>> visit cam.org. >> manager unfiltered view of government. >> you pick up the community center? way more fun thousand energy centers to create wi-fi enabled lists of students from low income families individual spending to be ready for anything. comcast supports pharmacy to democracy. >> a look at the effects of social media on american society and describes how he sees social media and federal regulations on tech companies.

>> in 2012 mark zuckerberg announced he hoped facebook would quote rewire the way people spread and consume information as well as transform many of our core institutions and industries. a development that recently made that possible was the rise of the smart phone which helped us not only check on our high school friend means but surf the internet, watch movies, share pictures, play games and in short, be destructive from the rest of the world around us. they clearly read wired the quote. in 2008, is google making us

stupid? because of the good old days. by 2000 times, it's worth asking, are smart phones and social media thinking is antisocial? are they disconnecting us from families and communities? we are fortunate to have with us doctor jonathan hite. ethical leadership near diversity and author as the

modern truth and agent wisdom. the american mind. good intentions and bad ideas for setting the generation of for ferrier was recently great we were childhood causing an epidemic of mental illness. since 2018 starting social media the decline of mental health. in 2019 inducted into arts and sciences important talks and now

he's here first drink lecture on a root decline of the play-based childhood in the 1980s and the cell phone -based culture not, a cause for the client and mental health and mental degradation. families and policymakers can alleviate these problems. he offers insights into childhood, human nature and psychological development that so relevant become a dangerous to look directly into them. we are fortunate to have today to discuss only our mental health but for lives. will deliver remarks on hers caused by social media for about 20 to 25 minutes in the drag on stage for discussion doctor christine rosen focusing on american history society and

culture and feminism. also a columnist for magazine a proposed of the commentary is in progress and develop university of virginia advanced studies in culture. author or co-author of many books in both chapters in the fall to publish the extinction of experience being human and the disembodied world they will converse for about 25 minutes and then we will turn to audience questions. i hope you will join us for refreshments and conversation in the gallery want to stampede so

if you can get a copy, you are welcome to one. please put on your phones and your hands together for doctor height. thank you so much as a perfectly set up covered a lot of things we are going to be talking about today. today i decided to do something different because i was reflecting on my ties to a.i. 2007 influenced me and help me to get where i am today was a

standard pricing democrat social scientist and i thought enemy territory but he seems like a nice guy. [laughter] how bad could it be? [laughter] came up was treated well and the conversations were great and i got to know him we really become friends over the years but that was 2006 or seven right around when i started working on right just which is about wiry polarized divided by logics and religion? that began trying to understand conservatives and libertarians and opened my mind and maybe a

better social scientist. good ideas will over and what we can do so i have a lot of materials i have not shown before. i can summarize the book and to develop ways to first, play-based childhood which is what we have had from literally millions of years in all mammals america between 1980 and 2010 all of a sudden phone -based topic selected detent in 2015. that's what i think gen z over the edge. another way to say this to protect our children in the real world with varied experience and under protected them online with no protections of any kind with children but and indirectly, i

began taking about the righteous mind, i decided to teach a course at the university of virginia in 2004 i was in new york city at the time and i stopped into the store went to the political purée section is a big book of conservatism and i pulled it off, this could be interesting and i started into the introduction and was so clear and powerful, it made sense to me as a social scientist, identify the book and did walk out with it but jerry is actually here in the audience, a wonderful intellectual historian mark some

of the ideas that got me right away trying to understand psychological differences, it gives you an overview, penalties imposed on the conservatives are supposed to protect the authority because the believe society cannot flourish without them. restraints imposed by institutions are necessary to constrain passion and a moment later he says famous quote. restraints on as well as liberties on their right. and it is a surprising statement so i was just thinking about

that writing the righteous mind in which i can have chapter eight conservatives have an advantage in american politics, they seem to know some things about the buttons often failed to realize so i contrasted 1 million based on this in which all individuals are people treat the possible. what i found presently by appeal to i favorite so i said imagine

an contrast to the millions of society, society not individuals but organically over time but found a way to live together, finding themselves together so i suggest an intellectual hero this way of thinking because he warned that man cannot become attached higher aim and submit to a rule something about along to free himself from social pressure demoralized result. the ideas of their now going to come back in about ten minutes because it really solves a puzzling to you so my standard. like to do is show you what is a

cap 3.5 only institutions and the rising phone -based childhood. even in the book some things begin getting into this stuff and i'm realizing my deed third equally important feature of what happened to all of us. what happened to americans born after 1995, okay great. keep me honest, ask for about your questions especially with objection, i think i got something wrong, please tell me so i can get better. representative data of the

population. as comes in and comes up is really psychological. there much higher rates of siding and depression. his rates of anxiety and depression go way up. it's just gen z's of different age groups detent it's not all

