The Kids (Aren't) Alright - World Happiness Report

[Brisketexan 105,083]

14 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

* More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

So, so, so much this.

As parents looking back on our parenting, we're happy with -- and we see the dividends of -- our choices to let our kids do a good bit of that.  Of course, we're also self-critical: we could and should have done better.  But letting your kids exercise independence, make their own mistakes, learn shit, and figure it out, is key to making them into healthy functioning adults.  From letting the boy grab a .22 and wander off and explore (on foot, on an ATV) our friends' ranch when we're there to hunt/do work was great.  Him doing a gap year on his own in Berlin (after COVID and his own illness set his natural social development back) was....maybe the best parenting decision we've ever made.  He did a lot of growing up and developing: he had to navigate his own food, laundry, getting his full visa (that was all on him, and he had to do it in a second language; he did so well at his appointment that he also helped the Iraqi Kurdish guy with the appointment after his), he learned how to drink and act a fool and what it was like to drink too much ("Dad....I puked all over much of Kreuzburg"), he got in a serious relationship that he wasn't ready for, he ended it awkwardly and learned some shit about how do deal with women and feelings.  The daughter....we could have done better with.  At least on fishing trips, I let her handle her own shit, and didn't hover.  She sorted out her own gear issues, she fought, landed, and unhooked fish on her own.  But she was also the "straight and narrow" academic star, and she followed that path throughout.  That said, she has lived in multiple countries, moving there and handling all logistics pretty much on her own.  She can solve some pretty adult problems, but she is still learning to adult.  We helped her with her high anxiety, and worked to give her tools, but she is just now REALLY figuring out how to be fully responsible.  And watching her do it is killing me.....but the fact that she's doing it thousands of miles away helps.  I CAN'T hover.  She is going to feel stress, and fail, and succeed, on her own.  Which she has to do.  She MUST do.

Do little things to show them that they CAN do things independently.  Shit, the boy was 15 when we went to CDMX.  Our last night there in Condesa, he heard the oaxacan tamales cart go by, and said "man, I really want one again."  I said "well, there are pesos on the table, you speak enough spanish to order, and you can find him.  Pay attention to your surroundings, and go for it."  So he went out into the city on his own, at night, and wandered a few blocks until he found the bike.  He was proud as shit when he came back in with his tamales.  A really little thing, but I remember the decision, and how pleased he was to have navigated a foreign city, in a foreign language, at night, and got his business done.

So, we got it far from perfect.  But geez, we see some other families we know that are much more helicoptery.  Not granting kids much independence at all.  And I really think that college is going to be a shock to the system for those kids.

[Herbie Hancock 7,345]

I’ve worked in a world renowned children’s hospital for almost a decade. The most ill-behaved, disrespectful, and emotionally/mentally stunted children I have ever seen in my life are the ones that have to have a screen in front of them at all times. It spans all races/religions/income brackets.

[Js1 85,297]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

("Dad....I puked all over much of Kreuzburg"

Pfft big deal, who hasn’t 

[Brisketexan 105,083]

5 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Pfft big deal, who hasn’t 

I'm more annoyed by the fact that he had a super cute Swedish gal who had fallen head over heels for him, and he ditched her because "it was just too much."  Number of cute Swedish girls old Brisket has had the opportunity to reject in his lifetime: 0.0.  Dumb little shit.

[usmc0331horn 953]

It's  the phones plain and simple along with social media because of the phones and social isolation because of the phones and depression and anxiety because of the phones etc.

[wildcat09 29,348]

On 3/22/2024 at 10:05 PM, hayden_horn said:

i am gonna argue that it's lack of mental health care, specifically for vets and their families, that have the boomers (specifically but it goes all the way back to world war 1) all fucked in the head thinking that seeking mental health care somehow makes people soft.  that's how the cruelty became the point. 

Johnny Sack, more than anyone on Surly, could really benefit from some therapy.  I suspect that's why he's so hostile to it. 

[YGIFS 19,449]

I think about that scene sometimes in "Mad Men" when Don was talking to his kids the night of the Kennedy Shooting.  And I think about when I was watching TV with my father when Reagan was shot by Hinkley.  I remember the state funerals of Ford and Nixon and Reagan and H.W. Bush like they were yesterday.  My cousin was a pall-bearer for Nancy Reagan's casket /csb.  I remember that moment when Bob Dole struggled to stand to salute H.W. Bush's casket.  It was a way that we, as children, onboarded the concept of death.  Among other means.  We all came together as a nation, as a people, to bury our heroes.  And then we lost pets, and grandparents, and aunts and uncles.  And we had no frame of online reference.  We merely gathered around the glowing Sony Trinitron.  There really is such a thing as "good" screen time.  Cronkite said as much.  

And this Autumn, we will all gather around the television set (albeit a flat and tall one /dangerfield).  And something once again...something wonderful will happen.  And our children will no longer have to live in so much fear.  

[RollLeft 5,040]

So of you motherfuckers really like to hear yourselves talk, fuck me.  

[Fudge Nuggets 19,189]

42 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Unfortunately, like everything else that is healthiest (and hard to do) for kids, the highest tally frequency of this behavior is found in the poorest demographics.

This is completely opposite to what I have observed over the last several years.

[Snake Diggity 4,620]

Top 10 list of crises causing this, in order:

1. Resilience: this skews worse as you analyze younger generations.  This goes hand in hand with #2, and paired together is what I think is driving the woefully misguided anti-woke crowd.  A culture of victimhood has allowed people to justify wallowing in failure or defeat.  We need to teach young people that anything can be overcome, because it’s true, and even if it’s not true, believing that lie generally leads to a happier life than not.

2. Accountability: this is a major problem for all generations.  I am not sure the cause, but our society does an epically poor job of holding people accountable for their behavior.  I think a lot of people’s unhappiness is bred from an external locus of control mindset and a lack of accountability for their own happiness.  We need to teach young people that they are in control of and responsible for their own happiness.  To be accountable is to be empowered.

3. Empathy: I trace a lot of this back to the Internet and social media, but there seems to be a tremendous lack of empathy in our current society.  People seem to be more able than ever to block out how their actions affect others.  This spans all generations.

4. Dignity of work: Working has gotten a really bad rap.  Our society glorifies people who inherited wealth more than people who work hard and aren’t wealthy.  Workers are viewed as suckers.  That has to change.  This problems spans all current generations including the Boomers.

5. Disinformation: Media bias is a gigantic fucking problem.  Society went from less than a handful of sources of information, all of whom presented basically the same information, to infinite, contradictory sources.  Being unable to trust new information breeds a lot of problems that flow into this happiness metric.

6. Healthcare:  our healthcare system is utterly fucked and almost no one has quality, affordable, convenient healthcare.  This is a tough nut to crack.

7. Education: our education system is utterly fucked and middle and lower class young people are getting the major shaft.  Unlike healthcare, I believe money can easily address this problem.  A much lower student/teacher ratio and a much higher salary for teachers would go a LONG way to fixing this problem.

8. Climate: it’s hot as fuck all the time and that makes people unhappy.  Also, thinking about societal collapse in the next 100 years because their grandparents and parents weren’t willing to make even moderate sacrifices has gotta be depressing as fuck for young people.

9. Inequality: I think there’s a big gap and this issue is far less impactful than the ones above it on the list, but wealth consolidation is a major problem.  Access to capital is probably the biggest determinate in someone’s ability to achieve in our society.  It far outweighs other factors like talent and fortitude.  That has always been a problem in our crony capitalist society over the last 200 years, but it’s worse now than ever.

