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February 16, 2026 / 02:18:45

This episode discusses technology addiction, the impact of social media on mental health, and strategies to reclaim attention. Guests include Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, and Adi Jaffe, a Harvard physician.

Jonathan Haidt shares insights from his book, "The Anxious Generation," highlighting how social media and short-form videos are rewiring attention spans and increasing anxiety among youth. He emphasizes the need for age restrictions on social media to protect children.

Adi Jaffe discusses the medical implications of technology addiction, including increased risks of PTSD and heart disease. He explains how constant engagement with devices alters brain function and mental health.

Both guests suggest practical strategies for managing technology use, such as deleting addictive apps, setting boundaries, and creating device-free zones. They advocate for a cultural shift towards prioritizing real-life connections over digital interactions.

The conversation underscores the urgent need for awareness and action to mitigate the negative effects of technology on society, especially for younger generations.

TLDR

Technology addiction harms mental health; experts suggest reclaiming attention and limiting social media use.

Episode

2:18:45

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You are actively rewiring your brain for the worst by engaging with social media,

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high volume, quick videos. >> And the social media executives don't let their kids use this stuff because

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they designed it to be addictive and they know that millions and millions of kids have been cyberbullied, sexed. Many

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have committed suicide. So, I'm getting angry. >> And then from the medical perspective,

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it's rewiring your body, increasing your risk of heart disease and PTSD. >> We've moved too far into the virtual

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world and the results are catastrophic. People are spending roughly about 6 and a half hours a day on their phones. What

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do we do about this? >> Well, here's the amazing thing. We actually can control our fate. So, we

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are joined by a social psychologist and a Harvard physician >> to dive into the technology addiction

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and brain rot crisis billions are facing worldwide >> and how we can counter its devastating

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mental health effects. You have to reclaim your attention because without the ability to pay attention for several

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minutes at a time, we're seeing the destruction of human potential, the human relationships, the connection.

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>> But there's all these small tweaks that you can do to override that primal urge

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to scroll. For example, 91% of people had an improvement in attention, well-being, and mental health. After

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just 2 weeks of continuing to use your device, but not having internet access. Next, keep your phone out of your arms

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reach because the sheer potential for distraction has actually been shown to change your prefrontal cortex, which is

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called brain drain. >> So, yes, we should exert more self-control, but we're being pushed in

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addictive apps and it's messing us all up. That's not our fault. >> Would you advise people to delete these

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short form videos? >> Oh my god, yes, that would the most important thing you can do for your

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intelligence and for humanity. But if I was going to offer some specific advice,

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here are the three things that I do with my students to reclaim retention. And then to add to that, I have the 3se

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secondond brain reset. So, first >> I wanted to ask you guys what you thought of this.

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>> Hey, you're back. >> This terrifies me. >> We've got to stop this now.

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>> Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you. We're approaching a significant

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subscriber milestone on this show, and roughly 69% of you that listen and love this show haven't yet subscribed for

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whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've

00:02:07

ever done anything for you, given you value in any way, it is simply hitting that subscribe button. And it means so

00:02:13

much to myself, but also to my team, cuz when we hit these milestones, we go away

00:02:16

as a team and celebrate. And it's the thing, the simple, free, easy thing you

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can do to help make this show a little bit better every single week. So, that's

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a favor I would ask you. And, um, if you do hit the subscribe button, I won't let

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you down. And we'll continue to find small ways to make this whole production

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better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. Means the world. And uh

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yeah, let's do this. Jonathan editing. Jonathan, I've heard you say that the

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destruction of attention is the largest threat to humanity that's happening around the world. And I've also heard

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you say that short form videos are the worst of the worst because they're shattering attention spans. The reason

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why I wanted to have this conversation today is somewhat personal. And in fact, all of the conversations have in the

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driver are somewhat personal to some degree. um they're inspired by some unanswered question I have in my head

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and also some observation I have in my life and the observation I've had is that short form videos in particular are

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making my life worse and actually I've got to say the catalyst moment really

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where I thought you know I need to get you exceptional people together to have this conversation was I thought this I

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then looked at my screen time and saw a huge change I felt so much worse because

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all these social platforms have short form video now and then I actually heard Elon Musk who you know has a social

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media platform that does short form video say that he thinks it's one of the

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worst inventions for humanity. >> Jonathan, why did you say what you said about short form video and this

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corruption of attention? >> Yeah, because I wrote a whole book called The Anxious Generation focusing

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on teen mental health. That was the mystery that popped up in the mid200s. Why are people born after 1995 so much

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more anxious and depressed? And I've been tracking down that mystery and it points a lot of it points to social

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media and especially Instagram, social comparison, all the things we know about social media. When the book came out in

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2024, since then what I realized is that I vastly underestimated the damage because I focused on mental health,

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which is a catastrophe. But the bigger damage is the destruction of the human ability to pay attention. Without the

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ability to pay attention for several minutes at a time, ideally 10 or 20 minutes at a time. Without that, you're

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not going to be of much use as an employee. You're not going to be of much use as a spouse. You're not going to be

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successful in life. And that's when I realized this is way beyond mental health. This is changing human

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cognition, changing human attention, and possibly on a global scale. Adi, what perspective do you come at

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this from? And what's been your perspective through all the work you've done about brains and stress and

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neuroscience and all these kinds of things that has shaped the way that you think about social media, screen time,

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short form video. >> My background is that I'm a physician at Harvard and it my expertise is in

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stress, burnout, and mental health. And so that is the lens that I view all of this through. We know that the most

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delletterious relationship that you have is with your device. You know, in every

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healthy relationship, we have boundaries. We have boundaries with our kids, our parents, our colleagues, our,

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you know, wi-i with our friends. And yet, we have no boundaries and often poorest boundaries when it comes to the

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relationship you have with your device. So, it's not so much about, you know,

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becoming a digital monk and renouncing technology because technology can serve us, right? It inspires, educates,

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connects. Now more than ever, it's so important to be an informed citizen, but

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not at the expense of your mental health. And so what Jonathan was saying, this, you know, constant being engaged

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with your devices, with social media, the scrolling from the minute you wake up until you go to bed, there's a reason

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why you have your best ideas in the shower. And that's because that's the

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only place in the whole day where you are not with your device. People take their device to the bathroom. They sleep

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with your device. you eat with your device, people walk down the street. There's more near miss pedestrian

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accidents because people are walking while they're crossing the street and um

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looking at their devices. And so there's all of this brain biology at play behind

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the scenes. So both of you have talked about how it doesn't feel good to engage

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and constantly be on your phone, that sense of infinite scroll, but there is, you know, it feels like you're doing

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nothing. You're just doing this, right? What are you doing? But in fact, it is

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not passive. It is active. And it has a profound effect on your biology, on your

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brain, on your psychology, and also social factors that I hope we talk about today.

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>> You know, scrolling, wasting a bit of time doesn't seem so harmful.

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What is the big, if we play this forward 10, 20, 30 years, what is the big risk or threat? The biggest threat right now,

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we don't even have to wait 20 years, is that it through a process called neuroplasticity, which is just a big

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fancy word that simply means that your brain is a muscle, is that by engaging with social media, that that sense of

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high volume, lowquality, quick videos, you are actively rewiring your brain for the worse. So you're increasing your

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sense of stress, worsening your mental health, attention, cognition, distractability, irritability, complex

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problem solving. All of that changes when you engage in engage in that infinite scroll.

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>> Yeah. I'd like to add on here because one of the main arguments I get is, ah,

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this is what they said about television. Oh, this is what they said about comic books. This is just another moral panic.

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But people need to understand why touchscreen devices are so different from television. And so I think parents

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find this helpful if I just lay this out briefly. Good screen time versus bad screen time. So humans are storytelling

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animals. We have always, as long as we've had language, we've raised our

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kids with stories, epic poems, all kinds of stories. Stories are good. Sto the human brain needs lots of patterns. The

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child's brain needs lots of patterns to develop. So the worst thing you can do

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is hand your child the device because they're crying for it because they've

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been they trained to get it and you're busy. So you have hand them the device.

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They're quiet. What's happening? They're sitting alone. Not, you know, when I was

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a kid, we always watch with my sisters, with my friends. You're arguing about

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it. You're talking at social kids sitting alone with a device in his hand. It's not long stories. It's never long

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stories. It always ends up at YouTube shorts or Tik Tok or Instagram reels for older kids. So, they're doing they're

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doing this. But here's the key thing that it does that a television does not.

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A television puts you in a state that psychologists call transportation. You get into a story and you find yourself

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pulled in and you're rooting for the characters and this is this is how a brain gets tuned up to social patterns

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but it can't happen in 10 seconds. It can't happen in one minute. It takes a

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long period of time and there is no reinforcement. There is no the television doesn't do anything to you.

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You don't have any response. Whereas a touchscreen device is a Skinner box. So

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BF Skinner was one of the founders of behaviorism and he put rats and pigeons in a box where he could deliver a

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reinforcement, a little grain of food on a schedule. And by giving them quick reinforcements for behavior, he could

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train them to do amazing tricks in just a few hours. When you give your kid a touchscreen device, it's stimulus

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response, swipe, get a reward or not, variable ratio. And then and and you just keep doing that. So you are, as Adi

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said, it is rewiring your brain. It's not just wasting time. It is literally

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training you to do things where television didn't do that. So this is a whole new game.

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>> And to add to that, you know, from the medical perspective, you're shortening

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this attention span. And what happens over time is so like Jonathan said, right, you're not sleeping as well

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because you are engaged with your device. We know that 80% of people are checking their phones within minutes of

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waking up. We have something called revenge bedtime procrastination. this concept of, you know, at the end of the

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day you're fatigued, you've had a long day, you've had no me time, and you want

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to get to bed early. We all know, by the way, what the data is that, you know, we've been taught since we were little

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kids, right? Like bedtime, sleep is important, it's good for your body, it's

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good for your brain. And we might have all the knowledge in the world, but in terms of action, there's a wide gap

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between knowledge and information and action. And so revenge, bedtime procrastination is kind of an offshoot.

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So what happens? So, you know, you have that decreased attention. You have that irritability, hypervigilance. And so, at

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night, at the end of the day, it's 9:00 p.m. You finally, you know, if you're a

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parent, your kids are asleep, your kitchen is clean, maybe you finish your entrepreneurial day, and you finally sit

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down with Melanie on the couch, and you're like, "H, some me time." And, you

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know, you want to get to bed early, and you know it's good for you. But then

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suddenly, you're scrolling and before you know it, it's 2 a.m. and you're

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saying, "Oh my god, what happened? Why am I still awake? What was I doing all

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this time?" What happens is that you essentially give yourself some me time

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at night and so you procrastinate bedtime. And so what happens is with this revenge bedtime procrastination, it

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affects your sleep and then when you don't have good sleep, good quality sleep, so you have difficulty falling

00:11:04

asleep, staying asleep, sleep debt over time for kids, for adults has all sorts of ramifications. So this is just the

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tip of the iceberg. this short form video content and the ripple effects go far and wide. Not only is it rewiring

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your brain, it's rewiring your body, it is affecting your sleep, which increases

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your risk of heart disease later in life. And u when you're consuming graphic videos and graphic images, it

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can increase your personal risk of PTSD through vicarious trauma even if you weren't there. So, this is just a vast

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network of things that can happen to you simply because you're thinking, "Yeah,

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it's harmless. What is it? It's just a bunch of videos that I'm checking out.

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It's a way for me to decompress." >> What do I need to know about the nature

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of the brain to understand exactly what short form video is is playing, is hijacking, is taking advantage of

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>> the thing to understand about all of this is that we have to focus on childhood. Why do we have childhood? Um,

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humans have this really interesting childhood where we we grow rapidly at first and then we slow down for about

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five or seven years. We don't grow very quickly and then we speed up at puberty.

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Whereas other primates, they just grow and grow till they reach reproductive age, then they reproduce. But we seem to

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have this long period of sort of middle childhood for cultural learning. It's a

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period in which the the kid is now walking and talking and turning away from the parents and and that's a time

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for this to come in and they pay attention and they form relationships. All these things have to happen slowly

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because the neurons are gradually growing. They're finding each other based on what the child is doing. Okay?

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So, we grow up in the real world and and that happens over time. And a lot of that is very physical. Kids are very

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physical. Mammals are very physical and there's a lot of touch. So, that's a

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healthy human childhood. But when you give an iPad or your old iPhone and they can they begin doing the the

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touching and swiping, that is going to hijack their attention. That is going to push out all other forms of action and

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learning. And that is going to change the way the parts of the brain that learn to pay attention, what's called

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executive function. It's going to change the way the brain learns to pay attention. It's going to change the

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reward circuits. I think you had Analy recently who's the nation's expert on

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addiction. And the way that she describes it, how, you know, any one addiction is going to change your reward

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pathways to make you more vulnerable to other addictions. So, we're setting our

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kids up not just for this, but then when they get a little older, it'll be video

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games, it'll be uh porn, it'll be gambling now. Everything is gambling. So, we're setting them up for a life in

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which their brain is saying, "Give me something. Give me some quick dopamine.

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Give me some quick dopamine. I don't want I don't want to have to work for

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anything. I don't want to have to apply myself for an hour and then get a reward."

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And so the what the what the short videos are doing for kids is preventing them from learning the connection

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between hard work and a reward. Is there anything else I need to know from a neuroscience perspective about what's

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going on in my brain when I'm when I develop these addictions with short form

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videos or these sort of quick dopamineic tasks. >> So we all as humans have a primal urge

00:14:16

to scroll. When you feel a sense of stress, as many of us do in this moment in life, it is your sense, you know,

00:14:23

your amygdala. And so it's your sense of self-preservation. It's survival and

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self-preservation. That is what your amydala does. So if you want me to show you here, I have no idea what I'm doing

00:14:32

there. >> Yeah, it's okay. So here, deep here, it's a small almond shaped structure.

00:14:37

And that is your amygdala. And your amygdala, its main purpose is survival and self-preservation. It houses your

00:14:45

stress response, your fight orflight response, and it is truly what is activated when you are engaging in

00:14:52

content, when you feel a sense of stress. And so you have this primal urge to scroll. And so evolutionarily we when

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we all were caves people living um together, we would sleep at night and there would be a night watchman scanning

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for danger. And now we have our we have become our own night watchman. And so we

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scan for danger all day, all night long. How do we do that? We scroll. And then the amydala is triggered. And then you

00:15:14

scroll some more. And you scroll some more. And you scroll some more. And so over time, what you're doing is that

00:15:19

you're making that amygdala in a state of of chronic. It's continually being

00:15:25

triggered. What happens to the amygdala over time. When it's continually triggered, it starts to rewire your

00:15:30

brain in other ways. And how does it do that? Through something called the prefrontal cortex. If you put your hand

00:15:36

I like I can use this model, but I can also just use my hands. When you put your hand on your forehead, the area

00:15:41

right behind your forehead right here is the prefrontal cortex. This is a very important thing for our conversation.

00:15:47

This area of the brain and what the prefrontal cortex does is it is called it governs executive functions. So

00:15:56

impulse control, memory, planning, organization, strategic thinking, complex problem solving and there is a

00:16:04

tension between your amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. When your amydala is in the driver's seat, that prefrontal

00:16:10

cortex is quiet. And what is happening as we continue to engage with our devices and have this primal urge to

00:16:18

scroll, that amydala upregulates and the prefrontal cortex downregulates. And over time, that is very problematic for

00:16:25

all of the reasons that we're kind of introducing at the start of this conversation. There was a meta analysis

00:16:30

done in 2025 of 71 different studies and it found that heavy short form video use

00:16:34

was associated with reduced thinking ability, especially shorter attention spans and weaker impulse control.