the folks that are terrible for some behaved like this. these are major depression in the last year girls implement on the top oec be clear, they're getting more present interest ultimately relatively they are getting more than one and a half times more depressed. dressing feature because the data came in about 200 gracie is a didn't do much depression and anxiety by 2019 and it kept going up. some people challenge me a

changing diagnostics, is allie here? a wonderful psychiatrist who read the book, it's a little. in any case, she was concerned about lowering position and all present terms and that has happened. some have said it's a moral panic, young people are just more likely to admit it. if that was true, it wouldn't show up in behavior. when we look at -- i'm sorry, technically emergency rooms for non- stable self-harm. this is where you see the most dramatic increases so the girls are 188%. they cut themselves at the rate

that girls used to 20 years ago receipt the same for suicide. once we got through a series of articles way up with an astonishing 7% increase in a single year as if something happened did the 12. it is not just that, it is the same pattern hospitalizations for medical records uk and canadian data, highest good. the youngest one is to be the happiest. this is a universal pattern, the happiest people have always been those who are young adults in their late teens and early 20s

and this was true until about ten years ago all over the world. i just got a paper setting this for the paper yesterday. curve is over. but it's not getting the same way so these are fairly certain which of the study, sometimes there are no credit at all for my life as no purpose. what we see is a small

difference between liberals and conservatives until 2010 long known and discussed what they are happier this finding liberals are more neurotic and creative, conscientious so well known personality differences you walk in, i know this is not a left-wing group so these things have long been known but they are usually pretty small until 2010. here's what happens. there are several status that shows the same thing.

in april 2020, all concerned about covid and the question was doctor the provider that they ever told you about your mental health problem? you can see women on average mark likely in age great but young people are more likely to be told that elderly people can there is a more diagnosis and recent decades so two factors that. the data for liberals remake interaction liberals at all points. younger liberals are more likely to say yes and mars are

conservatives. we see meal water among nobles and receipt for young women limited to white women on the left, a majority of them have been told they have the whole condition. something going on but really affected growth in 2010 for smoke. why is this happening at the same time in 2013 in many countries the biggest impact on young girls and liberals? what's going on? be my only theory that can explain it, this must have been the financial crisis in 2008 which didn't do anything for years and young girls artist.

i think this is what explains it especially if i could factor. show you to illustrate, this is seen in some ways to demonstrate how quickly changed. i want you to think about the agent which you are given freedom and you can walk out the door and say goodbye to your parents, your on your bicycle worker can no adult supervision. if it wasn't true until seventh grade, the number is 12. everyone forgot, pick the number. only raise your hand if you were born before 1984.

i'm going to have you all applicable. so 68. if you want in fourth grade, something was weird about your family doing? so bikes are great everyone is out. now the and also raise your hand if you are a paradox gen z.

the crime wave drunk drivers. the sociologist thing because of gas 18 years later and it gets really safe and we decide to dangerous. they will be affected, if our car so okay that is just to show you how radically childhood in

american institutions and that is the big question. kids learn on the playground and adjudication and we decided know more about. i was not enough i strangely rates of mental illness, health it's actually pretty good, they don't get marked the president dangerous but weakening young people are from crimson about 20 all help break loose to let them realize until i got into the book there were two discrete

ways of technology, the first one in the 80s couldn't do much with it and internet crimson but it's slow and you put your entrance based on. a lot of biennials, aol and things and it is amazing many of us thought this is incredible; to 21st century and all these programs are coming out so it's amazing, it is the second wave is so different social media around 2003, 2004 with facebook compared with smart funk mouth you have young people would notice go home and go aol, they

have entire internet in the pocket all the time even in the long-term, the internet and the hands all the time. the great rewiring of childhood an image of what life was like put it). this is what it has become. if you are a boy, you can't go to your friends house. you have to go home alone to your house and then you can play, you have to be alone. if you are a girl, you're spending your time checking on social media posting so is what

talbot becomes voluntary. we can see this in another data set, this is the average american of time americans spend with our friends outside of school. fifteen to 20 portals are spending a lot of time with friends because they are not married, they don't have jobs for the most part, they spent a lot of time with friends. i see my friends now them i'm busy. until we get into the 2010 and then look what happens. i'm with friends from its for young people only, not for older people. 2019 data collected report covid during covid lockdowns, do you see the effect? you don't because he was just a continuation of what was going on before. gen z was already socially distant by 2019, they only had a little further to go.