10. Demographic: I think demographic trends are already causing problems, but this is more a forward-looking issue than something that is causing current unhappiness, and there’s actually a chance this could end up being a good thing if technology and migration are properly managed.  But there’s a worldwide shortage of young people relative to old people, and that’s a problem.

Mass shootings didn’t make this list, even though I believe they cause young people a lot of unhappiness.  And even though I believe guns should be much harder to obtain and that our national priorities are totally out of whack on that issue, I do think if you solved #2, #3, and #7 on my list, you’d see a dramatic reduction in problems related to guns.

Edited March 25 by Snake Diggity

[Brisketexan 105,083]

8 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

Top 10 list of crises causing this, in order:

1. Resilience: this skews worse as you analyze younger generations.  This goes hand in hand with #2, and paired together is what I think is driving the woefully misguided anti-woke crowd.  A culture of victimhood has allowed people to justify wallowing in failure or defeat.  We need to teach young people that anything can be overcome, because it’s true, and even if it’s not true, believing that lie generally leads to a happier life than not.

2. Accountability: this is a major problem for all generations.  I am not sure the cause, but our society does an epically poor job of holding people accountable for their behavior.  I think a lot of people’s unhappiness is bred from an external locus of control mindset and a lack of accountability for their own happiness.  We need to teach young people that they are in control of and responsible for their own happiness.  To be accountable is to be empowered.

3. Empathy: I trace a lot of this back to the Internet and social media, but there seems to be a tremendous lack of empathy in our current society.  People seem to be more able than ever to block out how their actions affect others.  This spans all generations.

4. Dignity of work: Working has gotten a really bad rap.  Our society glorifies people who inherited wealth more than people who work hard and aren’t wealthy.  Workers are viewed as suckers.  That has to change.  This problems spans all current generations including the Boomers.

5. Disinformation: Media bias is a gigantic fucking problem.  Society went from less than a handful of sources of information, all of whom presented basically the same information, to infinite, contradictory sources.  Being unable to trust new information breeds a lot of problems that flow into this happiness metric.

6. Healthcare:  our healthcare system is utterly fucked and almost no one has quality, affordable, convenient healthcare.  This is a tough nut to crack.

7. Education: our education system is utterly fucked and middle and lower class young people are getting the major shaft.  Unlike healthcare, I believe money can easily address this problem.  A much lower student/teacher ratio and a much higher salary for teachers would go a LONG way to fixing this problem.

8. Climate: it’s hot as fuck all the time and that makes people unhappy.  Also, thinking about societal collapse in the next 100 years because their grandparents and parents weren’t willing to make even moderate sacrifices has gotta be depressing as fuck for young people.

9. Inequality: I think there’s a big gap and this issue is far less impactful than the ones above it on the list, but wealth consolidation is a major problem.  Access to capital is probably the biggest determinate in someone’s ability to achieve in our society.  It far outweighs other factors like talent and fortitude.  That has always been a problem in our crony capitalist society over the last 200 years, but it’s worse now than ever.

10. Demographic: I think demographic trends are already causing problems, but this is more a forward-looking issue than something that is causing current unhappiness, and there’s actually a chance this could end up being a good thing if technology and migration are properly managed.  But there’s a worldwide shortage of young people relative to old people, and that’s a problem.

Mass shootings didn’t make this list, even though I believe they cause young people a lot of unhappiness.  And even though I believe guns should be much harder to obtain and that our national priorities are totally out of whack on that issue, I do think if you solved #2, #3, and #7 on my list, you’d see a dramatic reduction in problems related to guns.

Don't know if your order is exactly correct....but it's close enough.  Great list.

[usmc0331horn 953]

1 hour ago, Snake Diggity said:

Top 10 list of crises causing this, in order:

1. Resilience: this skews worse as you analyze younger generations.  This goes hand in hand with #2, and paired together is what I think is driving the woefully misguided anti-woke crowd.  A culture of victimhood has allowed people to justify wallowing in failure or defeat.  We need to teach young people that anything can be overcome, because it’s true, and even if it’s not true, believing that lie generally leads to a happier life than not.

2. Accountability: this is a major problem for all generations.  I am not sure the cause, but our society does an epically poor job of holding people accountable for their behavior.  I think a lot of people’s unhappiness is bred from an external locus of control mindset and a lack of accountability for their own happiness.  We need to teach young people that they are in control of and responsible for their own happiness.  To be accountable is to be empowered.

3. Empathy: I trace a lot of this back to the Internet and social media, but there seems to be a tremendous lack of empathy in our current society.  People seem to be more able than ever to block out how their actions affect others.  This spans all generations.

4. Dignity of work: Working has gotten a really bad rap.  Our society glorifies people who inherited wealth more than people who work hard and aren’t wealthy.  Workers are viewed as suckers.  That has to change.  This problems spans all current generations including the Boomers.

5. Disinformation: Media bias is a gigantic fucking problem.  Society went from less than a handful of sources of information, all of whom presented basically the same information, to infinite, contradictory sources.  Being unable to trust new information breeds a lot of problems that flow into this happiness metric.

6. Healthcare:  our healthcare system is utterly fucked and almost no one has quality, affordable, convenient healthcare.  This is a tough nut to crack.

7. Education: our education system is utterly fucked and middle and lower class young people are getting the major shaft.  Unlike healthcare, I believe money can easily address this problem.  A much lower student/teacher ratio and a much higher salary for teachers would go a LONG way to fixing this problem.

8. Climate: it’s hot as fuck all the time and that makes people unhappy.  Also, thinking about societal collapse in the next 100 years because their grandparents and parents weren’t willing to make even moderate sacrifices has gotta be depressing as fuck for young people.

9. Inequality: I think there’s a big gap and this issue is far less impactful than the ones above it on the list, but wealth consolidation is a major problem.  Access to capital is probably the biggest determinate in someone’s ability to achieve in our society.  It far outweighs other factors like talent and fortitude.  That has always been a problem in our crony capitalist society over the last 200 years, but it’s worse now than ever.

10. Demographic: I think demographic trends are already causing problems, but this is more a forward-looking issue than something that is causing current unhappiness, and there’s actually a chance this could end up being a good thing if technology and migration are properly managed.  But there’s a worldwide shortage of young people relative to old people, and that’s a problem.

Mass shootings didn’t make this list, even though I believe they cause young people a lot of unhappiness.  And even though I believe guns should be much harder to obtain and that our national priorities are totally out of whack on that issue, I do think if you solved #2, #3, and #7 on my list, you’d see a dramatic reduction in problems related to guns.

Phones

[Thetexashammer 1,062]

6 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Haidt's thesis is much broader than just focussing on one particular type of website. It's the broader impact and balance between multiple factors during childhood psychological development. Social media is just one aspect. Independence, free play, and social interactions in the real world is another. An excerpt:

Here is a non-paywalled link to the Atlantic piece: https://archive.is/ZBCJl 

Baba alluded to Haidt's proposed four point solution:

* No smartphones before high school

* No social media before 16

* Phone-free schools

* More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

Haidt says in this video: the world tells you "you are a balloon full of feelings and the world is full of pins". His ideas overlap 99% with Shrier, however, Shrier is much much hotter. Both are extremely evidence based.

Haidt also says in the video, about a dangerous playground: "This is good, because kids can get hurt. And that's crucial. Because if you can get hurt, then you learn how not to get hurt."

[Snake Diggity 4,620]

1 hour ago, usmc0331horn said:

Phones

Yeah, smartphones, social media, and the internet can be pegged as major source of most of the issues I listed.  

Narratives propagated online breed a lack of resilience, empathy, and accountability.  

The culture of excess and celebrity diminish the dignity of work.

