john. it's goodbe wh you today. i'm so looking forward to this conversation. we're here to talk about your new book, the anxious

generation. i care a lot about adolescence. i'so i brought that lens to reading this book. i want understand what'in mom, t reasons to be hopef. perspectives i had in reading the book. i'm curious what lenses you ou writing it so i'm i'ocial sc. i'm also a professor. i'm also a father i have my my children are i have a son 17 and a daughter and i said, you know, my own research is on the psychology of morality. i looked at how mority helps us understand the political divide. i have looked a lot at what social media is doing to kids because that's not my expertise. al have studied a lot of developmental psychology, i set out to write a book ■z what is r country and how it's ki to havee politics. and i thought i'd the first te■ar off th, well, what

happened to teens when they move their social lives onto onto a smartphones and social media in 2011 2012. what happened to them that i was going to move on and then just talk about democracy. bu once i wrote that first chapter, i realized, oh my god, this is the graphs are shocking. the increase in mental illness is so vasand hes. so anyway, so that drew me into bring, even though i'm not primarily a developmental social psychologist, i'meallaware of and focused on how we influence each other and you rstand social media and the addiction to it and the difficulty ofunless you understl web that people are in, the incred c we all have about reputation, what people think of usd more intense that is for teenagers. so i bringt)■ that. and also i'm in a business school. i moved to the nyu stern school

of business in 2011. i'm i was at the universy of virginia before that. and i've learned so much about business. h about it before i came here. we don't learn much about business or capita.r you know, in most of our schools. and so understanding the business models that facebook particular the ad, the advertising driven enmemodel, has also helped me to understand why we're in thisep,. yeah. so talk to us a little bit about that business attention econom'd how that factors into your thinking. so let's go back. i find it, you know, it's very helpful, eec you know, older listeners who remember the nineties, who remember how amazing it was when we first got got type in, you know, anything and googlethink was the original onw would answer it. i mean, it was like we were gods, you know, you have omniscience, you can find anything. so incredible and the

millennials grew up with it and it didn't harm their mental health at all. their mental health better than gen x before them, and it didn't harm democracy at all. in fact, it seemed to be really helping democracy in the so, you know, we we all started off very this and a point that i come back to again and again in the anxious generation is that when smartphones and social media came in, in the 20 in a to thousands, that really changed everything. technology was noechnology longer a servant that we called em nee something. but once we got smartphone ads , thousands of apps and notifications, now, there was the opportunity for companies to usus s the opportunity for facebook wd out ed out the mechanics of this first.

originally, facebook had no revenue. it was just, hey, you know, let's connect people and for free. that but once they worked out their revenue model, which is that, te service are not the customers. they don't pay the money. they get a free service. and if you're getting something for free on the internet, probably you're the product. well, i shouldn' say that there are kids, we get it for free. but in this case, if you're you're actually the product, the customers, the advertiser. and once they developfree to us. but you pay with your data and your attention and, your receptivity to advertisements. many other companies adopted it and then theace was on. whoever could grab a young person's eyeballs and hold on would win. but if you didn't grab them and hold on, someonelse would. so you better be as addictive as possible, as engaging as possible. and th' the early, you know, even in 20 17,008, 229, it wasn' like it wasn't

hurting kids mental health. but by 2015 it was. 's turning point, that business model and you wr to the technologies themselves that you feel like made a big. i know the front finra is one of them. talk to us a little bit about some of some of what changed arl like has has had such a big impact. yes. so again, i didn't i didn't know this just from common knowledge. it wasn't up with tobias rose, stockwell, who has a wonderful book, outrage outrage machine, and then my research partners at roush really dug into it in detail change technologically it's a really amazing story. and so it starts. in 2007 with the introductof iphone. and there too, i remember my first iphone. it was magical. i mean, it was like a digital swiss army knife. it had all these amazing things on it, could use it for all sorts of things. so i loved it. itr old son loved it, loved swiping left, you know, loved watching things. it there was no app store, there

were no notifications it was just a tool that you use when you wanted it. and then in 2008, you got the dh allow apps to allow lopeelop ap. you get the app store, you get notifications in 2010, y front . so now young people's lives oth. much more ofel deal. instagram is founded in 2010, but it doesn't become popular■2s it high speed internet. yoowreally slow, and it's in ths period around 2010o 's when we'g quickly to high speed internet and unlited da plans. before then, teens had to conserve their texting because they were ngmy point is, in 201s atajority had a flip phone limited data, no front facing camera. they used the phone to text each other and to cl was it by 2015, most teens, 70 or over