even when they work together and not relate to got. actually looking at each other for interaction so that's my general story about what happened to team mental health, quiet that happened how it was these two factors. now we come back to the things i laid out, why is it hitting liberals more than conservatives? a couple days ago we read an article on how israel is one of the happiest purpose of the earth to the floor because israel has very unique sociology rather with nordic countries and this is really talking about intense religion with even with

military service and external threats or culture, a lot of things going on at me israelis happy people. they are teams are much happier than our teens are so look into the role of religion, this is longer that churchgoing or religious services going on, and not much of a drop in the 20th century. it drops even faster in 2010 but look where it is dropping. these are to say they are covered, they are not saying religion is important, the big changes if you are liberal, if

you go to church or synagogue in a sense, you probably don't. the drop even faster in this five year period. now when we break up by liberal conservatives from holy see is once again the liberals not going to services whereas conservatives are not changing much over 50 years and now when we bring it these questions like sometimes i think i'm no good at all, how many would agree with what i feel my life is not very so what you find is to say they are conservative liberal and religionist important to them or

their family, i can't remember what religion is important to them, they are they don't go up until 2016 wearing the other groups including conservatives or nonreligious they go up much faster and higher. back the way data is just for males. you always want to look at them differently, separately. the world is even bigger religious girl are not much at all. ...

>> less individualism or i should say more sense of duty and responsibility to the family, country, those sorts of things. where i'm getting more interested in this is new data that zach and i, sack is this was a brilliant young man who ii hired in 2019, 2020 to help me as a general research assistant but he's done an amazing job going to all these data sets and drawing out the lessons and so this is his post. he found what happened in the industry in the door. this is a recent post where we're look at europe. europe is complicated. nordic countries like the angle countries. the rest of europe is more complicated. overall, we do see an increase in psychological distress in europe for girls especially. not as dramatic for boys.

when zach dug into it here's what he found. when we break of the countries there's 32 countries in this data set, when we break it up by the countries that are high individualism based on i forget which system, they are the countries listed in yellow, when we break it up and away what we see is that by far the biggest rise is for girl in individualistic countries they are the ones who are washed away when everything moved online. we broke it up by individualism and if we divide the countries by religiosity we see the same story. here it's a different group. most of the countries are different. we take the top third versus the bottom third. the top third religious countries versus the bottom of the religious countries, we see the same pattern. largest increases are the low religiosity girls, the ones who were swept away in europe.

so again something is going on such that young people and people in individualistic countries like the anglos in the nordic, like individualism and country was atomic the list of happiness. but it's in those happy individualistic secular countries that we see by far the greatest decline, especially in secular liberal and liberal girls. and so i get at this a little bit as i finish writing a book up and some things about this third component. i give this quote in chapter seven of the book, if this button social order dissolves as will no longer feel that exist, whatever is social and us is the pride of all objective foundation, all the remains is an artificial combination of illusory images, a fantasmic lorry vanishing at the least reflection nothing which can be

a goal for our action. that to be some psychic or description of life online. just stuff, just trivia coming at you 1000 1000 times fasn ever could have before. i conclude chapter seven by saying that i believe is what happened in gen z. less able than any generation in history to put down roots in real-world communities come pocketed by known individuals who will still be there a year later. so i become really interested in the idea especially you fall and david, brilliant thinkers of right and on for many years. they've been talking especially in recent years that both are really understood the importance of moral formation constraint, training, mentorship and then putting those reminded me that we also have to really give a strong nod of approval to james hunter who pointed, usually on this case back in the '90s,

that you have to have a rich moral matrix in which the people develop if you don't you get very bad results. that i think brings us back to that difference that didn't understand that when i first read it but if it makes a lot more sense now. so that's my presentation. that's just some new stuff. it's the beginning of discussion. let's talk. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, john. i'm sure all of you been following, he's very modest and abuse number one duke times best-selling book this week so if you cannot get the book your i encourage you to get online. i also know for fact his publisher didn't get enough copies of the book. you can get a a print copy and read it slowly away from a

screen. i am very glad you started talking about communities. i would encourage all of you to take very seriously this idea of two ways of technological wave,, the internet use it was amazing, but all these things, good for us. i would put back a little on that and he think there were people at the time to the rae concerns largely to 90 days concern saying it's going on a website where is faced with the same thing as meeting up with your friends? even e-mail is communicating via e-mail, let's serve, very useful but in general if we agree it was some good some bad, though still nevertheless, no reckoning with what we were giving up at the time. we all kind of assumed everything is said can we work it all out, we will work the kinks out. a book called everything bad for you is good for you?

remember this. like stop adding an moral panic about how the internet and video gaming is actually good for you. that was the tone. very optimistic forward-looking. then social media game. my first question for you because you're here amongst conservatives, where to start to place responsibility here? my first part is tech companies, technology companies. what his response to companies that liberally design platforms that particularly targeted children and particularly targeted addictive behavior? >> let me start by rather you can guess one could say about the tech companies let me actually put a bigger frame around it. which is that to some degree this was inevitable. what a mean is i think our species is kind of like were going to fly too close to the sun the matter what. you can't stop us. and then our wings are going to melt. if social media, if mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg

had not worked out the particular advertising business model which is the worst part of it, which is i think link to a lot of the problems, if they had never existed, if they got created facebook, and not be quite as bad but we would still be going in the same direction. so to some degree this is inevitable modernity, technology connecting us to the world which means we don't care very much about who is around us. if you can find the best musician or whatever in the world you don't need to employ local musicians. so to some extent the decline of committee was baked in in a y start the industrial revolution. and i think the question is how do we adapt to it? i think can make the case in the 20th century we actually did develop some ways to adapting at then conservatives would discuss whether those were adequate, conservatives were always sounded the alarms. that's the first.