The unregulated Internet breeds disinformation and misinformation.

And the 24/7 in-your-face nature of smartphones increases awareness of issues (climate change, war, inequality, etc.) and breeds a sense of powerlessness to address them.

In terms of what I think might be achievable ways to address these issues, I think an anti-smartphone/socialmedia campaign and legal accountability similar to what happened with cigarettes and smoking would be good.  We also need to poor a fucking fuckton more money into public education.

[YGIFS 19,449]

5 hours ago, RollLeft said:

So of you motherfuckers really like to hear yourselves talk, fuck me.  

It’s not talking; it’s typing.  You’re not listening, you’re reading.  Imagine what you and the next generation could be capable of with just a few lessons in vocabulary.  

[F250 28,764]

52 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

Haidt also says in the video, about a dangerous playground: "This is good, because kids can get hurt. And that's crucial. Because if you can get hurt, then you learn how not to get hurt."

[Captainant 27,641]

1 hour ago, Thetexashammer said:

Haidt says in this video: the world tells you "you are a balloon full of feelings and the world is full of pins". His ideas overlap 99% with Shrier, however, Shrier is much much hotter. Both are extremely evidence based.

Haidt also says in the video, about a dangerous playground: "This is good, because kids can get hurt. And that's crucial. Because if you can get hurt, then you learn how not to get hurt."

I guess my problem with his framing is that he's also requiring you to accept that climate change, social inequality, and the breakdown of our democracy are things not all that worth getting upset about. His core thesis is "if people wouldn't look at their phones they wouldn't be upset with existential climate change".

It boils down all the gripes and genuine issues into an incredibly boomerific view of "it must be those newfangled cell phones that are the problem!"

[Brisketexan 105,083]

30 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I guess my problem with his framing is that he's also requiring you to accept that climate change, social inequality, and the breakdown of our democracy are things not all that worth getting upset about. His core thesis is "if people wouldn't look at their phones they wouldn't be upset with existential climate change".

It boils down all the gripes and genuine issues into an incredibly boomerific view of "it must be those newfangled cell phones that are the problem!"

Yep.  I like Haidt, I do - I have The Righteous Mind on my bookshelf, read it a few years ago.  But my quibble with him is similar: he diminishes things that are actually a big fucking deal.  These aren't abstract things, they are things that have real-world implications and impacts, and actually affect people's lives.  Lots of people's lives.

Now, the fact that we are more AWARE of many of these things surely does affect overall mood.  But the counter to that is the cop-out take of "ignorance is bliss."  Sure, if I don't know there's an iceberg dead ahead, I enjoy dinner and dancing.  But if I DO know, that's right...I don't enjoy the dinner and dancing.  But I DO have a chance to go to the helm and try to get the captain to steer AWAY from the iceberg, saving a shitload of us a frosty death in the North Atlantic.  All in all, even though it's more stressful beforehand, I prefer the second option.

[Anastasis 23,464]

1 hour ago, Thetexashammer said:

Haidt says in this video: the world tells you "you are a balloon full of feelings and the world is full of pins". His ideas overlap 99% with Shrier, however, Shrier is much much hotter. Both are extremely evidence based.

Haidt also says in the video, about a dangerous playground: "This is good, because kids can get hurt. And that's crucial. Because if you can get hurt, then you learn how not to get hurt."

Those are your two most important take aways from the hour plus long lecture?

Edited March 25 by Anastasis

[Anastasis 23,464]

7 hours ago, F250 said:

Here is the context. 

 

 

[Anastasis 23,464]

If there is a criticism to make here, I think that his distinctions based on sex are somewhat superficial. Boys are very vulnerable to social comparison, in different ways of course than girls, but in some ways very similar. He moves past this too quickly. 

[Thetexashammer 1,062]

8 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Those are your two most important take aways from the hour plus long lecture?

No.

[F250 28,764]

8 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Here is the context. 

 

 

This makes more sense. He pointed out that the image that came to mind from the TexasHammer qoute was not what he meant. It's more of a criticism of the Fischer Price type playgrounds than a call for a return to the actual dangerous playgrounds we had in our childhood. However, the too safe playground he showed is used by toddlers. That seems a bit of an exaggeration.

This feels like it's directed at parents named Topher and Abigail that spend way too much time trying to pick a pre-k program.

[BabaYaga 15,289]

16 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  I like Haidt, I do - I have The Righteous Mind on my bookshelf, read it a few years ago.  But my quibble with him is similar: he diminishes things that are actually a big fucking deal.  These aren't abstract things, they are things that have real-world implications and impacts, and actually affect people's lives.  Lots of people's lives.

Now, the fact that we are more AWARE of many of these things surely does affect overall mood.  But the counter to that is the cop-out take of "ignorance is bliss."  Sure, if I don't know there's an iceberg dead ahead, I enjoy dinner and dancing.  But if I DO know, that's right...I don't enjoy the dinner and dancing.  But I DO have a chance to go to the helm and try to get the captain to steer AWAY from the iceberg, saving a shitload of us a frosty death in the North Atlantic.  All in all, even though it's more stressful beforehand, I prefer the second option.

That's not at all what he's saying.  How many school ago children have a grasp or international, macro implications at a global scale?  Better yet, how many should?  He's talking about the growth and development of children being significantly impacted by a virtual reality that is having a detrimental impact to adolescents across the globe.  

How would you rate screen time on devices between geo-commentary and dopamine filled social media?  My guess is the latter would be the overwhelming amount of time vs. the former.

Nor are these mutually exclusive.  You want to have a conversation about geo-politics or the climate with your children, my guess is JH would suggest sitting around the dinner table as a family and do just that.  

[F250 28,764]

21 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

He does mention that actual dangerous playground had in childhood is better, in the interview. Here is the excerpt, bolded is my own emphasis:

DE: This reminded me of the part of the book that discusses the decline in ER visits, particularly among boys, because they’re not outside engaging in risky play as much. So does this indicate that, in a way, we might want some more broken bones? Not for their own sake, of course, but as indicators that kids are outside taking some risks that might get them hurt, but not permanently, and are important for development…

JH: That's right. So suppose you're running an elementary school, and you have a playground, and someone asks you: What is the optimal number of injuries per year at your school? injuries serious enough that it has to go beyond the school nurse. And my contention is that the optimum number is not zero. It's not going to be high. I wouldn't want 10 or 20. But if no one is getting injured, probably things are too safe. Because children need risk. They literally need risk. And when we deprive them of risk, we're preventing them from overcoming their anxieties, and learning how to manage risk. And so that was a stunning finding. Because the girls’ story was pretty clear, and social media is the central factor. The boys’ story was not as clear. And we gathered data — and by “we” I’m including Zach Rausch — on the effect of sports gambling on older boys, and marijuana use in boys, and pornography and other things. And we wanted to know: What’s going on? Why are the boys doing so badly even though they are not as depressed as the girls?

And what became clear is that boys had been withdrawing from the real world, from play and risk taking and adventure and challenge in the real world, the physical world with other kids. And they've been moving since the ‘80s into the virtual world as video games got better and better, as pornography got better and better. Boys are spending more time there, and with that, their personalities are changing. They are more risk averse. They are now as risk averse as girls their age used to be 20 years ago. It used to be the case when you look at who breaks a bone, who goes to the hospital for an injury, or a fall-related injury, it used to be that it was mostly teenage boys, followed by young men in their 20s. They were the risk takers. Older men and women don't break their bones very often. Well, that was true until 2010. In the 2010s, the rate for teenage boys has plunged so much that they are now less likely to injure themselves than a 50-year-old man, and they are less likely than teenage girls used to be 15 years ago. Because they're not doing anything that could lead to a broken bone. They're not riding bicycles, they're not wrestling, they're not running around. In order to play with their friends now, they go home alone, not over to a friend's house to play video games. You go home to your own headset and your own controller and your own screen. So some people might say, well, it's just as good because it's social. Yeah, it is social in the sense that you're talking to other other boys through your headset. But there's no actual risk taking. There's no fear. You're not overcoming any fears. You're not developing any skills that are of any use outside of the closed world of that video game. 

