The Future of Digital and Analog Trends

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It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things. You can social media your thing, generate images or videos of your thing, make decks or presentations to show your thing Whatever needs to be done for your thing, Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing What I'm seeing in my practice is boys coming in with all sorts of body image issues, body image concerns that used to be typical curiosities around puberty or this passing phase of insecurity during puberty, which passes. But now it seems like this transitional phase during puberty insecurity is now becoming a lifelong identity crisis or at least feels like it Why do you think that now transitions happen? Yeah So suppose you have boys trying to evaluate themselves, whereere am I in the among the other There are lots of ways that I could be cool or not. and there are lots of different sports that that maybe I could be good on And so I'm not automatically condemned to the basement here forever. And then you put them in a world in which they're all these signals and it's overwhelmingly based on your looks. Now that that was long been true for girls, so it's horrible for girls. but now it's the case for boys because you don't get to show off your athletic prowess. It's how do you look? Do you look masculine tough dominic You know, it's like you werere happily enjoying child,ight you're thrown into this seething cauldron of middle school and suddenly renegotiating this and you're looking for guidance to wear to your parents, to the people in your community. No, too the streamers and social media people who are the most extreme who have been able to garner the most likes. So it's sick. it's cruel Welcome back to the Checkp podcast. Today's guest is the world renowned Social scientist Jonathan Hite. He's emerged as one of the more popular thought leaders on children's screen timee and social media over use. He's written bestselling books like The Anxious Generation and now the Amazing Generation, which is specifically targeted at nine to twelve year olds, empowering them to have control over their devices instead of being controlled by them I've spoken to doctor Hype before about the struggles young people face today as they grow up in a world dominated by bottomless feeds and predatory algorithms. I've invited him back on the show today to talk about something more specific. The struggles I'm seeing in my practice from adolescent boys who are falling victim to look maxing, the manosphere, where this relentless wave of male influencers are preying on the body image issues of young boys and it's truly leading to some major concerns. Dr. Heyight, the world is a scary place And getting scarier, I suppose. Yeah, yeah. But you seem very relaxed and happy Well You know, each of our lives are not really made up by what's going on in the world. Tue. You know our happiness and our engagement is really very local And I'm just really blessed to live in a great place. I love living in New York. I'm working with a great team. We're working on this big problem of how to restore childhood So if I seem relaxed, I'm not really relaxed, but I am pretty engaged these days. It's interesting to hear you say the word local becausecause I am afraid that the word local no longer exists in the age of which we live with social media Everyone looking at their phones It seems every international problem is now a local problem What does that do to not just a developing brain, but to anyone's brains So you know I'm going to play the well, I'm a social psychologist who also loves evolution and anthropology. I love looking at What is human nature? How does it vary and You know, our environments have changed gradually over thousands of years But all of a sudden, things are changing so quickly that a lot of our evolved systems that evolved for life in the physical real world wildly malfunctioning in this virtual world. And so is there a specific example of when they malfunction or how they malfunction?ure Yeah. Okay, so let's start right in with the biggest area of all, which is relationships. You know, originally, everyone said your social media, o, you know, you can connect to everybody, you can have thousands of friends And And when I started this campaign two years ago to roll back the phone based childhood and raise the age for social media sixteen, people, oh, but it's how they connect. it's how they find friendship Okay, so if you have no understanding of human nature and you just think Hey, if I can connect with a thousand people, I'll be better off than if I only connect with three That's not the way we work humuman relationships are between who have bodies And if you think about what friendship was like when you were a kid You know, you share food and that bonds you together. You share a lot of laughter. I remember just laughing constantly with my friends and joking shhared laughter has really deep physiological and even hormonal effects Whereas liking each other's post doesn't do it. um We We move together in time, you know, girls play patty cake or we do physical things responding to each other's bodies. And in the process to love that person all of that away Give every kid thousands of shallow friends and what do you have incredibly lonely, not just generation, but an increasingly lonely world Why is the body such an important part of that equation to develop a meaningful relationship. Is there a world where perhaps That was the world we grew up in but not the world Gen Z or even Jen Alpha grows up and that could be okay or is the b it's part of the equation that's mandatory.. In theory, what you say is true. And of course, you know, we haven't lived in the environment that we have The arirment we adapted to or evolved in was the savanns of Africa Obviously we haven't lived in that way for a long time. So we are adaptable But as we've moved to different places, we recreate things, we do things. So we create villages. We have a local community. You know, I live here in New York City, know in Greenwich Village is kind of a, you know you get to know the shopkeepers. So we recreate things. Okay, so why is the body so important? Let's start looking at human beings from a different perspective. We think of ourselves as minds, as brains, where this great intellect that is sort of on top of this body. Oh, I better take care of my body because that's just like the tool that gets me around. But really You know, I'm in here, I'm in my head Actually, brains are five hundred million years old. They've been evolving for a long time to run bodies. and a lot of your brain is involved in representing the nerves coming in from your body We think using representations of our bodies. We use metaphors from our bodies And so to suddenly put people in a world where you're mostly just sitting and looking at a screen, that's your social life. You know, for adults like you and me You know, when I mean, maybe it will be okay But for kids whose brains are developing and expecting millions of face to face social interaction If you remove seventy percent of those The outcome's not going to be good. Yeah, you know, what's interesting to me in this dilemma that It's if I was to make a prediction, I would say the people who would have the hardest time in this current generation would be us because we didn't grow up technology around us and we grew up with bodies. So therefore We're forced to adapt to a new online digital world and that could be quite hard. Whereas if you're younger and you're growing up in this world, perhaps you're more accustomed to it and more comfortable But it seems to noting out that way. So again, what you're saying makes a lot of intuitive sense. And twenty years ago, I think a lot of people believed that And I still hear people saying, Oh, but, you know, I mean, they're going to live in this digital world. They're going their workplace, they've got it. So let's start them early you know, if my kid, if my kid gets started, you know on social media when he's seven, he'll be really well adapted to master that world when he's an adult Okay It may sound a little intuitively compelling. If you start your kid on piano earlier, I guess that will help them go further But what we're seeing now is that the idea of a digital native was a horrible idea that if you raise kids without normal social experience, without a lot of running around, low a lot of sunshine, without a lot of normal wrestling and touching, if you raise them like with computers instead, that they'll somehow come out better No. The technology is incredibly easy to use If you took you know, Amish kids who or whatever, you know, people who had been raised with no technology whatsoever, and then you put them in this world at the age of eighteen You know, how long will it take them to learn