The Daily Stoic - Solving The Epidemic of Mental Illness Caused By Social Media | Jonathan Haidt

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his PhD in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and taught at the University of Virginia for sixteen years. His research focuses on moral and political psychology, as described in his book The Righteous Mind. His latest book, The Anxious Generation, is a direct continuation of the themes explored in The Coddling of the American Mind.You can grab a signed copy of his books, The Happiness Hypothesis, The Righteous Mind, and The Coddling Mind from The Painted Porch - https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=jonathan+haidt*Jonathan’s Substack: AfterBabel.com www.anxiousgeneration.comX: @jonhaidtIG: @realjonathanhaidt✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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If you like fights, you'll love this. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondry+, on Apple Podcasts, or on the Wondry app. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays we talk to some of our fellow

students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The New York Times. I'm your host, Ryan Holiday. I'm your host's Ryan Holiday.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've been a fan of today's guest for a while, but we actually connected not because of that. I was supposed to do a tour of Australia before the pandemic, like 2018, 2019. And there was a promoter, and it went sideways. They sort of screwed it up and left me hanging. I was not pleased about it. And then I got an email somehow promoting the fact

that my guest today, Jonathan Haidt, was doing a tour with those same people. And I said, hey, man, I'm a big fan of your work, just the FYI. It is what totally sideways for me. So I just let you know to dot your I's and cross your T's. I think it actually went well for him. Maybe it was my fault that it went sideways.

I don't know. But that's how he and I connected. And then I followed his work. I've listened to him on a bunch of podcasts. And it's been interesting to watch as stoicism creeped in to his works. And Jonathan is a professor at NYU and he showed me this syllabus as he was putting,

as he was prepping to come on the podcast, he was like, hey, I want you to see this syllabus. And he sent me this syllabus of all the stoic works that he assigns to his students. Because lately he's been talking a lot about human flourishing and one of the major impediments of human flourishing, which is anxiety.

Anxiety being, I think, a theme that many of the stoics struggled with. If they didn't struggle with it, they wouldn't have tried to come up with a philosophy to help them deal with it. And we can imagine all the things that would make Seneca or Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus anxious. They lived in an unpredictable world. They lived in an uncontrollable world. They lived in a world of plagues and exiles and violence and uncertainty and all these things. And stoicism is in many ways an attempt

to mitigate that anxiety or to come up with coping mechanisms so it doesn't rule and ruin your life. I think anyone who has parents, particularly teenagers right now, this is something you're thinking a lot about because teenagers are just so struggling more than perhaps they ever have. And you can chart this almost exactly with the rise, not of social media itself, but algorithmic social media. That's

one of the things we talk about in today's episode. Jonathan has a famous book called The Righteous Mind. He has one called The Coddling of the American Mind. And then he has his book, The Happiness Hypothesis. And his new book, The Anxious Generation, is a continuation of all of those themes. He's a researcher on moral and political psychology and now a very big advocate of protecting young people from social media. I think we had a great conversation. I was really excited to have this chat and I think it went quite well. And by the way, I'm going to be back in Australia in July.

I think the 31st of July and the 1st of August. You can grab tickets at ryanholiday.net slash Australia, much better promoter this time and hopefully it won't go sideways. I'm very much looking forward to getting out there. So if you're listening in Australia or in that part of the world and you want to come out, I would love to see you. But in the meantime, check out the happiness hypothesis, the righteous mind, the coddling of the American mind.

Jonathan signed a bunch of copies of them at The Painted Porch. You can follow his sub stack, afterbabble.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram. He's at John Height and real Jonathan Height. And just a great writer, great thinker. And I think you're really gonna like this episode. So you said that the Stoics would have predicted social media or they warned us about it. Tell me about that. So I guess I'll go back to 2017 when I was really anxious about a lot of things and I started,

and I sort of started rereading stoicism. And at the same time I was working on this book, The Coddling of the American Mind. And so like half my mind was like, the world's gonna blow up, we're gonna have war with North Korea and Donald Trump is gonna be unstable and my wife is going to Korea with my son,

and like, you know, so it's like, and that was a period in which I decided to start reading Stoicism, which I didn't count long ago, but I kind of, and then at the same time, while writing The Coddling American Mind, which was all about what is happening to Gen Z, what's happening to young people,

you know, the mental illness, the depression, the anxiety, all the strange politics. And so on one side I was like writing down quotes from a realist like for me, but then did it be like, you know, he'd say, you know, why do you always care about so much what other people think of you? And it's like, oh my God,

it's like he knows what it's like to be on Twitter. So I just started keeping this document. And then before I knew it, like by the time I was done with the coddling, the coddling's about three big ideas, three terrible, terrible ideas. And each one- The great untruths.

The great untruths, right, three great untruths. And each one you find the exact opposite in Aurelius. I mean, in all the Stokes, but Aurelius is the most clear. Yeah, it's weird. Obviously they didn't have social media, but the things that drive social media is sort of extreme emotions. So the stokes are called the passions,

the way that the crowd or the mob gets whipped into things, our propensity for gossip, our endless appetite for distraction. All of those sort of driving currents of social media, obviously go fundamentally to the human condition those sort of driving currents of social media, obviously go fundamentally to the human condition and society. And so, yeah, they're talking about all those things and they had their own sort of struggles

with those forces and their own solutions. That's right. And that points us to what social media is doing to us because there are quotes from, what's his name? The first president of Facebook, whatever. Oh, Sean Parker? Yes, Sean Parker. About how we basically hacked social psychology

is what he's saying. We knew how it works and how to trigger some anxiety in people, and so it's like, they understood people's insecurities and fears and then they built something that preys upon it. And it's bad enough for us as adults. I mean, if the emperor of the Roman empire has to coach himself to not,

ignore the clacking of tongues, ignore the, imagine what it's like for a 12 year old girl. Yeah, I mean, you think about how unnatural it is to be like known to 50 million people, the way that the emperor of Rome was, right? And to have news from these far flung provinces, to have endless amounts of correspondence, to have all this stress, to feel like the weight

of the world is on your shoulders. Like when you read meditations, you're like, it's not good for a person to be all this stress, to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Like when you read meditations, you're like, it's not good for a person to be in this position. And then you're like, well, at least it's only one dude, right, like only one person is being subjected to this. But social media, I would argue, gives all of us the stress and information overload that was previously limited to heads of state a stress and information overload that, you know,

was previously limited to heads of state or the most famous individuals ever, you know? And for not that much upside, and certainly for most of us, not much in the way of compensation either. But so, and that gets, so then you say, well, so why do we do it? And that's, you know, one of the main insights

I'm hoping to get across in the new book is we're all in a series of traps. We're all in a series of collective action traps. And the main reason, I talked to my students, well, if it's doing this to you, if you're spending six hours a day, one student spending nine hours a day on TikTok, nine hours a day, I mean, she's completely addicted.

And I asked him, why don't you quit? And the answer was always the same. I can't because everyone else is on it. And what comes through in stoic writings to me is these are men who were physically tough, very disciplined, but they recognized that an attack on your reputation hurts, like much more than an attack on your reputation hurts like much more than attack on your body.

That what people think of you is the most important thing, or at least that's the way we're wired to feel. And so they're working on that. So yeah, so social media just, it pulls us in the wrong direction. If you think about spiritual progress, so much of social media pulls us in the wrong direction. If you think about spiritual progress, so much of social media pulls us in the wrong direction. Yeah, I think one of the most fascinating quotes

in meditations, Mark Zerillo says, you obviously love yourself more than other people, right? We're all sort of selfish. And he goes, but for some reason, you care about other people's opinions more than your own. Meaning like, you know who you are, you know what you stand for, you know what's good about you. And then some random stranger says you're

ugly or stupid or the book that you just spent two years of your life working on is trash. And you go, is it trash? Am I trash? And in an instant, all of your sense of self gets replaced by what some random stranger said. And that this is, I think, yeah, this is a timeless battle. That really strong people, really smart people, really well insulated people, really well educated, everyone has struggled with this for a really long time. And yet, if they're struggling with it, you're struggling with it,

and then also your teenage children are definitely struggling with it. That's right. And kids need to, kids need adversity. That's right. And kids need to, the kids need adversity. That's one of the big themes of a lot of my work. Kids are anti-fragile. All of us are anti-fragile. We get stronger from adversity.