Well, he is a regard if he thinks those old school playgrounds are better.

Edited March 26 by F250

[BabaYaga 15,289]

1 minute ago, F250 said:

Well, he is a regard if he thinks those old school playgrounds are better.

I think the general sentiment that nerfing the world for our kids is doing them a disservice.  

[F250 28,764]

1 minute ago, BabaYaga said:

I think the general sentiment that nerfing the world for our kids is doing them a disservice.  

Then references to a time when kids were dying or being permanently injured because of accidents should be discarded.

[utee94 15,808]

I'll agree that times were better when THESE were found on every elementary school playground.  Good luck trying to find one now...

[BabaYaga 15,289]

5 minutes ago, F250 said:

Then references to a time when kids were dying or being permanently injured because of accidents should be discarded.

You really think that's the message?

[Helobious 9,451]

30 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

He does mention that actual dangerous playground had in childhood is better, in the interview. Here is the excerpt, bolded is my own emphasis:

DE: This reminded me of the part of the book that discusses the decline in ER visits, particularly among boys, because they’re not outside engaging in risky play as much. So does this indicate that, in a way, we might want some more broken bones? Not for their own sake, of course, but as indicators that kids are outside taking some risks that might get them hurt, but not permanently, and are important for development…

JH: That's right. So suppose you're running an elementary school, and you have a playground, and someone asks you: What is the optimal number of injuries per year at your school? injuries serious enough that it has to go beyond the school nurse. And my contention is that the optimum number is not zero. It's not going to be high. I wouldn't want 10 or 20. But if no one is getting injured, probably things are too safe. Because children need risk. They literally need risk. And when we deprive them of risk, we're preventing them from overcoming their anxieties, and learning how to manage risk. And so that was a stunning finding. Because the girls’ story was pretty clear, and social media is the central factor. The boys’ story was not as clear. And we gathered data — and by “we” I’m including Zach Rausch — on the effect of sports gambling on older boys, and marijuana use in boys, and pornography and other things. And we wanted to know: What’s going on? Why are the boys doing so badly even though they are not as depressed as the girls?

And what became clear is that boys had been withdrawing from the real world, from play and risk taking and adventure and challenge in the real world, the physical world with other kids. And they've been moving since the ‘80s into the virtual world as video games got better and better, as pornography got better and better. Boys are spending more time there, and with that, their personalities are changing. They are more risk averse. They are now as risk averse as girls their age used to be 20 years ago. It used to be the case when you look at who breaks a bone, who goes to the hospital for an injury, or a fall-related injury, it used to be that it was mostly teenage boys, followed by young men in their 20s. They were the risk takers. Older men and women don't break their bones very often. Well, that was true until 2010. In the 2010s, the rate for teenage boys has plunged so much that they are now less likely to injure themselves than a 50-year-old man, and they are less likely than teenage girls used to be 15 years ago. Because they're not doing anything that could lead to a broken bone. They're not riding bicycles, they're not wrestling, they're not running around. In order to play with their friends now, they go home alone, not over to a friend's house to play video games. You go home to your own headset and your own controller and your own screen. So some people might say, well, it's just as good because it's social. Yeah, it is social in the sense that you're talking to other other boys through your headset. But there's no actual risk taking. There's no fear. You're not overcoming any fears. You're not developing any skills that are of any use outside of the closed world of that video game. 

That guy sounds like an idiot. I grew up riding bikes, playing sports, having rock fights, playing the “who can get the most air jumping off the swing” game. Never broke one bone or saw any of my friends break one because we weren’t idiots or massive fucking pussies. And if you’re in charge of a school and someone asks what what “the optimal number of injuries” to your students is your answer better be zero. 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11,669]

8 minutes ago, utee94 said:

I'll agree that times were better when THESE were found on every elementary school playground.  Good luck trying to find one now...

i was on one recently with my kids.  2 got thrown off, i went another couple circles then blew ass right over where they were laying down.  haidt doesn't have anything to say about that.

[Celery Man 20,933]

Maybe these pussy ass kids would be less pessimistic about the culture of malevolence and cruelty for sport if they experienced some real pain.

[BabaYaga 15,289]

7 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Maybe these pussy ass kids would be less pessimistic about the culture of malevolence and cruelty for sport if they experienced some real pain.

Time for zombies and rodents of unusual size?

[F250 28,764]

1 minute ago, BabaYaga said:

You really think that's the message?

The discussion was about a dangerous playground. Ana linked a video where Haidt stated he didn't mean the old school playgrounds. Donkey cigars then said Haidt did say the old dangerous playgrounds were better than the current ones. So yes, that is the conversation we are having.

[BabaYaga 15,289]

2 minutes ago, F250 said:

The discussion was about a dangerous playground. Ana linked a video where Haidt stated he didn't mean the old school playgrounds. Donkey cigars then said Haidt did say the old dangerous playgrounds were better than the current ones. So yes, that is the conversation we are having.

So you don't think the conversation is around the damages of nerfing the world for our kids and using old playgrounds as an example?

[Thetexashammer 1,062]

Edited March 26 by Thetexashammer

[F250 28,764]

39 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

 

Right.

@F250, no offense, but he's shown his work to what's informed his opinion-- what are you basing your opinion(s) around this matter on? Any answer is good except the ole trusty @Brisketexan citation of secondhand experience and emotion.

He literally said this isn't what I am talking about. There is a video of him talking about it a few posts above.

If what you say is true and he contradicts that statement than we are not talking about an informed opinion.

[F250 28,764]

10 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

So you don't think the conversation is around the damages of nerfing the world for our kids and using old playgrounds as an example?

My issue would be what is considered nerfing. Wearing helmets, seat belts, avoiding 20 ft jungle gyms built on asphalt?

[F250 28,764]

16 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

What? Nobody is saying any of that. 

Maybe it would be helpful to just replace that with "playing outside" and generally climbing, jumping, running, biking, sports-- any physical activity with inherent risk of physical injury.

You didn't mention anything about Haidt saying that the old playgrounds that had 20 ft high jungle gyms that were built on asphalt were better than the current playgrounds?

You guys are dancing around in ambiguity. Nerfing, playing outside, physical activity, sports, etc...

 

[F250 28,764]

30 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Serious question-- did you read the interview I posted of Haidt's own words?

Yes and it didn't address the discussion we were having about what constitutes a too safe or too dangerous playground other than a statement about there should be some injuries. What does that even mean and how does one adjust for that?

 

[956 Worldwide 34,705]

Are we sure that it’s the breaking bones or getting seriously injured part that’s good for kids and not the playing sports and running around outside part? 

[Captainant 27,641]

1 hour ago, BeardIP said:

Maybe it would be helpful to just replace that with "playing outside" and generally climbing, jumping, running, biking, sports-- any physical activity with inherent risk of physical injury.

Is it your contention that children do not do this sort of thing anymore? Wtf are you saying? This is some ridiculous hyperbole to say that children never go outside anymore and are depressed because they're on their phone so much

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

2 minutes ago, F250 said:

Yes and it didn't address the discussion we were having about what constitutes a too safe or too dangerous playground other than a statement about there should be some injuries. What does that even mean and how does one adjust for that?