70%, have a smartphone. most have an instagram account, they have high speed data plans. and so now it's possible for the first time to be online all the time. the millennials couldn't do geand did. and you call gen z the anxious generation. that's the title of your book. so tell us who is the anxious generation? what marks the beginning in mind and how did we get here? yeah, so the way that the way that i discovered this was originally through the work of jean tanguy. she wrote a book called i gen and. she had an atlantic article where, you know, author people need to understand authors don't make up their own titles. the atlantic is very gooatl. they made up the title have smartphones and so because it was a kind of an over-the-top flack for that. a lot of psychologists criz because what she was showing was these graphs of mental health of, let'al illnes, anxiety were like little hockey

sticks, likehey weqt flat. and then they would go up in 2013, 2014 thought, wow, three s of data. i see that. iif this goes down next year, she's going to be really ■ñembarrassed that it didn't go down. it just kept going up and since. ntal health crisis began in 2013. that's when all the numbers began goin's no sign of a probl. 2013. 2014 is when everything goes up, but akes us a while to notice it because know we research w collected. it takes two years before you see the published and but we began to notice on campus around 2014, 2015 that all of our mental healt centers were flooded. we couldn't keep up with the demand. and so at the time, we thought our students were millennials, people were telling us, oh yeah, the millnial generation, you know, born in 1981 through 1999 or 2000, turns out that if you

were born you have much higher odds of being ann in 1992 or 93. it's that sudden. it's the most sudden change i've ever seen in longitudinal data. and i think it's because the millennials went through puberty on the early internet■ puberty, an incredibly important period of brain development. the brain is really rewiring itselfcked down configuration. flip phones and the early internet, and they came out fine. their mental z, i think is defie fact that they went through puberty and social media many hours a d a■ónd that messes you up socially, developmentally. and i tnk i know that's part of your thesis in the book, but there i another component of your argument in the anxious gen as well. will you talk ta t about what t. oh, yes,nk the phones because 'l front and center.

simple story about all of those kids. they g phoand then they were ruined. it's actually a two part story. by saying we have overprotected ourhiren in the real world and we have under protected them online. so my previous was called the coddling of the american mind how goodtions and bad ideas are setting up a generation failure. i wrote that with my friend greg lukyanov and we spent a lot of time we were trying to understand. why are college students suddenly so fragile? beginning in 2015? it wasn't like this in 2012, 2013. why are college students so fragile that many think they're being speaker comes that they don't like? if there's a book aigd that they think has difficult content, the students in 2014 2015, which is different from those from those before, so we were looking especially at over

protection a large part of our argument was we were trying on play researchersh gray and the e skenazy, who wrote this wo kids. and we argued that because children are antifa fragile. that was the key word in that book where kids are not■í■b fra. they're not going to break if they experience a setback. actually, they need toetbacks. it's like the immune system. the immune system. if you protect a kidj=■:s, the m can't develop because the immune ■a■csystem requires disease, ge, bacteria in order to develop and become strong. he story that i tell in the access generation is that childhood was always based on play, especially unsupervised, nd tumble play, pretend, play, all kinds of play kids playing with each other without adult supervision so that they learn howte their behavior. they learn how to resolve conflicts. play is whatand in the 1980s an,

americans began tod abduction. we thought if we everjn let kids out, they'll be kidnaped. so we cracked down on childhood ely stopped letting them out. and so by about 2010, no one has seen a child outdoors without a ch so long that some neighbors begin calling the police when eyoutdoors without . so we crack down on free play, whh i think interfered with development. but and this is the millennials we're talking about now they didn't get to play outside as much but they're not anxious yet so the story tell is that that weakened them that de them more fragile and then when they thrown into the whirlpool of social media and people say bad things about each other and you're all of horrible, horrible7ythat's 'n adolescence were easily broken. and that i think, gen-z, i'm so

curious about this. i'm language and hearing words like broken and ruined. i'm trying to reconcile it this generation, teens who are amazing and and i'm wondering, as you were choosing this title, as you were thinking about this framing, you're a psychology ist and you were choosing this the this term, the anxious generation. you have any concern that way would be sort of a=nky self-fulfilling prophecy for teens. oh self-fulfilling that becauses a call to action. now first, i should say my original title that iwas kids i. and it was going to be about whpenshen you take kids out planet earth. you know, like plants need soil. if youry traise them in the air, they're almost all going to die. and we took kids out of

