Jonathan Haidt on Adjusting to Smartphones and Social Media

23:54Let me step back a bit and ask you a very long -run historical question. It seems to me that European culture and society maybe starting around 1900, it becomes more neurotic, more depressive, more negative, more hostile. Why did that happen? So these are some of the biggest questions in sociology about the transition from what Ferdinand Tunis called it, Gammine Shafed Societies to Gazelle Shafed Societies, those that are based on direct personal connections and interactions versus those that are market based. And a lot of stuff happened to get more individualism, so I don't doubt you get more neuroticism.

24:31But you also get the happiest countries that have ever been. So when you look at the world happiness report, I forget where it starts early 2010s or late 2000s, what you find repeatedly is that the Scandinavian countries, the Nordic countries, I should say, and the Anglo countries dominate the list of the top 10 or 15. US and UK are sort of down on the bottom of that. But you know, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, those are the happiest countries. And the kids were the happiest too until 2012. Then what happens is the adults don't change much, but the kids plummet in all of these countries.

25:04But say I ask you also, why does English thought and society seem to become so much weirder in the 17th century? The general point I want to make is there are all these long -term historical mood shifts, which very often are reversed, like the 1950s may be or much cheerier, and they're essentially a mystery to us. But we see because of contagion effects, you can have very small impotuses and then big, big shifts in mood that we, a century later, we still can't explain. So why isn't 2012 just another one of those? And you're, you're pinning it on smartphones, but these big shifts in mood that we can't explain.

25:38That's the norm in history. Well, first of all, can you point to any other shift that we can't explain that happened in a single year? Like usually you're talking things that take five or 10 years or 20 years, right? There were turning points, right? 17th century British all of a sudden people go crazy, they kill the king. Which year? Which revolution? Oh yeah, okay, all right, fine. I'm sure revolutions, of course. I mean, they've read those. So yes, things change, but what I want to look at, so the two ways to explain it, one is you can look at, you can look at it like what events happened that had sequelae.

26:12So killing the king and putting the committee of public safety in charge of chopping people's heads off, I mean, that's gonna have a pretty big effect on people's moods. But what I've interested in here as a social scientist is when you change a parameter. So, take a society, take a bunch of societies, and now let's take some of them and let's ramp up diversity. Let's have a lot of immigration around the world. What effects is that going to have? And I think it'll have a mix of good and bad effects. That's really interesting as a social scientist. Take a bunch of societies. Half of them, we super -connect them, give everybody telephones, you know, 100 years ago, and others don't get it.

26:46What effect is that going to have? and connecting society is usually a good thing. It certainly makes them more productive. But my argument is that we've been connected for a very, very long time now. What changed around 2012 was that we became connected not by direct connections to each other, but by social media platforms that were now super viral. They weren't that way in 2004 through eight. But once you get the like button, the retweet button, you get threaded comments, that's 2014. Now the way we're connected is a way that especially encourages rage and conflict. There's two pieces of evidence when I look at them.

27:21They don't seem to support your story out of sample. Okay, great. Let's have it. First, across countries, it's mostly the Anglo -Sphere and the Nordic countries, which are more or less part of the Anglo -Sphere. Most of the world is immune to this, and smartphones for them seem fine. So why isn't it just that in negative mood came upon the Anglo -Sphere for reasons we mostly don't understand? And it didn't come upon most of the rest of the world. If we're differentiating my hypothesis from yours, doesn't that favor my view? Once you look into the connections and the timing, I would say no. So I think I see what you're saying now.

27:53I think your view would say just for some reason, we don't know, just things changed around 2012. Whereas I'm going to say, okay, things change around 2012 in all these countries. We see it in the mental illness rates, especially of the girls. So I'm going to say it's not just like some mood thing, it's like, A, why is it especially the girls? B, they're more mimetic, right? Well, that's true. Girls are more mimetic. That's part of it. That's part of it. They're just much more open to connection. They're more influenced. They're more subject to contagion. That is a big part of it. You're right.