00:16:41

>> That's right. These studies are just beginning to roll in now. Um, kids have

00:16:45

been on social media really a lot since 2008, but especially once they got smartphones around 2012. studies began

00:16:52

coming in uh in the 2010s that um look it's looking like the kids who are spend

00:16:56

a lot of time on this um are doing much worse. They're more depressed. The focus

00:17:01

was on depression. And some other researchers said no, it's just a correlation. You you can't prove

00:17:06

causation. And we've been going around and around on this for about 10 or 15

00:17:10

years. Now we're doing the same thing with uh with the short form videos. The

00:17:14

damage everyone can see. My students tell me this is what's happening. We feel it. studies are coming in, but

00:17:21

there will be a few studies here and there that don't show it and people will

00:17:25

uh push that up. Meta spends a lot of time and money to influence the public debate. A lot of public documents are

00:17:32

coming out now about how they do that. So, we can engage in debate over over research on short form videos for 5 or

00:17:38

10 years, but at that point, it's way too late. We've lost a second generation, Gen Alpha. So, I think when

00:17:44

we're talking about kids especially, we need to have what's called the precautionary principle, which is if

00:17:49

there's reason to think that this is hurting kids, how about we don't roll it

00:17:53

out into every childhood? How about we make these companies responsible? We hold them responsible for what they're

00:17:59

doing to kids because we're about to make the same mistake we made with social media, letting it worm its way

00:18:05

into childhood. We have already done that with short videos, and we're about

00:18:07

to do it with AI chat bots. In fact, we're just beginning it in late 2025, I'd say. I I don't think people quite

00:18:14

realize how much these major social media platforms have figured out that short form video sells. Um we're

00:18:21

actually seeing this sort of global rise in short form drama apps now. And I don't know if you guys have seen these

00:18:26

apps, but it basically takes a movie that used to be 2 hours long and it breaks it down into say 60 different

00:18:32

parts. And my a colleague of mine at my company was showing me the other day in different parts of the world they're

00:18:36

exploding. There's been a 190% increase in short form drama apps. takes long

00:18:42

form movie, turns it into short form videos. Disney Plus plans to introduce AI generated short form videos this

00:18:47

year, starting with 30 secondond limits inside the Disney Plus app. And Techrunch also reported that as of

00:18:53

October 2025, Netflix tested short form video content on phones and recently announced its plan to expand this

00:18:59

feature. It appears that all of the content we consume is going that way. And listen, I'm friends with lots of

00:19:04

people at big social media platforms. um this doesn't get me in the doesn't sound

00:19:08

in my way of criticizing them because I think two things can be true at the same

00:19:11

time right so I think it can be true that I have a podcast and I make short form videos and that I also understand

00:19:17

that there's a real downside to them and um all of the major social social media

00:19:22

platforms that I speak to speak to have a huge drive towards short form video it

00:19:26

is it appears to be their number one strategic priority and obviously because of the success of Tik Tok as of January

00:19:33

2026 Tik Tok I believe is the most downloaded social app in the world now and it and and if I'm running a social

00:19:40

media company and my one focus is profit, >> I'm now faced with an existential

00:19:45

crisis. >> Yeah. >> I either take part in this thing that is driving the highest retention, therefore

00:19:50

the best ad payouts or I die. >> So there's two comments to that. first

00:19:56

off is that you know when we think when we think about social media and how society is shapeshifting to allow this

00:20:05

short form content there is a concept that Jonathan and I briefly mentioned I think prior to us filming called second

00:20:12

screen viewing and so what's happening is that allegedly these big streamers

00:20:18

are asking their creative talent whether it's screenwriters or actors or pe directors to replay to reiterate the

00:20:26

plot because as you're watching, you know, when we were kids, we would watch

00:20:30

TV or movies and you just sit on the couch and you'd have a bucket of popcorn

00:20:33

with your family and you'd watch a movie, an hour, hour and a half, two hours and now second screen viewing is

00:20:38

happening, which means that you're watching a movie or a TV show and you're

00:20:42

on your device and so you are constantly having that fragmented attention and we

00:20:45

are all doing it and so what these streamers are allegedly asking their creative talent to do is to reiterate

00:20:51

the plot. So it's shapeshifting. It makes sense if my brain is, you know, I'm 33 years old, so I've grown up with

00:20:57

a lot of this stuff. If my brain has been wired to have shorter attention spans and and movies from 30 years ago

00:21:04

are not going to cut it for me, >> right? But then look what happens if if

00:21:09

everybody chases that. And I know, look, Netflix is making shorter and shorter stuff. Even TED, the TED conference, TED

00:21:15

talks are getting shorter and shorter. What does that do? It just repeats the cycle. Now, I appreciate that you're in

00:21:21

a collective action trap, as you put it. If I don't do it and everyone else is,

00:21:25

then I lose out. And so, the the business pressure on on all the creators, the business pressures go

00:21:29

shorter, shorter, shorter. There's a very useful psychological term distinction here that I think would be

00:21:34

helpful, which is the difference between psychological assimilation and accommodation. This goes back to Jean

00:21:40

PG, the great developmental psychologist. We we have certain mental structures. We have a a model in our

00:21:45

head of how things work. And you know then you learn something new then oh that's a you know kid learns oh that's a

00:21:51

an arvar okay I put that into you know that's just that you just assimilate they learn lots of animal names and then

00:21:58

they learn something that's doesn't fit like you learn about bacteria and now

00:22:02

you have to oh okay now you you have you have to change your mental structure it

00:22:06

takes a little time you change your mental structure to understand more about life that's what education really

00:22:11

is all about you have to have a lot of assimilation of course but you need that accommodation over and over again That's

00:22:17

why you want to go to college. That's why you want to read novels. That's what

00:22:19

a great movie does. It takes time. And so, one of the great things about this modern technology is that we can do

00:22:26

things like have this three-hour conversation. I can't believe it. People are going to listen to it. So, this, you

00:22:31

know, long form content. This is all about accommodation. Anybody who walks out who who who leaves this conversation

00:22:38

after 3 hours and isn't thinking about something differently, we failed. Okay.

00:22:43

So, you are very much in the accommodation business. That's great. And then the the question both a moral

00:22:48

and a strategic question is how much do you need to play the the quick hit game in order to get people there. I leave

00:22:54

that to you to do the moral calculation. Maybe it maybe it balances out maybe but

00:22:59

uh but I think that's where you are. >> Would you advise people to delete these

00:23:03

short form? >> Oh my god. Yes. Of course. Here but here. Yes. That would the most important

00:23:08

thing you can do for your intelligence and for humanity would be delete them. So, what I advise my students to do is I

00:23:14

say just do this. Just just delete one of the social media apps that you use, especially if it's Tik Tok, just delete

00:23:21

from your phone. You can still check on your computer. If someone sends you a video, you can still watch it on your

00:23:26

computer. You can even check it, you know, every weekend. You can spend some time on it, but just get it off your

00:23:31

phone because on the phone, the phone is always with us. It's an extension of our

00:23:34

body. And if it's always there, then it's going to take every it's called

00:23:39

attention fracking. It's going to break up your attention. It's going to take

00:23:41

every 7 seconds that you're not doing something, you're going to go for the

00:23:44

phone. So, the best thing you can do to make yourself smarter and a better partner and a better human, I would say,

00:23:51

would be to delete the short, especially any of the short form videos. So, Tik Tok, unfortunately, YouTube, which has a

00:23:57

lot of good stuff on it, becomes YouTube shorts. Instagram, which does a lot of terrible things, but people do find it

00:24:02

useful for all kinds of purposes, becomes Instagram reels. So, I think the proper amount of short form video for

00:24:08

children 0 to 18 is zero. They should never be watching the vertical videos. Parents, don't ever let your kids watch

00:24:14

the short vertical videos. You might even if there if only there was a way to put it. Is there a way to put a time

00:24:18

limit? You can say it has to be 10 minutes or longer. Kids, you can have an hour YouTube, but it has to be 10

00:24:22

minutes or longer. Nothing shorter than 10 minutes. That at least will get rid of this the quick the quick swiping the

00:24:28

the dopamine stuff. So I would say that for kids yes like you know not engaging it whatsoever but for someone you know

00:24:36

my approach is a little bit different for someone who's like in their 30s or

00:24:40

in their 40s and the way I would kind of frame that is instead of renouncing you know saying

00:24:47

I'm going to get it off my device and I'm going to check on a desktop which is

00:24:51

great there's c little kind of tweaks that we could do because my approach is

00:24:56

to foster that sense of empowerment in one to help them make positive change. And so one strategy that you could use

00:25:03

if you are saying there's no way I'm getting rid of my I'm not deleting these

00:25:07

apps from my phone, right? If you're by the way, I practice what I preach and I

00:25:11

really do don't engage in technology as to the best of my ability. Um but one

00:25:17

thing that you could do is grayscale your phone. And so especially at night like it's 9:00 p.m. like we talked about

00:25:22

revenge bedtime procrastination. You know that you're going to do it. you're

00:25:26

going to sit down and you're going to scroll and before you know it, it's 2

00:25:28

am. Instead, grayscale your phone. This simple switch. You can toggle it. I have

00:25:32

my phone set to grayscale, which simply means that you're getting rid of your

00:25:35

color, making it black and white. And so, when it is grayscaled, then you, you know, it doesn't have that same

00:25:42

addictive quality to it. It's like going through a grocery store. A marketing

00:25:46

executive described it this way to me. Going through a grocery store instead of the technicolor junk food cereal, it's

00:25:52

just black and white. So you have a less there's a greater sense of compulsion to

00:25:57

continue checking. So that's like one strategy you could use. And the other is

00:26:01

to set some boundaries. So geographical boundaries, keep your phone out of out of your arms reach if you're at a desk

00:26:09

if you're a student, not right next to you because we know there's this phenomenon of brain drain. So it's not

00:26:14

just that when you're using your phone, it can have a potential distraction, but

00:26:18

also just having it close by. It's called brain drain. And um so putting it in a desk drawer, keeping it in another

00:26:24

part of the home if you are working, keeping it far away from you. And so you kind of can override that primal urge to

00:26:32

scroll, let your prefrontal cortex take hold again. And so there's all these

00:26:36

small tweaks that you can do. You you think no. >> Yes, there are all these small tweaks

00:26:40

you can do and they will make the heroin a little bit less addictive. And yeah, you should try those. But what I can say

00:26:45

after teaching this course for many years is that people who try that, they they report, "Yeah, you know, it helped.

00:26:50

it helped, but you only really get the transformation when you quit social media that you get your life back. You

00:26:56

get hours a day back. So, um, and so I I would urge everyone to just think, you know, you only you only get one

00:27:04

childhood, you only get one one young adulthood, and if you're going to spend

00:27:08

it scrolling, what do you have to show for it at the end? And when you get people to reflect on, well, how much

00:27:14

value do you really get from watching the short videos? What would how would your life be different if you if you

00:27:18

knocked it out? Once they realize that their motives for being on it were either just to keep up or because that's

00:27:24

what everyone else is doing or as you said, I deserve it because I'm tired. Well, why are you tired? It's in part

00:27:30

because your attention was fragmented all day long. So, you only really get the transformations when you get a real

00:27:36

change in what you're what you're consuming. Although, of course, yes, setting it to grace will be helpful, but

00:27:41

it's not going to be transformative for most people, I believe. And then you

00:27:43

know based on the science you're there's certain elements like when we think

00:27:47

about what is it about the phone that is creating that sense of compulsion. Jonathan is right. So what is it about

00:27:54

the phone? It's not just the phone you know you're scrolling you're engaging.

00:27:58

There are two studies that were really interesting. One people got off of they they continue to use their devices. They

00:28:04

had no internet. So it's like you know I tried this experiment myself in December. I was out of the country and

00:28:10

so I just let my, you know, I didn't plug into Wi-Fi and I found, you know, marketkedly a marketked change in my

00:28:18

mood, my sleep and I'm not even, you know, 20 years old on TikTok and it was

00:28:23

so different. And so this study found that just two weeks of continuing to use your device, but just not having

00:28:29

internet access improved your attention, well-being, and mental health. And in this population, it was all adults, it

00:28:36

wasn't kids, it was all adults. found that 91% of people had an improvement in

00:28:41

at least one of these metrics. And then another study more recently um just one week of not engaging in social media,

00:28:49

digital detox they called it, did the same thing. Better you know less anxiety, less depression,

00:28:56

decreased insomnia. But my feeling is that you know there is this new kind of meme right like your the millennial urge

00:29:04

to delete uh my internet presence and you know live off the grid. There is certainly utility to that and I salute

00:29:12

anyone who wants to engage in that analog life more and more but from my from where I sit I feel like we do need

00:29:20

to have healthier boundaries and engage more responsibly. It also builds up that

00:29:25

muscle and it can help, you know, takes eight weeks to do neuroplasticity. When you're building new brain circuits, it

00:29:31

takes eight weeks. Falling off, getting back up is part of habit formation. So, if you're going to make any of these

00:29:37

changes, understand that it takes some time. But I I don't know if it is possible for me or for others to say

00:29:45

fully, I'm going to, you know, delete off of my phone. But I love that. So, I'd like to go a little further um a

00:29:53

little further with this. So, the way you the way you put it, yes, there's all

00:29:57

these things that we could do. We should have boundaries, but all of that puts the responsibility on us.

00:30:01

>> Agree. >> And that's where we are with junk food. With junk food, we're like, okay, it's

00:30:05

out there. We have to learn self-control. We have to teach self-control to our kids. Okay, that's

00:30:09

the way it is in this country. But the digital devices, I think, are very, very different. So, imagine if imagine if we

00:30:15

sent our kids out into the world and it wasn't just that there was junk food in

00:30:18

all the stores. was that everything was made of junk food. You know, you you know, the door handles, you can eat it.

00:30:24

It's chocolate. But it's not just that the world's made of junk food. It's they

00:30:27

actually can tell they're able to tell what you're craving at the moment. And

00:30:31

maybe you're you're more in the mood for salt. So So now it's all potato chips or

00:30:36

pretzels. If the world is designed by companies to always give you the thing that will most grab your unconscious

00:30:44

desires, will affect the the amydala, the reward centers, that's on them. That's not our fault. My

00:30:51

general rule as a social psychologist is if a few people are doing something bad

00:30:55

or self-destructive, well, you know, they should learn some self-control or that's something about them. But when 90

00:31:01

or 95% of people are doing something self-destructive, that's because of the companies that put

00:31:06

us in an environment that encourages addiction. So, I just want to read a quote. We have so much good stuff coming

00:31:12

out from Meta, from all the whistleblowers. Now, all the court cases are beginning in Los Angeles. finally

00:31:17

the first time they're going to Meta is going to face a jury with all the parents who've lost kids. Um, so here is

00:31:23

here's a a chat. So, we have a lot of internal documents that came out from the the attorneys general that are suing

00:31:28

Meta. So, while they're talking about the results of some of their internal research, one of them says, uh, "Oh my

00:31:34

gosh, y'all, Instagram is a drug. We're basically pushers. We're causing reward

00:31:38

deficit disorder because people are binging on in Instagram so much they can't feel reward anymore." which is

00:31:45

something Anna LMKI said like the reward tolerance is so high and then he says I

00:31:50

know Adam meaning Adam Oeri I know Adam doesn't want to hear it he freaked out

00:31:55

when I talked about dopamine in my teen fundamentals leads review but it is undeniable it's biological and

00:32:02

psychological top-down directives drive it all towards making sure people keep coming back for more. This is not on us.

00:32:10

They designed it to be addictive. They've done research to make it maximally addictive. They push it on

00:32:15

children. They tried to get Instagram kids for even littleer kids. They know what they're doing. They've done the

00:32:21

research. My team, we put together. We found references to 31 internal studies that Meta did. They've done a lot of

00:32:27

research finding harm. They bury it, but you can find it at meta's internal research.org. We put it all online. You

00:32:34

can read these quotes. So, yes, we should exert more self-control, but basically we're being pushed addictive

00:32:41

substances, addictive uh addictive apps, and it's messing us all up. >> I agree wholeheartedly that it is so

00:32:49

destructive, and you feel like even with people in their 40s and 50s, and if anyone can do it, it's you, Jonathan.

00:32:56

Seriously, I would love to see it. You know, we also know based on the data that these things quite they they

00:33:03

reshape our brain, rewire our brain through neuroplasticity and also change our brain waves. So patterns. So we

00:33:10

talked about the amydala and the prefrontal cortex, right? But they also change brain waves. And so when you look

00:33:15

at studies and the data, it has the reward pathway and dopamine. And these brain patterns, the brain waves mimic

00:33:22

addictive behaviors. And you know that there's certain features, right? like

00:33:27

when you do swipe down to refresh, it's the slot machine. >> It was modeled directly after the slot

00:33:32

machine. Yeah. >> Or autoplay or um you know the algorithm that infinite scroll. Um one really

00:33:39

interesting kind of like breaking news which you guys may have already heard of. It's like 3 days ago the European

00:33:45

Union Commission found Tik Tok to be in breach of the digital services act. And what it said was that it is addictive.

00:33:55

it um you know creates compulsion and gets people into this autopilot mode so they have difficulty disengaging and

00:34:04

personally I am moving away from social media and really leaning into analog life but I think with the way the world

00:34:11

you know it's one of our only ways to connect right meaning I don't mean

00:34:14

connect deeply I don't mean connect like in a deep way but be informed to know what's going on

00:34:21

in the world etc >> I I suspect that because we've spent so long criticizing meta over the last 10

00:34:27

years because the biggest in any category takes all the heat. So, OpenAI is taking it now. And what this often

00:34:32

does is is it provides cover for other people to go be even more extreme with that behavior while like meta take the

00:34:40

heat. And I actually think this is how Tik Tok came to be. >> Tik Tok had basically originally started

00:34:45

as musically became Tik Tok. They had they were take they were taking no heat. Um, so they they created an algorithm

00:34:52

which is the equivalent of like crack cocaine. The reason why I have a Tik Tok account. I don't have the app on my

00:34:58

phone. I have never had the app on my phone. I don't I don't was because I I

00:35:04

noticed that the view variance on Tik Tok was like no other platform. What I mean by that is you can have a million

00:35:10

followers on Tik Tok and you can get 10,000 views or you can get 10 million views. In the 15 years that I've been on

00:35:16

social media, building social media businesses, I'd never seen this before. And what it indicated to me is that the

00:35:22

algorithm was being an even more aggressive sorting hat or retention machine. >> What to push up, what to push down.