communities and we raised them in cyberspace. that was my original title was just kids in space. but publishers rightly pointed out that, u know, that nobody's going to know what that means. and they came up with the the anxious generation. but i think it's a good. really addressed to young people. it's really addressed to adults and teachers because we need to change whati'm here to try to pg gamepersuading people over a five or ten year is that, you know, i'm here to say, look, the parents all see the problem. the teachers see it, not all.' . you and i are both professors. i need to be more careful. i need to be in my language. not everyone sees the problem, but i think most do byso i'm try wrong. i should be clear in responsein. the majority of gen z are not depressed and anxious.

so you know, if we say destroyed or broken, i literally everyone, not even majority. however, i do think that the ma that might make them a little a littlekettle less confident. soscientist, you see gigantic differen generations. you know, you and i, we're good l deviations, saying, is this a small effect or a big effect? the really big effects statistically in terms of the difference between generat.so sa convoluted answer, but that's how it came to be called the anxious generation. and they much anxiety is one of the main words they use. even more than depression. anxiety central is the central mental illness. and it's ■(a big part of a lot f their identities. so i'm not worried that this is going tose thetoe the things coming out of their amorizing it, that that's what

would cause for sure. i hear y on that. and talk to us a little bit about of the recommendatns abouu think it's going to take for us to, as you say, like bring kids ck ti know you have some very specific force reforms that you'd like see. talk to us about what they are and how you got there. mm hmm. okay i'll do that. and then. and then i actually want ask you because you wrote a book on this, and i want to actually get country view from you. so i'll. i'll do that just a moment. but here. okay, here we go. thee, i propose simple norms caw're collective action proble. you know,your kid an iphone becf give your kid an iphone thenn' she's cut off. she's isolated. she's alone. and that really could be bad for her. but what if if a bunch of e kids are friends you know what, we're just gonna

give our kids flip phones. they don't need a smartphone in sixth eighth grade. we're just going to wait till high school before we give them a all your friends have smartphones, have i have flip phones, even if there's only ten of you in a grade of 50 kids, you're fine, especially if you're also given more free play, more together, because that's a lot more fun hanging out with your friends, going to get ice cream, at's a lot more fun than alone on your bed. anyway, the four norms are these no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16 phone free schools and far more independence free play and responsibility in the real world. if we're going to take it, we're going to greatly reduce screen time, especially in k that's where a lot of the damage is done. that's where we can easily reduce phone u. if we're going to reduce screen and joy and time to play in time

with each other. so this is all about trying to roll back the phone based childhood and restore thay chil. i really appreciate that. 'nd■zg, i know you've been talking about these four reforms. from different people who you've engaged in some of these ideas? the response has been incredible. i have been involved in many i ran a gun control group in college, miserable. all you know, we made no progsscampaigns, you know, how u adjustí language to persuade people? it's very hard to change people's minds here. what i've discovered, i have no no. no one is saying that i'm wrong. therere actor. there's a good, healthy academic debate. there e some who say the effects are tiny. the evidence of causation, not

the great work. the great majority of parents, teachers, gen z, they see this. and so i'm finding i don't have to persuade huge amount of work. i show my work, i've put up all the research online on my substack after babble.com we've collected, you know, probably a thousand studies by now and organize them. we've created dozens or hdrs of graphs, charts. so i've done the work to persuade anyone who needs persuading. but the surprise for me has been as as the book is coming out, as people are reading it, no one is pushing back. there's nobody saying, i'm wrong. there's nobody saying i got i just gave a talk. anr a t in texas. remote talk. they strongly endorse the norms. so response has been unlike anything i've ever seen. and people want change. i thinkple hungry and ready for a change.

i was so curious about that, in part because, i thought i saw some data just out of the parents union is from last week suggesting that a majority of parents actually don't want k-12 schools going phone free. and i was kind of surprised by that. re thinking that and if there is any kind of pushback to in particular the sort of phone bans inchoohat might need to engage with as we think about mentation. all right. thank for pushing back. there is one objection. it's the only that comes up for phone free schools.ool shooters. that's the objection. and so, you know, you as a parent, what someone said to you, what would your first up be if the school said your kid ca would your first thought, be. well, i feel like i'm not a great use case for this argument, but is you're right. but i take your point. i take your point. ah from most from most parents. what do you think the first thought would be?