 

Thank you for your perspective because it's addressing the rather blase attitude wherein Haidt as author/speaker should select his words more carefully or explain himself further and not just wave away thoughtful questions about consequences. With respect to Haidt, there are plenty of activities to which we introduced our children that did not require Jack, Simon, Ralph, and Piggy in order to learn about fear and risk.

 

 

[Anastasis 23,464]

43 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

That's not (only) my contention, but Haidt's. Which is what we were talking about. And of course people still go outside, but generally speaking and as a vast swath/trend we are talking about.

I don't think that younger children free range now near as much as they did when I was growing up. I think that some are doing argument to absurdity here when they are discussing his work. Some of Haidt's formulations are certainly to blame for that. He appears to have a habit of glossing over and begging the question. But I do think that there is some merit in what he is saying and the themes. I don't think any reasonable person, and certainly no reasonable parent, denies that we have a critical mental health issue on our hands. It's good to be debating and looking for some answers and potential solutions.

Anyways, wrt to independent play....from the Atlantic article linked. 

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults.

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.

And then we changed childhood.

The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions––exacerbated parental fears. Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting. In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.

In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.

But overprotection is only part of the story. The transition away from a more independent childhood was facilitated by steady improvements in digital technology, which made it easier and more inviting for young people to spend a lot more time at home, indoors, and alone in their rooms. Eventually, tech companies got access to children 24/7. They developed exciting virtual activities, engineered for “engagement,” that are nothing like the real-world experiences young brains evolved to expect.

[Anastasis 23,464]

1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Are we sure that it’s the breaking bones or getting seriously injured part that’s good for kids and not the playing sports and running around outside part? 

I don't think that anyone is arguing the former, unless I missed it. But certainly the latter, particularly team sports, can play a strong role is developing social experience, risk feedback, leadership traits and experiential insights into social dynamics. 

[F250 28,764]

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

I don't think that anyone is arguing the former, unless I missed it. But certainly the latter, particularly team sports, can play a strong role is developing social experience, risk feedback, leadership traits and experiential insights into social dynamics. 

Team sports is an interesting topic to me. Something I noticed when my kids were young was a growing division between young people regarding fitness and athletics.

When I was growing up,  a lot of kids participated in sports. Some kids were terrible and some really good with most being somewhere in between. Despite the disparity in ability everyone played together in recreational leagues which is now a dying concept. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground anymore where all kids play together.

It's common to hear people complain about participation ribbons which existed in our day. But a bigger problem in my opinion is the professionalization of youth sports. It creates price barriers to sports, it's unnecessarily hyper- competitive, requires spartan like training and is a major time sink.

Sandlot style sports don't exist because kids are so deeply involved in adult lead organized sports. Recreational leagues are dying out because of the mass migration to club sports. As a result a lot of kids no longer participate in team sports.

 

[Tailgate 3,021]

Media not helping…

“Class bullies may earn more in middle age, study finds.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/class-bullies-may-earn-more-in-middle-age-study-finds.html

 

 

[Nivek 16,923]

I think this is true at an intermediate level/age, but at the elementary age there is still a thriving rec sports league tied to the municipality/city and/or YMCA. There is probably an intermediate rec league option but, to your point, I think most people these days view it as a waste of time and poor investment of time given that we live in a shrinking time and attention economy these days.

My kid was in a neighborhood rec league for Tball. We joined a team, with a first year coach, and magically we ended up with more younger kids than other teams. Coaches on the top 2 teams had scouted players from previous seasons, and then had them request him to be their coach. They had fewer 4 yr olds and a team that could throw, hit and catch and execute double plays. Their team was just amazingly full of genetic freaks that also looked older on average than the typical 6 yr old.

[F250 28,764]

2 hours ago, BeardIP said:

I think this is true at an intermediate level/age, but at the elementary age there is still a thriving rec sports league tied to the municipality/city and/or YMCA. There is probably an intermediate rec league option but, to your point, I think most people these days view it as a waste of time and poor investment of time given that we live in a shrinking time and attention economy these days.

Of course recreational youth sport leagues still exist but they are losing numbers across the board as private sports organizations continue to grow. A consequence to the privatization of sports is that the barrier to entry prices out a big segment of the population. Participation in youth sports is actually high and growing for children from families that earn $100k and above but below that income the participation starts to drop off a lot.

There are recreational leagues that do well but they are usually not located in lower income areas.

Little League has been trying to stop the bleeding for years. It was about 10 years ago that they modified their rules to allow players to participate in travel and Little League at the same time and reduced the amount of required LL game participation and still qualify for All Stars. Families that have the resources to do both do not live in low income areas. This benefited the leagues in higher income areas.

Next year, Little League will begin removing their geographical boundary requirements and allow kids 7 and under to register with any LL league but will be locked in to that league for the remainder of their LL career. This will likely only benefit the higher income leagues and drain the already struggling leagues.

There are a lot more problems other than financial ones but money is definitely one of the biggest problems that is keeping kids from participating in team sports.

[Guest]

On 3/26/2024 at 9:46 AM, BeardIP said:

The whole interview is good (interviewed by renowned author David Epstein), which I will spoiler for length, but this part stuck out to me:

DE: You had a quote in the book I wrote down related to this: “Social media platforms are the most efficient conformity engines ever invented. They can shape an adolescent’s mental models of acceptable behavior in a matter of hours, whereas parents can struggle unsuccessfully for years to get their children to sit up straight or stop whining.”

JH: Behavior psychology is really important here. Some of your readers will remember from an intro psych course B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov — there's operant conditioning and classical conditioning, and both are at work here. But the key for a behavior’s conditioning is you have to have a loop between behavior and reward. When you watch television there's no such loop. You sit there, maybe you're entertained, maybe you're not. You can change the channel, you can raise the volume, that's about it. Those are your behaviors. But on a phone, you're endlessly presented with things to touch. And if you touch the right thing in the right way, you get a little hit. You get something that will give you a little hit of dopamine. It'll either be validation of your social standing, or it'll be entertainment, or it'll be funny, or it’ll be sexual. As a parent, if we could implant an electrode in our kids’ brains to give them a little bit of reward when they clean up their room, a little bit of punishment when they drop their underwear on the floor, we could train them very quickly to clean up their rooms — if we had that button to deliver a little bit of pleasure or pain. We don't have that button, but the rest of the world does. We basically say, once you put your kid on social media, you're saying to the rest of the world: “Hey, how about if you train my daughter? You give her rewards and punishments, and I'll just sit back and see what happens.” And the result is a generation of girls that are anxious, depressed, self-harming and suicidal. 

  Hide contents

David Epstein: A main argument in the book is that, between 2010 and 2015, the social lives of American teens and adolescents moved from in-person to smartphones, and you call this the “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” You suggest that it’s the single biggest cause behind a wave of mental health problems since 2010. To start with, I know there are skeptics of this wave to begin with. What is some of the evidence, beyond just self-report, that this is a real thing?

Jonathan Haidt: Right, so let's start with the question of: Is there a mental health crisis? And before Covid, so in 2019, is when I joined this debate, and some critics challenged me and said it’s just another moral panic. That's a very reasonable view. There has always been a moral panic around whatever technology kids are using. And some of these skeptics said there isn't even a mental health crisis, it's just that kids are more self-reporting of depression, and that's a good thing. You know, that view was defensible at one time. But by 2019 we already had very clear evidence that the exact same patterns were happening for hospitalization and for self-harm. Suicide was very similar. Suicide, there's a weird dip in 2008. For some reason, the rate goes way down. I don't know what that was in 2008. So it looks like it starts rising in 2009. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. But it clearly is rising very rapidly in the 2010s. So given that we are seeing self-harm and suicide rising, and given that the percentage rises are faster for girls, everything matches that it's not just self-report. This is not just a change in Gen Z's willingness to talk about mental illness. This is a giant increase in mental illness, that has hit girls especially, and not just in English-speaking countries. Zach Rausch and I have documented it now in about 15 nations.