to use social media or AI? a few weeks, maybe a few months And there'll be way ahead. because their brains will have developed the ability to pay attention. and to have relationships. was what we're seeing, I don't want to overstate it, lookook, most kids are not mentally ill, most kids are okay. but on average, on average, what we're seeing is a generational decline in many really important human abilities. It's common throughout the English speaking countries. It's common throughout the West, maybe a little bit less so. there's an interesting debate now about why the English speaking countries are doing worse We don't yet know about the developing world. What we're talking about is a reduction in human potential out of a scale faster than has ever been seen in history. I mean,, hardard to compare it to the black death and a third of people dying, but at least in modern times, generally speaking, we've increased human capital. We've increased human ability steadily over ple of centuries. now it's declining. Do you think that when Children spend a lot of time in this digital world. They become digitally native that is problematic because they have to spend time in the physical world. Exactly. Whereas if you become well accustomed to the physical world, you can dabble in the digital world becausecause the physical world is still the majority of the time that you're spending with social I would situations. I see what you're saying but again, I would go further than that Um the the the The child So infancy is this amazing thing. How do you get a large brain into a tiny package that can actually come out through the birth canal of a woman? Okay? That's an incredibly complicated you know, almost impossible task And so we have, you know infancy and we have this long, long childhood The point of the long long childhood is to give the brain time to scaffold its development. And so the kid they first have to crawl and then they can stand and then they can, you know, you have to go through things in order And if you just take take a six month old and you say, OK, we're going to skip all that. We're going go right to, you know, bicycling oring driving a car, like, no, you can't do that. have to the brain has to develop skills in a certain order if instead of all that physical engagement with the world Kids love to run around climb things. They need to develop the physical skills of living in a world of predators and prey where they What are the games we play as kids? Tad, sharks and minnows, They need to practice all that stuff And then you get a properly developed human mind that's capable of dealing with the world The brain changes speed up during puberty, the brain's changing even faster during puberty, and then it slows down. Late teens, it slows down. It's kind of more or less done from a cortex by age twenty five You have to go through that developmental period. If you say instead, we're going to give you the childhood you experiences of a cat, you know, that would make no sense. Your brain wouldn't come out right And so to say, oh no, we're going to give you dig the childhood experience of a digital native. No Don't do that if you want. So here' the thing. Parents. me I'll look right at that camera there Parents If you want to prepare your child for success in the digital future, their brain development in the present from the ravages of a digital childhood Let them make real friends face to face, no AI friends Let's them, let's them Spend a lot of time with other kids, let them run and play If you put them on devices early, you are not giving them an advantage. You are interfering with their brain development And there is a chance that that effect will be long lasting. Study and play. comeome together on a Windows eleven PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. 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Spring to slit into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you. and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up Springs Calling Ross, work your magic Do you think I've seen some criticisms of the idea that the digital generation is being unfairly targeted, that it's not just social media, it's not just digital. There are other factors at play perhaps it's How you interact with social media or are you an individual who is struggling with mental health therefore seeking out social media? Do you find any of those arguments to be fair? Well, first of all, there certainly is no unfair targeting of Gen Z. I mean, we're all My kids are Gen Z, mostost of us in this game have kids who are G Z or now G alpha, born after about twenty eleven or so Um And so none of this is targeting. All of this is an attempt to turn around trends that are extremely alarming U and As I've traveled around the world, talking about this, what I've found is that wherever I go If there is a country in which kids have devices, meaning pretty much every country on earth You have the same fight within the family. You have the same addiction going on. The devices work the same way on developing brains quuick dopamine, quick dopine, addiction, addiction That's universal human experience of growing up with touchscreens. That wasn't true for television. Television isn't the quick dopamine, quick addiction thing But now it is And so there's no issue of unfair targeting. There's the recognition technology, we've always had a complex relationship with it, and it's always been mostly positive with some negatives And my argument is that somethingomething new happened by the early twenty thousand tw s smartphone, the touchcreen, all of that has created a digital environment that I think is mostly damaging to development with some positives Do you think it's Interesting that, I believe last year, JamMma published a report on this, pointing out that they believe there's not enough evidence to say that there's a caitive relationship between social media and harm to a developing mind theirir stance and the authors stance largely is that there's problematic use And not all screen timee is the same and that there are many who use screen time or higher levels of screen time and actually do quite well. That's all true. People who use social media to find communities where They are otherwise left out by their peers. they find joy in being on social media and finding that connection Why do you think that they're not fully saying that there's a causative relationship? R. let's go through it because it's really important for people to understand the a few aspects of the scientific debate here. So let's start with the argument that social media is a lifeline. That's the word you'll hear. Social mia is a lifeline for LGBTQ kids This is a talking point pushed by Meta and others to try to inflame sentiment on the left. And then they say Any regulation is censorship, they say that to inflame people on the right You know what was a lifeline for LGBTQ kids, the internet if you were You know, if you were gay growing up in a rural area in the eighties Horrible. You were isolated So when the internet came in in the ninetyies, LGBTQ kids, it was a lifeline They could get information instantly. They could find a variety places where they could interact with people And the internet that we had in the nineties I don't see any sign that that was harmful or toxic. So the internet is incredible and the internet solved those problems Now fast forward to twenty twelve and later. Now what do you have? What did LGBTQ kids gain by adding onto the internet An environment in which you have algorithms feeding you stuff and connecting you to men who are sexual predators. MetA has had very lax policies around kicking people off, even involved in sexual trafficking. They had a seventeen strikes and you' out policy according to one of their former former employees So so the issue isn't Oh, you know you know, kids in marginalized communities, they they You know, we'd isolate them if we took away social media No, they'd have the rest of the internet They wouldn't have the worst part And the research shows very clearly people who are most harmed, who say that they are most harmed are LGBTQ kids So yes, they use it a lot more. They encounter many more sexual predators. They're much more likely to be sex extorted and pulled into sexual trafficking. So please don't confuse social media, which is the , onene of the worst parts, along with gambling and porn and a few others Don't confuse that with the internet. The internet has a lot of advantages. Okaykay now then the larger point is there is a scientific debate. There are a number of researchers who say, well, they don't say that social media is safe. What they say is There's a correlation. We all agree that people who use it a lot are more mentally ill. Everyone agrees about that But some say, well, but maybe it's that People are more mentally ill, they seek it out to find