you know, okay, i've a rhetorical question i think what if there's a problem? i need to be able to reach my child. tural reaction because we're paranoid. we've become suoid parents. there's even a wonderful book called paranoid parenting for . so if you have people are you have a lot of people are paranoid that their first thought is what if there's a school shooter? what if there's a, you know, some issue i need to be able to reach my child right away. so. okay this will take some persuasion and argument goes like this where we've gotten to talking to our children all the time and we've seen horrible parent it's an unimaginable i mean it's we we can't somehow we can't keep it out of our minds. it really is hits home. but if y9nr ggo to a school, would you rather it be a school in which everyone has phone? and as soon as there's a lockdown, half the kids are on their phone, their parents crying. they're loud, they're afraid, they're not listening. the teacher can't get attention.

do you want your kid in that where? no one has a phone other than the teacher. and the teacher is telling them what to do. and people are quiet and eyope'd on what's happening around them. so experts on security do not advocate phones. saying phone free schools are better, that, you know, phones are a so i think it will take a little bit of time to reassure people on■= going to happening is that the parents were very upset about not being able to contact their kid during math class. face. they're the ones who are saying, how can you do this? but i think that i think that it pretty soons will be very open and supportive of the idea of, well, you know, doing this and if there is a way i can get in touch with my kid, i can can get the kid. i think i think schools that have gone phone

free put on a call on twitter. can anyone find a story about a school that went phone free and, regretted it. no one no one can find such a story interesting and i that this is actually such a research i think we will see more schools making this kind of decision and then we'll be able'll have some datay think through together. that's and th jusdif other couns have mandated phone free schomandated it so it is happen. we're at a tippg po it is going to happen. and since every time you do the kids themselves say, wow, schools, a lot more fun, you know, because in between classes, if the kids have phones in between classes, their silence. everyone's and dms. but when they don't have phones, kids talk and jokend laugh and flirt and do the things that you and i remember. kids doing between classes, they think, okay, well, here's we know, here's here's what i want.

i want to ask you because i because i bought your book behind the screens when i began this projecth, this book looks great. and then, you know, as is, you have so many books. 't actually read it. but but my sense fromp2ó fat i saw about my sense is that you take a much more nuanced view than i do aboutzsee many more b, let's middle school. being on instagram is. that true? we think we have somewhat different aims. and so i would say ' we a more r sure. the reason is when we were ri?j when cory and i were writing that book. our approach was talked to many, many kids,ands of kids across the country. and we ask them questions like, what is it like for you to up with social media and smartphones and were really interested lot. the struggles that kids ■tbed. but one of the reasons that we focus so much on, they're actually ro/eallo reasons why we are so interested in the details. i think. one is that we see that kids a c

experience tech. you know h havteens later. so many different circumstances and context and andng kid stories. it felt like it felt like that was a really important part of making sense of what was going on sort of mapping the terrain. and the second is, i'm i'm also really interested in what kinds of and i have found it's super interesting listening to teens what their experiences reveal aroundhat might be helpful, sort of a more level, like what is hard abouts an could we do as adults to, to help. and one of the things that is really that stood out to me is that so often i think that the screen&k■ time have become a rel us versus battle between kids and adults and so i've been really interested think kids really need adults in their lives who are caring and and empathetic at helping with boundaes skill development. and i've been just so interested

what it looks like to buil and also build those relationships between kids and adultso as the guides that i knw that they so desperatelyat, tha. that sounds like very important that certainly would be helpful to parents. i just want to know, what is youreb■m sense about it. so about the age atch on sites like instagram and tiktok ge is 13 and it's not enforced. i'm saying it should be 16 and enforced. but what do you think? yeah, i mean, i think i read description . 's explain to people why are we at 13 in the first place? i think this is a really important context for people to have. this is a political compromise, velopmentally motivated decision. will you give want a bit of just a bit of context o're here? sure. so back in the beginning of the internet, incompanies that wereg data from people. you had aol mail. and a lot of these people were children. and congress was tasked figuring

out, well, what's law going to be? can companies just take whatever want from a seven year old and sell it? like, what's what are we going to do? and so mar mark, he was then representative markey from massachusetts. propo be called coppa, thehiprotectio. belie, and in his original bill it said, well, 16, he go 16. you know, i mean, 18 is the obvious choice at kids can sign contracts and th' adults. but he thought, you know, the way the internet is going, you knat6,■kou should be able to be on aol and talking to strang■ng ay your data without, your parent's knowledge or permission. u internet. 16. so he pro the tech companies hate it. you know, i know it was aol, whichever ones were the ones that were being limited here with theirccilen, they hated it. they opposed it.