And boy are there quotes from the Stoics on that. I mean, they, like every ancient tradition, they knew that. But kids need them on a small scale. And they need to make mistakes in an environment that's low stakes. Yeah. Where you say something stupid, people laugh at you,

they make fun of you, you're embarrassed. And then an hour later recess is over and it's over. And so kids are gonna gossip, they need to practice all those skills. But it's like we take them, it's like instead of playing play war, which kids have always done, it's like, here, here's some real guns.

Why don't you go shoot each other? Like, no, this is just too much. It's too much. They're too young. I mean, I think about that. I obviously know all this stuff. I'm, I'm pretty, I have a pretty, you know, thick skin. I know what's important.

I know what I stand for, but I know if I subject myself to endless amounts of unsolicited criticism or feedback, positive or negative, it skews me. And there's a great passage in Epictetus, I think, it might have been Seneca, but basically he's saying, like, look, a Stoic should be able to endure any environment, right?

Like the mob jeering at you, you know, everyone cheering for you, diversity, stress, noise, whatever. But he was like, if you have a choice, you should choose peace. Right? And what he's saying is that, yeah, look, sometimes information is going to get to you and you're going to have to figure out how to not let that rattle you, not let it get inside your head. But that's very different than waking up every morning and mainlining this information

or making it your primary form of interacting with other people or society. And so, yeah, that choice, I hope people understand it's not like weak, like, oh, you can't cut it or you're too sensitive. But in fact, all of us are too sensitive. And so we should limit our exposure to very powerful, when you go and get an x-ray,

they throw that lead vest on you because it's not good to get unnecessary amounts of radiation. There's another reason why, another thing we should talk about, which relates to stoic insights. It's not just that it does things to you. It's that, there's a quick quote from a realist,

but it's basically, well the Buddhist quote is, we are what we think all that we are arises from our thoughts. And what's the quote from a realist? The soul is dyed by the color of your thoughts. Thank you, that's it. The soul is dyed by the color of your thoughts. And so now think, so I teach,

I'm a professor at NYU at Stern, and I teach a course called Flourishing. And it's a sort of positive psychology course. And I work with the students to become, make them smarter, stronger, and more sociable. And the stronger piece is emotionally stronger. The stronger piece is Stoicism, especially the wonderful book,

The Stoic Challenge by William R. Merlin. Everyone loves that book. And in the last year or two, I've really been working with them a lot more on their relationship to their phones and social media because that dominates their lives. And one thing that I learned that was really surprising or alarming is I work with them a lot on their morning routine and their evening routines.

And again, this is very much, this is sort of why I started reading stosis in the morning was we like, okay, you should do it every day and set aside time. And so I made up a little form like, okay, what are the first five things when you open your eyes, what's the very first thing you do? Do you go to the bathroom?

Do you drink? What's the very first thing you do? What are the first five things? Let's get control of those and start your day right. And at the end of the day, count down, you know, you brush your teeth. What are the very five things? Let's get control of those and start your day right. And at the end of the day, count down. You know, you brush your teeth. What are the very last things you do? Count down to zero and close your eyes.

And for the great majority, number one in the morning was check my texts and incoming DMs, things like that. And at night, number one on the countdown, last thing before you close your eyes is checking your texts and your DMs, et cetera. And in between those two, what are they doing? A lot of it is the same. So, if your soul is dyed by the color of your thoughts,

this is really sad. Yeah, you are what you eat. You are the information diet that you consume. Exactly, that's right. So this is, I think, one of the really important lessons for the social media age is we all have to take control of our inputs. Because we're all suffering from this.

You know, we're adults. This hit us, I mean, you're much younger than me. I don't know. When did you first get any kind of social media? What age? I had to wait until I graduated from high school. And then as soon as I got my college email address, I could join Facebook.

Oh, you were right. So the last, sort of the last part of that. Where I was my sister. So you're a young millennial. What year were you born? 87. My sister was just a tad younger than me, had it through all of high school, right?

So just that slight difference. Yeah. Yeah. Right, so, but also the Facebook that you had wasn't nearly as toxic. No, it was a real network of real people. Exactly. Because they used to be called

social networking systems, they connected people. And it was really in 2009 that they get the like button, the retweet button, it gets super viral. The news feed. Exactly, you put the news feed together with the like and the retweet or share buttons. And then you have so much information coming into Facebook, they can now use algorithms.

So everything reconfigures in 2009, it gets really nasty. And it's the kids who started puberty then, around 2010. They're the ones who really were, their souls were died by this toxic sludge coming in. Well, the morning and the evening routine are really important because you realize how vulnerable you are. Like the way I think about it is every morning you wake up,

it's a fresh start, right? It's a, you just slept, you haven't, you've had no inputs coming at you, right? You're, who are you gonna be? What are you gonna do that day? Is it a good day, a bad day? You haven't even looked at it, you don't even know what the weather is, right?

It's all, it's all before you potentially. And the choices you make have the ability to make the most of that or to not take advantage of it. And so, if you wake up, like I found this with myself, it's like I wake up, I'm in a good mood, even if I'm tired, I'm like, what am I gonna do today? Today's a good day. And then I'm saying, well, let's hope that what is currently

in my inbox continues to allow me to have a good day or not. Or let's see what insert politician tweeted while I was sleeping. Let's see what news happened in a third world country. Wait, what do you do that? As soon as you wake up, you check your phone? No, no, what I'm saying is I found that I'm waking up, you're checking your phone.

What I was doing is saying, I'm gonna let the world determine whether today is a good day or a bad day, or not even that, whether this morning is like, I'm currently happy, and then I'm checking my phone to see will this continue or not, right? And so a bubble maybe sounds like not something that Stoic would do, but it is.

I'm trying to keep a bubble in the morning while I'm fresh, while I don't have any responsibilities or obligations yet, and I want to enjoy that. So my rule is like, I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm awake. And then I don't do any social media stuff

on my phone either. So that's extended also. And then I'm spending time with my family, I'm reading, we're going outside, we're going for what we're doing. So, so now, you know, let's say I am, uh, you know, I'm checking my phone on the way to work or, you know, I'm getting a phone call on the way to the office or whatever, you know, now I've been up for a couple hours. I've got my legs under me. I, you know,

I've already enjoyed a good chunk of the day that the problem is you wake up and you're just, you're just saying, you're just kind of of the day. The problem is you wake up and you're just saying, you're just kind of spinning the wheel. Yeah, back into the maelstrom. Yeah, and that's just not, you would have to be a true stoic sage or a monk to not be affected by that stuff. And so you have to create some space

where it's not the first thing that you're doing. A friend of mine said, you know, I checked my email just to see if there's any fires that I have to put out. And it's like, I bet you always find them, right? Of course, you went looking for them. If you go looking for them, you're gonna find them. Are there any that have to be put out at 6.45 as opposed to 9.30?

Certainly not. And definitely if you're 19 years old. You know what I mean? Like if you're the CEO of a multinational corporation or you trade stocks, you trade stocks for wealthy investors, it's different. But like, the younger you are, definitely protect that space.

So Ryan, what is your evening routine? How do you, you know, once you sort of stop working or doing goal-directed stuff, what do you do? Yeah, my evening routine is, I would say, less good than my morning routine, but a couple big principles. I try to journal before bed, so I'm doing, putting the day up for review.