community. Okay, well, first of all That wouldn't explain why as soon as kids got on social media around twenty twelve, the girls got on Instagram wouldn't explain why at that point then that's when mental health tanked But even that's a correlation, that's a historical correlation. Two things happen at the same time What my lab has been doing is we've been gathering the evidence of causality. How do we know that it's not just a correlation. How do we know that it's causal And actually, This is what we do in science. I mean, this is not an impossible task. R. So I'll just list, I mean, I could spend an hour talking about this, I'll just list, here are the different kinds of evidence that it's causal So first There are now over thirty, my group we found thirty eight, I think it is, experiments where random control trial, you ask some people to get off social media And then you see what happens to your mental health And overwhelmingly, they find benefits on there's not a single measure where we found that it was harmful So there are experiments and that's the but the issue with those is the short termess of it all because The adaptability and plasticity of a mind showing how perhaps they can feel really great of taking a dopamine break you know, one of these dopamine vacations And then after the week, the benefit kind of goes away. Does that stay? Yeah, But you know, the studies only go for a couple of weeks and there certainly isn't a sign of decay overall. But sure, that's a theoretical possibility U But then we also have the natural experiments. What happens when When high speed interternet came into different areas in late two thousands and early twenty thousand ten s, it came into different parts of Canada or Spain or Germany or Italy. I mean, so's a lot of there are nine or ten studies now. that looked at that at the staggered rollout. And what did they find? My group and two totally different groups, all three of us have looked at this set of studies. We've all found the same thing. When it came in In the years after that, you get an increase in psychiatric admissions, especially for girls girls and young women. So over and over, so that's another kind of causal evidence. This is not just a correlation. This is a quasi experiment. Well, that could be causal evidence that some subgroup could have been harmed at a higher level. Yeah. Young women. Yeah. That's what we're saying. Young women are we're the first to get hit. And we'll talk about boys later because they're hittit in a different way But yeah, if you focus on young women, I think the evidence of causality is now very strong and from multiple sources But here's the other thing. you know, we're all confined to The correlational studies, the longitudinal studies, the experiments, and the quasi the natural experiments, Th those the four areas that we psychologists argue about But there's so much more evidence, okay? F What do the kids themselves say When you talk to older GenZ and you survey them Are they grateful that they're digital natives? Do they look back and say, wow, social media was great? No, they do not A lot of them regret it, very few are grateful to it You actually saw an interesting point there from Pew. They did some research on this and it was like sixty or seventy percent believe that social media was negatively impacting mental health of their friends, local communities and them The second point of it which was more interesting to me is that only thirteen percent believed they We're being negatively impacted by I' curious why that is. Well no, I haven't heard numbers that low recently. The most recent pew that I heard was, I cant was twenty or thirty percent of girls said at harm to their mental health. There are different surveys But look, a if you put a consumer product out into the world that thirty percent of the girls who use it say this has harmed me. Any other field, any other industry, they'd be sued to death. This one had a special exemption from Congress that nobody could sue them until this year, we finally got one case through and there would be many more to follow But just to finish up on the evidence if the kids themselves are saying this is harming us And then And they have the front row seats. They're the only one, they're the only ones who really know what's going on And then who has the next best seat? Meta. They know exactly who saw what and when U U My group compiled reports about there are twenty eight or thirty Um, studies that Meta did that came out during the trials, during the trials in Los Angeles U So Med has done a lot of research, including an RCT, including a randomized controlled trial. of getting kids off social media. So So the kids have the best seat and they say this is causing a lot of harm Meta has and other companies have the second best seat. Their own research shows that they're harming kids, and this is just like the tobacco companies, their internal research showed harm. Where's the next best seed? parents and teachers and coaches and therapists And we've collected all kinds of surveys of them Good luck finding more than a couple who think that this is good for kids, especially kids with anxiety problems So what I'm saying is There is so much there's so many different lines of evidence saying, this is hurting our kids And there are still psychologists, I understand, we're in a scientific debate. There's still psychologists say, Okaykay, but I'm not persuaded. it may just be, but I't it's just a correlationmor because there's so much experimental evid Oh yes, the multifactorialness of it all. course OK, sure. Of course it's multifactorial. So people sometimes accuse me of saying, Height says that one hundred percent of it was caused by smartphones. And every kid who of course not, I'm a social scientist. what I'm trying to understand is when you get a generational change, a historical change in the averages from going up to going down This is a global emergency. Yeah. Pandora jewelry brings the sparkle to your summer, now with even better prices. Enjoy up to fifty percent off select styles, from personalized pieces to must have favorites made for the summer Timeless designs that shine with you through every moment, whereerever the summer takes you. Sop in store or online. now through july sixth. Terms and addditition apply. Visit pandora. net for details This episode is brought to you by State Farm You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over nineteen thousand local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs. So you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. 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Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Luarics's disease, Myasthenia Gravis or Lambber Eat syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects Why wait? askk your doctor, visit Botoxchronicmigraine. com or call one eight hundred four four Botox to learn more. And you mentioned Bys are starting to struggle with the social media world. The looks maxing trend that we discussed earlier What I'm seeing in my practice is boys coming in with all sorts of body image issues body image concerns that used to be tyypical curiosities around puberty or this passing phase of insecurity during puberty, which passes But now it seems like this transitional phase during puberty insecurity is now becoming a lifelong identity crisis or at least feels like it You have streamers that are fully cashing in on Catching the attention of this age group, thirteen to eighteen years old. especially in the male community, which is very unusual Why do you think that now transitions happen? Yeah This is a great example of what we were talking about before about how you sort of change the environment in which we live and all kinds of weird stuff happens So Elementary school for most kids is fun. It was fun for my kids. It was fun for me. I remember. And then you hit middle school and it's awful ot for everybody, but it's really different Um and 'cause you're getting you're leaving the world of just pure play and entering suddenly, you're entering a period and where everybody is now evaluating everybody else and themselves, whereere do I fit And now you have very gendered status hierarchies At this point, I mean, I remember in elementary school, it was already the case that cool the socially prestiged the dominant boys were the good athletes was that simple. If you're good athlete you're high. Um, By middle school, it is still very much it's physical dominance For girls, it's looks and also social centeredness. Wh knows whose secrets? Who's the girl that is sort of the center of things So you have these new status hierarchies. That's been true for a long, long time before social media Okay So so suppose you have boys trying to evaluate themselves, where am I in the among the other Fifteen boys in my class Um There are lots of ways that