they teamed up. they were able to find some who were advocating for children's rights. you know what? if what wants to get an abortion? anonymously?t be able to, so you had this interesting coalbusiness and sort of progree activists saying, no, no, 16 is and then the way the bill was written, companies no responsibilityto verify that they are notbl use y don't know that the child is underage. anthat'why they say, what is your birthday? and that's it. they don't want to know anything . and of course, facebook knows everything about us. all these i mean, they know how old en my kids entered middle school, sixth grade in new york ■city schools, they both said te same thing. everyone is on instagram. can i have an instagram account. so the reason why all the sixth gradertagr when they're not 13 is because of anthat was the only protection

congress has ever given to children. and was essentially zero protection. it did nothing. that's the only thing congress internet. and now, of course, a lot of us are pushing. can't you at least make it a little safer? can't you at least pass code? so the kids online safety quest, can we do anything or areee to r kids sex started and harassed and approached by strge mean, 'y untenable. the current situatiowh every is exposed to everything that could possibly exist with the pare unable to stop it unless they lock the in a room with no internet. e with this. this is good. the status quo is not working, i think, and i think it's really important. you just teed up so. so people who are watching might be curious that there are really two things that are th a topics for discussion right now in the political. i mean, one hat ri now, 13 is effectively the age of adulthood on the internet.

there essentially as a political compromise. that's how we got here. verification. so it's sort of like a yeah, yeah, i'13you could be any age we're talking about one should the age■x of internet adulthood be raised and two or should we have actual verified nation required? and i know you talk a little bit about this in your book. tell us where you came down in terms of your thinking about verification in this broader debate. yeah, so i mean, it's completely i think it's completely obvio to most people that pornhub and pornography sites shouldn't just be opencomputer, you know, a ser old boy can n go to pornhub some of the sites don't even ons even make you lie. they just say, okay, you're here, welcome. this is completely and so if if there were not privacyrns, if there were not technical obstacles, it seems completely obvious to me least age verification for pornography,

you know, to buy all sorts to buy certain things that you can't buy in a physical store. we have 100 years of experience the physical world safe so that adults and children can live in them. we have special seats for kids. we've band down know 90%. i mean the world is the physical world is increyr children compared to even when i don't how old you are but i'm 60 grown up in the seventies there were a lot more dangers. ask that. i shouldn't ask that. whatever i don't like, i said, you know, i assume you're younger than me or or in ycase. so it seems obvious to me that, you know, it tík physical safet adults could do what they want. and kids could do what they want know, fences around pools, all sorts of things. the internet is new and i undegoing to take a while to build up guardrails. but, you know, it's been around for like years now and there are zero guardrails. there's nothing whatsoever, notect children.

and the stories that we're hearing now, you know, likeiblen wired magazine, you know, these gangs of perverts and weirdos that will trick a girl into sendingherself. she thinks she's flirting with a y. and then they reveal themselves to be a group of men who are who are sick d blackmail her into degrading herself, cutting meer thigh. in one. in one case, they made her cut pet hamster while they watched and laughed and then they said, now, for last thing we want you to do, and of course, with everything they said, if you don't it we're going to show all of these videos to everyone. you know, we are goingthis is da teenager, to anyone but, especially to a teenager. and they said and for the final act, w y to kill yourself on camera. and it was finally at that point she broke down and told her mother, and then they were able to put a stop to it. but this is not a one ofthere a.

god, we don't know how many victims they've, t is is not like some free and it's not like a media where this thing happened ande need to change our laws. no, this this is happening. sextortion not to 1% of kids, but it's not like one in a million. so the idea that, you know, a ten, 11 year old girl wander into this without her parent's knowledge or consent that youan naked men who are masturbating on omega or whatever it's called. i mean this isom insane. yeah. so so i just, you know, i want to sort of get the gut fees■k dg completely ridiculous. and now let's look at the other right. you know, if you're going to verify age is then my privacy be compromised. because what i'm going to do is =&9fy driver's license. and what if you're hacked? will know that i came to your site. points. but my argument is congress shouldn't mandate a single way of doing age verificn. congress should just the goal.