Just reform, you just have a notebook, or do you have a structure? So I have a couple different journals that I use. One is just a blank journal where I'm just sort of writing stuff down. I have one that I love, it's called One Line a Day, and you just write one sentence each day. And what I love about that is it has five lines

on each page. So I can see where I was five years earlier. So almost always I'm going to my wife, hey, did you know like two years ago, I was right here. Yeah, and how like, it'll always be like, I was starting chapter one of like the book that I was writing three years ago.

And the full circle. You realize for all the changes, things stay the same. And, or you go, I totally forgot. Like February 27th of 2020 was the worst day of my, like was horrible. And I've totally forgotten about it, right? So I do that one. And then I have a journal for Daily Stoke,

which has like a Stoke question every day. And you're supposed to meditate on the morning and meditate in the right? So I do that one. And then I have a journal for daily Stoke, which has like a Stoke question every day. And you're supposed to meditate on the morning and meditate in the evening. So I do that. So I do a little journaling. My other thing is I sleep with the phone in the other room. So it's not the last thing that I touch. And also by having that space in the morning

where I say, I don't touch the phone for an hour, that means seven, eight, nine hours minimum of uninterrupted blocks of not doing it, right? So that's a big one. And then, you know, I try to read in the evenings before bed, that's a big part of it. But once my kids go to bed, it's sort of like,

I think my wife and I's discipline collapses and we're just like, staggering around. You're still in the age where it's a full-time job. But yeah, I think when people talk about their morning routines, I think too often it seems like this feat of raw human discipline when really the seeds of that success are sowed the night before.

And if you stayed up till three in the morning scrolling Instagram reels, it's hard to get up early. It's hard not to, you know, so I try to make some good decisions the end of the day to set me up for success than the next day. That's right. That's a good point about it. It starts the night before.

So what I do with my students is rather than saying, how do you start your day? How do you end your day? I say, you have about, you know, an eight to 11 hour block of time that is to recharge. And the core of that is your sleep. But, you know, think about the hour or two before, the hour or two after.

So let's start with the night before, and let's make sure we get that period. And, you know, some of them get enough sleep, but many of them don't. And so it's like this period that should be recharging, it's like not enough sleep and a lot of electronic stimulation at night with blue light and poor sleep sleep and then, you know,

rush in the morning. And so yeah, of course this takes a toll on mental health. Yeah, of course, you're just running yourself ragged. I mean, you're burning the candle at both ends and then yeah, you're just not, you're not good. Yeah, the ability to concentrate, put large uninterrupted blocks of concentrate, that's a muscle that you have to develop.

And I think that's something the Stoics talk a lot about too, and social media is sort of the enemy of. The ability to concentrate, to stay locked into what you're doing. Mark Sturiles thanks his philosophy teacher, Rusticus. He says, he taught me to not be satisfied just getting the gist of things.

And so to have that deep, like, locked in understanding of something, that takes work, and it takes tuning out those easier forms of attention or stimulation. That's right. I'm a big fan of Cal Newport. Yeah, of course, he's coming in here next weekend. Oh, good, that's great, that's great. He has a book coming out, I can't wait to read that.

But we read in my flourishing class at NYU, we read his book, Deep Work. Yeah. Amazing book. And so what I work with my students on is, yes, it's a muscle, but as a social psychologist, I'm always interested in what are all the external things hitting you.

And so the main thing that really interrupts them is that they're mostly getting two, three, 400 notifications a day. Texts, group texts, notifications from all these apps. And so one of the most powerful exercises or things that I do with the students is on the second or third day of class, I say, okay, take out your phone.

Like we have, you know, I have a no phone policy and all my, you know, no screen policy, not even computers because it's all so distracting. So take out your phone, go to screen time, go to notifications, how many notifications. Now look at the list of apps that you've, and what are the settings? And you know, you have a hundred, 200 hundred apps all of which have permission to notify you and

I try to get them to see look your attention is the most valuable resource you can get an infinite amount of money like money is valuable but you can you know there's no limit on how much money you can make no matter how rich you are there's a limit on how much attention you have and if you're giving it away to any company that wants to take it from you, you get 10% off like an online clothing retailers. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You just maybe, but you just gave up $5 worth of attention.

So, so what I tell them is, okay, look at the list, pick five to keep on, turn everything else off. Yeah. So like, you know, Uber or Lyft, you're going to keep that on, of course, but things like that, like, and you know, texting, we talk a lot about because that's, you know, you kind of most, Lyft, you're gonna keep that on of course. But things like that, like texting we talk a lot about, cause that's, you know, you kind of, almost everyone, you need to keep that on,

but it's becoming a nightmare because everyone's texting everyone all the time. Too many group chats. That's right. That's right. But when the students turn off their notifications, especially for news sources, like do not get updates, do not get important updates from the news.

Like if there's a nuclear bomb, you know, nuclear missile coming towards us, someone will tell you, okay? But you know. Okay, you're not trading stocks. You know what I mean? You're not trading stocks in real time. You do not need, like ask yourself,

when was the last time you acted on any of this information and how often it was disproven or made irrelevant by almost the subsequent updates. Yeah, that's right. So doing that, when they turn off the notifications, they get amazing results. They say, like, I can do my homework. Like, I can sit at my desk and work for 30 minutes

because I'm not constantly fragmenting my attention. Yeah, it's a paradoxical thing when you meet really, really successful, important, talented, great people, like, you know, and some artists you really admire, or a billionaire, or, you know, and some artists you really admire, or a billionaire, or, you know, a high up elected leader, or a general, or, you know, you meet someone who's like,

just doing a lot, right? You're like, thousands, tens of thousands of people report to this person, or this person moves markets by themselves, or, you know, you know, this person makes decisions of international consequence. You would think no one would be busier than that person. No one would be more frantic, frenzied than that person. But it's actually the opposite.

Like their phone's nowhere to be seen. It's certainly not face up, going off all the time. There's actually a problem. They must have a person who handles all that. But my point is that successful, important people understand that the most valuable thing they can have is space and time to think, to be considerate, to not be emotional or irrational.

They have to protect their main asset, which is their brain, their ability to make decisions. Because that's what they're doing all day, is making decisions. And if they're overstimulated, if they're tapped out, if they're jerked in too many directions, if inconsequential things are making their way, they're not gonna be able to do that.

And so they're busier than you, but they've created more space and room and protected themselves more than you, but they've created more space and room and protected themselves more than you. And I think you want to do your best to emulate that in your own life. And yeah, they do have people, but they've also decided, they've also made some decisions about what is and isn't important to them.

And a lot of what they delegate to a person, their chief of staff or their assistant or whatever, you can also do through automation. You can do through, you know what? Yeah, I need to do a lot more of that. Yeah, and so it's important that you understand that actually, like the people that you admire who are busier than you are less frenzied, less, you know, they're not getting zapped all the time.

And that's what we do to ourselves. They take in charge of their inputs and their attention, and they're using it to good effect. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we delve into the life of Alan Turing. Why are we talking about Alan Turing, Peter? Alan Turing is the father of computer science and some of those questions we're thinking about today around artificial intelligence. Turing was so involved in setting and framing

what some of those questions were, but he's also interesting for lots of other reasons, Afro. He had such a fascinating life. He was unapologetically gay at a time when that was completely criminalised and stigmatised. And from his imagination, he created ideas that have formed the very physical, practical foundation of all of the technology on which our lives depend. And on top of that, he's responsible for being part of a team that saved millions, maybe even tens of millions

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So let's talk about kids because you have yours are four and seven. Yes. Yes. So what you know, what are you planning on doing in terms of electronic environment, phones, you know, tablets, video games? It's because you have a boy, seven? Two boys. Two boys.

Okay, seven. And it's interesting with my seven-year-old because my seven-year-old is... Well, they're both pandemic kids. But my seven-year-old was going to school and then wasn't going to school. And we can see... And obviously we're working on it, but we can see the way in which the iPad became for a period of time, not just an escape, but also like a security blank.