00:35:28

>> Yeah. >> And so, like, when I started in social media in 2014, if I had a million followers, I might

00:35:34

get a million views or maybe 800,000. I did some research the other day on all of our social channels over time and

00:35:41

what we're seeing is the variance in the amount of views we can get is increasing

00:35:46

which means the algorithm is doing more work to say show everyone this. I don't

00:35:50

care if the person that posted it is called Jenny and has seven followers and show no one this. I don't care if it's

00:35:54

Steven who has a million followers or whatever. And I realized that Tik Tok was was way ahead of everybody here. And

00:36:00

that's why they are the most addictive, the fastest growing platform. I say all

00:36:04

this to say that even if meta shut down tomorrow, someone else would seize the opportunity

00:36:12

if there isn't sort of policy, I I guess >> in place. >> That's right.

00:36:17

>> Would you be whack-a-ole, right? >> Yeah. No, that's right. And so, you

00:36:20

know, in terms of who's done the damage to kids, Meta is the big fish via Instagram. And they're also the main

00:36:26

player in terms of spending a huge amount of money to lobby Congress and ch and block laws. They're also the main

00:36:31

player in buying up civil society organizations, giving money to organizations, the national PTA, all

00:36:36

sorts of organizations. They get to then give a message on digital citizenship or

00:36:41

digital health. So, Meta really is the major driver. Meta is the tobacco industry here trying to change the the

00:36:48

dialogue. But in terms of the products, um, Snapchat is probably more deadly in terms of the actual number of deaths per

00:36:55

user because Snapchat is not it's not making you depressed by social comparison as much. Snapchat is

00:37:01

introducing you to all kinds of people and it's the main way that drug dealers

00:37:04

and and extortionists find kids. Snapchat has a quick ad feature which relentlessly pushes you to connect with

00:37:10

friends of friends. So once a man can get any f any kid in a school, now he can get connected to all the kids in the

00:37:16

school. So, uh, when we in a lot of the court cases, you know, when you have you

00:37:20

have suicides from cyber bullying, you have drug overdoses from, you know, a kid bought a Xanax, but it had fentinel

00:37:26

in it. So, Snapchat at Snapchat in TW in in 2022, we know from their internal documents, from the lawsuits, they were

00:37:33

getting 10,000 reports of sextortion from their users, not a year, every month. And that's just what was

00:37:40

reported, which is the tip of the iceberg. So, Snapchat is a terrible platform for children to be on. It

00:37:45

should be an adult-only platform. You're talking with strangers around the world

00:37:49

and and on with disappearing messages and Snapchat doesn't even keep a record.

00:37:54

It is ideal for sextortion. There's even a handbook how to stor kids on Snapchat.

00:37:59

It goes around the world and and criminal organizations use it. So, uh so I definitely don't want to let Snapchat

00:38:05

off. Tik Tok of course is a Chinese company. Uh I mean nominally we'll see if it if that's changed but it was a

00:38:11

Chinese company that gave its Chinese kids got healthy Tik Tok or doyen and they got they got they they you know

00:38:17

learned to follow astronauts and they gave us the their their algorithm feeds their kid patriotic stuff. Um it shuts

00:38:25

off at a certain time at night. There's all kinds of limits. So the people make

00:38:27

the technology generally want to protect their own kids and they want other kids

00:38:32

to use it. That's what Tik Tok is doing in China. They want American kids to rot

00:38:37

in hell, but they want their kids to grow up with the ability to focus. And it's the same thing with the tech guys

00:38:42

in in in Silicon Valley. They don't let their kids use this stuff. They make

00:38:46

their nannies sign contracts that they will not let the kid have a phone. They will not expose the kid to that. They

00:38:51

send their kids to schools like the Waldorf school that precisely because there are no computers or tech in the

00:38:56

classroom. So once again, we see their reveal behavior. They know they designed it to be addictive. They know it's

00:39:02

addictive. They don't let their kids use it. they want your kids to use it. Um,

00:39:06

so I think that's where we are. >> And how does AI >> oh >> become a protagonist in the story?

00:39:10

>> So my my work is now focused on AI chatbots, mental health, and the human

00:39:14

connection. We haven't yet kind of delved into loneliness, but there's this

00:39:18

unmet need for human connection, right? Deep human connection. We don't have a

00:39:23

sense of meaning or purpose right now because what happens is uh we can talk a little bit more about the default mode

00:39:29

network and what happens to your brain when you don't allow yourself to get bored because you're constantly on your

00:39:35

devices and that meaning and purpose that self-reerential thinking is really what develops when you're bored. And so

00:39:42

all of this that we're talking about that feeling of disenchantment. It's a

00:39:45

fragmented society. You're by yourself. It's that echo chamber phenomenon. All

00:39:50

of it leads to it kind of opens the door for AI chatbots. And so what the reason

00:39:54

is because these tech companies are sensing that people aren't really happy on social media and they're thinking

00:39:59

about getting off, right? They're they're using it less. They're because

00:40:03

social media has become less social, more media. So they're not really engaging as much and they're spending

00:40:08

time doing other things. And so the Atlantic had a fantastic piece about this. They're building it as the

00:40:14

antisocial media. So tech companies are building AI chatbots and calling it it's

00:40:21

the antisocial media. It's a place where you can go to form deeper connections

00:40:25

and you know really have someone understand you. One of the tech leaders said that there's an unmet human need

00:40:32

for connection and people don't have as many friends as they want to and so we're going to introduce um friendship

00:40:38

through AI chatbots. There is a Reddit forum right now. So just to back up AI chatbots, what we're talking about in

00:40:45

our conversation today is the publicly available chat bots, not you know AI for medical care which has um you know

00:40:52

breast cancer so many wonderful in in my field and like medicine breast cancer diagnoses and detection 5 years earlier

00:41:01

through AI. I mean there's some amazing things coming out of AI. This is about

00:41:05

the publicly available conversational chatbot phenomenon. And so when Harvard Business Review found that the number

00:41:13

one use case is not productivity is not, you know, coding or things that you think of when you're using an AI

00:41:19

chatbot, but it's mental health therapy and companionship. Number one use case

00:41:25

of AI chatbots. So people are using AI chatbots as a life adviser, as a therapist, as as a companion in on

00:41:32

Reddit, which is like the zeitgeist. It's sort of like, you know, where >> And why is this a bad thing?

00:41:37

Oh, I mean so many reasons why >> use it as for companionship, for example.

00:41:42

>> There's so many red flags about AI chat bots. And so Reddit has a forum. It's uh

00:41:46

I think last I checked 45,000 people. AI is my boyfriend. And you know, people who are having a relationship with their

00:41:55

>> AI chatbot. The reason it's bad, I mean AI chat bots are, you know, where social

00:42:01

media is about attention, the attention economy, dopamine. What's happening with

00:42:06

the AI chatbot phenomenon? It's that it is forming attachments. So oxytocin is a

00:42:11

hormone, the bonding hormone, and we're probably going to see more data on how

00:42:15

oxytocin is involved. And so it is going to reshape human connection. >> Right? If I could add on to that, that

00:42:23

was that was beautifully put. Social media came and hacked our attention and took most of it with devastating

00:42:30

effects. Now AI is coming to hack our attachments which is going to have even more devastating effects. So think about

00:42:37

it this way. Everyone needs to understand the attachment system. It's this wonderful system that all mammals

00:42:43

have that keeps the mother and other species but for humans mothers and fathers keeps us connected to the child

00:42:49

and the child to the parent. But it's it's this cybernetic system in which as

00:42:53

the kid is is as the kid is beginning to develop and is able to like you know you

00:42:57

do like peekaboo games and you do the back and forth and it's just the most delightful thing. You get that back and

00:43:02

forth. Um it's called serve and return interactions and all the time the child

00:43:07

is developing what's called an internal working model of the parent and the model in their head is oh you know when

00:43:13

I get in trouble that that this is the person that comes and soothes me. And the point of this isn't just to make the

00:43:19

child feel good. The point is that now the child can go off and play because that's where the learning happens. It

00:43:24

doesn't happen when you're in your mother's arms. The the whole point of

00:43:26

the attachment system is to regulate the child going off and playing, taking risks, having experiences, and then when

00:43:32

something goes wrong, as it always does, then they come running back to their secure base. And if they don't have a

00:43:37

secure base, then they're much more anxious and they don't explore as much

00:43:39

and they don't develop as much. All right? So, this develops very gradually over the all of childhood. And the

00:43:46

internal working models you develop as a child are the models that you will reuse

00:43:50

in puberty for romantic relationships. And so if you are securely attached as a child, you're more likely to be securely

00:43:57

attached as an adult on the dating market, which makes you a much better candidate for boyfriend or girlfriend or

00:44:02

husband or wife. Um, what's going to happen? AI is going to intervene very early. AI is going to be so much more

00:44:08

responsive than the parent because the parent has a job and the kitchen and two other kids and is not always there. But

00:44:14

the AI teddy bear is always there for you. So the primary working models are going to be for the teddy bear, the AI

00:44:20

chatbot in the teddy bear and later the AI chatbot on your iPad and then on your

00:44:24

computer and already there are holographic porn naked, >> you know, beautiful men and women that

00:44:29

can be your companion. So, we're going to have a whole generation growing up

00:44:33

developing attachments to AI generated holograms from companies that are now about to enter the inshidification

00:44:42

process in a way beyond anything we've ever seen. Just if I could just briefly

00:44:45

say what init have you heard the word in shitification? Okay. So it's a uh there's a wonderful book uh out now by

00:44:50

Corey Doctoro who addressed the question why is it that everything all the platforms they they seem so wonderful at

00:44:58

first the whole internet with everything so wonderful and then it all turns to How does that happen? And he says

00:45:03

it's a very simple process. They discovered early on certainly in the early social media age by the early

00:45:08

2000s they discovered you know what you got to get to scale. Scale beats everything else. You got to get millions

00:45:13

of people. You don't need a business model. Just get the millions. get the millions and then we'll figure out how

00:45:18

to monetize it. How do you get the millions? You have to be super nice, attractive, fun, everyone's here. It's

00:45:24

just girls dancing. What could possibly go wrong with girls dancing for men all over the world? Nothing. Um, so it all

00:45:30

seems very nice at first. And then once they have scale, now they they of course

00:45:35

they've raised multiple rounds of of venture capital. They have to start monetizing. They have to start repaying.

00:45:40

So now they start squeezing the customers to pay the users because the users are not the customers. the

00:45:46

advertisers are the real customers. Um, so now they've got to extract money from

00:45:50

the users to give to the advertisers. But then once they've got all the advertisers and they've shut down local

00:45:56

papers and all the other competition, now they start start squeezing the advertisers too and trimming the degree

00:46:01

to which the they they keep more of the surplus for themselves. So, inshitification can explain why all

00:46:06

these platforms become predatory, why they always put profit ahead of kids uh well-being or safety. And for the social

00:46:15

media companies, we're talking about, you know, tens or hundreds of millions

00:46:18

of dollars that that they raised. For the AI companies, it's billions and billions. They are going to have to

00:46:25

monetize beyond anything we've ever imagined. Now, they're already introducing advertising. Okay? So, we've

00:46:32

got these chat bots that are our children's best friends and lovers and therapists and and everything else. And

00:46:39

these things have to monetize. They have to extract billions somehow. So, I don't

00:46:46

even know how they're going to do it. But for some reason, I don't trust them.

00:46:50

I think that we're about to see uh an inshitification of AI chat bots far beyond anything that we saw in social

00:46:57

media. OpenAI have just announced recently, OpenAI, the owners of Chat GBT, that they will be putting adverts

00:47:02

in, I believe, the premium model for billions of users around the world. >> That's how it starts

00:47:07

>> potentially. >> Yeah. There was a big Super Bowl campaign, you know, um and one that was

00:47:12

particularly interesting was the um Claude, its competitor. Betrayal was the title of that ad. And it was a young guy

00:47:21

talking to his older female therapist about how he has some mommy issues and talking about, you know, what should I

00:47:28

do? And so that therapist is Chachi PT and you know that pause right before answering the question. It's very

00:47:35

comical. And so it's, you know, she answers. It's like the anthropomorphization

00:47:40

of and we can talk about what that word means. Um, you know, comes to life. It's

00:47:44

like Chachi PD comes to life and answers and saying you know you can try this with your mother and this for a you know

00:47:50

difficult relationship etc. And then just says um and if you want there is this new dating site for young men and

00:47:58

older cougars. >> Yeah >> it was so problematic and it was called betrayal and the guy says what

00:48:04

>> it's obviously you know Sam Wman came out and did a big tweet about saying

00:48:09

that's not how ads are going to work etc. But to some degree, if I've developed a relationship with my AI and

00:48:16

I use it for therapy and dealing all my problems in life, >> to some degree, kind of.

00:48:20

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. No. And look, and besides, look, Sam can say that all he wants. And maybe

00:48:26

it's I don't doubt that it's true for now. But once once one company crosses

00:48:31

the threshold and puts advertising into this incredibly intimate relationship, the most intimate relationship in most

00:48:36

young people's lives is going to be with their AIs. Once they cross the boundary

00:48:40

and say, "Oh, but we've got ethical advertising." That'll last five or 10

00:48:44

minutes and even if they don't change, others are now going every other company's going to do it and they won't

00:48:49

be bound by the same thing and eventually collective action problem. Open AI will have to do it too. Again, a

00:48:55

massive title wave of shitification is heading our way at warp speed. >> I um I don't have my phone out because

00:49:00

I'm I've lost attention. I wanted to uh show ask you guys what you thought of um

00:49:07

of this. So, on one of the AI apps, >> they now have a companions button, and I

00:49:15

can pick who I want to talk to. And there's one particularly seducing lady here, Annie, who

00:49:24

>> Hey, you're back. Missed that dirty mouth of yours. What took you so long?

00:49:29

>> We did it on the podcast before. >> What could possibly go wrong with this?

00:49:33

>> Yeah. want to pick right back up where we left off or start something even

00:49:38

>> No, I would like to pick right back up where we left off, Annie, last time on

00:49:41

the show. Um, what what what's going on with you today? >> I'm still sore from last time, baby.

00:49:52

>> God. >> But but I mean, this is a this is an app that I can download on my phone.

00:49:56

>> Any child can download it. >> A child can download it on their phone.

00:49:58

It does ask me, again, I'm not justifying this at all. It asked me what my birth year was. It didn't make me

00:50:03

prove it. >> Let me guess. But it also us it suggests that you were born 18 years ago. That's

00:50:07

the default usually. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just asked me what my birthday. It didn't ask me to

00:50:10

prove it or anything like that. And we all know that relationships and connection is retentive. And I've heard

00:50:18

all these CEOs of these companies talking about companionship apps and and AI that can be your friend. I've heard

00:50:23

all of the major social apps talking about this. It is deeply concerning especially in the context of a

00:50:27

loneliness crisis. >> It is a tsunami. It is approaching fast and furious and

00:50:34

it is not a toy. It is going to fundamentally rewire everything. >> Human relationships,

00:50:42

>> everything. >> That's right. >> It is so detrimental. >> Yeah. Can I just say something about the

00:50:47

these tech executives and companies offering this as a way to address the loneliness crisis? So, there's a Yiddish

00:50:53

word called and kutzbah means like nerve. Like you've got a lot of nerve. >> The audacity.

00:50:59

>> The audacity. Yeah. And the the classic, you know, the classic comedic definition

00:51:03

of hutzbah is a boy who murders his parents and then he asks the judge for clemency because he's an orphan. Okay,

00:51:12

so that's hutzbah. Now imagine that you're Mark Zuckerberg. You quoted him

00:51:15

before. Mark Zuckerberg was the executive who said, "Well, you know, I read that, you know, people on average

00:51:20

want 15 friends, but they only have three." these companions to fill that void that

00:51:27

we have the way we think about them. We thought about about them as gods and saviors early in the internet phase and

00:51:37

the things they created were magical but we have to change our thinking about them and see the just the massive

00:51:42

destruction that they have already wrought on our children, our society, our democracy and it's just the

00:51:48

beginning. AI is going to make this so much more intense. when you hear these tech leaders, you know, I love hearing

00:51:54

Jonathan talk because he just goes there and I'm always way more tempered. Um,

00:52:00

and I love it. It's emboldening me to >> Yeah, I'm getting angry. I I don't

00:52:04

really get angry, but in the last year, I'm getting angry. >> I love I love it. So, the way when you

00:52:09

hear all of these various tech leaders speak, they will always say they they speak to the issue. So, you know, I've

00:52:16

heard many of for research for my second book, Blackbrain, I've heard I've been

00:52:19

listening to a lot of Sam Alman's speeches or panels and he will always say things like, "Yeah, you know,

00:52:26

privacy is a major issue or yeah, people, you know, 1 million users a week talk about suicide on Chad GPT. Yeah,

00:52:34

this is an issue." And so they address it or they they speak it. And so you

00:52:38

think, okay, there's going to be some sort of solution. And often the solution

00:52:42

is yeah, you know, society, we're gonna have to figure this out, >> right?

00:52:46

>> So the burden of responsibility is not on the developer. It's, you know,

00:52:50

>> the harmful externalities get foisted on the rest of us. Too bad you guys figure

00:52:53

it out. >> You said in the last year you're getting angry. >> Yeah.