that's what it should have done ba in 19, say, you know, here's the law. the age of 16. and you guys figure it out. you figure it out. we expect you to be perfect. we're not going■m■6 to make you liable if one kid gets in. but, you know, as long ayou'ly'e covered for underage use. and there are already so many different ways of doing age verification. there's so many coanie it for, financial products that they have their own trade cinow, age verification association, something. so there are many different ways of doing it. but besides showing a driver's license, so it is doable. think we're going to have to get to the point of realizing, you know, we have to do on the internet what we did have a world in which adults can do largely what they want to do. kids can do what they wao do. and the kids don't get chewed up in the much different and much safer kind of internet for kids. i as a as a parent, it's hard

for me to even listen to you tell that story. honestly, i feel like my blood pressure is like sweating, tening to that story and imagining my daughter in ahink a lot of parents understand that. i want to that evoke desire for keeping my daughter safe and fo about in the book so much. and i want to ask y talk about t out experience blockers and you talk phones as experience blockers and you talk our over protection of kids as experienced. and i'm wonderingfoand i'm wondf you can just talk a little bit about what you mean, ho there and if you could just fit into that how i can lean into the benefit of risky play with emergency room every week.in that would be great. yeah, that'rit. right. well, first, let me just make the point that, you know, my goal here not to just panic parents about the internet

because i don't want to be afraid of everything, but i tell stories like that totrat the fact that, you know, we're also afraid that our our children outdoors will story becausemething like that. the sex predators aren't out at playgrounds. they're really not out there. you don't hear stories about the guys who are out at playgrounds. they've all been arrested, locked away for life. and there are, you know, are there on extreme restrictions as sex predators. so they're not out're all on in. the sex predators, all on instagram and a few other platforms. for them to contact young contact to realize we've completelyverinvested in our defense portfolio in the real world where we're vastly overspending withd we're completely under-invested in protecting our kidsnline where we're not doing anything. i mean, some are are trying and struggling, but we're not very effective a. we need to do a lot more. and we need help from congress

and from norms. question, so you ter i wrote that first chapter about the graphs, the data, and what the hell know, i better i better write a whole chapter just on it that these phones are preventing us from doing as kids. mm. and once i laid that out, you know, iot a developmental psychologist but i study evolution and culture moral development around the world and i thinkot child go? how does a boy become a man? how does a girl become a woman?e world? and amount of experience. they have a huge curiosity a hunger to understand the world, not maybe through books, but through re experience and when you i'm sure parents have had this experience, you're traveling you're in this amazing place. you want t■ go see a waterfall or go see this amazing thing,

and your kid just wa sit there on on her ipad in, the hotel room, my wife and i found that, you know, when we went to, you know, nice hotel in upstate new york, it was only when we just locked away the phones and the ipads just locked them away. so no, you cannot have these until we until wel. you know that our kids really, like, opened up and started enjoying the facilities. so kids need a huge amount of unsupervised. and it turns out some element of risk. one of the essentialks kids have to manage is, is risk and managing themselves. and if you protect them from risk all the t make the decisions about what's risky. they never learn to do that. that's happened with gen z when they showed up in college book dangerous, this book is going towhat how can i don't hoa

book how can ago to their talk? what you talking abouteprived os of the experience of risk. wonderful work by some play researchers, including one from nor sand, cedar, who has a couple of essays on how kids need read. risky play because taking and experiencing fear and then overcoming it is literally the way kids overcome anxiety and this really explain many parents will have seen you take your kid to an amusement park you take a bunch of kids to amusement park. they're not just going to be like, oh, i don't do anything scary. no, it's the opposite, actually. it's about■■e, oy, which roller coaster are you going to try? you know, here in new york city, you know'a you know, there's like the soaring eagle there's the steeplechase. i mean, there's akay, what's the big one? well, obviously, the cyclone. but there's, you kthen there's the slingshot, which i mean, scared to do. but the point is, time talking t