I could be cool or not. There are lots of different sports that maybe I could be good on And so I'm not automatically condemned to the basement here forever And then you put them in a world in which there are all these signals and it's overwhelmingly based on your looks. Now that was always that was long been true for girls. so it's horrible for girls Now it's becoming the case for boys because you don't even get to show off your athletic prowess, How do you look? Do you look masculine tough, dominant And so to put these poor kids who are suddenly, it's like,, it's like you were happily enjoying childood andonight you're thrown into this seething cauldron of middle school and suddenly renegotiating this. and you're looking for guidance to wear to your parents, to the people in your community, No to the streamers and social media people who are the most extreme who have been able to garner the most likes So it's sick. it's cruel We have to let our kids develop in a relatively normal human social environment. And once again If you want to prepare your kids for this digital future with so much cruelty in it Imerse them in it early protect their brain development through puberty I've had guests on the show in the past talked about the aesthetic revolution, the need for being honest with your kids about their appearance which was a bit shocking to me, but you know, I like to hear people out even if I disagree with them. Um, saying how Those who are quote unquote ugly, liive on average a worse life Their pay is lower They experience more mental health conditions. they're more ostracized by friend groups and that by heavily investing into their looks They can be saved from this or healed from this. I think healed was the word my guest used. What do you take from that? So it used to be the case that there were multiple ways that you could excel What you said is absolutely right about there one of the stronger prejudices that we have is stronger than race or gender or I don't know gender, but is beauty. do we do respond more positively to people who are beautiful or attractive. So there is there is some truth to that U And so to help your child, you know, become more attractive is not a bad thing. to frrame it around your child that your value is your looks. That's the most important thing Um Hm I, you know It sounds again kind of cruel to me kids need to develop along their different lines of excellence they can develop. And the more you focus it on looks, it's obviously horrible for girls. and now as you say, it's happening to boys. Can you give us a little bit more detail? what are the boys And when they come to you, what are they what do they want to do? What is it that what is the psychological effect? Yeah this The psychological effect that I see playing out is they is an underdiscussed male loneliness epidemic Even in younger males. and When you start exposing them to The people who they look up to sharing this loneliness and hatred for people isolating them. and sharing tips for how they got out of it It now feelels almost an addictive process of trying to get out of loneliness by doing look maxing And to me, that is The exact opposite of what you should do or recommend to someone who is struggling with loneliness You encourage them to connect, you encourage them to step outside of their comfort zone and overcome by giving them tools And those tools are not pllastic surgery scalpels, and tide Injections Yes And this is the reality in which we live. every single day teenager, maybe early twenties individual asks me about peptides to make their skin clearer, to make their muscles bigger, to make their muscles heal faster, recover from exercise And I don't know where this came from because it's a hyper optimized version of wanting to look a certain way. But it really takes my mind to the idea of You're not chasing a goal You got to chase the journey Yeah And that journey, that friction that we oftentimes discuss of When we talk about the topic of love as an example, it's the friction that makes it special versus what happens with those kids? or twenty year olds when they do get giant muscles. Do they just continue on seeking more and more and more to what end And it reminds me of when I was growing up The steroid era was still happening. I just talked about in sports Sammy Sosa, Harry Bonds, like it was top of conversation for us. but it was always somethinghing we frowned upon Almost how smoking is today But yet vaping is cool and pouches are cool. So it's interesting how that shifted. and I think about this almost like bigigorerexia whereere you just constantly want to be bigger, stronger And I don't know what to what end. And I don't know that this actually cures or helps with loneliness and all those issues that started the journey to begin with So from a societal perspective I think social media is definitely adding to this. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. The social psychology that I'll put on the table here is called prestige biased learearning So an interesting way to look at human beings, and this is from in part from Joe Henrick, an anthropologist at Harvard if and um He points out he and his and his and his team, his advisors They developed the idea that If you look at humans as learning machines and the competition in evolution was always who can learn the best? who can learn notot just the fat, who can learn the best What would you build into a mind in order to have childildren or you humans that excel at learning cultural knowledge from previous generations So one heuristic is Copy's common when in Rome do what the Romans do. and so we're very good at saying, oh, what's everyone doing around here? Okay, I'll do that too L trend set or trend exxactly. So trend Yeah. So that's very clearly part of human nature And kids have always done that. And so if you suddenly expos into a world in which everyone is pumping iron or everyone is, you know, every boy is talking about his abs or whatever it is. then they're going to feel like, oh, I need to do that too but it gets worse because there's a second A second learning algorithm or learning what is he call them learning heuristic? called prerestige biased learning which is don't just copy the average, donon't just copy what people are doing. Look around who do people think is high status Okay, I'll copy him And this is the birth of celebrity. and this is why celebrities have hangers on who want to be close to them and soak up things from them and get the credit from So The idea that kids as young as nine, ten, eleven will be thrown into celebrity culture where they're supposed to worship, you know, they're going to see that everybody else is pointing to these these idols. So I'm going to be like them Now, any weird goal could be put into your child And so one weird goal is just be as big and musculular as you can. Now, obviously it's going to relate to deep evolutionary systems about appraising masculine. So so it's not that it's totally arbitrary But what kids aspire to be when they hit this period of middle school and puberty is gonna to be governed by prestige by his learning So this is one of the main reasons why I think it's so important Just raise the age for social media to sixteen. Really it should be eighteen. this should be an a delelta only activity, talking with strangers and sending photos and videos am with strangers, some of whom want sex from you. I mean This should be an adult activity And what I've tried to do as a social psychologist is say, look, what we need is a norm that is widely followed. And I thought if I went for eighteen, we wouldn't get it, but I think sixteen we can get sixteen sort of the end of puberty for you know, girls are mostly done. boys are kind of finishing mostly So just raise the age. I don't want to hear your arguments about, oh, well, but some kids would be able to have this benefit and some yeah, sure, some kids could. but this is devastating the entire ecosystem of childhood for everyone This should not be a part of childhood, nor should gambling? Nor should pornography. These should just not be normal parts of childhood, but they are, right now they are. They childhood is shot through with all of these vices. becausecause we just let it happen When you say social media, how do you define it Because even I was on the Oh my God, the committee for Eects of social media on addolescent Health for New Jersey. that Gvernor Murph, the previous Gvernor New Jersey put together. And I was on that committee One of the biggest struggles we had in creating this report was figuring out, are we going to call WhatsApp social media Is YouTube social media? Is Netflix social media? Is video games? Yes our video games social media. So I'm curious how you think about it. So let's first let's about social technology. There are technologies that let us be social like the telephone No