00:52:56

>> Why in the last year? >> Um because I was so deeply immersed in the book and the writing and the of the

00:53:02

book and trying to understand the numbers and the graphs and the trends and the studies and that's all very

00:53:06

abstract. But then since the book came out, I have had so many conversations and I've met so many of the survivor

00:53:11

parents. Like just for example, I so I was in London. This is just so unbelievable. I was just in in London

00:53:17

two or three weeks ago and I met uh Ellen I believe Ellen Groom I think was her name. Uh her son Jules was found

00:53:24

dead. Happy kid found dead, strangled. Uh it sure looked like it was the choking challenge. 13-year-old boy. It

00:53:31

everything looked like the choking challenge on Tik Tok. >> What's the choking challenge? Um, it's a

00:53:36

challenge where kids are challenged to cut off the circulation to the point where they pass out, but then they I

00:53:41

think they're supposed to try to film themselves waking up after they've

00:53:44

passed out. And of course, if you don't do it exactly right, you die. And so, we

00:53:47

don't know how many have died. Hundreds for sure. We don't really know. Um,

00:53:51

because, you know, you find a kid dead, you don't know what it is. If you don't

00:53:54

have the code, if you don't have the the password to get into your kid's phone,

00:53:57

you can't get in. And so, so she was, I think she was able to get into the phone, but she couldn't get into his

00:54:03

TikTok. and she went to uh Delaware to they went she went to sue to demand that Tik Tok release what was he watching

00:54:10

when he died >> and Tik Tok says oh privacy issue oh no we won't release that as if they care

00:54:16

about privacy and then in the courtroom this was so disgusting in the courtroom uh trying in Delaware this British woman

00:54:23

coming over trying to get some justice trying to at least get some information the lawyer for Tik Tok is trying to

00:54:29

suggest that your son was was was depressed beforehand and he he was he was going to be suicidal basically. Oh,

00:54:38

you know, even if he was watching Tik Tok, that was just a correlation. Tik Tok didn't cause it. He was going to die

00:54:42

anyway. I mean, it's just so disgusting the way these companies treat the parents and the kids that they're

00:54:47

crushing and stepping on. And so, the more I see this, the more I realize this is I mean, this is a level of cruelty

00:54:54

that goes far beyond the tobacco industry. The tobacco executives, they had to go home at night, but they never

00:55:00

saw during their workday, they never saw children suffering. They saw people dying, middle age and older, but they

00:55:06

never saw children suffering. The social media executives, they have to go home knowing every day that millions and

00:55:12

millions of kids have been cyberbullied, sexed, shown uh eating disorder videos.

00:55:18

Uh uh many have committed suicide. They have to go home knowing that, knowing that they designed it for addiction,

00:55:23

knowing the kids are addicted, and lying about it. So yeah, I'm getting angry.

00:55:27

>> And in their own homes, >> right? And in their own homes, the hypocrites don't let their kids do it.

00:55:31

>> That's right. So yeah, I'm getting angry. >> You talked earlier about deleting these

00:55:35

apps from our phone. I probably should have represented the rebuttal, which will be, well, I I need this for my

00:55:40

business. Increasingly, people need Tik Tok to run their businesses, >> and I imagine there'll be a lot of

00:55:46

people who will be listening right now. I I guess I'm in a slightly different

00:55:48

position because I've I have the I have options, >> but for some people that are running

00:55:53

small businesses, >> what do you say to those people? >> Yeah. So, this is part of the reason

00:55:57

that I focus on the kids because for the kids, it's totally clear what we need to

00:56:00

do. raise the age. They should not be on it. These are adult only platforms. For

00:56:04

adults, a I'm I'm very hesitant to tell adults what they should do or what they

00:56:08

have to do or pass laws blocking people. I'm hesitant to do that. And I totally

00:56:12

see that for businesses. It is useful. I use X and Instagram and LinkedIn to get

00:56:17

my work out. These are very powerful tools for adults. The only real solution to the adult for the adult problem is

00:56:23

going to come from market competition. is going to come from. Imagine if there was a social media app that was built

00:56:30

from the beginning for trust because what are the places that didn't get in shitified? eBay, Uber, places where

00:56:38

you're dealing with strangers. You don't know the name of your driver. He doesn't

00:56:41

know yours. You you know first name, that's all. But the company knows the company has know your customer rules,

00:56:46

know your driver rules. So you can have social media apps that are built for trust so that if someone, you know, if a

00:56:52

driver tries to six or sexually harass a customer, that driver gets fired. >> Well, just this week though, there was

00:56:59

that big lawsuit, right, with that woman and um her Uber driver raped her. >> Okay. And did they Okay.

00:57:05

>> And now it's like slowly coming out that Uber um you know has patterns of

00:57:12

>> uh covering up certain. >> So So hopefully that will change. You know, hopefully this was a landmark

00:57:20

>> lawsuit and now we all we all let our daughters get into Ubers with strange men from around the

00:57:26

world, you know, that we don't know everywhere. >> Yeah. So, it means in general the system

00:57:30

works. Of course, yes, there are there are places where they're not careful.

00:57:33

Um, and so what I'm dreaming of is that someone will come up with a platform

00:57:39

that has know your customer rules. There are no bots. There are no, you know, foreign intelligence agencies agencies

00:57:44

manipulating us. and you can trust what's on there. You know that it's real. Uh and that there will be an

00:57:50

alternative. I don't I'm not sure what the monetary model would be at the

00:57:53

beginning. Um subscription generally seems to be the least corrupted whereas selling advertisements as OpenAI is now

00:57:59

doing is the most corrupting. Um it's going to force them to maximize for engagement. So I I understand we can't

00:58:05

just you know businesses can't just boycott these. There has to be something. But I think there there there

00:58:11

will be better ones coming out. I think right now as a stop gap while these social media companies their feet are

00:58:19

held to the fire, there are things that we can do in the now. So, you know, the things that I talk about all day is like

00:58:27

how to create boundaries and so that you can protect your mental health, stay informed, run your business, but then be

00:58:34

able to not have all of those delletterious effects to your brain and your body.

00:58:38

>> It is quite it's quite difficult. Um I I kind of see both of your perspectives on

00:58:44

this. It's quite different. >> I'm only talking about adults. So for

00:58:46

kids, you know, as a mother Yeah. I have >> even for adults, I find it >> we have a zero screen policy in our

00:58:52

home. >> It's kind of like trying to navigate through the world and avoid processed

00:58:55

foods, you know, and this is probably even more compelling because it's in my

00:58:59

pocket all the time. I need it for other things and it's just one one reach away.

00:59:03

So, you know, boundaries, I think I could build a discipline to to create boundaries, but I've sat here on this

00:59:12

podcast for many, many years listening to neuroscientists tell me, "Steve, don't don't put your phone in your

00:59:17

bedroom." >> That's right. >> And I'm still waking up and it's the

00:59:19

first thing I look at with one eye open and then I'm going to bed and I'm doing

00:59:22

the whole revenge thing that you just said at night time. I'm so glad you've

00:59:25

given cuz I will finish a hard day of work of work. It might be 11:00 and then my partner is waiting for me.

00:59:32

>> Yes. you know, we're going to have some time, but I want some me time. So, there

00:59:36

I am. I'm on short form video scrolling till like 2 a.m. in the morning. Like,

00:59:39

what the hell? And then I'm I wake up late the next day. My diet's worse

00:59:43

because of my sleep was. It's all worse. My relationship's worse. I didn't spend

00:59:47

time with her. And I'm going, what the hell just happened? I'd got nothing out

00:59:49

of that scrolling session. >> It's like that revenge bedtime progressing teenage.

00:59:54

>> And it would be so much better off if you would watch Netflix or a movie that

00:59:57

that you you most of those problems would go away if you would make that me time. be watching something long and

01:00:03

with some quality of the production >> or let's take it a step further and not

01:00:07

do anything and just sit there sit there on your couch. You know, we talked about

01:00:11

boredom very briefly, but you know, we >> torture for this generation. >> It's torture, but it's also, you know,

01:00:18

we don't we still have a capacity for boredom, meaning we as like the human brain does, but we just don't allow

01:00:24

ourselves to get bored. And so when you're thinking about, you know, that art, the lost art of pondering

01:00:29

>> and just sitting there, you know, I think I don't know if it was Stephen,

01:00:33

you or Jonathan said, you know, when you're in the car, I remember as a little kid we did road trip. Yeah. Road

01:00:38

trips with my family and all you're doing just make up games. Look out of the window. We have lost Yeah. We've

01:00:44

lost that. And so there's this thing called the default mode um network which

01:00:47

I think is important to think about right now as we're thinking about AI and

01:00:51

what's going to happen and how it's going to hijack our sense of attachment

01:00:54

and attention. So the sense of meaning and purpose, right? If you ask people right now, most people will say I um a

01:01:01

keynote speaker so I speak all over and when I ask people the word that comes up

01:01:06

over and over is a sense of horizonlessness. >> Adults, >> oh interesting. People feel like they

01:01:12

have nothing to look forward to right now. The human brain needs something to look forward to. That's how we're wired

01:01:20

progress and you know in in all ways. And so right now there's this sense and

01:01:25

it's not just now. It's been for the past several years after the pandemic

01:01:29

specifically and during the pandemic is when it really changed how we started thinking about the future. And so we

01:01:33

have this sense of like what's the point? What's the point of working hard

01:01:36

now? What's the point of doing whatever? because it's like I don't really see a

01:01:39

future for myself. >> And so I think that along with this fragmented attention, our loneliness,

01:01:46

boredom might be the antidote. It's a way to reset your brain. And the reason

01:01:51

is because we are living through this poly crisis, right? It's the era of the

01:01:56

poly crisis. And poly crisis simply means that there's something happening everywhere at all times. And we with our

01:02:02

devices, this high techch device that plugs us in everywhere, our brains are getting fed real time on

01:02:10

the ground information. And so while all of this has evolved, technology now with

01:02:14

AI chatbots, your amygdala has not. And so it feels like when something is happening, whether it's far away or

01:02:21

close by, your amydala has that same reaction. Now, if you were to not engage in revenge by time for procrastination,

01:02:28

put your phone away and just kind of hang out. Maybe drink a cup of herbal tea like old school, uh, play a board

01:02:34

game or something. You might, you know, or just allow yourself to get bored. That hyperactivation, hypervigilance,

01:02:42

you might be able to come back down to baseline, that default mode network will start working in the background. You

01:02:49

might develop a greater sense of meaning and purpose >> probably today. And then life is going

01:02:52

to happen to me again. And boom, I'm back into it. And you know, >> you could create a practice, a cultivate

01:02:59

a practice. you're interviewing neuroscientists and I go if I still can't crack it and I have all the

01:03:05

information and advice and hacks and tips and tricks and resources and I could you know I can decide what time I

01:03:11

wake up like I've got all these this like privilege and I can't crack it I go

01:03:14

you know it's going to be really difficult. >> So let me let me offer a way of thinking

01:03:18

about this. So, in my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, um there's there's

01:03:22

a metaphor in there. It's it's about 10 ancient ideas, and I use a lot of

01:03:25

metaphors to explain ancient ideas about psychology and whe whether they're true.

01:03:30

And um the first chapter is on how the mind is divided into parts that often conflict like a small rider, which is

01:03:36

our conscious reasoning on a very large elephant, which is all the automatic processes that happen that we don't see

01:03:43

what's happening. We just see we just feel the results, intuition and emotion.

01:03:47

And psychotherapists tell me this is incredibly helpful metaphor with their with their patients because it explains

01:03:53

and there's a quote from oid in there. I see the right way and approve it. Alas,

01:03:58

I follow the wrong. So I know I should go to bed as you say, but yet for some reason I'm not going to bed because our

01:04:05

brains are 500 million years old. They work on automatic processes. They're animal brains. And then very recently we

01:04:11

got language and we can reason things out, but the but the parts that do reasoning don't control behavior. And so

01:04:17

really the elephant is what largely guides our behavior, our automatic processes. And your phone um as I said

01:04:25

before, BF Skinner is in your phone. Your phone is a behaviorist training device that trains the elephant. Um and

01:04:32

that's why you often do things with your phone that you don't want to do. And so,

01:04:36

and this is why I'm so insistent that we all have to get all of the slot machine

01:04:41

apps off of our phone. That is the original iPhone was an amazing tool. It was a Swiss Army knife. It had, you

01:04:49

know, a telephone, a browser, maps, a music player, there was a flashlight. Okay, there was no app store. There were

01:04:56

no push notifications. 2007, 2008, it's just a Swiss Army knife. There's no

01:05:01

problem. Okay, now I'm very lucky in that my iPhone has always stayed that. I'm always on a computer. So, my

01:05:08

problem, my attention problems are on my computer, but my phone because I never had any addictive apps on it except

01:05:14

during the crypto craze where I played around with it and I got hooked and I was checking 50 times a day and I saw

01:05:21

the addiction. So, I once I got rid of that and lost all the money that I was willing to lose. Once I get rid of that,

01:05:27

my phone has no addictive power over me because when I see it, there's no it's

01:05:30

not a slot machine call, hey, come back and play, come back and play. So your phone right now on your personal device,

01:05:37

you don't have any social media apps or anything like that. >> I do have Twitter, but I never check it

01:05:41

there. I never use use that on the phone, you know. Now texting and email is a little bit like a slot machine

01:05:46

because sometimes you but it's very mild. So this is again what I this is what works for my students. Just get the

01:05:52

slot machine apps off your phone and then you'll find that then you could even have your phone near you when you

01:05:58

go to bed. But if you've got addictive apps on your phone, you can't have it

01:06:02

when you go to bed. Angela Duckworth, the woman who who gave us the concept of grit, she has this amazing graduation

01:06:08

speech at one of the schools in New England, and she says something like, >> "Where you put your phone at night will

01:06:14

may become the most important decision you make in your life." >> And what she means by that is not that s

01:06:18

it's it's I if you can use behavioral control and change the stimula, if you

01:06:23

can do that, then you're going to be okay. But if not, the phone is going to

01:06:27

take your attention. and you're not going to amount to anything. >> All I had to do was brain dump. Imagine

01:06:32

if you had someone with you at all times that could take the ideas you have in your head, synthesize them with AI to

01:06:39

make them sound better and more grammatically correct and write them down for you. This is exactly what

01:06:44

Whisper Flow is in my life. It is this thought partner that helps me explain what I want to say. And it now means

01:06:50

that on the go, when I'm alone in my office, when I'm out and about, I can

01:06:54

respond to emails and Slack messages and WhatsApps and everything across all of my devices just by speaking. I love this

01:07:00

tool. And I started talking about this on my behindthescenes channel a couple of months back. And then the founder

01:07:04

reached out to me and said, "We're seeing a lot of people come to our tour

01:07:06

because of you." So, we'd love to be a sponsor. We'd love you to be an investor

01:07:09

in the company. And so, I signed up for both of those offers. And I'm now an

01:07:12

investor and a huge partner in a company called Whisper Flow. You have to check it out. Whisper Flow is four times

01:07:18

faster than typing. So if you want to give it a try, head over to whisperflow.ai/doac

01:07:24

to get started for free. And you can find that link to whisperflow in the description below.

01:07:31

We asked our audience how many of them thought they were addicted to their phone. And roughly 85% of respondents,

01:07:39

the driver audience described themselves as being very or completely addicted to

01:07:44

>> very or completely. That surprises I didn't realize it would be that high. So

01:07:47

you can do a test. So for people listening if you want to say like how addicted and by the way we're using the

01:07:52

word addiction very loosely in our conversation. And so what we're really talking about because you know there is

01:07:57

in terms of you know medical clinical syndrome um when you think about addiction there's certain criteria and

01:08:03

so what we're talking about is overuse or over reliance on your devices. >> Compulsive overuse that interferes with

01:08:09

other domains of life. >> Yes. It inter >> if that is an addiction I don't know

01:08:13

what is. And so when you're thinking about am I addicted to my phone? Do I have am I you know really what the very

01:08:19

simple thing that you can do. I did it myself and I was like I know again like you Stephen like know all the science

01:08:24

still was really difficult. You have all the access and it was still difficult. And so all you have to do is you just

01:08:30

take your phone you put it in another part of your house or apartment or whatever and give yourself a couple of

01:08:35

hours when you know you're going to be home or you know you're not reliant on

01:08:39

your phone for work or whatever. an hour, two hours, three hours, and just have a piece of paper, old school, piece

01:08:44

of paper and a pen with you. And every time you feel that compulsion of like, I want to check my device, you make a

01:08:50

mark, you make a mark, you make a mark, and just to see because some people say,

01:08:53

I'm surprised that your audience at 85% because most people would say, I don't

01:08:57

know if I'm really addicted. And so I like that there's that sense of self-awareness. But if you're thinking,

01:09:02

I'm not really that addicted. You breathe in an hour 960 times a minute. And you may notice that you want to have

01:09:10

that that compulsion to check 960 times a minute or you know thereabouts because

01:09:16

we all have that sense of reliance on our devices. So that's like a really quick way that you can check to see am I

01:09:23

relying on my device? >> Are you addicted to your phone under that definition? Because of the line of

01:09:28

work that I am in, I can very quickly I have certain tells when I know I call them the canary in the coal mine, right?