and some of them are ready to try, you know, cyclone at a certain age or, slingshotx; and you can see they're like it's like they're in a chemistry lab titrating the exact amount of fear that they're ready for. and if they pick something 's a little scary and they're scared, just before lunch, i remember that child ing really scared as the roller coaster is just going over the top of the hill. ■its and then it's thrilling. and then when you come out at the other end,g up and down and you are now a stronger, tougher kid, you have overcoou. you had this feeling of thrills, and you are on your way to being ssus aan adult. if you do that, thousands times, you will be much less kids needf experienideally involve fear. some should involve social exclusioan we at this very diet of experience and we say, how about if we cut down the total numberf experiences by 7%, let's just give them 70% less experience,

an let's make sure none of it has any risk or fear or threat. what do youyou know, we all wano protect our kids from danger, buto deprive kid of the full range of human experience? and unfortunately, that's what we've done. once a kid gets a phone, not every kid, you know, some kids, they can take it or leave it. but a lot ofially girls on social media and boys on video games, once you give them theut strong and clear limits on fill every available moment of their i have you wereg the roller coasters i think most viewers will probably be in this position i was imagining i was remembering going onrot+er coaster the hulk at age 11. and that is such a visceral memory for me. to go back to something. it's a positive memory to a yeah, it is. it's well, it is. although, you know, i wrote, it so many times back to back, i think i was ill afterwards and that's what's different now. but i think there was also some confidence thatth that.

i want to go back to something you shared a few minutes ago. so you vacation and the sort of importance of locking in the idea owh the phones, the kids phones were locked in the. and that just makes me think about something i feel like i've heard from a lot of which is that they wish that their parents would lock the parents phones in the room that they they wish that they could have their parent's undivided attention. and i'm wonder a about as we think about moving forward, as we think about what it will take to get to a better or a better state of affairs, what role do we have as as adults and as parents to reflect on, think about, look critically at our own tech habits? yeah, that that is a question that many have raised. and i think my answer is going to be a little counterintuitive, which is i don't think parents are actually that important by the time kids are in middle school now. obviously important for many on but i'm going to add, is this when the kids are little, they're really focused on their

parentand playing with their parents and back and forth games and, songs and jokes. and i' i mean, that's one of the great things about being a dad is, you know, yo's your mr. play. and so what you do, you know what pds are, you know, one, two, three, four or five years old. i think that does matter a lot. and a lot of parents are giving what's called continuous partiad their children they're trying to th're trying to cook. they're kind of pretending to be going along with a game and the' doing a good job of any of it. this is bad for all of us so for kids in elementary school and before. i do think we'd be better even if you spend less total time with your child. e time when you're when you're really as person to person taking and fu'y much about what you want to do or what you think. they are completely obsessed theverybody else thinks.

they would never wear a pair of sneakers that you boughthe thou. if they think will make fun of them. so if you if you tell me we can either do this parents so that y don't spend as much good behavior. let's see if we can reduce the mental healthto crisis. having parents model good behavior, but i don't think that's going to turn it around. all if the other kids are on instagram in sixth and seventh grade, they're going to be on instagram in sixth and seventh. it doesn't matter what their parents are doing, whe norm in which we parents all get thinker, we say no smartphone would be transformative. that would be such a g effect ct until it let them at least get through early puberty. so, of course, parents for many things, you know, but as you know, a lot of research on personality just continues to show that personality is not really shaped by the parents, it's by genes and it's shaped by

peers and culture but they're not really looking to us for they're not copying us by the time they're in middle school. s like it feels like if not the connection.hou, i mean, parents do still matter so much to middle schoolers. and i'm thinking about i just read jenny wallace's never enough and i'm thinking about her he arguments about mattering and how important it is were for our kidsurinthe teen years to know that they matter to others and to us and yes, is part of what happens when we are tai know from teens, they're noticing that and they're feelin. okay. okay. there i 100% agree. let's talk about this or that matter. d th is a great word. so, right. what i wasing is don't necessarily matter as role models as much, but they're very important omperspective. the kid needs a secure base to need to trust their parent. theynow at if things go bad, they have a place to go. if someone's trying to force to kill themselves on cam they go'g

to support them and not scream at them. to. right. not just not just that they can. yeah, that's right. that is absolutely. that's right. yeah. so so yeah. i certainly not saying parents that. i'm just saying teens aren't copying tho your word matter is fantastic because what's what's inr boys? what's happening is they feel that they are questions monitoring the future. it? sometimes feel like my life has no meaning or useless. and how much do you agree or disagree with this question? and these numbers? the agreement with that was actually going down a little bit in the 2000, but those things everything aboutpase all do a hockey stick curve up. they all rnd 2012, kids, as soon as they get as soon as they move useless.ves online, they feel so i've been thinking about this. we got these graphs in the bookd