The world felt crazy, his parents were stressed, the world was stressed, things were, and that was a thing, right? And so we can tell that it means something to him that we're trying to slowly sort of wean him off. But, you know, we've been, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who has young kids the same age,

and he was like, we just started, he's like, we watch a DVD on our big TV, you know, like over and over, because he's like, there's something about the infinite of choices available that's exhausting. You know, like I watch my son, he pulls up his iPad, he has his little YouTube kids, which doesn't have everything on the internet, just like stuff that's exhausting. You know, like I watch a son, he pulls up his iPad and he has his little YouTube kids,

which doesn't have everything on the internet, just like stuff that's saved. But it's like, he's clicking the thing and then he'll wait like 30 seconds and he clicks another thing. And I just think about the way that in my own childhood, my choices were so circumscribed. There was so many television stations,

so many radio stations. I had to just, and as a result, I discovered things. I was forced to endure things. And so we were kind of trying to circum, one of the things we're working on, not instead of just going, you can't use a screen. We're just thinking, how do you circumscribe choice? Because it's exhausting.

We know that choice is exhausting. The choice is a part of it, but I'd like to also point out, there's a big difference between TV and a touchscreen. Yes. And there's a lot of differences. One of them is that the touchscreen is a small screen that you watch individually,

whereas the TV is a large screen that you often watch with your siblings, you can watch with your parents. Another is that on TV, the shows tend to be long, like at least 25 minutes minutes and movies are longer. Whereas when you go nowadays, especially the main thing that they're doing is TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels.

The short ones are, you know, for everybody with kids here listening, it's the short videos. That breaks your brain. That break your brain, that's right. Because the long form videos are a story. They make some sense. You don't do anything, you watch.

Whereas the short form is like a dog trainer training a dog. It's, you know, you give them little tiny treats a lot and you can shape any behavior you want. And when I asked my students, I did a little thing with them at the end of the semester last year. I said, okay, how many of you watch Netflix? Everybody.

How many of you wish that Netflix was never invented? Nobody. How many of you watch TikTok? The great majority. How many of you wish it was never invented? Almost all of them. Because it's addiction, it's a trap. Well, I think about this, because it's addiction, it's a trap. Well, I think about this too, it's not always true,

but the average production costs of a Netflix show or a TV show is in the tens of millions of dollars, right? So someone had to really be thoughtful about what they were making, right? That's a good point. And you think, or even cheap stuff like Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street, think about all the time and energy

that went into every frame. You know, there's child development experts that are on there. Mr. Rogers is a thoughtful guy. And then you contrast this with the family that's uploading 20 YouTube videos a week of their kid unboxing toys or, you know, doing stuff. I'm not saying they don't mean well,

but their range of communication and the knowledge behind what they're communicating is just so much less. And so there is a big difference. And actually we might even be able to say that they don't mean well, because you know, Mr. Rogers or anybody who's trying to make something,

they're trying to make something great. Yeah. Now, okay, there's reality TV, you know, there's some obviously trash on TV, but people were working together to create something good and there are awards for the best shows. Where's the difference between like a tweet and a book? You know, like someone spent years crafting this book

and it's been through editors and publishers and all these things. And then the tweet is like one of 30 things that person said. That's right. But why are parents putting up these videos? I mean, I would never do that. There was just this big article in the New York Times recently about those moms whose daughters,

five, six, seven years old, they're putting up all kinds of videos. They want them to be helped to have a modeling career. And then of course, hundreds of perverts are contacting them and their daughters. I mean, it's insane that people do this. I'm not sure that the mothers there mean well. Now, I don't blame them. What I'm saying is, I think they're caught up in the race for prestige that, you know,

the Madden, there's a quote from the Dow like race, you know, precious things lead,, precious things lead the mind astray. I forget the whole quote, but the point is, they're not doing this for their daughters. They're doing it for the prestige, and then the daughters are collateral damage. Well, there's another part of it, is like when you watch some show on television and there's a child in there,

there's a whole bunch of laws that protect that child and the earnings that that child is getting, right? And that's not true for this random YouTube channel. And there is something fundamentally exploitative about it and fundamentally unregulated as a result of this sort of wild westness of it. And you, like a friend of the sort of wild westness of it. And you, like a friend of mine is a big eater,

he's like, if you have a kid, you know how hard it is to get them to do things. And so you watch these videos and you go, what's on the cutting room floor? And there's this horribly haunting video of this mom in the car. Oh yes, I saw that. Oh, that was disgusting.

She's like, I need you to make a sad face. They just put down their dog. Yeah. And she goes, I need you to look really sad. And he goes, I am sad, I'm crying. And she's making, she's seeing her kid as a prop in this. What the irony is she wasn't even like a professional, like successful YouTuber.

Do you know what I mean? It's not like she's the Cartashians. She's like a professional, like successful YouTuber. Do you know what I mean? It's not like she's the Carcassians. She's like a nobody. And here she is taking one of the worst moments of her child's life and seeing it through the lens of, will this work as a thumbnail or not? That's right. And there you go. And it's like an adaptation of the earliest quote

we had before. You know, it's like, you care about your child, but then why do you actually care more about what people will think of your moment together and you're ignoring your child? So yeah, just in so many ways, the move, you know, I mean, of course, when television came in, you know, everyone thought it was the dumbing down

of America, there were problems. Now we look back and go, Mr. Rogers is the greatest thing ever. That's right, that's right. But you know, what I'm trying to get across, so in the anxious generation, what I'm trying to get across, so in the anxious generation, what I'm trying to get across is that this is not just another moral panic over the new technology.

There are always, whenever there's a new technology, especially if the kids are using it, radio, comic books, TV, anything, yes, there's gonna be older people saying, look what it's doing, it's dumbing them down. So that's always there. But never before has there been a new technology that almost instantly caused a wave of depression,

anxiety, self-harm, and suicide. It started in 2012, basically as soon as the, 2012 is the big year that Instagram really comes out. And as soon as the girls get on Instagram, that's, I can't say it's all from Instagram, but the biggest single cause of the girls' mental health decline, I believe, is social media. And there's plenty of evidence showing there's a correlation. There are a lot of experiments showing it as well. It's causal. It's not just a correlate. What I'm getting at is the complete

rewiring of social relations, information flow, news, dating, sexuality, everything now is going through the phones. And this is a transformation about as big as, if God just like flipped a switch and said, this 80, 20 atmosphere they have on earth, 20% oxygen, let's just flip it. Just make it 80% oxygen, 20% nitrogen. When it's like everyone lives on farms

and suddenly you all live in tenements in a city. Like it's a profound re-imagining of society. That's right. And this only happened really about 12 years ago. It really hit around 2012. In 2010, very few kids have an iPhone. They still have flip phones. In 2015, the great majority have an iPhone

and a social media account. So it's 2010 to 2015 is what I'm calling the great rewiring of childhood. And, you know, we kind of notice it ourselves as adults, but our brains were actually already formed. So our lives changed, but it didn't really change our brains. Whereas kids who are starting puberty before 2010, you know, the late millennials, if you're born in 1993,

1994, you're the end of the millennial generation, you know, they didn't get, They didn't get thrown into this whirlpool until late high school or college. Gen Z, I think, is defined by the fact that they're the first people, not to have the internet, the early internet was not harmful. They were the first to go through puberty

in this new, super viral, addictive social media world that really comes in around 2012. And one of the decisions we made is like, we don't ever show pictures of our kids on social media. Good. And the reason we did that is obviously there's privacy is a thing and AI and whatever, but a big part was we didn't want to,

as we experienced things as a family, to be thinking, how do I- How will this To be thinking, how do I? How will this look? Yeah, how do I publish this to other people? And I remember we were taking a family photo at the beach a couple weeks ago. And we set up the thing and then you hit it and it's like 10 seconds you have to do it, right?

And my oldest, he would wait for like six, seven, eight. And then he would lunge to the camera. He would try to knock it over. That's the game he was playing. Then his younger brother was doing the same. And there was this moment where both my wife and I were like, you're ruining the picture. And then we were like, wait, no, no, this is the picture.