the big picture, this had happened although don't think it had happen to this bad. the tech companies, we say tech companies and there are so many of them and many have made our lives better. it's really only a few that are, their business model requires them to hook children, as been interested this possible because if they don't someone else will spearfish them. they all know exactly how old of their users are. then everything about them. they could kickoff and age youth, just mostly 13 to open account according to federal law but they don't kick anyone off. and we know, we also know from internal whistleblower accounts that met it is probably the worst of them. there's just so many, so many whistleblowers from meta, a recent one will be publishing some of the writing of my substack on after babel in the next couple of weeks. meta-because it's a big as

instrument is the one most closely linked to mental illness in girls come tiktok is probably worse but it is so new we don't have a lot of data on that. i've seen medics and tiktok in particular, step testimony more about. i think they have some problems, too although i don't believe, i think tiktok and that are really the ones that very huge amount of blame. >> yes. so what role is there? among people who care about free enterprise, who are skeptical of federal top-down regulations. you have some solutions are offering your book and actually most of them are not regulatory for most of them are about collective action about parental responsibility and the like which conservatives love to hear. but is there a place because of the local farm you have shown us these platforms encourage particularly with children, what role is there for both federal legislation and state-level legislation? as you say indie book there's a lot of interesting bipartisan effort going on in that arena.

>> to be clear what i'm proposing is we are stuck in a set of collective action problems. the reason why parents give their sixth-grader a phone, smartphone is because she says d what else has one, i'm left out. if each of us does the right thing alone we're we put t a disadvantage that if we all do together or even half of us together then it becomes much easier. collective action problems, three of which required no regulation, no cover. the first is no smartphones before high school. that's clear. it's not a law, i would not favor law say a 13 year can't own but a norm. just don't come give them a flip phone or a phone watch. that's what millennials had and it were funny. so no smartphones before high school. okay, the second one is no social media until 16. that's when we can do as a norm but it will be hard and it would really help to government support so we'll come back to that one. the third is phone free schools which schools can do themselves

and, of course, all of that is state-level and a lot of governors are not looking to because this is easiest most powerful we can do this year, it will have huge effects. every school that doesn't loves it. all schools have to go phone free this year. we don't need government help with that although jeb bush brought me to speak to his group of education people and what and talk with state legislators it was clear if we just put up a few million dollars to defray the cost of phone lockers, like a lot of schools are dissuaded because it will have the money for phone lockers. that when requires nothing. the fourth norm is for more free play independence and responsibility in the real world. this is where i've done work with free range kids. some regulation would be helpful but not essential. we have to give kids back childhood. the big sticking point seems to be the second one because i think the current age of 13 is too low and is not enforced. the biggest single thing we could do to turn this whole mess health crisis round, the biggest

single thing we could do is to raise the age from 13 to 16 and mandate the enforcement and all copies responsible not for perfection but for making good-faith effort to really keep people off until 16. let me ask this audience a question. here are your three choice, which category are you in. would you say you're a social conservative? would you say you are libertarian or would you say you are progressive? let me get a sense of the room. raise your hand if you'd say you are a social conservative. raise your hand high. brazier had a if you see a libertarian. okay, not that many. raise your hand if you would say you are a progressive. about the same as libertarians. what's going on? so as long as there's very few libertarians here i can kind of like we can all plan together because -- i'm joking. >> you will be allowed to defend yourself during q&a. >> and interesting things develop i've never seen before. everything has been left versus right. this is not.

the left and the right are in total agreement. it's the libertarians who are opposed because libertarians think jon height once triggered social media, therefore he's bad, he's wrong. by the way to study when a a crisis, that's what they say. it's called solution of version. if you don't like the solution to deny there's even a problem. so i do think i love libertarians have a lot of libertarian friends. i like a lot of their ideas but on this one, on this one and extremism in defense of unregulated markets with real libertarians wouldn't do, , so u look at what, i teach a course on professional responsibility. we want efficient markets. we don't want market failures. we don't want monopoly, which some of the companies sort of half. we don't want asymmetric information which of course all the companies have. we don't want imposing costly externalities on people who are not part of the transaction which all the companies do and

we don't want the exportation of public goods such as the entire attention span of anyone, like how about if we not let companies just take all of it? what we have is the most inefficient and corrupt market in the biggest the most important area of life, which is our ability to think, talk, communicate and live. libertarians if you're listening either here or there, i love you but could you at least like chemical demise on maybe protecting children? like that's really all i'm asking. >> it is a striking to realize there are states in which you cannot get a tattoo until your 18 but you can have an instagram or other social media count when you're seven or eight. this brings me, as one group in your book and one line for two where you acknowledge, i do know what the answer is, which concerns me because i'm always looking to you for the answer and it worried me.