DE: One of the messages in the book is that we basically ran this kind of grand social experiment starting in 2010. And now we have some of the results. And they don't look very good, particularly for young people…

JH: So actually let me — sorry to interrupt — but your first question was about what's the evidence we have now. And I broke it up into two parts. The first was: Is there a mental health crisis? And so now there is no doubt, everyone can see it. There was some debate in 2019, and then we hit Covid. So a lot of people thought, “Oh, it's just Covid.” But it wasn't. When you look at the graphs, you can see a little tiny Covid blip, but it was a blip. So there's no doubt now we have a multinational, gigantic mental health crisis unlike anything we've ever seen. Then the question is: What's the evidence that it was caused by technological change? 

And so the first way to frame this is that there is no other theory on the table. No one even has proposed one. I mean, people say the global financial crisis, but that completely is the opposite of the timing. The economy is getting better and better exactly when mental health is getting worse and worse. So the global financial crisis is the only thing anyone's proposed that could be global, and it doesn't work for the timing. So the skeptics here don't even have an alternate theory. That's the first thing. 

The second thing is, scientists are used to using a very high standard of proof, which is what we do to guard our journals. We say it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt. We treat scientific questions the way criminal law treats guilt: you have to have overwhelming evidence before you lock someone away, or before you get something into Science or Nature. But that's the wrong standard for public health. For public health, we don't say we're not going to act until we're absolutely certain. One clear standard is just what's the preponderance of the evidence? Is this more likely or less likely? And when we use a preponderance of the evidence standard, now I think the evidence is overwhelming. The correlational evidence is actually very clear. And the amazing thing is we actually all agree on the size of the correlational effect. We all agree it’s around 0.15. My skeptics, so Amy Orben, Jeff Hancock, we actually agree that if you look at just simple hours on social media, and at self-report measures of anxiety and depression, it's a little below 0.15 for boys, a little above 0.15 for girls. That is not trivial. That is as large as most other effects in public health. So the correlational evidence is actually now very clear and very consistent. 

And if there was no real effect, then you would often find positive correlations, [i.e., sometimes the correlation between social-media use and mental health would be positive in a study] but you never find that. It's just a question of how big the negative correlation is. But then the question is: What about the experiments? And people say, “Oh, it's all correlation.” No. In my Google Docs, which Zach Rausch and I collected, I think we're up to 25 or 30 experiments, and the great majority do show a significant effect of whatever it is they were manipulating. And the interesting thing is, I think there are six that failed to find an effect. Almost all of them used a short time period. This is very important. If you take people off of heroin, and then you check with them three days later: “How are you doing?”, they're not doing well. They're doing worse. But if you wait a couple of months, then they're doing better, much better. And so what we find in the experiments is: when we look at the ones that fail to find a benefit of getting off of social media, they almost all used a day or a week, whereas the studies that kept people off for a month or longer almost all find a benefit. So I think the experiments are really clear. And now where we are is I'm in debates with skeptics who say: “Okay, so there are correlations, but they don't prove causation. Okay, so there are dozens of experiments, but each one has flaws. Each one isn't certain. So using the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, I criticized every single study out of the hundreds you've proposed, and I'm not convinced by any of them.” Really? In a public health emergency, this is the right way to go when there is no other theory? No one has even offered another theory for why mental health is plummeting, especially for girls, in many, many countries.

DE: Speaking of experiments, I enjoy natural experiments, and you mention in the book the timing of Facebook, where it was open to some colleges before others, and apparently when it opened up to a given college, suddenly mental health services on campus start getting overwhelmed. 

JH: That’s right. So I was just talking about the lab experiments. But in addition to the 25 or 30, I found six quasi-experiments. And then there are five others that looked at when high speed internet came to British Columbia, or Spain or other places. And it comes unevenly by town or by region. And so all six of these quasi-experiments found that as it came in, the mental health of teens, especially girls plummeted. So I'm like, what more can we do? We’ve got the correlational evidence; we’ve got the experimental evidence; we’ve got the quasi-experiments; we’ve got the testimony of kids. So at what point is the evidence so overwhelming that we have to just stop engaging with the critics who won't believe it?

DE: I think you glanced off the fact that for a lot of people, the intuitive answers are: well, there's climate change, political polarization, and all these other things that might be at play. But I know, at least looking historically, mental health disasters and disasters out in the world haven’t corresponded intuitively at all. It has often been the exact opposite of what people assume. I think with the Cold War, and World War II, and two financial recessions, I think in many cases actually mental health improved and people started engaging in collective behavior. 

JH: That's right. That's right. In fact, there is research showing that people who are politically active have higher mental health than those who are not until around 2010, 2012. So, historically, crises pull people together, lower the suicide rate. Durkheim showed this in his book Suicide. Historically, people who are involved in political causes have a sense of meaning and purpose. They're not more depressed and anxious. But for some reason, in the 2010s, now students who are activists are more depressed and anxious. So you can't say that it's global warming. First of all, Greta Thunberg could explain why it's global, but that wasn’t until 2017 or 2018. So again, there is no other theory on the table. No one has even offered one.

DE: I want to discuss what you call the “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” You write that it’s a convergence of two things. One is “safetyism” culture, which is the hampering of childhood development by being over-protective. And then the second is the move to the phone-based childhood. I want to talk about both of those aspects separately, but first the phone-based childhood, since we're already kind of talking about that. You use this phrase from Sherry Turkle, “we’re forever elsewhere.” That stuck with me. The argument you make is that there are all these systems of the brain and social skills that develop through low-stakes practice, and some level of risk taking, and having to break and reform social bonds when you're an adolescent, that teaches you how to do important things. And they all happen in person, in communities that you cannot just block or leave if you don't like what they're saying. They happen synchronously, in many cases. So what happens to childhood when we’re forever elsewhere?

JH: Human childhood is an amazing evolutionary innovation. To start with, mammal childhood is an amazing evolutionary innovation, with very high investment for the parents, for the mother, typically, and a long childhood compared to other kinds of animals, and an enormous amount of play to wire up the brain. So that's mammal childhood, and that's been going on for 200 or 300 million years. Mammals need to play to wire up their brains. Humans have these gigantic brains that are cultural. So we have a much, much longer period of learning. And the brain has to be exposed to certain kinds of experiences, thousands and thousands of times, that are appropriate for the part of the brain that's developing. So first comes sensory systems, and then walking, and then talking. And all along social systems are coming online. They come online especially from synchronous facial interaction. You make faces at each other; you laugh. So synchrony and embodiment are part of the scaffolding by which a child engages with the social and physical world, and then the brain grows in response. 

Early in the internet era, and in the social media era, people assumed that virtual interactions were just as good as real world ones. In fact, maybe they're better because you can interact with a hundred people virtually, whereas otherwise you can only interact with a few people directly. You can have huge amounts of social stimulation, much more virtually than you could in the real world. So people thought maybe it'd be better. But the brain doesn't work that way. The brain is an evolutionary creation that was forged over 500 million years on planet Earth. So that's sort of the long background. Now what happens then is, once kids get a device, and let's again be clear: the flip phone does not seem to have harmed the Millennials. It's not having a phone that's bad. Being able to talk to people on the phone is not a bad thing at all. It's having a device that has a thousand apps, that has high speed internet, that is pinging you constantly to call you into it. Nobody had that in 2007. Nobody had that in their pocket. Even the iPhone for its first two years didn't do that. It's only once you get the software development kits, the App Store, the proliferation of apps, high speed internet, and notifications. All these technological innovations, they all come in just a few years after the iPhone. So no child had this in 2007. In 2010, a few children began to have it, but very few. The great majority had flip phones. By 2015, everybody had it; 70 or 80 percent of teens had it. So that's why I call it the Great Rewiring of Childhood. 