This is who you were at this moment, right? There is, and you know, already, you know, for generations, parents have been like, we gotta get something for the Christmas card. And that's a performance moment. But that's one thing you do a year. Not this constant stream of performance and this publication bias of,

I'm only showing when we're all matching in our clothes, when everything's going well. We were at Disneyland and we turned to these people behind us. And we're talking to the kids and we go like, what rides have you been? We were waiting, sort of a juxtaposition of technology. We were waiting in line for that little old timey shop

on Main Street where they cut out your silhouette. We wanted to get like hand cut silhouettes of our kids. And you know, it's like, I don't know, noon, one o'clock. And we're asking the family behind us like, oh, like what rides have you guys done? These are kids a little older than ours. And the family's all wearing matching shirts and they go, oh, we rides have you guys done? These kids are a little older than ours. And the family's all wearing matching shirts. And they go, oh, we haven't done any rides yet.

We've been posing for pictures. And you realize, okay, now you have replaced experiencing in reality for performing in virtual reality. And again, these aren't like professional content creators. This is just people who don't understand that Facebook and its algorithm or Instagram and its algorithm or TikTok has consumed you and turned you into like an appendage of the thing.

And you don't understand like you are performing free unpaid labor for this thing at the cost of a moment you'll never get back. That's right. There's a, just talking with a British person who said, you know, there's a phrase they use in Britain, don't put your daughter on the stage. And it's a line from an old Noel Coward song,

but the gist of it is if you grow up on the stage, terrible things happen to you, especially if you're a girl. Like girls especially should not grow up, photograph, photograph, photograph, look at me, look at me, I'm performing for you. You know, it's bad for every kid. I mean, you know, Macaulay Culkin and others are the famous examples of kids whose fame spoils them.

But it's just warping, it's warping human development. That's another theme in my book is, you know, there's all this research and I'm in this debate with other researchers about does social media cause depression and anxiety? That's a major question. The answer is yes, but we debate over how big the effect is.

But there's like 10 other avenues of harm. And so just to warp the developmental process, social development, political development, spiritual, everything gets warped. And so that's, all right, we're probably boring our audience with our endless going on about social media. Well, I do, I want to talk about anxiety

because one of the interesting passages in meditation is Mark Strzok says, you know, today I escaped anxiety. And he says, no, actually I discarded it, it's within me. Yes, I love that, yes. So it's kind of this paradoxical thing where we're the cause of the anxiety, right? The Stokes would say the events are external. You can't blame the airport or other people or money.

You can't blame other things for the anxiety. And yet I would agree with that, but I would also say you can, if you go looking for things, you'll get more anxiety. Do you know what I mean? Like the environment you put yourself in either flips that switch on in you or it doesn't. Well, you know, the environment certainly flips switches in us.

That's why we have emotions. Yeah. But there are big individual differences in emotional reactivity. And, you know, one of the big five traits is neuroticism. Some people just, they're more anxious, they see more problems, they make mounts out of molehills. A concept that I find is very helpful for my students

and in my books is the contrast between what's called discover mode versus defend mode. So the brain is set up so that there's a set of systems that are active in goal pursuit. And so, like if you see a dog or a cat stalking something like, they're totally focused, they're energized, they're excited. So that's especially in the front left. It's called the behavioral activation system.

But then if something suddenly there's like a big boom or a person comes along or there's some reason to fear, then circuits that are especially located the front right cortex activate very, very quickly. The alarm system is very, very quick. And then the brain flips over into a withdrawal, avoid defend mode. And especially as an educator, as a college professor, you know, what I saw and my friend Greg Lukianoff saw first is all of a sudden around 2014, a lot of the students were in defend mode. And we don't think of college students as being anxious and afraid and afraid of ideas

and afraid of books, it doesn't make any sense. To get the most out of college or any education, you need to be in discover mode. But something happened to kids born after 1996 and later, when they arrived in college, they were in defend mode. So to come back to what you were saying, yes, the environment definitely flips your switches, but I think the point of stoicism is you can decide

how reactive you wanna be. Now at the extreme, you'd never react. And this is the ideal in Buddhism and Hinduism also, be the same in success and failure, don't be attached. So there's the Buddhist, actually I hope people talk about the Buddhist or Eastern version of Stoicism. But my point is that if you keep in mind, either as a parent or a teacher

or just a person going through life, you wanna be in discover mode as much as possible. We live in a world that's very, very safe, physically safe. You wanna be in discover mode as much as possible. We live in a world that's very, very safe, physically safe. You wanna be in discover mode as much as possible. And I think stoicism is a technique for getting into discover mode and staying there even when things happen in the world. And this is exactly the opposite

of what a lot of students are learning from therapy and from a therapeutic culture, which is the world is full of triggers. Oh my goodness, we have to get rid of the triggers. And you don't have to get rid of them. Everyone else has to get rid of the triggers for you. And this is the worst thing we could be teaching kids. And that's great untruth number one in the coddling

is what doesn't kill you makes you weaker, is the great untruth. Yeah, this idea of discover versus defend is interesting because it may resolve a contradiction that I hear a lot about from people who are not totally bought in on a stoic idea. Seneca has this idea of premeditation or premeditation of what could happen, right, of the evils.

And so it seems contradictory to say, on the one hand, don't be anxious. Don't worry all the time. But he's also saying, you got to think about all the things that could happen so you're not caught by surprise. But if you think about it as you're trying to discover what could happen, what the possibilities are, as opposed to I got to, you know, crouch, I got to protect myself from all this horrible thing that's gonna happen. Maybe that, so when Seneca's going, hey, you know, you're about to head on this journey,

what are the possibilities here? What could go wrong? What could go right? What would you do if this happened? What would you do if that happened? As opposed to it's a very fraught and dangerous journey and you won't make it out alive. And so it's seeing it with this openness

is almost as curiosity, which you're intending to resolve or satiate as opposed to this sort of reticence or withdrawal, this defensive crouch. Maybe that's how you resolve that idea of premeditation. Well, that's right. And because the premeditation does not cause anxiety. That is when, you know, and I tried to do it

because Bill Irvine talks about this and stuff, challenge, I do this with my students. And I try to imagine the death of my children as Aurelius does. And it's an awful thing, but it doesn't trigger cortisol and higher heart rate. It's not actually anxiety. It's a kind of a horror and a sadness.

But that, but I think that their point is, if you do this, yes, it's uncomfortable now, but it will reduce the pain later. And that's what training is all about. You know, no pain, no gain. You have to have these experiences now. Well, and that horrible exercise, the idea of as you tuck your child in tonight,

imagining that they don't make it to the morning. What is the worst exercise now? Well, and that horrible exercise, the idea of as you tuck your child in tonight, imagining that they don't make it to the morning. I think it's, I don't, the gruesomeness of it is Mark Cerullo's berries, half of his children. And I don't think there's any philosophical exercise that makes that not the worst thing that's ever happened to you, right?

So I don't think he's doing it in a Buddhist detached way where he is trying to say like, I don't care about this person, this person's not mine. I think what he's doing is he's saying, I'm gonna imagine that this is the last time I tuck this person into bed. So I'm not gonna rush through it. I'm not gonna take it for granted. So I think the way that it lessens the pain

is not that it makes it less painful that they died. It's a regret minimization strategy in the interim, right? The way that it lessens the pain is not that it makes it less painful that they died. It's a regret minimization strategy in the interim. And I think that's a really important... When you are thinking about the things that are happening, you're not just torturing yourself. You're like, I could get hit by a truck. I could get hit by a bus. I get hit by a missile.

You're saying, well, what if the plane is late? What's my backup plan? Right? You're thinking, so it's forcing you to be proactive and focus on what you're gonna do about it, as opposed to just listing all the potential catastrophes and then catastrophizing. I don't know.