it's the challenge all of us as parents who have kids have faced and this is a question of the digital umbilical cord, i think that's how you put it. the fact it's not just the kids love the stuff and get hooked on it and live their social lives online. it's that the parents like to track and survey the kids because that reassures the parent. this is a question where the conservative community based orientation family or religious community based orientation does have very clear answers. i'm wondering if you could expand a little on that concern, particularly the surveillance aspect. one of the recent kids are anxious is there always being watched. >> i think the primary cause of anxiety is not that they're being watched by the parent. it's all the other stuff going on in their social world. but the parents consular checking the means they never get to taste true independence, true freedom were you responsible for yourself. they can always call the parents. there was an article i think in

slate on how hard it is to be a middle school teacher because your kids probably committed getting with their parents like during class, texting to parents and after checking in making requests and demands. the parents are big part of the problem. the thing i say i don't know the book is lenore and i had a debate over this for years. lenore says we shouldn't track our kids. just give them a phone like a flip phone, let them out in the world, trust them, don't track them. my argument is i was willing to let, to follow your advice, lenore, much earlier in new york city than it would have because i could see the mason admitted to school. i could see what he was. to the extent that lets you give your kids more freedom i think it could be a net positive. maybe the way to his office is a lot of people use tracking programs like life 360 which is like as orwellian a name as you can get. my family we do use find my, because we want to know, okay, he has a track meet. on his way home? we find that were useful.

so much of me for life 360. 360. it's just not what is he. it's he was here for 17 minutes and then he went here for 25 minutes. you can see everything they did all day long. that i think is a creepy level of surveillance. they key thing is give your kids a lot of independents and if you do that then it's okay to do a little bit of tracking i think. >> okay. >> what do you think? >> i have twin 17-year-old boys, but they had no screen zero to five, no smart phone until high school. they were the last kids to get, believing they will tell you about it. >> but do they still resent you for it? >> there started to come out of resentment and into perhaps generally positive acceptance,, but i chose not to track the and their city kids like your kids. they rode public transportation to get to and from school and it is nerve-racking because when you know as apparent that you can track a kid and you think safety safety safety you want to do it. so i chose not to.

i friends who chose to in part because that one kid who would have so and do his own thing, as a gen xer i admired that. [laughing] his parents did not. so i think it that's was individual choices where i think communities discussing which thanks to book it will be can help people come to solutions. i have one more question. am going to quote, i was pleased to see you quoted marcus aurelius in your book. the thing to think about, the thing to think about determine the quality of your mind, your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. i was like i know you little bit. an atheist talk about the soul. and you do have a secular book very think is very persuasive which talks about spiritual practices for lack of a better term. my question is looking at the did about religious committees at the some of the children in the securities are protected from negative influences, is that translatable to a spiritual

but not religious world? increasing secular work because the thing the religious committee does is not just create boundaries and protection but enforced rules. what you think in terms of a secular version of? >> that's a great question. so just very, very briefly, after written seven chapters on what happened to kids and ugly late on during the booking, i felt like to something what it would do to adult. i should make a list of all the things or two in all. fragmenting our attention, filling us with stuff we can never get a moment of quiet. i'm it was all things happening and i realized it's like this brings it back to my happiness hypothesis and religious of religious tradition store tradition. a lot of philosophical traditions. they offered similar insights insights. one of them is marcus aurelius quote we are what we think. a rise of the thoughts can we take on the color of what we

think about. and if you've ever seen what could to washington tiktok especially the boys, a lot of it is people getting hit by cars get punched in think of not falling denser horrible stuff. and then hours and hours of this. it's so degrading. if we spent hours we feel dirty afterwards. our brains were formed for this imagine kids going through puberty, , the nuance are wiring up. anyway, that's the back of the chapter eight even if kids feel karabakh kids at all, buy the book to reject it because that's what i'm unspiritual elevation and degradation. okay now to your question. it's long been thought there have long been movements i can with all the good things about religion just without all the god stuff? that is like sunday assuming from -- efforts to bring people together without the god stuff. i would imagine those are better than nothing because you are if you rituals, if you have a group but as far as i can tell and that we see in the data unhappiness and religion, right,