problems messaging, texting, WhatsApp Mostly good. If you connect people, mostly good. Weird stuff happens. kids get into large groups, it takes on some of the feeling of social media. But I've never said anything about restricting kids from WhatsApp or texting or other things like Social media, there are a lot of ways to define it. but the prototype is people have a profile that anyone They post content. That's the key thing. Users are generating the content. TV studios have to pay a lot of money to make content, but what Medt and oers discovered is, hey, let's just sort of Motivate people so they'll make all the content that other people come to see Um And then you have users communicate. And so there's a variety of features that put you into contact with people in this weird way in which especially if a lot of the contact is one too many. So if you're texting a friend, fine. If you're using WhatsApp with a small group, it's great. no problem But if you are now trying to gain followers by doing whatever it takes to get followers You are now putting yourself in a skkinner box. So BF Sinner, behaviorist found that he created special boxes where he could train rats or pigeons very, very quickly by giving them you click a button, give them a reward every time they did a little something that he wanted, then they do a little more, thenen they turn a little further. and eventually he taught them how to play ping pong. He did amazing things. You can train animals very quickly if you can give them quick rewards And once you put kids into an environment in which they're trying things and looking at their response, trying things looking at their response They're in S skinner box And who has the button giving them rewards? It ain't you as the parent. It's whoever is the most, you know, weird and extreme and Now, I don't want to knock people of lots of followers. someome people earned it. but those but a lot of kids are in a desperate race to do whatever it takes. to get follow. Uers generated content The hierarchy of the following And is there if there like addictive dopamine quick hitting? Not necessarily. You could imagine a form of social media that wasn't about quick dopamine ones that we have because as Meta pioneered the advertising driven business model, you know, at first You know, apps were charging money But then they all quickly discovered You know If you offer the app for free, but it's just paid for by advertising, people you get millions of people taking your app. So once Facebook pioneered the advertisement driven business model and others joined in now the race is on to I got to grab your eyeballs before he does. If I don't do everything I can to get you to stay on my platform He's going to get you to stay on his platform So that all begins in earnest in the early twenty thousand ten s, that savage competition and to throw kids into that So kids attention, kids eyeballs are like You know, like the oil fields in Alaska, like everybody's competing to let's let's let's sink a drill and lets suck it out before someone else does So Do you think that This is a problem isolated only to kids, or do you think this is playing a role on our minds in some way as well? Yeah. It is certainly playing a role in our minds too, but there's two reasons why I have focused kids three reasons and why I don't talk a lot about adults, although I'm beginning to a bit more because adults are constantly saying to me, it's not just the kids, it's me too.. When we come to attention in particular, it's all of us But the reasons I focus on kids are twofold. The first, Um is that kids are going through this massive brain change. I mean, from birth through puberty and especially during puberty And so whatever weirdness, whatever weird scenario you're putting them in continontually, is going to have much bigger effects and possibly permanent effects because their brain is literally changing from the child form to the adult form, the adult form can take many forms In different cultures, we have slightly different brains in that culture got into, our brain different from a Japanese person or an Indian person So So the importance of acting quickly for children is much greater than it is for adults Adults, if we stop all this stuff, we'll get our brains back Our brands aren't being changed very much We're just it's our habits that are making it hard for us to pay attention, but our brains will recover. Um, um Johan Har is a great book Stolen fooccus where he He goes to Provincetown for three months for a summer and he gets his brain back So that's one. The other is that U you know, we're a generally libertarian nation and I have a lot of libertarian sympathies and I don't want to tell adults what to do. Unless it's a really, really compelling a reason for it Whereas we also live in a world in which lots of people are out to get children, know, predators, companies, people make addictive products. They're all out to get children as customers Dumbas And so we have a much more protective attitude towards children And we know, and this was one of the amazing things that came out those in those social media trials in Los Angeles is that these companies and here we mean meta, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube Those are the four companies that Thousands of parents were suing because they damaged their kids We have internal documents from all of them about how they were trying to hook kids. They used the word addiction until I think in twenty nineteen, Meda sent out a memo saying, do not use the word addiction anymore because it could show up in documents. Call it problematic use Sure, that is actually perhaps a better term, but it still means compulsive use that you can't control and that leads you to live in ways that you don't want and that cause harm to you So we know that they're all competing to hook kids So so that's the second reason is that we we all agree we can protect it. And then a third related reason Get businessiness done with the new American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited card, with unlimited two percent cashback on all eligible purchases, Unlimited five percent cashback on flights and prepaid hotels booked through American Express travel online, and a flexible spending capacity that can grow with your business. You'll have the confidence to keep building. 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We need to stop it. We need phone free schools. We need to raise the age to sixteen. We need to protect our kids from these predatory companies. Yeah. You mentioned phone free schools. I worked with Governor Kathy Hol in trying to push this in New York. I don't know if you're aware because I work a little bit in the political spectrum, I think it's come out that the TikTok CEO, Adam Presser is going and trying to reverse phone bands in schools Who was trying to reverse it? The TikTok CEO. Oh, good luck Phone free schools are so popular with teachers. Teachers love it. There is no way that this is getting that this is getting reversed. But I think it speaks to the villain mindset that you're describing of these companies. Yeah. Like if we ban cocaine and then the cocaine association says no, don't ban cocaine. like come, there's no way they're going to be successful. You know what? I would Aree with you. . intuitively But then I see the FDA just approved fruity flavored vapes that are extremely popular with children So I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, no I mean, so there's a wonderful book called The Age of Adiction by David Courtwright It's fascinating. He traces out Humans have always sought pleasure And it used to be, we had to work hard to get pleasure. You had to take down a beehive and get stung in order to get something sweet, you know? And that's slow dopamine. That's like you have a goal, you work hard delayad deelayedad. So that's all good. And that's what we evolve for. And that's what we want our kids to grow up learning. Set a goal, work towards it. and when you get it, it will be sweet. Okay But what's happened as we go into modernity, as we go into you know the age of disiscovery and you've got ships going all around the world. and now you've got, you know, you've got sugar and you've got Nit tobacco, you've got all these things moving around You get much more addiction and you get market forces and you get companies that are trying to push it. And then we enter the industrial age and now, it's not just you have tobacco leiefs, you have Machines that can make millions of cigarettes in a day and they're cheap and they're pushed everywhere and they were pushed on kids. and they were pushed in high schools in the fifties and sixties. So you get this this constant process of both the concentration of the reward so that you don't just have, you know, well, honey iss pretty darn sweet, but you know fruit is very good, but