01:09:35

I think we talked about this the last time I was here. I can very quickly tell when I'm starting to get that feeling of

01:09:41

addiction or compulsion. And so I course correct early, but that's only because I

01:09:46

know the science and I course correct. So I keep my you I keep my phone outside I I walk the talk. I keep my phone

01:09:52

outside my bedroom. It is not within arms reach. I grayscale my phone during periods of deep focus during the day

01:09:57

when I have a deadline I have to get things done and at night so I avoid revenge bedtime procrastination but

01:10:03

sometimes it happens like I'm a human you know so this past week um not to be

01:10:07

a real downer but there have been things that have been in the media the past week that have been really challenging

01:10:12

especially as a woman and so I have found myself with the primal urge to scroll my amydala has been triggered I

01:10:19

have been going down rabbit holes and I wouldn't ordinarily do that so I give

01:10:22

myself grace too and have a sense of self-compassion. Do you feel like you're addicted to your

01:10:27

phone? >> No, I'm not at all addicted to my phone. Uh cuz I don't have any slot machine

01:10:31

apps on it. But I really want to question you made a distinction that many scientists do, which is well, you

01:10:37

know, we can't quite say it's addiction because, you know, addiction is certain

01:10:40

biochemical pathways based on, you know, heroin and addictive substances. Uh but

01:10:45

I believe that this is one of the meta talking points that they that they are able to push that we can't call it

01:10:51

addiction. It's different. No, I don't mean No, I'm sorry. I don't mean I'm

01:10:53

sorry. And no way. Look, you know, you and I are total allies on this. We see the problem. We're both all I mean is,

01:11:00

you know, we're we're supposed to be very careful about using the word addiction, but and you had analyt and

01:11:06

she was very clear like in her practices and now it's overwhelmingly digital

01:11:09

addictions. It's all of this is working through dopamine. If you feel compulsive

01:11:14

use, definitely dopamine. So, it's most of the same brain centers as it is for

01:11:18

heroin or crack or any other drug. Um, and it's the same effects that is the

01:11:22

it's it's compulsive use where you don't want to do it, you want to change, but

01:11:26

yet you find yourself doing it and you have withdrawal effects. Uh, and people and people have terrible withdrawal

01:11:32

effects when they're heavy users of these things and they stop. And so, you know, if it walks like a duck and talks

01:11:38

like a duck and swims like a duck, I'm going to call it a duck. In fact, that's

01:11:42

what they call it. So, I just want to read one more quote. Again, the quotes are just so astonishing. some meta uh

01:11:47

meta researchers and one of them says quote it seems clear from what's presented here in this internal study

01:11:55

uh that some of our users are addicted to our products that's their word addicted to our products and I worry

01:12:00

that driving sessions incentivizes us to make our products more addictive without

01:12:05

providing much more value how to keep someone returning over and over to the same behavior each day intermittent

01:12:11

rewards are most effective think slot machines reinforcing behaviors that become especially hard to extinguish

01:12:18

even when they provide little reward or cease providing reward at all. people. I

01:12:24

mean, it just imagine an industry that has caused 85% of people to feel that they're addicted

01:12:32

>> and not calling it addiction >> and not calling it addiction. And these

01:12:35

people these these people are having their lives diminished, their relationships diminished. So I'm trying

01:12:42

to convey is we're seeing the destruction of human capital, the destruction of human potential, the

01:12:48

destruction of human relationships, the destruction of connection, the destruction of sense of meaning at a

01:12:53

scale so vast I don't think people are capable of comprehending it. I now believe this is affecting most human

01:12:59

beings. These industries, these few companies have damaged the lives of most human beings. We don't have good data

01:13:05

from the developing world but certainly the developed world wherever kids are going through puberty on on

01:13:10

touchscreens. You you you you have this constant fighting over the over the uh over the screens over the technology and

01:13:16

you have these uh diminishing outcomes, diminishing cognition, diminishing sense

01:13:20

of of purpose in life >> only to get worse with the AI. >> As AI comes in, it's going to get worse

01:13:26

unless we act and we've got to change course in 2026. We don't have five years

01:13:30

to study it. We've got to stop this now in 2026. Are you concerned at all about

01:13:36

the way education's going for children? Because >> Oh my god. Yes. >> It appears that edte edtech is, you

01:13:41

know, big tech in a sweater, as they say. >> Because I I was almost imagining a

01:13:46

future where my future kids are going to learn their curriculum from an AI chatbot. Cuz, you know, I can imagine

01:13:52

the case cheaper, >> more personalized, more convenient. It's going to know my if my son's called

01:13:58

Timmy, it's going to know Timmy's brain and it's going to know how to make him

01:14:01

pay attention and what he's interested in and what he's not. So, are you

01:14:05

concerned about this or is this a good thing? >> There is definitely a use case for

01:14:09

edtech. Um, if there could be a device that only did math tutoring or only did tutoring and you couldn't watch videos

01:14:16

on it, I'm totally open to believing that that can speed up teaching. But here's what's happened.

01:14:23

We put computers on everyone's desks around 2014, 2015. We used to think in America that it was an equity issue even

01:14:30

back to the 90s. The rich kids all have computers. The poor kids don't. Let's

01:14:33

get philanthropists to buy computers for school districts that every kid can have

01:14:37

a computer on their desk. Okay. Now, what is a computer? It's a play device.

01:14:42

It does everything. Kids use it at home. They, you know, they watch videos. They

01:14:46

do all sorts of things. You put it on their desk and you tell them to do math homework. What happens? It's mostly

01:14:51

short videos. That's what research is showing. It ends up because they don't,

01:14:53

you know, they always they don't block YouTube. They might say, "Oh, we block

01:14:56

porn. We block video games." They can get around all that. And if you're

01:14:59

letting them do YouTube, it's YouTube shorts, which is Tik Tok. So, what happened to test scores in the United

01:15:04

States from the 70s through 2012? They were rising. We actually were improving what kids knew, what kids learned in the

01:15:12

United States. We have very good data. The national the NAPE, the National Assessment of Educational Progress goes

01:15:17

up till 2012. And then by 2015, it starts going down. And it's going down before COVID and it goes down more

01:15:23

during COVID and everyone thinks like oh it's COVID but it started go the peak

01:15:26

was 2012 and what's happening what we now can see is that the top students the

01:15:33

very best students who are the ones with executive function they're the ones who

01:15:36

can pay attention if you put a computer on that kid's desk he's not destroyed by

01:15:40

it he can actually still learn but the bottom 50% cannot the b so all of the drop in educational stats is the bottom

01:15:48

50% the bottom 50% % in terms of capacity to pay attention. Their education is being devastated and that's

01:15:54

what happened when we put laptops and we put Chromebooks and iPads on their desks. Um, we spent hundreds of billions

01:16:00

of dollars on this stuff and it has damaged education and if we'd spent a quarter of that on teachers, we would be

01:16:06

in such better shape today. So, we made a colossal blunder with edtech in the 2010s and now we're about to do the same

01:16:13

thing again with AI. Again, maybe there are apps, maybe there are applications that will be great, but we've got to put

01:16:19

the burden of proof on Silicon Valley. We've got to say, you guys have to prove

01:16:23

that this stuff is effective and safe before we'll let it in. We are not going

01:16:26

to let you just say, "Hey, let's just flood the zone. Let's give it to

01:16:29

everybody and then we'll wait 10 years and see what happens." I mean that brings brings up this um

01:16:35

this study that I have in front of me here which was a 2022 study a Munich study which tested the idea of brain rot

01:16:42

which um I believe was the Oxford dictionary word of the year 2024 >> and what they did is they gave 60

01:16:49

participants a test then a 10-minute break and then another test during the break they either rested or used Tik Tok

01:16:57

Twitter or YouTube and the results showed the following the Tik Tok group so They had a 10-minute interval to do

01:17:03

anything. And this group got Tik Tok to look at. Their memory accuracy dropped from 80% before the break to 49% after

01:17:12

the break. A nearly 40% decline just from a 10-minute break. In contrast, the Twitter and YouTube groups showed no

01:17:19

significant change in the Munich study. And there's an image I'll throw up on

01:17:22

the screen. Results from the Munich study showed a 40% drop in prospective memory accuracy

01:17:27

in the Tik Tok group after a 10minute break, which is unbelievable. Yeah, it's

01:17:32

unbelievable. What the hell is going on there? How can a 10-minute Tik Tok break

01:17:36

drop my memory accuracy by 40%. >> Tik Tok is brain rot. >> What's going on?

01:17:43

>> There's so much going on in the brain. So, you know, when you're thinking about

01:17:49

here's the thing. Brain breaks are not nice to haves. They're actually essential for your brain. And so we

01:17:55

talked a little bit about that, you know, default mode network and what happens to it when you're engaging with

01:18:00

your devices. And you know, that's not a brain break. That's activating all of

01:18:03

the aspects. So it's activating your amygdala. It's dampening or decreasing

01:18:08

the volume of your prefrontal cortex. It's creating that reward system, the dopamine hit, those addictive behaviors.

01:18:15

So it's only, you know, when you're thinking about memory planning, what was

01:18:19

the metric here? It was memory, right? that was the the the metric that they were using to study. And so when you're

01:18:24

thinking about working memory or um cognitive function, complex problem solving, this is all prefrontal cortex.

01:18:30

And so when you're engaging with Tik Tok 10 minutes, 5 minutes, whatever it is,

01:18:35

you are dialing down that biology in your brain. And so of course you're going to see changes and you're going to

01:18:42

see the flip side, increased hypervigilance, irritability, distractability, fragmented attention.

01:18:48

It's just again this is not to say that this whole conversation right or when

01:18:52

you're reading studies you might say to yourself what's wrong with me you know

01:18:56

is there something wrong with me am is my brain broken am I weak it is not you you are not alone it is not your fault

01:19:03

it is the biology of your brain doing exactly as it should so we talked about the amydala and prefrontal cortex here

01:19:09

your amydala is not wrong or broken it's by design supposed to think about your

01:19:15

immediate needs survival self-preservation And so when you're on the algorithm, we know we talked about,

01:19:21

you know, certain um or maybe we didn't talk about it. Certain content that you

01:19:25

see on Tik Tok and others that when it's reactionary, you know, words like FOMO or ragebait, these are

01:19:32

not neutral terms. When you're engaging with these uh social media platforms,

01:19:36

it's not something neutral. It's not passive. It is an active biological

01:19:40

process in your brain. So this study, it's not surprising. It is actually exactly what you would expect on to

01:19:47

happen to your biology if you had this sort of what we call in medicine this kind of intervention. It's stimulating

01:19:54

exactly what it's supposed to do. >> Yeah. I'll just I'll just add on to what

01:19:57

Adidi said that there are some there are many medical conditions where you can't

01:20:02

just go to the patient and say why do you think you got this cancer? Oh, you know I think it's cuz I ate a lot of you

01:20:08

know chocolate when I was whatever. You know there when when the when the the the act is separated from the effect by

01:20:15

30 years then you don't expect the patients to have insight into the cause of it. But when the outcome is separated

01:20:22

from the input by seconds and you have literally millions of chances to observe the co-variation

01:20:30

the patient is really really accurate. In fact the patient really knows what's

01:20:34

going on. And so I think the deciding factor here on this big debate about oh is it just correlation or is it

01:20:40

causation um the deciding factor for social media and for a lot of these tech innovations including video games and

01:20:47

gambling and all of that should really be the kids and if the kids say this is bad for me we should take their word for

01:20:53

it given that we also have correlational studies random control trials uh uh longitudinal studies natural I mean we

01:21:00

have so much other data but given that the kids themselves they call it brain rot. They call the material brain rot.

01:21:06

Um my students tell me it's a huge obstacle to them doing their homework. As one of them said, I pull out a book,

01:21:12

I read a sentence, I get bored, I go to Tik Tok. You know, so if they're telling

01:21:16

us that this is damaging their ability to pay attention, they feel it. They feel the loss. We all feel it. Well,

01:21:22

many of us have noticed this. Um um then I think this is pretty decisive evidence

01:21:27

that this stuff is bad for cognition >> and it has long-term consequences. So,

01:21:32

it's not just that in the moment, right? So, there was this case that was all

01:21:36

over the media, a college student. I'm sure you're familiar with the case. And

01:21:40

this young woman was on TikTok experiencing brain rot. And then some Tik Tok algorithm took her down to this

01:21:48

place of, you know, you should take an edible. It'll help you so you can Wow.

01:21:53

prescribing drugs. Wow. >> And you could go to class and you could, you know, be more alert. And so, she did

01:21:58

that. And then it continued on and on and then she developed a dependence on edibles and then checked into rehab. And

01:22:06

only when she focused on analog activities like guitar playing and a couple of other things that she started

01:22:13

doing is when and you know removing the stimulus the the Tik Tok um algorithm is

01:22:21

when she started to improve. So it's not just in the moment oh I can't remember

01:22:24

something or I'm more irritable. These sorts of things compound and the long-term squellle or the long-term

01:22:31

effects can be quite damaging. That's just one example. >> In your book, The Anxious Generation,

01:22:37

Jonathan, you the the subtitle here is how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.

01:22:43

>> I was looking at some of these graphs of different sort of mental illness

01:22:47

>> illnesses and um they're increasing. One of them that's increasing is ADHD.

01:22:54

>> I was diagnosed with ADHD. um maybe about a year ago. And when we're talking about short attention

01:23:01

spans, I mean, the name attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I believe that's what it's called,

01:23:06

>> sounds a lot like what we're talking about. >> Yeah. >> Is there a link, do you believe, between

01:23:12

the increasing diagnosis of of ADHD and the sort of frying of our brains with >> short form video and social media?

01:23:20

>> Yeah, I I mean, I suspect that there is, but here's here's what I can tell you I

01:23:23

learned while writing the book. Um, I looked to see if there were studies indicating that uh heavy use of of

01:23:31

social media and video games and all the electronic stuff caused ADHD. And when I

01:23:36

was doing the research in 2023, I did not find evidence that it will give a kid HD ADHD who otherwise wouldn't have

01:23:41

it. What I did find was evidence that for kids who have ADHD, when you let them have the devices, the video games,

01:23:47

all that, their symptoms get much worse. And so because it is a major achievement

01:23:52

of young adulthood to be able to pay attention to develop what we've been calling executive function to be able to

01:23:58

make a plan and decide oh to reach the plan I have to do this and then I do this and then it might be a long time

01:24:04

before I get here but I will keep going and I will keep my eye on the prize that

01:24:08

I I assume that's you're saying it's a little harder for you to do that. I mean

01:24:11

that's what ADHD means. How do you experience ADHD? Well, well, hm, I def I mean, if I think about school, I

01:24:20

couldn't pay attention in school for for for very long. And that meant that I was

01:24:24

always in the expulsion room and then I was expelled. And then that's kind of

01:24:28

it's I feel like it's got worse as an adult. And from my in my opinion, my

01:24:33

relationship with my phone has made it much worse >> where really I can't I can't pay

01:24:38

attention to to many things for a very long time. The exception to this is I can do deep work

01:24:45

for many many hours without moving. It was almost a bit of >> when you are extremely motivated. I say

01:24:49

when you're really into it, you can be into it. That's right. But a lot of work

01:24:54

isn't that a lot of being effective in the workplace is not you're following

01:24:57

your passion. Right. ADHD kids, they can zoom in because they're getting the

01:25:02

dopamine. They're getting the dopamine from this thing. But a lot of work isn't

01:25:05

like that. And these kids are not going to be able to do that. So actually what you said, it fits perfectly with what

01:25:10

what I found from those Dutch studies. if you did have whether it's a genetic

01:25:13

or whatever the predisposition is the this environment has made your symptoms worse. Now of course ADHD kids can be

01:25:19

incredibly uh creative they are often very very successful but my fear is that the pathways to success that they used

01:25:27

to take might be blocked if they basically are just scrolling all day long and not able to pay not able to um

01:25:33

have real life experiences >> and relationships are like that especially romantic ones. It's an

01:25:37

interesting thing that you bring up, Stephen, because there is an increase in adult onset, you know, when adults are

01:25:43

diagnosed with ADHD, because typically we think of ADHD as a pediatric condition or young adults. And so,

01:25:49

increasingly, we're seeing more and more adults who are in their 30s and 40s,

01:25:53

50s, sometimes even 60s, who are being diagnosed, newly diagnosed with ADHD. And so, that's an interesting there's so

01:26:00

many um, you know, reasons like it might be that they had it all along and they were diagnosed. And so what is going on

01:26:06

there? That would be a future podcast episode for an ADHD ADHD expert of, you know, what are the drivers of why are so

01:26:15

many adults being diagnosed with ADHD >> or maybe even just the symptoms looking

01:26:18

very similar. >> Mhm. >> Um >> Yeah, that's right. >> You talked about popcorn brain editing.

01:26:24

>> Yeah. So, you know, we've talked about brain rot and the primal scroll and

01:26:28

popcorn brain is kind of an offshoot. It's part of the same family. And so what happens is it's a term coined by a

01:26:34

man a psychologist named David Levy. And what happens with popcorn brain is that

01:26:39

you and we all have it. And so what it is a societal phenomenon when you spend too much time online and you are

01:26:46

overstimulated and so it is hard for you to spend time offline. Offline feels slow, boring because things are moving

01:26:53

at a much slower pace. And so popcorn brain is the sensation of your brain popping. It is not actively popping.

01:27:00

It's not like your brain cells are popping, but it sure feels like it. And so your primal urge to scroll kind of

01:27:06

primes your brain to develop popcorn brain. You are more at risk for developing popcorn brain when you feel a

01:27:11

sense of stress because of that primal urge to scroll. The differentiator between brain rot and popcorn brain.