28:26What Zach Rouschen I have found, he's my lead researcher, the after -babel sub -stack, I hope people will sign up. It's free. We've been putting out tons of research. Zach has really tracked down what happened internationally. And now I know the answer. I didn't know it two months ago. So the answer is within countries, as I said, it's the people who are conservative and religious who are protected and the others get washed, the kids get washed out to see psychologically. They feel their life has no meaning, they get more depressed. Zach has looked across countries and what you find in Europe is that overall the kids are getting a little worse off psychologically, but that hides the fact that in Eastern Europe which is getting more religious, the kids are actually healthier now than they were 10 years ago, 15 years ago, whereas in Catholic Europe, they're a little worse, and in Protestant Europe, they're much worse.

29:15So it doesn't seem to me like, oh, all the, you know, like New Zealand and Iceland were talking to each other and the kids were sharing memes. It's rather everyone in the developed world, even in Eastern Europe, everyone, their kids are on phones. But the penetration, the intensity was faster in the richest countries, the Anglos and the Scandinavians. That's where people of the most independence and individualism, which was pretty conducive to happiness before the smartphone. But it now meant that these are the kids who get washed away when you get that rapid conversion to the phone -based childhood around 2012.

29:50What's wrong with that explanation? Old Americans also seem grumpy or to me, right? Maybe that's cable TV, but it's not that they're on their phones all the time. And you know all these studies, but if you try to assess what percentage of the variation and happiness of young people is caused by smartphone usage. Sabine Haustenfeld or Heather recent video on this, those numbers are very, very, very small. And that's another measurement that seems to discriminate in favor of my theory, exogenous mood shifts rather than your theory. Why not? Okay, so first of all, we have to talk about correlation coefficients here.

30:21So, I've been involved in the debate. Gene Twingy and I are on one side. There are a few researchers Andrew Sibilsky, Amy Orbyn, Candaceodra, a few others on the other side. It's been a very productive debate. It's all conducted within bounds. And there are three different kinds of studies that the correlational studies, they're the longitudinal studies, and then they're the true experiments. There's three different kinds. Zach and I and Jean have put them all. We have a Google Doc. If you go to JonathanHeight .com slash reviews, we have all these Google Docs. You can see abstracts to all the studies.

30:48Most of the discussion has been over the correlational studies. And some studies have said, oh, the correlation between time on screens or time on even on social media. time on screens and some measure of bad mental health is like point O4. Now if that was true, I would say, wow, that is that's pretty much nothing. But here's the thing. Every time I dig into the data, whatever studies published to try to debunk this claim, you dig into the data and what do you find? If they're looking at screen time overall, then the correlation is low. But whenever you consume it on social media, it's bigger.

31:23Whenever you consume it on girls, it's bigger. And an amazing thing has happened. The skeptics and me and Jean, we've all reached the same conclusion at the size of the correlation. They say the size of the correlation is between R is 0 .1 and 0 .15, which is small, but it's about the same size as many other public health effects. But that's always for boys and girls combined. What Jean and I have found is that when you look at the girls, now you're in the realm of 0 .15 to 0 .2. So we actually all agree, because girls are more affected by that. We actually So I'll agree, the correlation coefficient is around 0 .17.

31:54That is not trivial. Like you would never let your kid do something four hours a day that was correlated 0 .17 with depression, anxiety, and self -harm. So the effect is actually much bigger than many people realize in the scientific community because you have to zoom in on girls in social media. Well, I know talking in your book about the benefits of social media. They seem to me extremely large. Great. Tell me about that. Yeah, go ahead. I know many. I know many. students. 11 to 13 years old. At emergent ventures we support many teenagers, young women, many of them, not 13 years old, but very often 16 to 19 years old.

32:31They're doing science, they're remarkably smart. They get in touch with their collaborations and with each other, using social media. They exchange information. They're doing phenomenally well. They're an incredible generation. Smart or more dynamic, probably more productive than any other scientific generation ever, and that's because of social media. Now you might think the costs outweigh that, but there's no mention in your book of the benefits that I can see. Well, well, I do have a section on the benefits. It's short. Here's what I say. First, discussions of benefits are always for older teens.

33:06The benefits of being able to collaborate with people far away, when you're 16 or 18, I totally see that. For middle school students, they don't that. They need to develop basal social skills and be with each other. So I've never heard anyone make a good case that 11, 12, and 13 year olds benefit from social media. Second, whenever I hear this argument, it usually seems to conflate the internet with social media. So like during COVID, a lot of people say, oh, thank God for social media. What would the kids do if they didn't have social media? To which I say, yeah, can you imagine if the only way they could connect was by calling them up on the phone or texting them or Skype or Zoom or FaceTime or multiplayer video games or many many other ways that the internet allows you to connect.

33:51Social media is very different from everything else. Social media is a distorting mirror. It's not a connection device. It is that, but it's a weird connection device. So that's that would be my first response is don't confuse social media and the internet. We need the internet. The internet is amazing. Remember what it was like in the 90s when we all discovered it was one of the greatest things we've ever seen. It didn't harm mental health. It was good for democracy. That's not true anymore in our modern. So these purported benefits of social media, I'm just not seeing the evidence for it. There are hardly any studies.

34:20Which is Twitter is Twitter internet or social media. No social media. Well, that's how they all meet these kids. That's how they get in touch with each other. They see what they're working on. It seems to me just an enormous benefit. It could be the case maybe only 5 % of teenagers benefit from this Twitter function, but that could by far that way the costs. Well hold on a second. Okay, let's suppose it's 5 % benefit. If you'll grant me that probably the costs that way the benefits from middle school students, because that's where the girls seem to really go off track. Will you grant me that?

34:48That the cost benefit ratio is probably negative when you're 11 and 12 for being on Instagram and TikTok. I think it is likely that girls age 12 to 14 are worse off because of Instagram. Okay, fine. So if we agree on that, now at least let's focus where it's harder for me, which is what do we do about 15 and 16 year olds? We all agree 18 year olds can be on, you know, but let's say, you know, 14, 15, because I favor raising the age to 16. I think the, I think social media is just not a place. It's not appropriate for children. The internet, of course, has so many amazing things. I'm not saying keep them within the internet and saying social media having an account where your fed material, you know, your fed content by algorithms, that is not appropriate for children.

35:32the age should be 16. So let's you and I talk about 14 and 15 year olds. But these kids start connecting with each other when they're 13. Maybe I only meet them when they're 17, 18. But they get going on science and learning, definitely at age 13. Boy, can you imagine if they didn't have Twitter, there's no way they could find each other is there? It would be much harder. I feel like a lot of people over here. It would be a little harder. Come on. There would be something like social needs. There are so many web sites, there are blogs, There are podcasts, they would find each other. You don't have to have an algorithmically driven platform to find other kids who share your interest.

36:07So I disagree with that premise. But now, but I want - I can switch my Twitter to no algorithm with one click, and they do too. They choose. They all make this decision. Okay, but wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So this is actually, wait, you know what? I want to turn the tables here, and I want to ask you some things, because there's something that I'm really puzzled by, and I want to know your opinion of it. So it seems to me, in talking to my students, members of Gen Z have to spend so much time servicing their network connections. Many hours a day. It's the first they do when they open the rives in the morning.

36:37It's the last thing they do before they close them at night is check their notifications, messages. And in between, it's a lot of what they do. They don't have much attention left over to do anything. Now there was a conversation between Patrick Collison and Sam Altman. Last May, I think it was. And Patrick pointed out to Sam. He said, this is the first time since the 70s that there has not been a major person in software under 30 because it was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They got started. They were very young. You know, in the teens and 20s, they found a company in the 20s. The millennials, I mean, in the 90s and the two, but the 2000s, the millennials were amazing.