progressive or progressive denominations are not very finding it don't seem to convert the same mental health benefits. still beneficial but not as much. this again was -- durkheim was not a conservative. we actually need perfect freedom is really, really bad for us. we need constraints. we need restrictions. we need duties to others. and if we don't have them and it's all about me all the time, the phones have lounge and people to pretty much everything you want whenever they want for free with no effort. if you're a boy, why bother talking to a girl and being embarrassed? you can have amazing sex with your virtual girlfriend. you can design however you want. this is before they are put into robots. the robotic parkas as fast in a couple of years the quit a physical three-dimensional robot girlfriend. they're just not going to develop the skills of talking to

girls and women. i'm sorry, this is far afield from your question. it's just something that really bothers me but i will stop there. >> are right. in the spirit of durkheim was keep the animate me to admit them. microphones if you raise your hand and went into the microphone comes to you. we have one here up front. they're bringing your mic. >> thank you. wonderful talk and i'm a boomer and actually walked to school first-grade which is 20 minutes away, so it was different. what i wanted to ask you about, you mentioned of course mr. zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg and cheryl of course is referred to in some books as typhoid cheryl because she took that model, predictive e

model to google and of the place and from there. what do you think we can do about these algorithms? it is an addiction. it is promotion of an addiction, just like fentanyl, like other addictions. where the using algorithms that promote impulse buying techniques like fear of missing out. among the most vulnerable teenage girls. where there constantly presented deliberately with a never reachable goal of looking at certain way, et cetera for the purpose of selling them cosmetics, clothing, music, et cetera. but i have now a constant anxiety and that is deliberate. it is built into the algorithms which then push the technology. can't we control that even though it's an enigma how it works to a normal person?

>> i think it's a book to make a huge bright line between adults and children. especially in europe they might can do all sorts of things but in a way not going to make a law saying that adults can't choose what services are what companies to associate with. but i'll be damned if i'm going to let companies approached my children without my knowledge or consent and do things to them like this in ways that i can't even stop unless i literally locked them in the room away from the internet. this of i do think we do need regulation. the most important thing is this of you raise the age. we can't fine-tune this, raise the age, let them get through early puberty. some say 18 but if we can get 16 i think, but there's also there's also the one pill that might make it through congress this year is called the kids online safety act. it is all kinds of restrictions

and it that say all the stuff you doing to adults can some of the stuff you can't do to kids. you have to default, to be private not reachable by stringent new in a world. there's a bunch of protections we can get. those would help. then i could be game changers necessarily but they would make it less toxic. there is a lot we can do it once again this is an area where the companies have shown they will not do anything that will reduce their user base or their profits. i think we will require government help to reduce the harmful externalities that they are producing for children. >> jon has an excellent section in the book about the design choices and some of the things they've done in europe they could translate you. i will add mad came there and gave a presentation and when asked about just this question the design choices could you alter the platforms in some ways? said that's up to the parents. we get parents this little button. they can make it right. so the answer is none of this is our responsibility.

>> even when you two married parents with phds work on this really hard, they generally can't do it. what's when happen for single moms who have no time to supervise and no resources? the argument it's up to the parents come this is one of, i think the pushing this out the libertarian circles also. that everything is -- you know, can they go gambling and go to strip clubs and go to bars? we can't expect those places to check ids. up to the parents that they want the kids to be drinking in bars. >> good. all right. i saw a hand here. >> you had a wonderful discussion in the book, what are the things i appreciate very much about the book is you are not afraid at times to say no, no, this is not just correlation versus causality. this is causality. this is a recent visit happening and really appreciate that.

i'm interested to know what is the correlation and perhaps the causality between, you talked about this in the book but the addictive, the way which these organizations use this algorithm to garner addiction, took on the dopamine hit. not every time but maybe every fifth time or maybe the time. one come is her correlation between that and just the absolutely insane amount of addiction, like actual opioid addiction fentanyl addiction that seems to be just ripping through people this age, just ripping through them. and would you make any different statement about getting a smart phone to a recovering addict?

>> thank you. so i would say don't focus too much on the algorithms. algorithms matter but not as much as people think. twitter didn't even just algorithms into 2017. it's straight chronological feed. videogames are not using algorithms. a lot of addictive things are not using algorithms. focus more on the dopamine than the algorithms i would say. if you have something which gives reliable quick hits the dopamine to children, you're going to change the developing brain. i think it's permanent. i think there's lasting marks but even leaving that aside there's about your changing their brain in the short to medium term. because when you take away they go through withdrawal cravings. dopamine nation, a book that withdrawals sustained cravings with other drugs. focus on the dopamine and then

i've just written, this a petition to stop expertise but it did hear someone saying recently that especially once you've gone through puberty like this and your brain has been worked by the easy dopamine and you have to have it, that you are more subject to chemical addictions then. you don't have, so one of the key terms is executive function. which developed in the frontal cortex and mid-to-late puberty. the ability to set a goal, garner the need to get there and stay on task. that's hard to do. by the time could help most of us are able to the better than when we were 12. so yes i do think, i can't prove come because osama expertise but it do think if you have a girl who's always on social media on multiplayer videogames this would change the dopamine neurons in the brain such that they would be more subject to addiction probably that's true i don't have the sites to prove that one.