now like the kids don't even want fruit because there' so many sweeter things. So you get the concentration and that happens with drugs. you go from opium poppies to heroin to fentanyl. You get this concentration? And you get a removal of friction. as you mentioned before, friction is part of life. We need a world with friction But what the digital world has done is say How about you can have any vice you want, any timee, no shame Instant porn, you got it. You you want gambling, you got it. It's everywh Um, you know, you want you want nicotine? It's everywhere So we're creating we're going down this road that Ctright describes , and we desperately need is this is one of the major roles of government is to prevent a free market society from having competition. compometition is usually good among firms, but competition to hook kids before the other guy does There's no way to stop that as a race to the bottom. other than governments saying, stop it Stop it. Why do you think our government's not doing that? That's our government. Yes. Yes. I guess we do have a government. look, actually is very important. State governments have been amazing. And kudos to Kathy Hokel, kudos to Governor Murphy. and this has been totally red state, blue state. I mean, I've talked with a lot of governors, Most of them are acting on this. Most states have now passed phone free school legislation in some form So the governors are doing great. We do have state governments that work Congress, of course, is a mess. It was designed one way, but it has ended up another And it's so cheap. I mean, people marvel at how cheap it is to buy influence in the US. You know, you don't need tens of millions of dollars. You can do it for a lot less So I don't know what happened with the FDA. I have no idea, I don't want to comment on the FDA But at least with Congress, MTA and others, they spend a lot of money and they can stop anything in the house. and that's what's been happening I'll fill you in on the FDA situation. I think it was as simple as some of the nicotine execs golfing with the president and asking for for this passing to be made. and that's so destructive U Given the fact that we had the most recent outgoing FDA commissioner on the podcast talking about the problems that kids face. Now we're reinventing the problem. And this topic of friction has come up so often on the podcast and usually we're talking about it in the sense of a positive way that friction creates love, delayed gratification Friction also stops problems. So what is unique about our previous pandemic that we just had and I say previous because who knows what's coming from us? Um The reason why SARS COV II, the virus that causes COVID nineteen spreads so widely and so wildly. is because of asymptomatic spread. frriction was reduced So people who were feeleing okay We're walking out and spreading this virus Whereas SARS Cove one nearly lethal So those people were very sick, created lots of friction for spread, didn't spread as readily. was lethal. A lot of people died, but not as many people died. withith Sarscove too. Yeah, that's interesting So when I think about vapes as an example To me, it's very obvious from scientific literature that vaping is less harmful than true cigarette smoking. I think that's a fair point to say But it's not a zero ain They're still bad for you and there's issues with addiction. Yeah. you're changing your dopamine system. incredibly, especially at a sensitive time But what is frightening to me is that There's no friction. Yeah. They don't smell really bad. Oh You can do the in secret. That's right. There's no shame. There's no shame like with cigarettes that exist today. U The speed at which you can do it. you don't need to light anything, smoke alarms don't catch it. You could vape at a park, you can't smoke at a park Yeah So suddenly the friction is gone, the use case scenario expands The addiction potential actually increases because the nicotine amounts in the vapor are higher than that is what is found in a cigarette. So it's like this perfect confluence of events to make kids hooked on it. Yeah That's really powerful. and the reason I'm smiling as you're saying this is that you activated a memory that I think will illuminate the point you just made. When he was talking, it The phrase occurred in my mind from my high school physics class. I remember the physics teacher, Mr. New, was his name And he was giving us a problem. He said, imagine a frictionless monkey swinging from a tree.ike, you know, it's like, o. And then okay. And then he says wait imagine a frictionless world in which a monkey is swinging from a tree. And then he stops and he says Well, no, you couldn't have a friction in this world because it would fall apart instantly. like notothing would hold together if there was no friction And that's I think, what's happening to us with the digital transformation is that there used to be some friction for everything You know, if you want to get your opinion out Lots of ways to do it, but you have to find a postage stamp or you have to write something, you know, you couldn't just snap your fingers and have things happen But the technology has increasingly become like magic. You just snap your fingers and things happen. If you want to do something, you can just do it. When we're talking about adults trying to do their work in the world, That's mostly a good thing. likeike I'm all in favor of tools to help us adults do our jobs better But when it comes to children, children need friction. The last thing you want is to make your child's life effortless and frictionless. Um And especially when it comes to vice, this is the thing that's so upsetting to me now. You know when I wrote the book, I wasn't thinking about gambling then I was writing in like twenty twenty three, especially And then by twenty, twenty four, twenty five, now it's everywhere. It's throughout child I mean not young childhood, but you know, high school boys are I mean, they used to watch sports a lot and talk about sports. and now a lot of it's about the betting You don't have to be eighteen to bet. There's all kinds of ways around it And so again, the You know, I just want everybody to understand The technology has given us a world that has changed certain parameters So that in a way we're getting close to the vision that my high school physics teacher had of a frictionless world in which everything's going to fall apart Yeah, I think we've lost the system of checks and balances that we need to make a true free, capitalist society work Because the way that I imagine is there's all these forces that constantly want to get more people to gamble, to spend more time on social media, to create addictive algorithms, vapes, what have you. And then it used to be that the government would be able to be the force that ends that and says, oh, we gott to have some controls in place. We got to regulate this so that we don't create a race to the bottom But instead what has happened? Capitalist forces have got so strong that they're now buying the government from stopping them doing these things And until we, I think, become more aware of it and call it out publicly I don't I don't know where the the buck will stop Yeah I think you're absolutely right that There are regulatory systems that we've developed over a couple of centuries that will encourage economic dynams. and we want people to innovate, start companies, invent products, you know, market them, sell them, advertise them. know we want that all to happen But you have you have to have conditions that encourage efficient markets where there's no monopoly, there's no external costs foisted on people who aren't part of the transaction. There's all sorts of things you need to have a vibrant free market society And over time We developed those institutions and the FDA being really a great example of one But we've also always been subject to corruption every system is And as money has played a larger role in our politics, and of course, it did in the nineteeenh. It's not that this is new, but it fluctuates But as money is playing a huge role nowadays, it's very easy, it's so easy to buy influence I think our health, our public health and our children's health is being sacrificed in a really dramatic way And so But here's okay, but you know what? I've been pretty I've been so dark so far. Yeah I was about to say hand stage capitalism is in my head right now. ' it is, you know, because like, you know, you start studying one problem, like, okay, social media and depression And then you find out, wa, no, it's social media and gambling and porn and all the dopamine things, and it's all these outcomes and it's attention. So like the problem keeps getting bigger and bigger But let me turn this around by saying Here's the amazing thing We're actually working on it, like we're actually making incredible