It's tough though. I think anxiety is a thing for me where if I'm not taking care of myself, if I don't have an exercise practice, I'm not eating well, if I'm overworked, I'm just more susceptible to it. So I think it's about how good you are at regulating your life so you're not as susceptible

to this thing that we all do. That's right. We are complex dynamical systems. It's a concept that I use in my flourishing class. We're complex dynamical systems, we're not machines. I mean, we sort of are machines, but it's better to think of us as something like the weather or the economy, there's all these parameters.

If you change things over here, it might not come out over here. It actually could sort of like affect everything else somewhere else. And so, yeah, those are some of the parameters. And that's why it's so important to get your sleep right, get nutrition, and actually, I'm basically just recapitulating Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia and all these guys

who really are helping us think about that. But yeah, working on the foundation, there's so much you can do with your habits, but definitely, yeah, sleep, exercise, diet, light. I've recently tried to incorporate more of that, like actually, you know, looking not directly at the sun, but near it. Let's-

No, my doctor was like, when you go for your morning walk, do you wear sunglasses? And I was like, you know, if it's bright, I do. And he's like, stop doing that. You know, he's like, you're mitigating the benefits of this thing that you're doing. And I was like, okay, that's like a little small thing. I think one of the huge problems with social media,

like we tend to focus on what other people are doing and how that's bad for us. But I think the real insidious part is that box that pops up and it says, hey, what are you thinking about? Or like, you know, it's like, hey, react, what's your reaction to this, right? So the Stokes say like, it's not things that are the problem, it's our opinion about them.

And what social media really is, is fundamentally an opinion solicitation machine. It's saying, hey, are you pissed off about something? Please share it with as many people as possible, with as little nuance as possible, as quickly as possible. And that's where you get in trouble. Like you do things that upon reflection, you're like, why did I say that?

I don't believe that. That wasn't a good idea. You know, I didn't think about how that would affect other people. That's right. So that brings to mind a quote from Marshall McLuhan that I recently came across again. You know, when television came in,

it changed a lot of things. And there were all these great media theorists in the 20th century, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman especially, who wrote about, how is this changing us? And everybody was focusing on the content. Everybody was focused on, there's violence on TV. We have to have less violence and whatever.

Let's change the content and then the kids will be okay. And they were saying, no, no, you're missing the point. And McLuhan says, the content, something like, the content is the juicy piece of meat that the no, you're missing the point. And McLuhan says, the content, something like the content is the juicy piece of meat that the burglar carries to distract the dog. Like, so everyone said, oh, we got away. And the same thing with social media.

Everyone's going like, oh, you know, we have to get, you know, more content moderation and those Senate hearings, they're all about, can't you? Oh, but Senator, we spend $7 billion a year and we remove 2 billion pieces of bad, like. And what these media theorists said was, the content isn't that important. It's the medium itself.

And as McLuhan famously said, the medium is the message. And so you just put it, I think exactly right. You go from a television era in which, yes, it made us passive consumers. Yes, it made everything is now entertainment. Politics is entertainment, everything's entertainment. And that is a change in society that was seen as being a change for the worse by people at the time.

But it's much, much worse to then go from that to here. Here's an anger button. And not just an anger button, here's a dart gun. So you can show your anger and you can dart anybody in the world. You can shame them, you can do it anonymously, you can create seven anonymous accounts. And so now we live in a world in which most of us

don't wanna dart anybody, but people on the far left, the far right, and also trolls, or men, primarily men. Crazy people, yeah. That's right, who just enjoy being jerks. And so you get these three groups are constantly shooting the moderates especially, and this is having a transformative effect on our politics The left and the right are going completely insane in this country And I think it's going to drive us to ruin but it's it's the insanity is

Insanity came especially or at least was amplified by social media when everyone has that Anger button with a dark gun. Welcome to Pura, the most pristine, safe, climate stable city on Earth. A haven amidst the wreckage. Here, you're safe from heat domes, super storms, water bandits in the Outerlands. There's no crime in Pura, no murder, no suicide, and best of all there's no cost to join us. In Pura, I promised to keep you safe. They killed her! You took everything!

In a world that doesn't feel so safe anymore. We're waiting for you. Here in Pyrrha. The Last City is a new scripted audio drop from Wondery. Enjoy The Last City on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Last City right now at free on Wondery+. Get started with your free trial at Wondery.com slash thai. The early 2000s was a breeding ground for bad reality competition series

from shows like Kid Nation, CBS's weird Lord of the Flies style social experiment that took 40 kids to live by themselves in a ghost town to The Swan, a horrifying concept where women spent months undergoing a physical transformation and then were made to compete in a beauty pageant. Hi, I'm Misha Brown, and I'm the host of Wondery's podcast, The Big Flop. Each episode, comedians join me to chronicle one

of the biggest pop culture fails of all time and try to answer the age-old question, who thought this was a good idea? Recently on The Big Flop, we looked at the reality TV show The Swan. The problem? This dream opportunity quickly became a viewing nightmare. They were isolated, for weeks, berated, operated on, and then were ranked by a panel of judges. Follow the big flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, there's that expression of you talk sense to a fool to call you foolish.

I think that we've got a, what you realize in the social media era is when you're talking sense to a fool, you are a fool. The person you're talking to, first off, might not even be real. You are talking to a Russian bot, or you're talking to a troll who's taken out a persona who's just trying to say something stupid to get you riled up.

And so yeah, what other people are doing on social media is actually not the problem. It's what it's doing to you, what you are doing, right? It's that you feel the need two seconds after you read a news story or hear that somebody did something, you feel compelled to have an opinion about this. And the Stoics have this idea that Mark Suess says,

remember, you always have the option to have no opinion. And that's harder to do when they're like, hey, if you say an opinion, I'll tell you how many people agree with that opinion. I'll tell you how many people disagree with that opinion. I'll tell you how many views your opinion got. It tickles all these things that make us feel like we're of value or that we're not shouting

into the void. And so, you know, the ability to just sit there with your own thoughts and to be pissed off about something, like when you meditate and you have that feeling and then it just kind of drifts away, the ability to do that is really important. And what social media is predicated on is depriving you of the ability to do that.

So tell me if, you know, if Marcus Aurelius came back and was elected president, or dictator even, but- Yes, he might be more comfortable with that. If he was, yeah. Or if we could have a stoic run country, or stoic reforms, or a stoic Congress, what would it look like in this regard?

Like what changes, what would you do, or what would they do to get us out of this mess? We're all trapped in this. What would you do? It is interesting, right? us out of this mess? We're all trapped in this. What would you do? It is interesting, right? Because the Stokes are all trained in rhetoric and communication. I think that like what's so amazing

about meditations is this guy's talking to himself more clearly than the greatest writers in history have ever done. So are they gonna take advantage of these communication platforms to get out messages that they need? I think absolutely. But are they also gonna have a lot of personal self-discipline

about what they do and don't do on them? I think that's gotta be part of it. And you see, that's what Mark's Realist is doing in meditation, is don't get bounced around by this. You don't have to respond to this. Let this person be an idiot if they wanna be an idiot. Don't try to write this person off as an idiot just because they said something dumb.

So I think they would use it, but then they'd also do what we're talking about here, which is like, what are the very clear boundaries that I have to have with regards to this thing? And then I would like, you described social media earlier as a collective action problem. I think that's well thought.

I think a lot of the problems we have in this today's world are collective action problems. And I think it's important that we I think a lot of the problems we have in this today's world are collective action problems. And I think it's important that we don't see the Stoics, although they have a lot of personal discipline and they try to focus on what they control, they also were engaged in political life at every level. And so the idea that they didn't think things could be changed or improved or regulated is to,

it's not all this passive resignation of just like the world sucks and you have to put up with it. That's not why someone gets into leadership or politics. And so I don't know exactly what the solutions are, but I would like to think they would be trying things. Yes, yes. And that's a good point, the contrast with the sort of the fatalism,

because in many strands of Buddhism, not all, but in many strands, you get more the feeling of Taoism, like the wise person is not gonna be in there trying to fix, the wise person will withdraw, and will accept things as they are, and the universe is working itself out. And I think that's why Stoicism is now so popular in the West,

because there's always been an attraction, at least since the 60s, to Buddhism, but it wasn't really a good fit with the more action-oriented Westerners. Whereas I think Stoicism, right, just as you say, I mean, you get a lot of the psychological benefits of being able to deal with the bad stuff. But the Stoics were very happy to have positive emotions

and to have an effect on the world. So... And look, that's the difference, the big tension between the Stoics and the Epicureans, where the Epicureans were like, Terry here in the garden, focus on your own flourishing, your own psychological wellbeing.