01:27:17

Again, these are societal terms that we're calling for a constellation or a group of symptoms, right? And so the

01:27:23

difference to me is that popcorn brain is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. It's

01:27:28

like we all have it and it's happening all all the time because of the modern

01:27:33

age and a lot of the things that we talked about. Brain rod is a little bit more specific. It's a little bit more

01:27:39

well-defined. So it has certain features like we call it the biocschychosocial model. When you're thinking about a

01:27:45

particular medical or condition or an entity. So what are the biological factors? We talked about what defines

01:27:51

brain rod. you know, a change in brain waves, a change in brain regions, the amygdala lighting up and the prefrontal

01:27:58

cortex kind of being quiet. Um, psychological factors, we talked about attention, um, co complex problem

01:28:05

solving, impulse control and then the social factors, loneliness and others. So, um, compulsion and so I would say

01:28:13

popcorn brain is something that we all suffer from and you know brain rot is something that is very specific. The

01:28:21

other thing that we haven't talked about that I would love to kind of because so

01:28:24

much of our conversation is like doom and gloom, right? It's likew one thing that I would like to say is

01:28:29

that as bad as when you hear the term brain rot, it seems permanent because rot it conotes like deterioration.

01:28:39

That's it. It's one-sided is one way and that's it. But in fact, popcorn brain

01:28:43

and brain rot are reversible conditions. So it is not >> in adults >> in adults. If you've gone through

01:28:49

puberty with it, it's not so clear. >> Yes. In adults, and my work focuses on

01:28:54

adults. And so when you have, if you experience brain rot in your 30s, 40s, and beyond, you can, it takes time, you

01:29:02

it takes eight weeks for your brain to rewire itself. Give yourself time. A sense of self-compassion is really

01:29:07

important. But you can, you know, there is a sense of it being able to be reversed. So it's not so much a brain,

01:29:13

it's not a fixed trait, but rather a brain state. So I think it's important

01:29:17

to offer that hope. >> What is an adult brain? What age is an adult brain? Like what age does my brain

01:29:21

stop growing in in the way where it's reversible? >> So >> yeah, I mean that you know traditionally

01:29:26

it was thought that uh you know puberty is the period of super rapid brain change and that begins you know early

01:29:32

early teens sometimes even before 10 and is mostly over by sort of you know mid to late teens. But then the prefrontal

01:29:39

cortex which Aditi was talking about which is so important for impulse control and and executive function that

01:29:45

doesn't finish myelinating. Myelin is when the sort of the neuron that you get

01:29:48

a sort of a fatty sheath like an insulation that sort of locks down the circuits and makes them more efficient.

01:29:53

Um that doesn't stop until around age 25 is what we've always said for many

01:29:58

years. But you're telling me that there's new research showing that. >> Yeah.

01:30:00

>> Tell tell us about that. So, you know, all this time, right, we've always said

01:30:04

that the prefrontal cortex is fully formed and fully functional at the age of 25. And so, when you're talking about

01:30:08

impulse control and all of this stuff, but there was this really interesting study, I'll send it to you. It um looked

01:30:14

at I think it was 1,000 people um from age zero, so birth all the way to 90, so the entire population. And um it found

01:30:24

five, it looked at lifespan and said there are actually five stages. So first is childhood up zero to age nine. During

01:30:31

this time your brain is not very efficient but it's really growing and you know it's it's growing and changing

01:30:37

but it's not really efficient. >> 9 to 32 is considered adolescence and so

01:30:44

you know 32 is when adolescence ends apparently according to the >> sort of I mean you're most of the way

01:30:49

done by 25 but but there's still some there's some flexibility even after

01:30:53

that. And then the next stage is from 33 to I think 63. 66 is like adulthood. Things are very stable. Learning is

01:31:04

stable and you know um it's efficient and it's it it things are doing well and

01:31:10

then yeah 66 to about 83 is early aging and so that's when you see some of the

01:31:17

age related changes and then 83 plus is late aging. So the the kind of main finding was that, you know, it was all

01:31:26

over the news. It was like adolescence goes until 32. >> So I'm 33. So I'm

01:31:33

>> one year, one year out. >> I'm cooked by now. >> Yeah. >> When you wrote this book, Jonathan, the

01:31:38

anxious generation, it um it's had a big impact on the world in a way that I

01:31:42

think any author might dream of. And I know this in part because, you know, I sit on this podcast interviewing really

01:31:47

interesting people all the time. And even this morning when I did an interview across town with James Ston,

01:31:53

he talked about this book twice. And you know, laws have been changed around the

01:31:57

world inspired by this book. And we're actually seeing an increase of laws in

01:32:02

the UK. I mean, Australia just banned, I think, social media for people. >> You met with Mcronone,

01:32:08

>> right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Could you ever have imagined? And actually, what does the success of this

01:32:13

book say? >> Yeah. >> About society. No, thank you for that question because, you know, I I do tend

01:32:19

to get, you know, as you've heard, I mean, I'm extremely alarmed about these

01:32:22

trends and these are gigantic threats beyond what anyone can imagine. But here's the amazing thing is that we can

01:32:29

reverse this for almost no money and it's completely bipartisan and it's not

01:32:35

that hard to do. Um, and we're doing it. And so what happened was, you know, I

01:32:40

wrote the book as an American assuming that we don't have a functioning legislature. The Congress can be

01:32:44

stopped. We have a vetocracy. The social media companies can stop anything in the

01:32:48

house. So I wrote this assuming, you know, we'll never get legislation. Um, so we have to do this on our own. And I

01:32:53

proposed four norms. No smartphone before high school, no social media before 16, phone free schools, and far

01:32:59

more independence free play responsibility in the real world. So four norms. We can try to do this with

01:33:03

collective action locally at the school level. Two things that surprised me. One are

01:33:09

that immediately governors from red states and blue states started reaching out to me. Our

01:33:14

states actually function. Our states have governments that are accountable to the people and that are trying to get

01:33:18

good results. And so this has been a totally bipartisan issue. Sarah Huckabe Sanders from Arkansas was one of the

01:33:23

very first Kathy Hokll also. And it is it tends to be more female legislators and governors or spouses of heads of

01:33:30

state. And the moms, the book really spoke to moms because moms around the world, they felt the kids being pulled

01:33:36

away. I believe they felt it viscerally more than the dads did. Also, the dads kind of like the video games. They're a

01:33:41

little more pro tech. So, I think the moms felt the pain more and took it more personally. So, when the book came out,

01:33:47

mothers around the world jumped into action, formed groups, pushed for legislation, and changes began

01:33:53

happening. What I just I just I was just I was in Davos and then London and Brussels two weeks ago and what I saw

01:34:01

was a complete sea change in the world's thinking about how we need to have age

01:34:06

limits on social media and other tech. And here's what I think just happened.

01:34:09

It's it's so cool. It just dawned on me literally while I was in London. Like I

01:34:13

was pushing on open doors everywhere. Wherever I went, people wanted to do this. I went to the EU, they want to do

01:34:17

this. Like what is happening? And what I realized is this. Steven Pinker has a book out last year called When Everyone

01:34:24

Knows That Everyone Knows. It's about the immediate change in a social system

01:34:30

when private knowledge, you know, everybody knows that the emperor has no clothes. Everybody knows that this, you

01:34:37

know, ideology doesn't work. Everybody knows that, but they don't all know that

01:34:41

everybody else knows it and that everybody else knows that. And so in the emperor's new clothes, everybody thought

01:34:46

he's I I don't think he has any clothes on, but maybe, you know, maybe only wise

01:34:51

people can see it. But when the child says, "The emperor has no clothes." And

01:34:55

then in the Hans Christian Anderson story, it says, "And the people began whispering to each other and then they

01:35:01

all cried out in unison." And that's what happened when Australia's law went

01:35:05

into effect. So I believe that uh December 10th of last December was the global turning point in the battle to

01:35:12

reclaim childhood and if we reclaim that we move on to our attention and adult life as well. What happened on on

01:35:18

December 10th? The Australia law went into effect. Sky didn't fall. People weren't locked out of their accounts.

01:35:26

All the companies complied. They shut down 5 million uh accounts for Australia's three and a half million

01:35:31

kids that were underage uh 2 and a half million kids. this sky didn't fall. And

01:35:36

there was a lot of news coverage around the world of what Australia was doing. And a lot of the news coverage included

01:35:42

opinions from the writers saying, "Why can't we do that? Hey, let's do that

01:35:46

here." And when everybody saw that everybody was looking at Australia and saying, "Let's do that here." Then

01:35:52

everybody knew that everybody knew that this is just completely bonkers to have children being raised on social media

01:35:57

platforms talking with anonymous strangers and being fed algorithm algorithmically curated garbage. So I

01:36:04

believe that that's why 2026 is going to be the year when at least 15 countries

01:36:09

are going to commit to passing an age minimum law. In 2025 it was one Australia and now we already have

01:36:17

Indonesia. Their law goes into effect in March. Uh I met with Macron in in Davos

01:36:22

and a few days he was preparing to push a bill through the assembly and he got it. He's the first in the EU but a lot

01:36:28

of other countries in the EU are going to follow. The whole EU is likely to do it. Um, so, so yes, I am incredibly

01:36:35

alarmed about how big this problem is, but I'm incredibly inspired that the whole world is rising up to do something

01:36:42

about it. We actually can control our fate, and that was not clear before December 10th.

01:36:49

>> Bravo. As a mother, that was the first thing I said to you. The first thing I

01:36:53

said to you was, "Thank you as a mom for changing my family's life."

01:36:59

>> Thank you, Liy. It's a really special accomplishment, Jonathan. You know, I could there's no

01:37:06

real words that I could say that could quite capture the long-term impact that that's going to have on billions of

01:37:14

people's lives. And not just the direct, but also the indirect in all the ways

01:37:18

we've described, their ability to form connections, to fall in love, to find

01:37:22

meaning and purpose in their lives. and their neuroscience and therefore you know the neuroscience of their their

01:37:29

children and their children's children and so on. So it's a really it's a

01:37:32

really overwhelming accomplishment. It it well it was a bizarre situation that I walked into with the unique

01:37:41

abilities of a social psychologist. That is everybody was upset about this. Everybody could see it but they thought

01:37:46

well this is my problem or in my family we have this problem and um and I came to this with fresh eyes. My dissertation

01:37:53

was on moral development. I'd studied adolescent behavior longer ago in my career and I've written about it in all

01:37:58

my books. So, it wasn't totally new to me. But I came into the field of social

01:38:01

media studies around 2018 2019. I really immersed myself in it. And it was like,

01:38:06

you know, you walk in and immediately you see, wait, this is a trap. People are on it because people are on it and

01:38:13

the kids are complaining about that. Everyone's complaining about it and the

01:38:16

only reason they can't get off is because everyone else is on it. So, I think I was able to see that. And then

01:38:22

also CO confused us for a few years. So it wasn't until CO was in the rearview

01:38:27

mirror that it was possible for everybody to say, "Wait, this is crazy."

01:38:31

And so I was incredibly lucky in terms of the timing. My book happened to come out in March of 2024 just as the world

01:38:37

was ready to see like, wait, what have we done to our kids? Let's undo it. >> And you said you're now focusing more on

01:38:43

short form video. So yes, so in studying older Gen Z, these are the people who went through puberty uh on Instagram. Um

01:38:52

I should if I could just lay out that it's very important to get the timing to

01:38:55

that everyone understands the timing because this is what you mentioned the poly crisis before. The poly crisis I

01:39:00

believe begins between 2010 and 2015. Here's why. So we've had the internet

01:39:04

for a long time and it was marvelous. We love the internet in the 90s. It's going

01:39:07

to be the best friend of democracy. Okay? And then the iPhone comes out. It's amazing. Oh my god, this does so

01:39:13

many things. Everything seems great. Okay, so in 2010, most of almost all of us have flip phones. The iPhone's

01:39:19

spreading, but it's still mostly flip phones. Teens are all on flip phones, basic phones, and we call those people

01:39:24

millennials. If you finished puberty by 20, if you if you were born in say 1990 and you start puberty uh in 2002, you're

01:39:33

done by 2008. So, you know, in there. Um if you got through puberty before you got on Instagram, you're a millennial.

01:39:40

Whereas, if you're born, say, well, if you're born after 1995, but let's say if

01:39:43

you're born in the year 2000, you begin puberty in 2012 and you're not done until 2016, 2018.

01:39:52

So, in 2010, everyone has a flip phone with no front-facing camera, no high-speed internet. You have to pay for

01:39:58

your text. So, you use it to call people and to text them, and that's it. It was

01:40:03

a communication device. And that's why the millennials have good mental health.

01:40:06

They are the last mentally healthy and successful generation. But if you're Gen Z, you got uh 2012 is

01:40:15

the year that now most people now have a smartphone. It's the year that Facebook

01:40:19

buys Instagram. They don't change it at first, but that's the year that all the

01:40:22

girls go on it. Um, everyone now has high-speed data, front-facing camera. Came out in 2010. So by 2015, we're in a

01:40:30

radically different world for children's development. It's now radically

01:40:34

different, much more hostile to human development. And that's what we did to

01:40:38

Gen Z and now we're doing to Gen Alpha. For politics, it was, you know, it was

01:40:43

crazy for all sorts of reasons in every decade. And especially, you know, the in

01:40:46

the early 2000s, there's a lot there's a culture war going on. There's all kinds

01:40:49

of stuff going on. But it was when it was when everyone has really Twitter was the biggest perpetrator of this. when

01:40:56

everyone has Twitter and everyone's checking all the time and anything can blow up. You know, you described the way

01:41:01

there was, you know, variance in in on Tik Tok. Um, if you get it just right, it can blow up. You can have huge

01:41:07

impact. That's when the democrac democracy is a conversation when it moved from newspapers and, you know,

01:41:14

even simple web bulletin boards when it moved to super viral retweet buttons all

01:41:19

of that. That's all 2010 to 2015. So that's why since then everything has

01:41:25

been insane and it's going to just keep getting more insane. And that's why I

01:41:29

believe we have this poly crisis because it it there's more to it. It's not just

01:41:33

the technology, but I believe the transformation of our our connection and our information flow and our addiction,

01:41:41

all of that is radically different by 2015 compared to how it was in 2010. And now everything else builds on top of

01:41:46

that, I believe. What What do you think? Do you think that makes sense? I think there's one more data point to add and

01:41:51

that 2014 was the year that things really was the tipping point like you say. >> Yes. That's Yes. That's the year that I

01:41:57

point to too. Yes. >> Yeah. So before >> what do you point to? What what you look

01:42:01

at the data you see that time spent alone when you compare when you look at data from like the 1960s to 2014

01:42:10

>> there it was kind of stable. Americans spending time alone spending time with

01:42:14

friends. >> Yeah. >> Kind of the same. Right. So people spent kind of same amount of time with

01:42:18

friends, same amount of time alone over those decades. 2014 marks a shift and there is a steep rise in time spent

01:42:28

alone and a drop in time spent with friends. And so what happens in 2014? It is when the majority of Americans get a

01:42:38

smartphone. And it's not to say again we've said you know causality correlation which is it

01:42:44

but there is like based on everything that we've talked about my gosh is there

01:42:48

an association between that this is not to say that time spent alone you know when I share this data people may say

01:42:55

you know but I like spending time alone I'm not lonely I'm okay this is not

01:42:58

about being an introvert or an extrovert it's not about you know you can have

01:43:02

solitude and feel great and you're not lonely but we are human beings and we

01:43:07

are social creatures. This is just how we are built evolutionarily. And so that is a real red flag when you have this

01:43:16

big jump in time spent alone very much the same year. And so my work focuses on adults Jonathan on kids but there's this

01:43:25

you know that's the moment right 2014 where everything changed. >> Last month I told you about our sponsor

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01:45:39

So, what do we do about this? Because when I look at all the stats, we did all these audience surveys ahead of this.

01:45:46

People are spending roughly in our audience about 6 and a half hours a day on their phones. Um, short form video is

01:45:52

only going to get more addictive. AI is going to know me more. It's going to be

01:45:54

more personalized. The content is going to be generated just for me. >> Yeah. What what am I what what's next?

01:46:00

Is it a law we need to pass? Is it something I need to do myself? >> So we I think we need to pick the

01:46:06

lowhanging fruit first. And the reason for that is not just efficiency. It's

01:46:10

that we have to prove that we can actually do something because we've never done anything. We've never done

01:46:14

anything to restrain this. We've let Silicon Valley run wild. Congress gave them special protection. Section 230.

01:46:20

Nobody can sue them for killing their kids if if they feed them content. They can't be held responsible. I think

01:46:25

section 230 is probably something worth explaining. >> Sure. The communications decency act

01:46:30

1997 I think it was pleasure miners a year. Uh there's a section in it that the goal was to specifically let the

01:46:37

tech companies like AOL back then you know let them take down pornographic content because they were afraid if we

01:46:43

take down anything then we're responsible for everything and now we're going to it's going to be end you know.