progress in the last year or two So when I started this, my book came you and I talked I think soon after the book came in twenty twenty four And you know, people thought it was crazy like o, you're going to raise you're going to have an age limit for social media? goodood luck. How you enforce Um People thought it was just crazy to think that we could change this. And it's, oh, you know, the trains left the station. You know, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. It's, you know, so people just there was a there was a fatalism. there was a a sense of resignation We can't change this. But an amazing thing happened which is that the mothers of the world werere so upset by this already. The mothers were felt it. they felt their kids being pulled away. and I think they felt it more than fathers did on average And soon as as soon as my book came in twenty twenty four, and this was around the world, even countries I didn't go to, whenever it came out groups of mothers would form or' already beginning a form And they jumped into action And they started demanding action and they started getting phone free schools and raiseding the age to sixteen in countries around the world, especially Brazil, Australia, in the UK. so much happened. really quickly driven by the mothers And I'm so excited by this because Authoritarian countries are better able to deal with this so far. China, they look at this and they say, OK, we're putting on time limits. Chinese kids can only play an hour of video games. I can't remember the rules, but there's very tight restrictions. They can do that in authoritarian country Democracy is much more vibrant. I love America. I care a tremendous amount about what's happening to American democracy. and I want to make it vibrant and strong And if we can't handle this, if we can't protect our own kids from what is now clearly damaging their development Then it's kind of game over for the Western democracies. But I'm so and you said at the beginning, you said you seem you know, he seemed like you, you seemed like you thisppiars And part of it is we really are making so much progress And so And so even though Congress has been disappointing But the states have been incredible. And countries around the world have been amazing and families across the country and around the world have been acting So I think we are seeing a resurgence of a kind of a democratic vitality or vibrance people are discovering, wait, we can change our local school Oh wit, we can change the law in our state. So so I am actually really excited. It's an exciting time. 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And platforms are trying unique things like Instagram just launched this new feature called instance where you try and share something in the moment so that you're in the moment, not creating a specific tailored version of who you are And I don't see huge uptake. I see people being proud that they don't have social media profiles. I see more and more accounts being private where they only have one hundred friends more like how social media started from the Mypace era so that's interesting. I'm curious From the Gen Z perspective, what has their feedback been to you about your work? Yeah So well, actually, so we have a new book out called The Amazing Generation. U Your guide to Fun and Freedom in a screen filled world, and it's for kids eight to thirteen who might be just getting phones? And the book is not just about like, oh, you know, don't grow up on phones. it's about living an exciting life with your friends in the real world, doing things in the real world And in the book, we interview, we have little snippets from interviews with oldlder Gen Z. Older Gen Z is so important because They They're now turning thirty. The oldest of GenzZ are turning thirty or twenty nine this year U And when kids read all these young adults saying I missed out on my childhood. You only get one childhood and I spent it you know, a scrolling orr one young man said, I wish, you know, I wish I gotten to know my grandfather better before he died instead of always being on my video game when he came over. this kid didn't get to know his grandfather And so the wistfulness, the tragedy that so many young people see is really powerful for the younger kids. I have spoken at so many universities and a lot of high schools And I always I give my presentation and then I always say Okay, members of Gen Z, raise your hand if you were born after in nineteen ninety five some raiser hand It's like just you Did I largely get this right or wrong? I mean, did I've said some things that are that paint a negative picture generation? please tell me Do you think I largely got this right or wrong All the time I've done it, maybe three hands have gone up to say wrong They know That's the thing Gen Z. they are not in denial. They know this is bad for them And so when they when they see a way forward, Now they're really acting. There are a lot of Gen Z groups now If you go to anxiousgeneration. com we have a whole page of aligned organizations. There are dozens and dozens of groups started by members of Gen Z T come together in the real world. You know, there's the Luddite Club was started in two high schools in Brooklyn you know design it for us is one that's been around for a long time. So Gen Z is really getting active here. You know, it's interesting you're talking about feedback in speaking at schools. I had this previous conversation with a gentleman talking about appearance and how it impacts a worldview And I was partially playing deevil's addvocate, but also standing up for my patients that struggle with anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia I was explaining that working on Y mental health Do't necessarily require working on your aesthetic Right. version of yourself I was explaining that cultural norms change widely and that what is beautiful in one place might be not beautiful in another and how that shifts. And I was trying to just create an alternative viewpoint to my guest. and yet a lot of the comments were unhappy with the fact that they believed I was disconnected from reality or from their reality What is the correct way to speak about this? because I know you have a lot of experience for me to get better in communicating there? Or is that just a problem? No that is super interesting the way you put it because What I've seen You know, is members of Gen Z are very receptive to my arguments about what know this is the problem they can't a lot of them can't imagine there's an alternative. They say, Well, if we don't have social media How would we connect you know, they've only known it. And so they they can't understand that before, you know, before twenty ten, You know, there was some Facebook, but people they called each other, they texted each other. you know, you have so many ways on the internet and you can get together in person. So I've seen a sort of you know, because this is all they've ever known, and it's totally overwhelming and encompassing And then you say, Hey, how about we take away this world and give you a better one? I can't imagine what that will be And I think it's the same thing here for boys growing up or you know, kids growing up in this like, it's all about your looks. It's all about your looks You know, like, oh, you're out of touch, like that's just the way it is. No, that is not the way it has to be. They're right that that's the way it is. It does not have to be that way That's the message that my movement is trying to convey. and that's what we're actually ha making some progress. because Nobody really wants it that way. It's called a collective action trap. Nobody wants it to be this way. But if anyone opts out and says, I'm not going to work on my looks Well, now they're at a disadvantage in some ways But I think a better way to respond to that line of argument and that fellow who advocated everyone working on their looks. Let's just spend a moment talking about what leads to happiness because we actually know a lot about that. The whole field of positive psychology is about that. What are the conditions of human flourishing And it's not Rising in status on this one dimension of looks. It's the degree of embeddedness that you have between yourself and others Yourself and your work or something productive and yourself in something larger than yourself at least this is the conclusion I come to in my book, The Happiness Hypothesis. I synthesize ancient wisdom, modern psychology But it fits with Sigmund Freud, who said love and work are the two key areas. I mean So the point is we want to raise kids and we want to be ourselves who have lots of real of close relationships, not a huge number, but close. We have close rel we are embedded connected And we do something that matters to others. We have a job. We care for kids. We're doing something know teens who have