i wasinth you know, the an uber to the to theirrt and, you know, making small with the driver. and he said, oh, i'm here to, promote a bo says , what's the book on. and rather than tell him what it was about, i said, well, you ening to your generation. he was young, he was 28. so older. 22, 28. gen z and and i said, well, you know, what do you think is happening? you know, know, you know, we got we got problems, you know, a lot with depression where, you know, an anxious wave, we're not in we're not doing s well economically. so i had a list of litanies and i said, what do you think[ is? what do you think is causing it? why are why is your generation unhappy? d the rst thing said was, you know, i think a lot of us, they feel like, you know, for a. and then he use this phrase i wrote it down, i should find it. but it was basically he said, cause i said, okay, what do you mean? u owyou know, what do

mean? use it, tell me more. and i think what he said was, you need to feel that you mean something. someone, you know, just that you. yeah, you are connected in a way that yeah, you matter. that's right. and, and so i don't think it's it's not just that your parents are paying attention, although. no, of course that it if your parents aren't even to you if they're saying you know what this text in is more important than you, you don' matter. so you're right in that way. if parents convey you don't matter that bad. i do agree with that. yeah, it's it's interesting to just to think about this and to think about trying to parse and what role is social media really playing here and what else i, i hope that pee will pay attention not just to the tech side of your book, but to the other piece of at about . and i love your description of play clubs in schools and some

of the interventions like that at are really actionable. and i hope that that will be part ofok as well. i certainly hope so. so let me now put in, you know, for turning more towards specific things that that people do, that parents can do. i hope anybody, especially if your kids know, younger than high school,u0lly. i hope you'll go to let go, dawg it's a small orgnazy, who wrotee range kids and me and petergray. and it offers all kinds of grou step back, give your kids independencend we also especially find it powerful. we work through schools so our if if you don't mind, i'd love to just brieflyxp project that is so powerful. it's called the let grow experience. it gets right to what yore abouo parents do this? so i'm a big fan of sending kids on errands and, you know,

when i kids were in fourth grade, maybe even third, we started sending we just like across tjtrt rmarket and but, ya lot. moved to new york city in 2011, my wife and i met an book free range kids. to do things and they loved it. they really felt more confident. they were proud ofren't doing this, but they were. but it's hard, especially if if noer ks are t there. so what this actually the ecteacher at brooklyn tech. but lenore and i put it up at grow. it's called the let grow experience. it's a homework. andur kid is in, say, a third grade class, eight and the assignment the teacher gives is go home, talk with your rent think of something that you think you can do that you've never done by yourself. and it will give examples like maybe it's walking the dog for the first time, maybe it's , maybe it's going to the store and buying groceries,

maybe it's raking the yard, th something and agree with your parents and you do it. you comey talks about it and you write d, you put it. it's a little you put it up on your tree. you have a leaf on your tree, and en you do this week for ten or 20 weeks. anden or 20 weeks. so an amazing thing happens even just after the second or third is the kids are often little nervous about, t inout, especially on their own. but then, like as we were talking about with thrills, thious. they do it, it works. they're thrilled. they'ikhey want to do it again and they do another one and another one. another one. so it really affects the kids. but here's the cool thing. it really affects the parents because these are often parents that would let their kid walk three ks but it's a homework assignment. it, then actually it's much easier for parents toetown does it, if

every elementary school in the town does it before you know it, you're seeing eight year olds in the grocery store buying and carrying it home just the way my generation and all previous ■kgenerations used to do. we used to trust seven year olds to go shopping, to do errands, we don't do that anywhere we need to. so the let grow experience, i urge parents to try it themselves at home. and if you have any influence on the school, your kids go to it. great middle school too. so k through eight is a fantastic project. it also works in high school, but it's just it's a little bit t. but k through eight please try to let go project go to let dawg and john i love this story in your book where you talk about your daughter bringing you lunch to your office. i you peering down, watching her across the street and sight of her, but also that that was so important. and i thiill ally resonate with. i want to i want to just ask you i hope you don't mind one more. maybe slightly critical question as we■rap up those ideas, push back me. i want someone to push back.

okay, i'reso i had i had one ofy undergrads who works on my team read your book with me. when i washis interview. and it was so interesting, she