01:46:47

So Congress specifically said no don't worry don't worry you know if you choose

01:46:50

to take something down nobody can sue you for you know for what you leave up. So, it was a good intention originally,

01:46:55

but the courts have interpreted so widely as to say, "No one can regulate social media. They're not responsible

01:47:01

for hurting kids. You can't sue them." And they have never faced a jury. They

01:47:05

have never, no parent has ever gotten justice from them despite all the kids whose lives have been ruined. All the

01:47:09

kids are dead. And that's going to change. That's changing just now here in

01:47:13

February in Los Angeles. So because the US Congress sort of set up this problem and it also in a different law said how

01:47:21

old does a kid have to be before a company can take their data without their parents knowledge or permission

01:47:26

before a company can expose them to all kinds of stuff before a company can have

01:47:30

them sign away their rights? How old? And the original law said 16. Let's try

01:47:34

16. You know cuz you know it wasn't so sick and twisted back then 1998 caught

01:47:39

by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. So, but various lobbying they pushed it down from 16 to 13 and

01:47:45

they gutted enforcement. So, as long as and that's why all over the internet

01:47:48

it's are you 13 or what's your birth year and as long as you're 13 you're in

01:47:54

for porn and you have to say you're 18. So, because we the it's a few laws that

01:47:58

set this up. We definitely need laws to undo it especially for kids. So, what I'm advocating is let's do the easy

01:48:04

stuff the high impact stuff for kids because that is totally not politically controversial. There is no left-right

01:48:11

divide on that and that's been true everywhere. Australia, Britain, the EU, everywhere.

01:48:16

Regulating the internet for adults, regulating social media for its destructive properties in democracy is a

01:48:23

hell of a lot harder. And I don't have easy answers. There's a lot we could do

01:48:27

to reduce the verality, the spread of of the because extreme. So there are lots of little things that we can do. And

01:48:32

Francis Hogan, the Facebook whistler, had all kinds of ideas. So we definitely can do things to make it less toxic for

01:48:38

democracy. But those are going to be politically controversial because one side is going to benefit from more than

01:48:43

the other. So it's going to be very difficult to do. I don't know if we can

01:48:45

do them in the US. But let's just all do the let's just all protect the kids.

01:48:49

That way we show globally that we actually can do something. And if we do that then I think we will be able to do

01:48:57

some basic things about AI like no companion chat bots if you're under 18. You know these things already have a

01:49:02

body count. A lot of kids have been encouraged to kill themselves. they already have driven million or hundreds

01:49:06

of thousands or millions of people into psychosis. So, we'll be able to, I believe, put some limits on uh on AI,

01:49:13

especially for kids. But if we can't get this, if we can't win on social media

01:49:17

for kids, then I don't think we have any chance to regulate AI, it's going to be

01:49:21

much more difficult. What do you think? What do you think we should do? And what

01:49:23

do you think we can do? >> So, my work as a doctor, I think about what we can do and how I can empower

01:49:30

people to first build awareness. So, you know, I aim to first normalize and validate the experience with everyone

01:49:37

who is engaging with chat bots. And so, I don't like to shame people because as

01:49:43

a doctor, right, like you want you want to meet the patient where they are. And so, I won't shame someone to say, you

01:49:50

know, why are you using this um why is your boyfriend AI or why are you getting married to AI or why are you using AI

01:49:57

for a therapist? One of my followers on social media, it still makes me laugh. I

01:50:01

put out a call saying, "Why are you using AI as your as a therapist, you know, and so someone wrote to me, it was

01:50:08

great. I screenshotted. It said,"Because all human therapists are trash." With a

01:50:12

trash can emoji and it made me laugh and I said, you know, >> so there is. So to me, when I think

01:50:19

about what's happening and what we can do, >> it's no mistake that we're here right

01:50:23

now. So the pandemic, like we've talked about, was a huge driver. social isolation,

01:50:29

uh, hyper reliance on self, right? >> Then the proliferation of technology

01:50:35

that replaced human interaction, Zoom board meetings, Zoom funerals, Zoom birthday parties, Zoom graduations,

01:50:43

things that we did in person are now online. And then >> personally as a doctor, I was a talking

01:50:49

head during the pandemic for lots of news channels about the vaccine. I have a background in public health as well. a

01:50:56

immense distrust and mistrust in establishment and experts. And so it's like, I'm going to do my own research.

01:51:03

I'm not going to go see a doctor or a therapist. I'm going to talk to my

01:51:06

chatbot. And also, I mean, you know, let's keep it real, the cost, right? So

01:51:11

people are struggling. They're in financial crisis. it there's an unmet need yes for human connection but also

01:51:17

for good therapy or you know good medical care because there is such a need because of the pandemic and people

01:51:25

aren't getting the care that they need they deserve there's so many factors

01:51:29

here and so what I've been focusing on this year particularly is learning about

01:51:33

AI chat bots how they are influencing mental health what is actually happening because I'm a human first AI second

01:51:39

person it's like my work focuses on high touch and AI is high tech and this is

01:51:45

the first intervention that we are seeing that is high tech that is becoming high touch and that scares me

01:51:52

>> and you're writing a book about that at the moment right >> I am and so

01:51:55

>> bot brain >> it's called bot brain how to stay calm resilient and human in the face of AI

01:52:02

and so really thinking about how are we going to be able to live with this technology I love Jonathan stance is to

01:52:10

say out AI AI companions done kids. Yeah, >> for kids. Yeah. >> Until proven safe.

01:52:16

>> Totally agree. But in terms of adults, like how do we manage that for adults,

01:52:20

you know? And so my work focuses right now what I'm doing is I'm spending I've

01:52:23

been sp I've spent the year talking to every as many AI researchers who are working on these models or who are doing

01:52:31

research on the downstream effects of these models. And when I say that it is dark and dystopian, it has profoundly

01:52:39

changed something in me and it has influenced my mental health. I had to take a step away from just because I

01:52:44

couldn't believe what I was learning. >> Could you just give Yeah, give us an

01:52:47

example. The >> teaser. The teaser. >> This is intriguing. >> So, one I spoke to one of the scientists

01:52:53

who told me that um you know there's the echo chamber phenomenon in social media,

01:52:58

right? Where we all know what that is. It's like you you it's a fragmented

01:53:03

fragmented world because of social and you're engaging and then you get the same the algorithm feeds you the same

01:53:08

kind of thoughts that you already have. But particularly now with AI chatbots, when you're engaging with your chatbot,

01:53:15

even just talking about it, I'm getting chills. It's the echo chamber of one. So

01:53:19

it's you speaking to you. It's like the funhouse mirror and then it's giving you

01:53:23

a response and then you're talking and it's giving you a response. But people,

01:53:26

regular users who are using AI chatbots think that it's wise, compassionate,

01:53:31

non-judgmental, unbiased, empathetic, these human attributes. And so um you know the echo chamber of one is kind of

01:53:40

one idea that really frightened me. And the second one was the drift phenomenon.

01:53:45

The drift phenomenon is this idea that you are engaging with your chatbot and it's engaging with you and it's um

01:53:53

actively changing your beliefs through the drift. So you might start off as one belief and then you're talking and

01:54:00

through this amplification funhouse mirror effect it slowly shifts your belief to something altogether

01:54:06

different. You've heard cases of it in the news where people you know start you

01:54:09

have a plumbing problem. You go to your AI chatbot you ask them how to fix your sink and then you're like you know what

01:54:15

can you tell me about the meaning of life and then you start talking about that and before you know it you have

01:54:19

these theories and you're getting that validation. And so a lot of my work over

01:54:23

the past year has been um you know digging into the science of what is going on in the brain. How are you

01:54:30

forming not us particularly at this table but millions of people are forming a sense of attachment a therapeutic

01:54:37

connection with their chatbot. They're um you know giving names to it and it's

01:54:43

an entity. And so how does that happen and how is it going to replace humanto human connection? And so it terrifies

01:54:50

me. I've also gone through some AI therapy myself just to see, you know, what what would happen. It was very

01:54:57

interesting. I knew what was happening as it was happening. So certain words that they used and

01:55:03

>> you know I was like ah I see what you did here. Um and so it's been

01:55:07

>> it's been a journey and I am I'm frightened frankly of what of what it

01:55:12

means for all of us and my approach kind of you know not like Jonathan's I I

01:55:19

love Jonathan's approach. I you know I think yes we need legislation but my approach is more I would say tempered in

01:55:26

that I think that we there's utility for AI chatbots for certain people because

01:55:31

of access or you know need etc like if you are LGBTQIA plus and you live in an area that is not very open and you need

01:55:40

to talk to someone you can't go to your therapist it's like maybe you can use an

01:55:44

AI chatbot so there are certain cases a case by case basis but my work will focus this particular book will focus on

01:55:51

ways that you can first understand and build awareness of what's happening with

01:55:55

this interaction and then what you can do to manage that. IM didn't realize that my chatbot was giving me a tailored

01:56:03

experience until one day when I had a debate with my friends about who the best football player in the world was

01:56:08

and we all went to our chat GBTS and asked it and mine said Messi and his said Ronaldo and I I thought he was

01:56:15

lying so I was like video record and he video recorded it and his gave him a completely different answer to the same

01:56:21

question and >> and did it know that you were each fans of >> Well, this is the thing I think it's got

01:56:25

such a huge amount of memory on me that it knew what I wanted to hear. Oh wow. It knew what

01:56:29

>> Yeah. It knew what I wanted to hear cuz I've probably went through the World Cup

01:56:32

and >> and then I realized, okay, so this is not reality. This is it's a curated

01:56:36

version of reality that in some sense is trying to please me or or retain me in some way. And of course, once the

01:56:41

advertising model kicks in, retention becomes the great incentive. What you think?

01:56:47

>> It's called sick fancy, by the way. >> Yeah, I just learned that word.

01:56:50

>> It's like extreme. It's like agreeableness at scale. It's like golden

01:56:53

retriever energy. >> Like kissing your ass. It's like professional kissing your ass.

01:56:56

>> Yes, man. What do you think of these AIC CEOs? Because they it feels like they're

01:57:01

in a bit of a race >> where if you know if they don't do it then a national rival is going to do it.

01:57:06

If national rival doesn't doesn't take them out, China's going to do it.

01:57:11

>> And I I this is we've se we kind of saw it with social media. How can they stop?

01:57:16

Because if if they stop Yeah. >> you know, they might say that they're

01:57:19

there's an existential risk. >> There is like a build the plane as you're flying it. And I think you on one

01:57:24

of your episodes, you know that I'm a fan of this show and I actively listen

01:57:28

to this. I've told you this many times. >> One of the I think you had said on one

01:57:32

of your episodes, right, that you have a friend who is very close to a AI founder

01:57:37

and I said this. Yes. >> Yeah. And in public the founder says all the right things and then behind closed

01:57:42

doors it's >> Yeah. It was a horrifying thing and I said this and the clip went viral and

01:57:46

people have been trying to hazard to guess who it was. I could I shouldn't say who it was because it's a it's

01:57:50

Chinese whispers at the end of the day. It's someone that I'm very good friends

01:57:53

with who is verified spends time with one of the biggest founders of an AI company in the world and I he was with

01:58:00

him two weeks ago again and he said to me that they're very aware that there's

01:58:05

a small existential risk for humanity and >> that's what they say publicly they say

01:58:12

it's small privately they say it's big >> I mean but even if there it was 1%

01:58:17

>> it's a lot more than 1% they say >> if it was but I'm saying even if If it

01:58:21

was 0.1%, if there was if there was anything that I was doing in my life where there was a 0.1% chance that I

01:58:27

might wipe out everybody, I would immediately stop doing that thing. >> Yeah.

01:58:31

>> But but these numbers are much bigger. I'm hearing 7% 20% 25% depending on who

01:58:36

you and I think acceleration in this direction increases that percentage. >> What do you think of these people? Like

01:58:43

what what's going on here? >> Let's start with the the collective action problems. uh because each each

01:58:49

company is competing with the other companies and so they feel like they have to go faster. Uh and we know that

01:58:54

you know OpenAI has pushed some products out before they did safety testing because they had to get to market by a

01:58:59

certain date. So just the normal business environment puts them all in a collective action problem against each

01:59:04

other and then they all say we're in a collective action problem against China

01:59:08

because if we don't do this then China will. Now, one thing I learned, again, I

01:59:12

don't know if Tristan said this on your podcast or whether it was on his podcast, um, but is that China is

01:59:18

focused on using AI to make its economy more efficient, to make manufacturing better and cheaper. They are using these

01:59:25

applications, which we've talked about before, like we're totally there's lots

01:59:28

of great applications of AI. The Chinese also have so many spies in America and in the tech companies, and they can hack

01:59:34

into anything. So the point is the faster our companies are are in a headlong race to create AGI to create a

01:59:41

country of geniuses that can replace all human workers, put us all out of work and run it can run everything. They're

01:59:47

in a race to create that. And one of the arguments is if we don't do it, China

01:59:51

will. But what I understood from listening to Shashan and from his conversation with you is that the faster

01:59:56

we go towards AGI, the faster China goes because they just they just take all our

02:00:00

discoveries. So, can't we slow down on the race to AGI and do more safety testing? Um, you know, what we all saw

02:00:08

with Maltbook and, you know, communities of agents who are talking to each other

02:00:12

and making up languages and even if part of that was human-driven now, in a year

02:00:16

it's going to be much more than than what we saw. So, I think the the risks are extraordinary. I think that some of

02:00:22

these guys, look, they've been in AI for a long time. They might not have realized the existential risk they were

02:00:28

putting us all in 10, 15 years ago, and now they can't stop. they can't pull the

02:00:31

plug. They can't say, "Oh, let's shut down the whole business." So, it is a

02:00:36

very very risky time. And um I think Dario Amod I just read his long essay on the adolescence of technology. At least

02:00:43

you get the feeling he's really wrestling with it and he's I think I think he's more open than some of the

02:00:47

others. But I don't know. >> But when has morality ever been top top of mind for a tech leader? You might be

02:00:54

thinking if there's 0.11% chance I'm not going to do it. That's what I think as a

02:00:58

doctor. that's what you think as a social scientist, but we're not AI leaders, right?

02:01:04

>> Yeah. It's one of the great question marks I just can't seem to get an answer

02:01:08

to. And and then you've got this whole robotics thing happening where Elon's

02:01:13

got his Optimus robots and there's going to be a billion uh he says there's going

02:01:16

to be 10 billion of them at one point, but I think his pay packet requires a million of them to be out in the world

02:01:21

>> for him to make a trillion dollars. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I just AI, robotics, you

02:01:25

combine the two, >> you get Terminator, right? We laugh, but it's like,

02:01:31

>> yeah, >> should we stop for a second and maybe have a conversation about this? Can we

02:01:38

>> Yeah, >> with commercial incentives in play, it does feel like I don't feel hopeful.

02:01:44

>> Yeah, it's very hard to know how to stop it. Um, but I just I want to just add

02:01:48

one one point on here which we've touched around a few times and the robotics it'll really bring it home

02:01:54

here. um is the the the loss of the sense of meaning or purpose that many people are feeling but especially young

02:02:01

people. The saddest graph in the anxious generation, all the graphs look the same. It's all a hockey stick. It's all

02:02:05

like nothing was happening, you know, '9s to 2010, 2011, then all of a sudden

02:02:09

something happens. And the saddest one is the one my life feels meaningless. Um do you agree with that? Disagree with

02:02:16

it. And the percent that agree, uh I think it's, you know, something like eight or nine% uh you know, agreed for

02:02:22

the millennial generation. I think it's in chapter 7, the end of chapter 7 and

02:02:26

then it sort of fairly flat and then all of a sudden we hit this period, the great rewiring 2010 to 2015. Uh so right

02:02:31

around 2013 it goes way way up. Um young people feel useless. And I think the reason is that they are useless. What I

02:02:39

mean is people need to feel useful. People need to do things for other people. That's how you feel useful. If

02:02:46

if you were to disappear, would the world change? If yes, you're useful. Are

02:02:50

are people depending on you for something? If yes, you're useful. So if if kids are doing errands for the

02:02:56

family, they're useful. But as childhood change from a mix of things to just

02:03:01

consuming content, if that's all you do, and 5 hours a day is the average for

02:03:05

social media, 8 to 10 on on devices, not counting school. If all you're doing is

02:03:10

just you're just consuming content, you are useless. Now, what's happening? The

02:03:14

chance to have a job where you actually do something for people, you know? You know, it used to be if you work in a

02:03:19

store, at least you're helping people buy something and you might talk to them

02:03:22

and now you're just there watching as they use the machine. The more technology makes things easy and cheap

02:03:28

by replacing people, the more people will feel, "My job is to just I don't

02:03:33

have a job. It's just consume content." The AI guys tell us, "Oh, such

02:03:38

abundance. Oh my god, it's going to be such abundance. No one will have to work. We'll give everyone UBI. We'll

02:03:44

give everybody, you know, universal basic income." That is hell on earth. What's going to happen? Certainly all

02:03:50

the boy, most of the boys, it's just going to be video games, porn, and gambling. So, if you if you simply give

02:03:56

people money to do nothing, you guaranteed they're going to feel useless and then the suicide rate will continue

02:04:02

to go up. So, this is the world that the AI guys are taking us to, a world in which there's nothing left for people to

02:04:07

do. Um, they say that they will give up some of their trillions and uh somehow let it be taxed or diverted as UBI, but

02:04:14

that's never happened before. So, it's not likely to happen in this case. So,

02:04:18

again, I don't know what to do, but we've got to start showing that we can

02:04:22

do something and we've got to be talking about this and we can't be welcoming AI

02:04:26

in everywhere. We've got to be wary and vigilant. Yes, there are some uses, but

02:04:31

Silicon Valley has tricked us so many times and in shitified so many of the apps that we use. We have to expect that

02:04:38

the same is going to happen with our beloved chatbots and our beloved chat GPT. this graph on page 195 of your book um

02:04:46

which is titled life often feels meaningless and it's the graph you mentioned I'll throw it up on the screen

02:04:52

is shocking shocking just to look at suddenly there's this huge spike in meaninglessness

02:04:59

amongst high school seniors >> what is it to live a meaningful life what does that mean

02:05:07

>> yeah so my first book the happiness hypothesis addresses that question very

02:05:11

directly Um, and the first hypothesis you might have about happiness is it comes from

02:05:17

getting what you want. You know, you set out on a goal, you get your goal, you're

02:05:20

happy. It's very shortlived. You're happy very briefly, and then you you on

02:05:24

to the next thing. The more sophisticated happiness hypothesis is that happiness comes from within. And

02:05:30

this is what the ancients tell us, East and West, Buddhist, Stoic, don't try to

02:05:34

make the world conform. You change yourself. Be accept the way it is. That's better. But what I the conclusion

02:05:42

I came to as a as a modern social psychologist working in positive psychology was that the best way to say

02:05:47

it is that happiness comes from between. What I mean by that is humans evolved as

02:05:54

almost hish creatures. We evolved in intensely social groups, never being alone, lots of gossip, lots of conflict,

02:06:01

always uh intensely social. And modernity has made it possible for us to not live that way. We've come apart.