chores who are So we have to matter to other people And we need and we especially thrive when we feel we're part of some sort of a larger community or a moral order. We need an overarching moral framework So if those are three conditions for human flourishing What is the technology done to it Relationships shallow, swipe based The more connected people are, the lonelier they are because it's replaced human relationships, not augmented them a sense of purpose and meaning that you matter to others AI is threatening to take away vast numbers of jobs, The technology routinely makes it that we don't need anyone else. You can have an AI friend, you can have an AI girlfriend, boyfriend, sex partner Um So the technology is in many ways dehumanizing us by blocking relationships blocking our ability to matter to others. and shredding any common moral framework or moral canopy under which we can have a sense of coherence So this is the world that the technology is taking us into And I think we're beginning to see an awakening. I mean, the fact that a number of commencement speakers were booed recently because they mentioned AI, you know people are I think there is a tech lash And even though I was always very techno optimist my whole childhood and all the way into the twenty thousand ten s You know, I think that technology is now really dehumanizing us And I'm inspired that people are beginning to see this and take action. What do you think the three trends we can expect over the next ten, twenty years in this space would be? Analog schoolchools is for sure one Um Um AI resistance becoming a political movement, probably with more violence Um, Yeah. an unfortunate class divide over protecting kids. So the class divide is this. think about obesity and junk food twentiet centy comes foods everywhere, junk food's everywhere Uh thenen eventually we have a movement to sort of stop eating junk food. What's the class divide? It's upper class people, college educated people, they're trying to eat healthy, they're trying, you know to avoid junk food Working class, lower class people are not, they're not in that There are also financial constraints. And so obesity, which used to you, heaviness used to be a sign of wealth, you could afford food But since the twentieth century, it's the sign of class. Wealthier people are thinner. they're able to avoid certain vices So that's what we learned from the twentiet cent. GOP one access. Exactly. There you go. there you go. So the rich can do all sorts of things to protect themselves and their kids, and the poor have fewer resources and are not as likely to respond to those health messages. I'm curious on that class divide issue Have you seen any trends on the social media side of things? Are poor kids more susceptible to the harms of social media? And why? So one thing that we know for sure is the usage stats. So Pew and Galluop have good stats on you know, many how many hours a day are you on? and then they break it down by class and gender and everything And the big differences are that girls more than boys are on social media. Girls is more than five hours at agge of social media, boys are less than five hours. Class where kids in wealthier families have much less total screen time, kids in poor families much more screen time race, so Black and Hispanic kids have more screen time. And I believe that's true, even if you account for if you partial out class Um, Those are two of the biggest ones. LGBTQ kids are on more than others. And so all of those groups are more vulnerable. And when I said a class divide, what I mean is especially class divide in responsiveness And so when the Exious Generation came out in twenty twenty four It made the rounds in all the fancy private schools, you know the mothers who are you know really intense and focused on reading the research and like, do what's good for the kids. And there's a lot of research shown that working class, lower class people, they have what was once called natural parent natural growth parenting. the idea that You know, your kid is not your pet project to soup up and, you know, like kids, you know, kids will do what they do And so we're seeing a huge amount of uptake. So the four norms The forums that I propose the next generation No smartphone before high school, no social media before sixteen, phone free schools, and far more independence free play responsibility in the real world Those four norms, sort of upper class neighborhoods, you, wealthy suburbs Huge uptake. Those parents are getting together, they're creating pighborhoods, their kids are riding bicycles with each other And and I think what we're seeing, you asked me for trends, I think we're beginning to see. so I expect that it will grow unless we can reverse it is that wealthy families will increasingly be able to protect their children from digital harms And the digital harms will be concentrated in the bottom half or two thirds of the economic distribution, which is tragic And that's part of the reas why phone free Schools is so important. because levels the playing It level the playing field cause outside of school, the working class kids are on much more often. They spend much more of their lives on devuses. It's interesting because an advantage that I saw growing up poor we' on welfare in Brooklyn going to a public school was that The kids that were part of the richer families, they struggled to form connection and perhaps work through adversity as often. And there was actually an advantage to growing up as an immigrant. At least that's how I feel for me and a lot of my friends in the same group And now that advantage is almost gone becausecause when there's something so fun and inexpensive and addictive that you could spend a ton of time on, why would you ever go and try and work hard? That's right. I think what you said is absolutely right. I I believe I've seen research about that. and certainly You know decades ago, there was so many cases of these rich schools, these rich neighborhoods with huge side rates kids who are overwhelmed. And so I wouldn't have said that rich kids are healthier twenty, thirty years ago, mentally healthier But I think we're beginning we're beginning to see that. Now, of course the It's complicated, the rich kids still have vast pressure for college and all of that. But in terms of protection from digital harms,, there, I think we do see a huge class toiv One way to look at it and this is one thing that David Courtwright says, and a metaphor that he uses, is companies are dangling hooks in front of kids And these hooks are qued dopamine. anythingy would give be quickedpamine And you know, when I was growing up, I mean, you couldn't get porn a you couldnt buy it. You had a, you know steal. Yeah, you had to steal right from you know a cousin or older brother or something. know, I mean, there were which that probably brought you together more than any harm someome of us you who are too ashamed about it. But anyway, the point is, yeah, there were temptations, but they were few and far between. And now especially once the kids are online Imagine your son, especially and this is more for the boys and the girls. Imagine your son just sitting there. On a screen surrounded by fish hooks, baited with the most delicious stuff They're all saying Bite me, bite me, no bite me And that's childhood. Yeah. So again, you know, I'm putting things in a kind of extreme way, I'm not saying this is literally what childhood is, but this is the change we've seen once everything went digital. Yeah. It's why I think also marijuana use also disproportionately affects those of lower socioeconomic standing. In order to remove feelings of helplessness, you can do a couple things. You can work hard and get out of that helplessness and train yourself or you can numumb it And numbing it can be done through digital forms where you distract yourself or through mind altering substances to make you not feel those issues. And when they're so widely available, especially as marijuanas these days, I feel like it's a compounding issue No that's right. I just noticed when I was walking home from the gym the other day, you know, on sixth Avenue And there, you know, there's all these shops that sell, you know, cigarettes and things. But they had listed. it was like every possible dopamine trigger. They didn't list for. but they had like all these different. sure they w before ye Yeah, that's right. you know, because and you know, and who goes into them? it's going to be a class thing. It's going be it's marketing to working class people to say here, num your, you know numb your unhappiness. So Well, at least we have your first two being a little bit more positive withith phone free schools, more analog schools. And what was the second one remind me? So the first one I said, we're already getting phone free schools. Yeah that's clearly going to happen