It wasn't, oh, let's have orgies and feasts, but it was a withdrawal. And the Stoics were saying, that's well and good, but do you know what happens when you withdraw? You cede the field to the not so good guys, right? And so there is something about stoicism that's closer to that, you know, Rooseveltian idea of like the man in the arena.

Like you're trying, you're contributing, you're stepping up, you're engaged. And so yeah, I- You're civic duty. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's right. It's much more characteristically Roman. Yes.

You know, I can understand why Greeks would be Epicurean, but yeah, I mean, given what little I know about the Roman Empire, it was an honor culture and a strong sense of civic duty. And man, I wish we had more of that today. Yeah, and you know, it's interesting. I've gotten to know a handful of elected leaders that are all sort of interested

in the personal self-development side of stoicism, but then that sort of collective action, solving these big problems, thinking about how these decisions were, the decision not to address something because it's politically unpopular or the base doesn't like it or the donors don't like it, that's a harder part.

And I'm talking about that now, I'm doing, so I'm doing this series on the Cardinal Virtue, so I'm on justice now. That's good, good. But the idea that like, yeah, you have this obligation to try to heal the world, to make a positive difference, to solve these problems. And then all, yeah, collective action problems,

if we all come together, that's also how you have collective action solutions. And you can't just go, things are awful, because then they just get more awful. That's right. Right, so let me tell you what I think the solutions are to the collective action problems. So in The Anxious Generation,

I spent a lot of time going through, why is it that our kids are on this when they don't even like it? Why is it that we're letting them, giving them phones when they're 10 and we're letting them on social media when we don't want them? And because these are collective action problems,

the solution, as you say, is to act collectively. And so what I propose in the book is four norms, all of which we can do, all of which would be easy if we do them together. So the first is no smartphone till high school. It's just, do not give us. And are you already not supposed to legally be able to do it until you're 13?

Well, that's social media, that's next. So we're talking just about the hardware, just the phone. Now people freak out like, well, how will I get in touch with my child? With a flip phone, just give them a flip phone. The millennials had flip phones and they were fine. A flip phone is not putting the entire internet in your 10 year old's pocket to get addicted to porn,

on the school bus. So no smartphone before high school. We have to get all of this stuff out of middle school. We've got to really protect high school. We have to get all of this stuff out of middle school. We've got to really protect middle school. Second norm, no social media until 16. And that's the one where, yes, right now the law is you can't open an account until you're 13, but the law does not require the companies to check.

So they don't. They wanna make sure that they don't know so that they can't be held responsible. But if we all just say, I'm not going to give you cannot have an Instagram account until you're 16. Now some kids, of course, are going to get around it. But the the the collective action problem that we're stuck in is your kid says, but mom, I'm the only one right everyone else is on it. Sure.

Whereas if even half the kids are not on it, then it's much easier. So that's number two, then it's much easier. So that's norm number two, no social media until 16. Yeah, we don't say you can let your kid drive whenever you feel like it. We've all agreed this is about the time that they seem to be competent enough to make these decisions.

And then because we all agreed on that time, everyone waits and then it becomes kind of a, becomes the norm. A rite of passage. Yes, exactly, a rite of passage. That's right. That's right. That's right. There should be graded steps on the way to adulthood. But once you give your kid a phone, that's it.

They have everything whenever they want, pornography, violence, everything all at once. The third norm is phone free schools. There is so much research now that if a kid has a phone in their pocket and it vibrates, they're gonna check it. If some kids are texting during the day, all kids have to check their texts or they are left out.

They don't know what the big thing is that someone said or did. So this is just kryptonite for attention. Nationally, academic achievement is going down and people say, oh yeah, cause of COVID. No, no, it actually began in 2012. 2012 was the high point. It's been going down since then.

So phone free schools, there's no excuse for letting kids have phones in schools. And this is through from K through 12. And the fourth norm, this is a piece we haven't really talked about yet. The fourth norm is far more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world. Because this is the other half of the story

in the anxious generation, a lot of it is about the great rewiring of childhood into the phone-based childhood. What we lost is the play-based childhood. What we lost is a childhood in which you go out, you experience challenges and setbacks without supervision. If there's an adult around, they're gonna step in and help you.

So kids have to have a lot more unsupervised time the way all kids did. I grew up during the crime wave. Anybody my, I'm 60, anybody who's 40 and older grew up during a huge crime wave. And there were drunk drivers, there were perverts walking around molesting kids. I mean, not often, but like they were- Both times. Well, no, but my point and there were drunk drivers, there were perverts, you know, walking around molesting kids. I mean, not often, but like they were.

Well, my point is there were risks and we had to face the risks and that made us stronger. Now those risks are minimal. The crime is way down, drunk driving is way down. The perverts are not out there. They're on Instagram. They all moved to Instagram. So we, but we say, you know,

at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal keep reporting on this. The perverts are to Instagram. So we, but we say, you know, at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal keep reporting on this. The perverts are on Instagram. It lets them get to get to young girls, young boys. So, you know, so the bottom line in the book is we have overprotected our kids in the real world and underprotected them online. So we have to do both.

You can't just take the phones away and say, you know what are they supposed to do? What are they gonna do? That's right. So you have to work with. You can't just take the phones away and say, you know, what are they supposed to do? What are they going to do? That's right. So you have to work with, this is the key thing. If there are any parents listening who have young children, communicate with the parents of your kids' friends, because I guarantee you they're concerned about this too. And say, you know, I'm planning on following these four norms. And you know, when my book comes out March 26, I I'm gonna try to be everywhere. I'm gonna try to make sure everybody

hears about these four norms. But just create a text thread or just talk whenever you can with the parents of your kids' friends. Because if you get to three of the friends, and so you've got a group of four kids who are not gonna have smartphones till high school, who are not gonna have social media till 16, who are not gonna have unlimited time on an iPad

or unlimited video game time, but instead are gonna have a lot of independence. So that by third grade, I think kids need to be out by eight, by around age eight, third grade, they should have some independence. They can walk to a friend's house, they can go play in a park. If they're doing things together, they're really happy.

But if they're doing things together with phones, they're gonna sit down and be on the phones next to each other. Yeah, we found like when we are just like, oh, let's not do anything today, that's where it's harder to say, no, you can't have the screen, no, we're not gonna watch TV all day.

But when we're like, we're going here, and we're doing this, then we're doing this, even if it's running errands, that you're getting the stimulation from reality, from activity, not from whatever you're scrolling on. That's right, and that's what the brain is expecting. There's a feature called experience expectant development that neurologists talk about, brain scientists talk about,

which is evolution built us so that the brain, it's not designed by the genes. The genes have very little information in them. The genes just get the neurons started. And then it's kind of expected that there'll be certain kinds of input, you know, language at a certain point, and then they're going to start walking, get physical feedback.

So there are developmental tasks at each age, and the brain is kind of expecting certain kinds of feedback. And the brain of a five, six, seven, eight year old is expecting a lot of climbing, running, chasing, playing, pretend, all this stuff. And it's not built to just do swiping. Yeah.

So as we wrap up, walk me through the three great untruths. Cause I think almost each one of them feels like it is, the antithesis is rooted in stoic wisdom. Yep, exactly. So I think, yes, I sent you that sheet that I give to my students. So I'll tell you the great truth

and then why don't you read a quote that is the exact antithesis of it. Okay, so great untruth number one is what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Meaning you should avoid unpleasant things because they'll harm you, they'll traumatize you, they'll damage you like paper cuts. So avoid unpleasant things.

What would the Stoics say? Well, in meditation, as Mark Schreler says, the impediment to action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way. And basically the whole idea is that everything is fuel for you to practice some virtue. So the idea, it's not that everything magically, you know, helps you make more money or be happier,

but it's that, you know, frustrating people are a chance to practice patience. You know, someone hurting you is a chance to practice forgiveness. You know, a delay is a chance to practice this. You know, the idea is that these things, if you see them as resistance training for developing the countervailing virtue,

then you're probably never gonna get to the point where you're excited that bad stuff is happening, but you understand and you have confidence in your ability to learn from and grow and do things because of this thing you didn't want to happen, happen. That's right. So the key idea there is what we call in psychology, anti-fragility, term made up by Nassim Taleb.

And that, right, we need that resistance training. We need to strain the muscles in order to strengthen the muscles. And let's see, was there anything else to say about that? So that's the first great untruth. Yes. Okay, second great untruth. Always trust your feelings.

What do you think? What would the Stoics say about that? Yeah, the Stoics are saying of all the things to trust, your feelings are at the absolute bottom of the list. Your feelings are constantly misleading you. They're saying, hey, every time you have an impression, every time you have a feeling, they're like, put it to the test.

The stokes say we have this, the feeling of fantasia or fantasia, I forget the Greek word, but the idea is you have that initial reaction, but then you have the ability to go, is this true? Do I want this, do I want to feel this way? And also I think the distinction I make is having the feelings, if you feel it, it is true. Like you are angry.

It's true that you're feeling something, but it doesn't mean. But I'm saying if something has made you feel anger, there's a difference between then acting on said anger. Right, do you know what I mean? So I think when people say trust their feelings, they don't just mean go like, what they mean is that your feeling

and what it's telling you to do is the right thing. And that's definitely not true. It's not just what it's telling you to do. It's what it's telling you is real. So if someone has made you angry, the anger emotion causes you to perceive a justice violation.

They mistreated me, they did something they shouldn't do. And therefore the implication is someone needs to punish them, possibly me, or maybe I report it. Yes. So, you know, feelings are important, but this is the whole point of CBT. And this is the close relationship

between stoicism and CBT is, you know, Aaron Beck and the others in the 60s and 70s found that people will spontaneously look for evidence that their feeling is right. Yes. Will look for reasons that their feeling is right. We'll look for reasons to back up your anger at your wife or your teacher, whoever. But we don't spontaneously look for evidence

on the other side. That's a discipline, that's a practice, and that's what CBT teaches you to do. Yeah, Epictetus's line is, remember when you're offended that you are complicit in taking offense. Yeah, that's right. And so I think realizing that, hey, yeah,

because basically the core of stoicism is things are, and then our opinion, like things are objective, our opinions about them are subjective. So you go, they said something, it exists. It was a combination of sounds and whatever, but the idea that what they said is offensive or racist or cruel or wrong, that's requires you to ascribe a judgment to that.

And that's not to say- And you could be wrong. You could be right, but you really could be wrong. Yeah, and yeah, that's not to say that everything is okay and that we should just accept people. And it certainly doesn't mean that you should go around doing those things, but it says, hey, let's step back

and is there another way I could see this? That's right. Right. And if we could basically just cut our outrage reactions by 90%, then we'd only be five or 10 times as angry as we were 20 years ago. All right, what's the third great entry? So the third is really the most damning. It's the one that causes the most problems worldwide.

And that is life is a battle between good people and evil people. But what the Stoics say about that. No, I was actually thinking about that one. This is, I wonder if people might think that actually the Stoics agree because this is the passage, this is the opening of meditations, book two. Book one is gratitude.

But book two is Marcus Aurelius saying, "'When you awake in the morning, tell yourself, "'the people I will deal with today will be meddling "'in ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. "'And they are like this because they can't tell good "'from evil, but I have seen the beauty of good "'and the ugliness of evil.'" Okay, but he still isn't saying that they are evil.

Well, what I was gonna say- He's saying, you know, have some forbearance with these people. Agreed. But what I was gonna say, so you think he's saying, hey, look, there's good people and bad people. And I think there are good people and bad people. But he says, but I recognize in the wrongdoer a nature related to my own,

not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind. And so they can't hurt me. And he says, no one can implicate me in ugliness, nor can I feel angry at my relative or hurt him because we were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like two rows of tea, upper and lower. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him, this is an obstruction.

That's right, that's right. There's in Aurelius and in the other Stoics, there's an awareness, as there is in great literature, that people are complicated. Yeah. There's a line we quote in the Coddling of the American Mind from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who said, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. And great literature shows you that, whereas cartoons and social media are the opposite. There are good people and bad people, and we all have to get together now to chime in, to condemn this.

So, yeah, so a world that is less moralistic, more humble, slower to judge, quicker to forgive, that's the kind of world that I think we all wanna live in. Yeah, it's interesting, I'm writing about this in the Justice book now, is like, today when people use the word like allies, like are you an ally? What they're saying is like,

do you think exactly what I think and agree with me 100%? When in fact, allies historically, politically, in the history of war, is about people with a variety of different views and interests finding common ground on specific things where they can work together and solve specific problems. And I think Churchill's line was something like,

the only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without allies. And you know, that actually the great social movements, the great social change has come from allies who were not at all in lockstep, but found agreement enough in a specific issue and then had the forbearance and the tolerance and the open-mindedness to say, you know,

I don't care about all the things we disagree with. I care about the things that we agree with. A pragmatic approach. Yeah. Less moralistic. Yeah, like Harvey Milk, how does Harvey Milk come to power in San Francisco? He allies with the Teamsters.

Oh, cool. And he helps them, the Teamsters are boycotting bars in San Francisco, they're boycotting Coors beer. And he says, I'll help you get it out of gay bars bars in San Francisco, they're boycotting Coors beer. And he says, I'll help you get it out of gay bars if you start hiring gay drivers. Oh, wow.

And then that relationship is what ultimately that's his first sort of political constituency. And so even in the women's rights movement, I talk a lot about this, it's like the women who got together and said, women should deserve to vote, or are constitutionally able to vote. They're saying there was Mormon women who were polygamists, there was black women and white women,

rich women and poor women. And they had, if you asked them what the role of women in society was, they would have very different answers. But if you asked them what the role of women in society was, they would have very different answers. But if you asked them, should women be given access to the ballot, they were in agreement there. And I think that's our problem so much now

with good and evil is like someone's all good or all evil. Well, that's right. When politics is about horse trading, strategic alliances to achieve outcomes. Then that's what politics is supposed to be for. And then it's effective. But what's happened, because as I say in The Righteous Mind,

we evolved for small scale societies that are deeply religious that circle around sacred objects to make us stronger, especially in battle against other groups. That's the kind of minds that we have. We don't have to be tribal, we can calm that down, but it's very easy to ramp it up. And our politics, unfortunately, has morphed in the TV age and before, it was more pragmatic stuff, but especially in the social media age. And this began in the TV age with cable TV. It's much more moralistic. We get

a culture war mentality and now it's us versus them, it's red team versus blue team. And the way our founding fathers set up American democracy, or I should say a republic with democratic features, it can't function if we are two opposing tribes who cannot compromise. Because you're almost never gonna get an absolute majority, you have to create a majority by cobbling together several different minorities. And yeah, if you have this us or them good versus evil mentality, you're probably not

going to be able to do that because you're going to be too pure for it, too self-righteous for it. That's right. That's right. So I think we're in agreement that our society is in huge trouble, but if the ideas of the ancients, especially the stoics were more widely understood We would have a citizenry with the virtues that the founding fathers kind of hoped that we would have yes How's that? I agree. I totally agree. This was awesome. Thanks for coming right Brian my pleasure

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to the daily stoic early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, the host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front row seat to how some of the biggest products were built, and the innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists

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