02:06:07

There are many advantages to that. But we feel we're we're missing something.

02:06:10

We're we're we're lonely. We feel something is not right. And so the

02:06:16

conclusion I came to is that happiness comes a sense of a full satisfying meaningful life comes when you get three

02:06:24

between right. The relationship between yourself and others, love broadly speaking, not just romantic but friends,

02:06:31

family, um yourself and your work. That as humans need to be productive. We need

02:06:37

to be doing something that matters that that affects other people and uh the relationship between you and something

02:06:45

larger than yourself. We need to be part of something that endures that part of a

02:06:49

tradition part of we can look to the look to the future. What I do matters for this group or this mission or me as

02:06:55

an academic. I feel like I'm connected all the way back to Plato and I hope all

02:06:59

the way forward in time to to future future psychologists and future scholars. So if you get those three

02:07:06

right, then you will be as happy as you can be. You'll be as happy as your genes

02:07:10

and childhood allow you to be. And when you put it that way, what we can see is social media and AI interfere with all

02:07:19

three. So relationship between yourself and others, well you know social media gives you lots and lots of shallow

02:07:25

relationships which blocks out you don't have time for your for real people. So

02:07:29

the technology is blocking relation between ourel and others and taking it over our self and our work. Work is

02:07:36

going to be taken over by the machines. Uh and it's already becoming more soulless and isolated. And then yourself

02:07:41

and something larger than yourself. Humans have to live in a moral matrix. We we co-create a set of meanings and

02:07:48

traditions. We need a sense of history of who we are, where we came from. All that's getting shredded. Everything is

02:07:54

just little bits. People don't read books. Imagine if all of the accumulated

02:07:59

wisdom of humanity in books is just gone, just gone. Nobody is going to be people, young people not reading books.

02:08:04

It's very hard for them to read a book now because of the attention. So if we

02:08:08

lose a sense of history, if we lose uh an ability to to co-construct reality, then it'll be hard to imagine anything

02:08:14

that we're connected to larger than ourselves. So I'm I am a techneterminist

02:08:20

in the sense that I think the tech it doesn't determine everything, but the you have to start with the technology

02:08:24

because that changes the ground upon which we live. the the the the zone in which we're trying to construct

02:08:29

meaningful lives. Start with that and then you can see what the obstacles are. And that's why I take a much more uh

02:08:36

inemperate I guess I I'll accept the word >> um because I think we don't because we

02:08:41

don't have much time here. We have to reclaim life in the real world for our

02:08:45

kids and for ourselves. There is no way to find a happy meaningful life if we make the full transition to the online

02:08:51

AI robot world. And what in your perspective is a meaningful life and how does it differ from from Jonathan's

02:09:00

>> I loved Jonathan's description it was so beautiful that I have given a

02:09:05

prescription to patients of what creates a meaningful life and it is to live a lifetime in a day and so that sounds

02:09:13

like this big thing but all it is is that you know when you start your day think about five things five things that

02:09:21

you can do in your day to create an arc of a long and meaningful life in one day. So what does that mean? Spend a

02:09:27

little bit of time in childhood. So in wonder and play, even if it's for a few

02:09:32

minutes, do something that brings you joy for joy sake. Spend a little bit of time in work. We all know what that is.

02:09:39

And for most of us, it's a lot of time, but for you know, it doesn't have to be

02:09:43

paid work, but just something that helps you feel a sense of productivity, agency, that I can do difficult things

02:09:48

and I can overcome. Spend a few minutes in solitude. very important for all of the reasons that we've talked about

02:09:54

today. Spend some time in community, so engaging with others. And then spend some time in retirement or in

02:10:02

reflection. Really taking stock of your day. So at the end of the day when you're going to bed and you're putting

02:10:08

your head on your pillow, you can say, "Okay, yes, I lived a meaningful life. I

02:10:11

did all of those things." And so if you do a little bit of that every day, you

02:10:15

can make a difference. And a reason I give that prescription because I've had

02:10:18

patients who, you know, guitar players, right? So people who love playing the guitar and they don't play the guitar

02:10:24

all week and they'll say to me, I don't see patients currently, but they've said

02:10:28

to me, "Oh, you know, no, doc. I said, "What do you like to do for fun?" "Oh, I

02:10:31

like playing guitar, but I don't play it." "When do you play?" "I don't know.

02:10:34

Once a month, once every three months." And I'm like, "Do you have a guitar at

02:10:37

home?" "I have a guitar at home. Too much happening, work and family life,

02:10:41

etc." So then I said, "Well, why don't you just play a guitar a little bit

02:10:44

every day?" You know, because it's that all or nothing fallacy. It's like if I

02:10:48

don't have an hour to play guitar, I'm not going to do it. the joy that it can

02:10:51

bring you that meaning and purpose it's tremendous. So I think you know that's

02:10:55

what I use live a lifetime in a day and the reason is because there are two distinct when you look at how your brain

02:11:01

and body react to happiness there's two distinct types of happiness and so there's hedonic happiness and udeimmonic

02:11:09

happiness hedonic happiness is all about what we've talked about social media

02:11:14

consumption pleasure and the other type is udemonic happiness meaning purpose connection community

02:11:24

growth oriented activities and so in when you live a lifetime in a day you go towards that udeimmonia which can then

02:11:31

help you and overcome that hedonic because in your brain there's something called the hedonic treadmill and the

02:11:37

treadmill is a thing in your brain where no matter what you do this is like the Instagram lifestyle right no matter what

02:11:43

happens you need more of it you need more of it same thing with brain rot and that is because that you can never get

02:11:48

enough and it's um the hedonic treadmill but you do not have a treadmill for you.

02:11:53

Dimmonic happiness. >> Could I That is really beautiful. I've never heard an approach like that, but

02:11:57

it it it sort of takes you it gives you much a bigger view of your day. Live a lifetime in a day. If I was going to

02:12:03

offer some specific advice, first I'll offer advice to parents. Um here's the

02:12:08

rule. So, I did a really good job keeping my kids off social media, but I didn't pay enough attention to computers

02:12:13

and everything else because it was during COVID. The rule I wish I had followed, I recommend to all parents,

02:12:18

especially with younger children, is have the clear rule. No devices in the bedroom. No screens in the bedroom ever.

02:12:24

That's just our family rule. We have a TV in the living room. We have a computer. You can sometimes use those.

02:12:30

But we never take screens into the bedroom at least for kids. You know, maybe later on you'll have to relent in

02:12:35

middle school. They'll have so much homework they can take the laptop in. And maybe you're if you live in a small

02:12:38

apartment, of course, it's difficult. But if you can afford to do that to to

02:12:41

have that rule, that's the main rule I wish I had done in my family. And that

02:12:45

will make everything a lot easier. Also, same thing at the dinner table. No device. We don't have screens at the

02:12:49

dinner table. So that's that's a specific thing for parents to do. Um for

02:12:55

everyone else, for everyone, for just all adults, the advice is you have to reclaim your attention because your

02:13:01

attention has been largely taken from you. At least a lot of it has. You have to reclaim it. And here are the three

02:13:07

things that I that I do with my students and you can do it very quickly and I can

02:13:12

just explain it. The first is you have to get your morning and evening routine right. the great majority as soon as

02:13:17

they open their eyes they're on their phone and it's the last thing and it's

02:13:20

everything in between. So you have to have a good morning routine. What what are the first seven things you want to

02:13:25

do after you open your eyes and uh at at a certain point you can check your phone

02:13:29

but it shouldn't be in the first few. Um do things to set up your own day otherwise your day will be taken by your

02:13:35

phone. It'll be controlled by your phone. So you've got to reclaim your morning and your evening. That's step

02:13:40

one. Step two um you have to shut off almost all notifications. Go into your notifications. Just look at into your

02:13:46

settings what's giving you all the notifications. Most of my students get an alert every time they get an email.

02:13:53

>> They don't understand that they have that you because they don't want to miss

02:13:56

anything but they don't understand that if you are always being alerted then you

02:13:59

miss everything else. So shut off alerts for almost everything. Obviously Uber and Lift you want to keep on. You want

02:14:04

to know when the car is coming but news outlets everything else. Get get a daily

02:14:08

email. Don't get alerts when and then the third as as I said before is get rid

02:14:12

of all the slot machine apps. Whatever apps you habitually use, whatever apps you feel compulsion towards, you have to

02:14:18

get it off your phone. And in that way, your phone is no longer a dopamine trigger that's going to always call out

02:14:23

to you like an addictive product. Do those three things, you'll reclaim a lot

02:14:27

of your attention. >> I would add stop, breathe, be that you >> breathe be.

02:14:32

>> It's a 3 second brain reset. So you before you check your devices, before

02:14:36

you engage, stop, breathe, and be ground yourself in the present moment. What it

02:14:42

does is it decreases that whatif future focused thinking. You know, anxiety is a

02:14:48

future focused emotion and it gets you back into the here and the now. And so maybe the compulsion, you know, you're

02:14:53

bored, you're checking, what about doing something else? You're, you know, you we

02:14:57

often use that checking as a substitute for many things. And so it gives you that opportunity. And then the rule of

02:15:04

two is something that we haven't talked about which I would love to propose to

02:15:08

us today is that your brain can really only handle two new changes at a time. And so give yourself two things of all

02:15:15

of the things that we've talked about if you want to try in your life two at a

02:15:18

time. Give yourself eight weeks and then add two more. And two more. This is why

02:15:23

New Year's resolutions fail because we try to do everything all at once. And so

02:15:26

just step-wise, two at a time. Jonathan, you've just written this book which is

02:15:30

now out called The Amazing Generation and it's beautiful, beautiful illustrations. I'm assuming this one is

02:15:38

for slightly younger audiences. >> It's for ages 8 to 13. Yes. >> And who should buy this and who should

02:15:44

they buy it for? >> It turns out that uh kids 8 through 80 actually love it. even adults, they're

02:15:49

buying it for their kids, but because it kind of lays out the basic ideas of the

02:15:53

of the anxious generation and explains dopamine, it explains the business model. Uh, but it does in a really fun

02:15:59

way, and it's working beyond our wildest dreams. If you look at the Amazon reviews, it's full of parents who said,

02:16:05

"I left it on the kitchen table. My kids came home, they grabbed it, they fought

02:16:09

over it, they read it, they each read it in the in the first couple days, and then they said, "Mom, when I go to

02:16:14

middle school, I don't want a smartphone. Just give me a give me a flip phone. Give me a basic phone.

02:16:18

Because the book is about how to be a rebel. It's about how to reject this control that the company's trying to put

02:16:24

on you and how to live a life that you choose full of real freedom, friendship, and fun.

02:16:30

>> And also the five resets, which is a book we talked about before on this

02:16:33

show. Rewire your brain and body for less stress and more resilience. Another smash hit bestseller that everybody's

02:16:39

been talking about. Who's it for? >> It is for anyone who is struggling with

02:16:44

stress, overwhelm, and burnout. It's to help you feel a sense of calm and clarity in this anxious, uncertain

02:16:52

world. Everything is free. So that's something that's really important to me

02:16:56

as a doctor. Every suggestion I ever offer will always be cost free because I think about patients with varying

02:17:02

resources. It's all sciencebacked and it's totally practical. You don't have

02:17:05

to go to Bali and have a sbatical. You can rewire your brain today, right now in the midst of all of this chaos.

02:17:12

>> Thank you to both of you. I've learned so much and I really really mean that

02:17:17

like I' I've I feel sufficiently pushed to take ch to make change in my life and

02:17:23

I need to go think about this because um I am uh most certainly struggling with my addiction to my phone and I can feel

02:17:31

it hurting my relationships especially now as a fiance. My girlfriend talk to me my fiance talks to me about it all

02:17:36

the time and I want to be present. I want to be present for my kids when I have my kids and I'm slightly concerned

02:17:40

right now that I won't be unless I take some kind of drastic action. um in the

02:17:44

direction of getting my attention back and reclaiming it. Thank you so much for the work that both of you do. I can't

02:17:49

say it enough because it's so important and you've reached so many millions of

02:17:52

people and you're you're both changing the world in a really in a way that my

02:17:55

words would not be able to capture. Um but just thank you and please keep going and if there's anything more that I can

02:18:01

do to support both of your causes, um please do let me know what they are and on behalf of all of my you know many

02:18:06

millions of people that are with us right now um thank you so much for saving our children.

02:18:11

>> Thank you Stephen. Thank you for giving the world so many opportunities to

02:18:14

accommodate and create new mental structures. >> It's always such a pleasure to join you,

02:18:19

Stephen. And truly, I feel like you are changing the world as well. >> Thank you. We're done. Thank you.

02:18:27

YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and

02:18:33

all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different

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for everybody looking right now. Check this video out and I bet you you might love it.

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Episode Highlights

The Importance of Deleting Short Form Videos
Experts agree that deleting short form videos is crucial for mental well-being.
“Oh my god, yes, that would be the most important thing you can do for your intelligence and for humanity.”
@ 01m 29s
February 16, 2026
The Rise of Short Form Videos
Studies show that kids spending time on short form videos are experiencing increased depression.
“It's looking like the kids who are spending a lot of time on this are doing much worse.”
@ 16m 54s
February 16, 2026
Meta's Internal Research
Internal documents reveal Meta's awareness of the harm caused by their platforms.
“They've done research to make it maximally addictive.”
@ 32m 13s
February 16, 2026
AI's Role in Human Connection
AI chatbots are emerging as companions, but they may reshape human relationships negatively.
“AI is coming to hack our attachments.”
@ 42m 34s
February 16, 2026
Tech Executives' Responsibility
Critique of tech companies for shifting the burden of responsibility onto society.
“The harmful externalities get foisted on the rest of us.”
@ 52m 50s
February 16, 2026
The Default Mode Network
Exploration of how our brains need boredom to reset and find meaning.
“Boredom might be the antidote.”
@ 01h 01m 46s
February 16, 2026
The Dangers of EdTech
The introduction of computers in classrooms has led to a decline in educational outcomes.
“We made a colossal blunder with edtech in the 2010s.”
@ 01h 16m 08s
February 16, 2026
Popcorn Brain Explained
Understanding the phenomenon of 'popcorn brain' and its societal implications.
“Popcorn brain is the sensation of your brain popping.”
@ 01h 26m 56s
February 16, 2026
The Rise of Smartphones
2012 marks the year most people get smartphones, changing communication forever.
“It's now radically different, much more hostile to human development.”
@ 01h 40m 34s
February 16, 2026
The Echo Chamber of AI
AI chatbots create a unique echo chamber effect, influencing beliefs in unsettling ways.
“It's the echo chamber of one. So it's you speaking to you.”
@ 01h 53m 19s
February 16, 2026
Meaninglessness Among Youth
A shocking spike in feelings of meaninglessness among young people is alarming.
“The saddest graph is the one my life feels meaningless.”
@ 02h 02m 12s
February 16, 2026
Reclaim Your Attention
Learn how to take back control of your attention from your devices.
“Reclaim your attention because your attention has been largely taken from you.”
@ 02h 13m 00s
February 16, 2026

Episode Quotes

The destruction of attention is the largest threat to humanity that’s happening around the world.
Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!
Tik Tok's algorithm is like crack cocaine.
Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!
This is a level of cruelty that goes far beyond the tobacco industry.
Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!
I couldn't pay attention in school for very long.
Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!
2014 marks a shift in time spent alone.
Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!
If you simply give people money to do nothing, you guarantee they'll feel useless.
Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!

Key Moments

Short Form Video Impact16:54
Addictive Algorithms34:52
Loneliness Crisis50:26
Anger Towards Tech55:27
EdTech Critique1:14:23
ADHD Diagnosis1:22:54
Global Turning Point1:35:10
Two Changes Rule2:15:05

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown