didn't have somebody steal your money or you know you didn't get in a fight in the schoolyard or you didn't play tag
01:10:24
and you know didn't get picked for Dodgeball you got smashed in DodgeBall and they bullied
01:10:29
you if you didn't have all those experiences that are formative yeah you're not going to survive in the
01:10:35
corporate world there's no time there's no time to teach you how to you know get
01:10:40
smashed in the face you know with a with a dodgeball you know that should have happened in 12 12 years old it's uh it's
01:10:47
going to be tough for them I I think you're doing God's work trying to get them back on track well let's you know
01:10:52
let's hope that that parents and schools realize you know the the truth of what you're saying and we get to the point
01:10:58
where um you know college admissions and hiring is not just going to go for the high GPA and the full resume of
01:11:05
extracurricular activities they're going to go for signs of being a free range kid they're going go for signs that you
01:11:11
traveled alone you traveled on your own for three months someplace you know when
01:11:14
you were 18 or 19 they're going to go for signs that that you actually can handle adversity yeah I'd like to see
01:11:22
your project work you know I see an myu or Forida I see any Ivy League school degree or something like that you're
01:11:28
going to think oh my God this person's going to come here and start a union a movement you know they're going to
01:11:33
distract everybody this is why coinbase and other folks are just saying we're here for this purpose if you're here
01:11:38
you're here for this Mission and this purpose anything else you want to do on your own time they your business but got
01:11:44
major major kudos to coinbase they were the first one Armstrong he was the first
01:11:47
one to really put that out there and a lot of companies follow yeah that's yeah now now it's the standard hey you're
01:11:53
here you the random group there's like a random channel on slack that is like one
01:11:59
of the default channels that's where chaos occurs the first thing you got to do is delete the random Channel there's
01:12:05
no random here we're here to work yeah there's no you know side hustle random you know your
01:12:12
politics whatever indigenous group uh you know whatever group that you care most about yeah that's called the
01:12:20
weekend we had a word for that in Gen X that's your weekend at 5 o'l on Friday you could start thinking about that the
01:12:27
rest of the week you're focused anyway I'm old school Gen X I'm old school now it's so great to have you on here
01:12:35
the books uh coddling of the American mind anxious generation and the first two buy all four everybody that's the
01:12:43
message you should get here stop what you're doing get the audio book books are the greatest deal in the world 10 15
01:12:48
bucks you get a ton of knowledge and hopefully this podcast inspires you whether you're a parent educator or a
01:12:54
young person to just understand what's going on here John you're a great guest thanks so much guys I just want to put
01:12:59
in just a quick note to learn more go to anxious generation.com is the website for the book after babble.com is my
01:13:06
substock where we put a lot of research a lot of writing and letg grow.org is an
01:13:10
incredible organization that we created with I skazi to give parents like you more help more ideas in how to give your
01:13:18
kids a free range I have been all over that website lots of great ideas there yeah so I hope if there any
01:13:24
philanthropist in the audience who are willing we we were it's a tiny little organization we could do so much more if
01:13:29
we had some money and could hire some hire more staff so now let grow.org fantastic let your kids grow exactly
01:13:38
exactly and let us know what you think of the all-in interview everybody who's a fan uh John you are amazing great
01:13:44
guest thank you thank so much [Music] guys I'm going all in