Now, there is a backstory. It's not just the phones. But the puzzling thing to me — I'm still trying to figure this out — we were destroying childhood from the early ‘80s through 2010. We were over-protecting; we were restricting their range — 

DE: The safetyism… 

JH: Right. But yet mental health wasn't declining. In fact, it was slightly improving, actually, for the Millennials. Gen X, I believe suffered from, well, we know Gen X suffered from the highest levels of lead poisoning of anybody since the Roman Empire. So Gen X had special mental health problems that might have been related to lead exposure. That might explain why the Millennials are a little happier; their suicide rate is much lower. But my point is that as we were cracking down on play and independence and depriving kids of it, the kids are getting weaker, they're getting more fragile, they're not fully developing, but yet they're not depressed and anxious. It's only once you take these weaker children, who've been play deprived, and then you draw them into the virtual world, and you cut off access to the real world — that's when mental health collapses. So it was not a gradual thing from the ‘80s on. It was a very sudden thing around 2012, 2013. 

DE: You make a point in the book that’s in my mind, because I just saw some clips from the recent Congressional hearings with social media executives, where they were discussing harm and sexual exploitation and harassment of teenage girls. And at one point Mark Zuckerberg is made to turn around and apologize to families who were there who say that their children were victimized or died for reasons linked to social media. And I don’t know how to parse all of that, but it did remind me of a recurring theme in your book: that we became obsessed about safety for kids outdoors — while by every measure outdoors was getting safer since the 1990s — and completely ignored safety in the virtual world. We ignored it so much that — as you write — by law, a 13-year-old can essentially sign a contract with a company to give away their data, and even the 13-year-old age limit has no meaningful enforcement. 

JH: We’ve overprotected our children in the real world, and we've underprotected them online. And you laying it out that way just made me realize something: that the real world used to be quite dangerous. It used to be for the last, you know, 200 or 300 million years, that when your kids wandered off out of sight, there was a good chance they'd be eaten. So the real world has always been dangerous for young mammals, yet they evolved to play. Play is so important for brain development that even when the world was insanely dangerous, for hundreds of millions of years mammal babies still went out and played, often out of sight of their mothers. That's how important it is to play. And then we get to civilization, and murder rates plummet. Predation rates drop to zero; there are no animals eating our kids. And the chance that they'll be murdered is microscopic, in modern societies, so things get safer and safer. But when I was growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there was a huge crime wave. There were a lot of weirdos, there were a lot of drunk drivers. So even in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was much safer than previous times in history, but even still, there were risks. All those risks plummeted by the ‘90s. Drunk drivers were locked up and dissuaded; there’s much less drunk driving now. And, you know, my sister was flashed when she was a teenager — a guy just opened his raincoat. And that sort of thing happened a lot, because we didn't lock those people away for 20 years, but now we do. So there are still people out there, but they have learned: don't approach a kid, you'll be arrested; just go on to Instagram — it's safe. So as I say in the book, if we want to keep our kids safe, get them off of Instagram and send them out to play.

DE: This reminded me of the part of the book that discusses the decline in ER visits, particularly among boys, because they’re not outside engaging in risky play as much. So does this indicate that, in a way, we might want some more broken bones? Not for their own sake, of course, but as indicators that kids are outside taking some risks that might get them hurt, but not permanently, and are important for development…

JH: That's right. So suppose you're running an elementary school, and you have a playground, and someone asks you: What is the optimal number of injuries per year at your school? injuries serious enough that it has to go beyond the school nurse. And my contention is that the optimum number is not zero. It's not going to be high. I wouldn't want 10 or 20. But if no one is getting injured, probably things are too safe. Because children need risk. They literally need risk. And when we deprive them of risk, we're preventing them from overcoming their anxieties, and learning how to manage risk. And so that was a stunning finding. Because the girls’ story was pretty clear, and social media is the central factor. The boys’ story was not as clear. And we gathered data — and by “we” I’m including Zach Rausch — on the effect of sports gambling on older boys, and marijuana use in boys, and pornography and other things. And we wanted to know: What’s going on? Why are the boys doing so badly even though they are not as depressed as the girls?

And what became clear is that boys had been withdrawing from the real world, from play and risk taking and adventure and challenge in the real world, the physical world with other kids. And they've been moving since the ‘80s into the virtual world as video games got better and better, as pornography got better and better. Boys are spending more time there, and with that, their personalities are changing. They are more risk averse. They are now as risk averse as girls their age used to be 20 years ago. It used to be the case when you look at who breaks a bone, who goes to the hospital for an injury, or a fall-related injury, it used to be that it was mostly teenage boys, followed by young men in their 20s. They were the risk takers. Older men and women don't break their bones very often. Well, that was true until 2010. In the 2010s, the rate for teenage boys has plunged so much that they are now less likely to injure themselves than a 50-year-old man, and they are less likely than teenage girls used to be 15 years ago. Because they're not doing anything that could lead to a broken bone. They're not riding bicycles, they're not wrestling, they're not running around. In order to play with their friends now, they go home alone, not over to a friend's house to play video games. You go home to your own headset and your own controller and your own screen. So some people might say, well, it's just as good because it's social. Yeah, it is social in the sense that you're talking to other other boys through your headset. But there's no actual risk taking. There's no fear. You're not overcoming any fears. You're not developing any skills that are of any use outside of the closed world of that video game. 

DE: You glanced off of a few things that I want to touch on. One is the idea you write about of “discover” mode versus “defend” mode. If a kid is in discover mode, they’re looking around for opportunities, basically, to see what the environment has to offer, what they can try. Whereas defend mode is looking around for dangers, and what you don't want to try. You use that framework to talk about how a play-based childhood involves being in discover mode a lot, where you're looking for opportunities and for relatively low-stakes practice, even if you get hurt once in a while, emotionally or physically. Whereas in defend mode, everything is potentially dangerous. And defend mode is useful, but if you’re in it too much you have this baseline level of heightened anxiety, where you're just looking around for what not to do. Is that a reasonable summary?

JH: That’s right, and this goes back to the mammal way of life. We evolved in a world of predators. Those predators strike very quickly, so you have to have a defend mode that is lightning fast and mobilizes behavior in an instant. You have to have that. But imagine having a fire alarm in your house. Fires are very rare events. You need a fire alarm, but now imagine if your fire alarm goes off five or 10 times a day, and you can't shut it off, you just have to live with this thought that there's a fire, or there's a noise. That would not be a good way to grow up with your fire alarm going off five or 10 times a day. But that's what we're doing to our kids. When we block them from developing their antifragility, we block them from selecting and choosing the risks that they want to face, such as climbing a tree, or getting in a wrestling match or whatever it is that they want to do when they're playing. When we block them from that, we are preventing them from changing the brain over to a more approach-oriented, confident, able-to-handle-risk kind of being; in other words, discover mode. 

DE: The premise reminds me a bit of when I used to train for track, or any sport, really. And just studying physiology, instead of avoiding stress on your bones and muscles you undergo stress specifically in order to be more resilient to progressively higher levels of stress later on in your training. I always think of the word “indurate” — to make hard. It sounds like you’re saying there’s a similar principle for emotional development in children. 