>> i want to take it a step further. all of us who are involved in the discovery of education technology over the last 30 30 years, and in 2012 there was such a breakthrough. i mean we thought this commendation of project safe learning combined with online self executive function, self driven learning, i been in all the rooms with many others what we thought this was a holy grail truly helping children discover great moments in learning. and so talk about the intersection of this and will are we going then. because this is massive and it's failed largely because we didn't have the right system set up during covid. but the world is -- china structured this way. india is structured this way. we americans not really turning back but i'd love to your thoughts on that and what do we do about it? >> i have a slide for that.

in theory all the technology was going to help. it doesn't look that way. looks like it's hurting. in the '90s we had what we called the digital divide, which is kids from high income families all have computers. as when you do own computer or laptop or laptop whatever it was. it can be used all sorts of things. did anybody realize that if they can text from the device will be texting all day long? that's what seems to be happening. these devices, one had some benefits in theory, in practice they are texting devices. the boys watch porn. they play video games. the distraction so that it shows up in global data so here we go. derek thompson had this a couple months ago after the latest numbers came out.

the program for a national whatever, the international assessment of academic progress statistic test. the scores were pretty stable in the 2000 and then what happens? yes, they go dance the entering covid but the decline started after 2012. let's look at this data in the united states, the national assessment of educational progress also known as nations report card. this is quite remarkable that we made steady progress in reading and math. our kids were literally getting smarter, better educated from the 70s of up to 2012 been what happens? turned around. yes, the drop during covid but don't the drop started in 2012. so ever since we bought the technology into class can market to getting dumber, distracted, our teacher to quitting because they can't stand it. our education system is a mess because of all this free technology that the tech company again is to try to get kids onto the system.

i didn't say in this book because it didn't have time to do enough research i believe we need do is rip it all out, get rid of it all. the teachers of course let them have computed. they should be screened, computers in the classroom that you sometimes but the personal technology, acting in your hand that you take home with you that you can customize, get rid of it all. the waldorf schools, the schools, people who created the technology they don't let the kids have. they send it to schools that don't have technology because they know what these things due to kids. i can't i need to do the research. that would be the next project but i suspect the edge is get rid all, all of it. the personal tech that you have with you. >> back row there. >> thank you for coming. it's been a wonderful talk to you have alluded to the attention economy and impact of attention but i did notice a early on in your presentation that adhd numbers did not seem

to go up at the same rate as depression and anxiety. can you speak to that difference and then what the difference, the impact of that different on solutions? he shouldn't be talking a lot about increasing attention and how does that was the correlation between attention and depression anxiety? >> thank you for that. i didn't spend a lot of time studying adhd because from early on the links between social media and depression anxiety, those with the places i was folksy, that's with the debate was and those are the clearest links. at first i thought it was mostly a story. as zach and i worked and try to figure out what was going on with boys we saw it was we do games, all sorts of things happening to boys. not necessarily from social media. what a report in the book because is interested in the question of like with all this move onto these devices,, shouldn't adhd be going up? i didn't find evidence that it is causing adhd but i did find

evidence that if you have adhd and makes the symptoms worse. so kids with adhd love the stuff and it fragments them further. i can't say that it is causing a rise in adhd. what we saw in that slide i showed you was a gradual increase which is consistent with just overprescribing or, i don't know if that's the case but i'm just saying we don't see a hockey stick with anxiety depression, so that's why i focus there. >> far back corner. >> thank you. thank you so much for the talk. my question relates broadly to the phone-based childhood and then curious in your view what the sort of partial effect of the actual content and structure social media sites play in influencing these mental health declines we have been discussing, and then on the

other hand, the effect of just substituting out in person interaction. so in other words, is it the technology itself or is it just the fact that we are no longer interacting face-to-face. >> i'm sorry, did you mean is that the continents like the things kids are watching, is that what matters? >> yeah. would you say it's a social media content or the structure? >> right. so in general i'm not that interested in content. in general, i side with marshall mcluhan and neil postman, the median is a message. though senate hearings we saw in january was all about why is it this a much cell phone and suicide content? can we cut that out? the tech companies say but said it are we spend seven dollars be removing 93 trillion pieces of self harm content. like no, even if you can get 95% which you can't, but if end if you could get 5% you still have

kids spending five hours a day every day. that's the average. that's the market average five hours a a day every day on sol media which include tiktok and youtube. i'm not that focus on the particular content i'm much more focused on the time and the opportunity cost. i've recently come to see if there's something special about short form video which is really, really bad. to try this experiment at home. i do this with my class at nyu. let's try right now. how many of you in this room watch netflix of this once a week? raise your hand-netflix. just those of you, how much of jewish netflix was never infinite, the world would be better if it was never intended? brazier hentai. okay, one. [laughing] how many of you in his room watch tiktok at least once a week. brazier hentai if you watched tiktok. >> be honest. be honest. >> very few. there is dated progresses watch more associated than conservatives.