JH: Antifragility. Muscles are antifragile. If you take it easy on them, they get weak. Bones are antifragile. If you never stress them, they get weak. And children's emotional development is antifragile. If you never stress it, if there's no conflict, if there's never any exclusion, they get weak. And then it becomes very painful when there is a conflict or exclusion.

DE: I want to go back to one other thing you touched on: that the story of the rise in anxiety and depression among girls appears to be both more dramatic and more straightforward than for boys. And the point you make in the book is that the core of the issue for girls is endless social comparison, basically, and contagious negative emotions on social media — which, by the way, reminded me of the so-called “TikTok Tourette’s” phenomenon I wrote about. 

JH: So all teenagers are trying to figure out: Where do I fit? How valuable am I? What can I do to be more valuable? They're all insecure about whether people like them, whether they belong. They're all afraid of being excluded. We all are. But for teens, it's much worse. And for girls, there's the tendency that they will be judged on their looks. 

My whole life, since the ‘70s, it seems as though we've been working on that — really trying to make it clear to girls that: no, you're not defined by your looks; no, you can do more than just be pretty and find a husband. And for 50 years during my life we made a lot of progress on that. But all of the sudden, young girls once they go onto Instagram in particular, their lives become about their skin, their hair, their clothing. It’s making them extremely shallow, materialistic, insecure, looks-focused and hyper-sexualized at an early age. So all the things I thought we agreed on about what was bad for girls, it's like we forgot that. And we said: let's just hook our 11-year-old girls up to this socialization machine. And before we know it, they'll be getting plastic surgery and lip fillers, and spending hours a day on their appearance. So that's just the focus on appearance. And then you have all the social comparison. Well, why do they focus on their appearance so much? Because they have to, because it's a social comparison engine. And since everybody else appears more beautiful than they are in real life, you feel you're less beautiful than average. So social media in particular really homes in on girls’ fears and insecurities and amplifies them.

DE: You had a quote in the book I wrote down related to this: “Social media platforms are the most efficient conformity engines ever invented. They can shape an adolescent’s mental models of acceptable behavior in a matter of hours, whereas parents can struggle unsuccessfully for years to get their children to sit up straight or stop whining.”

JH: Behavior psychology is really important here. Some of your readers will remember from an intro psych course B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov — there's operant conditioning and classical conditioning, and both are at work here. But the key for a behavior’s conditioning is you have to have a loop between behavior and reward. When you watch television there's no such loop. You sit there, maybe you're entertained, maybe you're not. You can change the channel, you can raise the volume, that's about it. Those are your behaviors. But on a phone, you're endlessly presented with things to touch. And if you touch the right thing in the right way, you get a little hit. You get something that will give you a little hit of dopamine. It'll either be validation of your social standing, or it'll be entertainment, or it'll be funny, or it’ll be sexual. As a parent, if we could implant an electrode in our kids’ brains to give them a little bit of reward when they clean up their room, a little bit of punishment when they drop their underwear on the floor, we could train them very quickly to clean up their rooms — if we had that button to deliver a little bit of pleasure or pain. We don't have that button, but the rest of the world does. We basically say, once you put your kid on social media, you're saying to the rest of the world: “Hey, how about if you train my daughter? You give her rewards and punishments, and I'll just sit back and see what happens.” And the result is a generation of girls that are anxious, depressed, self-harming and suicidal. 

DE: I hope my readers will be more likely to remember Pavlov from the episode of The Office where Jim surreptitiously trains Dwight to want a mint every time a tone sounds on his computer. …But one thing that I think is useful for people to remember about dopamine, which is involved in our sense of pleasure and reward, is that it doesn’t confer a sense of satisfaction or satiety. 

JH: The key thing that people don't seem to really get about dopamine is that it is pleasurable, but it's not satiating. It actually causes desire. And it's only since I started writing this book — I mean, I taught Psych 101 at UVA for many years; I knew all this stuff — but it wasn't until I really got into rereading, for example, Anna Lembke, her book Dopamine Nation…it was only once I really started learning more about dopamine that I realized, when you eat a potato chip, it's triggering dopamine, and it's not just like, “Mmm, yummm,” it’s: “I really want another one.” You have another one, and then you really want a third. And so the key thing about dopamine isn't just pleasure-reward, it’s: pleasure, reward, keep going; pleasure, reward, get more.

DE: One other thing I want to make sure I touch on — because you make specific recommendations for both policy and social norms in the book, but I don’t think we can go through all of those now — but a thread that runs through your recommendations is the idea that the various forms of content moderation that social media executives have proposed are hopeless. Because, you argue, it is actually the medium itself that is irredeemable, at least when it comes to adolescent development. So, I guess there are actually two parts of this I want to touch on. First, does it make a difference if people recognize the unreality of social media?

You write about Josephine Livin, a woman who creates Instagram posts in which she shows the process of photo and video editing to demonstrate to viewers that much of what they’re seeing on Instagram is unreal beauty. I went and looked at her posts, and it is remarkable the editing she can do very quickly, and I think it’s admirable that she’s trying to convey a message that this isn’t real, and you should be comfortable with your own body. And yet, I wonder whether the awareness of all these filters actually makes any difference whatsoever to viewers. I think there’s plenty of research showing that simply being aware of a cognitive bias doesn’t necessarily mitigate it, so I wonder if this falls into that bucket. 

JH: My first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, was based around the metaphor that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict, like a small rider on the back of a very large elephant. The rider is our controlled rational processes, and the elephant is the automatic intuitive and emotional processes. And it's those processes that drive our behavior. And so you can tell people: heroin is bad for you; you shouldn't do heroin. And you can show them the movie Trainspotting. And you can see, wow, heroin is really destroying their lives. But if there's something glamorous or cool about it, the elephant's going to respond, and you're going to be curious about trying heroin. So a lot of the idea — and this is very important — that everyone focuses on is the content. Everyone acts like, “Oh, if we could just clean up the content, then it'd be okay for the kids” — 

DE: And that’s what the executives were saying to Congress at the recent hearing: We’re working on that…

JH: Exactly. That's exactly where I was going. The Congressional hearings were all about: Our kids are being exposed to sexualization, sexual harassment, solicitation, sextortion, child sexual pornography; can't we clean this up? And then the executives, like Zuckerberg would say: “But Senator, we spent $37 trillion to remove 94 quadrillion pieces of this content.” And even if they could get 90% of it — which they never could — even if they get 90% there would still be a lot of content, but that actually isn't even very relevant. 

What's more relevant is not the content, it's the medium. And this is Marshall McLuhan's famous point in his aphorism: “the medium is the message.” Imagine that we could clean up Instagram to the point where it was only pictures of young women, happy, leading beautiful lives. Wouldn't that make girls happy to look at pictures of other happy girls? Of course not. Because if you spend your life flipping through pictures of happy girls leading perfect lives, first of all, you're going to feel that you don't measure up and your life doesn't measure up. Second of all, you're not doing any of the things that lead to mental health like going out with your friends. So, there is no way — let me underline that — there is no way to improve the content on social media to make it safe for 10- 11- 12-year-olds who are legally underage. I believe the same is true for 13- 14- and 15-year-olds. I think we need to let kids go through puberty, get most of the way through, and at that point they're adults, they won't be as harmed. But as long as your prefrontal cortex is wiring up, for God's sake, don't give control of the socialization and the neural development, don't give control to weirdos on the internet selected by an algorithm for their extremity.

 

Is this in a podcast form? I've read about half of it but would love to listen to it if possible.