such as, rating it again for tiktok shorts. i mean instagram wheels. >> although reels. >> if you any watch in of the short form, raise your hand. okay. okay. just those of you, how many of you think the world would be better if it was never invented? most of you. so the point is, here we have come out if there any economist listening, sometimes people say linda's today, i come to get pay you if you study at university cargo? how much you have to pay you do not use instagram for a month or tiktok and people out to be paid because they don't want to be kicked off? but did you say what if we get everybody off how much would we have to pay you to join? then it becomes i would bet you so much money to have that happen. because people feel trapped. what an come to learn is that stories are good, movies are good, television shows are

generally good is a lot better when you and i were kids. they were stupid, really bad, right? television is better than it used to be. it's the short form ones the ones are not real stories come just little dopamine things. i would urge you if you're going to let your kids have some social media, just picture the don't to tiktok and other things. maybe a little bit 30 minutes on the weekend just so they can see some things but the tiktok habit or the short, those i think a really bad. >> all right. we've got time for one more question. in the far back over there. >> thanks for giving this talk. one thing i don't hear talked about as much is my understanding is a lot of the studies that find self-reported negative effects of social media on mental health also find at least some people say there's self-reported net positive effect and is plenty people in d.c. who would say something like twitter has been great for

promoting the work, networking, that kind of thing. i was wondering how we think of that? is there a subset of people who are using social media in a fully responsible net positive way? is it wrong to do like a blanket ban on discrediting? even with a lot of ice is there some small portion that of a likely get addicted that some portion you would never get addicted and like never have a propensity to misuse. how should we think about that? >> so once again adults versus children of these tools are useful. i use twitter for various purposes. if adult jews use one of his tools to advance their needs which includes all kinds of networking information gathering that's great. i don't think sixth and seventh grades have much of any to network with strangers or to find information which, i mean they are free to do with google. also talk about the benefits, it's vanishingly thin. what it largely, you don't find the kids are doing more are happy. you do find it increases happiness. if i you ask them, you ask them

does using this, how do you feel when you use this? mark zuckerberg is correct that in that interval study most of the variables were positive, like peoples that makes me so close to my friends, makes they feel connected. that's true. these benefits are vanishingly thin because they're not did as good as what they replace. what if we took every kid and said hi but if you never see her friends again you sit alone in a row. but were going to give you the billy to like each other supposed. how do you feel? i love to sing their post. so what happened to girls when they went on, in 2012 is when they moved on to instagram. they became much lonelier. that's also around the time when boys moved on to these immersive multiplayer games. you can't go to your friends house anymore. you have to be alone. when boys were connected by the incredibly exciting amazing games they got much lonelier. i don't believe these reports. a rather i do believe but all the same is the kids themselves

see some benefits but he can ask them as adjusted, if you ask and would you rather that instagram or tiktok was invented they would suggest if we could all get that we would. it's a trap. the way to get out of collective action trap comes a couple of ways. government regulation especially when companies are harming children, that's a pretty effective way to escape from the worst of these traps. >> i will remind everyone that there are some books, editing you willing to sign a few. to not hold him up because as a lever reception also just outside the store if you like to talk to jonathan. and then reminder that may seventh we will have the lecture with ruth weiss and matthew continuity to please everyone join in thanking jonathan hite. [applause] >> today watched c-span 2024 and

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american automobile manufacturing now takes place in what we call world areas. especially the japanese companies, toyota and honda, build these plans starting in the '70s and 80s not inside urban areas but out in the cornfields. and that, so world people are not farmers. i mean statistically speaking much at all. they are factory workers. they are truck drivers. there do it all of these things that are connected to our industrial society. >> steven conn with this book "the lies of the land" sunday night at eight eastern on c-span's q&a. you can listen to q&a and all of our podcast on our free c-span now app. >> the house is now planning to send impeachment articles against homeland security secretary all the hundred markers to the senate chamber next week. several senate republicans

requested the delay in order to have the chamber conduct a full trial instead of the democrats went to quickly vote to dismiss or table the articles. life covers next week on c-span2, on c-span now are free mobile food at and online at c-span.org. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are offended by this teln company and more including cox ♪ ♪ >> koolen-de vries syndrome is extremely rare is extremely rare. >> hi. >> but friends don't have to be. >> this is a joe. >> when you are connected you are not alone. >> talks supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a front-row seat to democracy. >> the atlantic council commemorated the 75th anniversary of the nato which was establishedpr