37:12But Gen Z isn't starting companies. Gen Z isn't doing things. And so my question for you is you said that this is the most productive, inventive, creative generation. It seems to me you could make the case that it seems to be possibly the least. And what I'd like to know from you is, is there, can you name people? Can you name members of Gen Z who really have come out big and really had a big impact on the world? Can you name anyone? And there's only two names that come up. What are yours? Let me first say that in any area where we can truly measure performance, like take chess, young people, including young women, they're just doing better and better than ever before.

37:48Oh yeah, I keep saying like you will. The flip of the stuff. But they're not ruining the young women's chess players, right? They're just improving all the time. Okay. But that's telling you something about the smart people in society. I think that you can't just be a programmer alone, that the nature of companies now is not that you do it in your dorm room at Harvard, but it requires synthetic abilities. So it's Sam Altman at OpenAI in his late 30s is the new paradigm. but it's because of the nature of production that's changed. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. But even still, can you tell me, so my concern is, you know, Gen Z, I mean, they're working hard, but so much their effort is within the black hole of the prestige economy within social media.

38:34So we can point to Mr. Beast as a well -known Gen Z person, but that kind of proves the rule that it's all about doing things to be recognized within this prestige economy to get likes and followers that to get prestige. And nothing comes out of that world to influence the world that the rest of us live in. Please tell me I'm wrong. I've visited Anthropic and OpenAI. A lot of the people there were extremely young. I don't know exact birth dates. They're doing amazing things. None of them are famous, but their research teams are quite small, like those individuals are decisive. And again, with immersion ventures, I'm interviewing young people from ages like 16, often through 25, through 30, five to eight times a week, every week of my life.

39:21They're just awesome. They're way better than kids who are in my time. They're smarter. They're more productive. They're more attentive. They're more disciplined. I see there's problems at the median, but they're just better in every way. And I don't see how that fits into your account. Well, first of all, I will grant that the internet in general makes it much easier for you to find the very top people. Because let's suppose that I was right. That because Gen Z now has to devote 5 to 10 hours a day, literally 5 to 10 hours a day to servicing their network connections plus consuming content. They have to keep up with Netflix, their YouTube shorts, short -forms.

39:54So if we take 5 to 10 hours a day out of most of their lives, most of them will not be very productive. But there are always going to be geniuses. There always are going to be amazing young people, and you're able to find them. So your anecdotal experience that you're finding all these amazing young people doesn't convince me that the average is getting better. Whatever problems there are, I mean, why not just think we'll adjust to them? Now I've read your page 81 where you discuss this, but I don't think you have any actual facts. You just say you don't think people can adjust, but we adjusted from moving from a hunter gatherer society, do agriculture, we adjusted to having fire, we adjusted to urbanization, we adjusted to many truly major trends that overall have been great.

40:37But in their early stages, we're far from easy, right? Why isn't, you have this weird distinction between internet and social media, which I don't really buy, but why is it? What's happening now? Just another example of that. There's some problems. We're going to adjust medium -term benefits. We'll be enormous. Let's get on with the adjustment. Okay. You could be right about that. That is definitely within the realm of possibility. I could just be, you know, if this is the early days and I am overreacting, you could be right. But let's think of another class of events. Suppose we change our diet so that there's just no vitamin C in it and our kids start getting scurvy.

41:13Would you say, well, you know, they'll adapt to that. They'll adapt to scurvy. We'll figure out a live with scurvy. Do you think like is that going to be some will adapt to? Well, that's what the Aztec's did. They put Nishdamal and their tortillas, and they don't get scurvy for that reason, right? Well, they eat oranges, they do adapt to it. I see. Okay. So, what I'm trying to argue here is that humans as mammals have certain requirements in childhood, and those are for a lot of play, face -to -face interaction, eye contact, synchrony, a lot of those things. My argument is that the virtual, at the phone -based life is blocking that, so it's not like they're going to be able to grow up without that stuff.

41:54But I think your argument is that AI will play the role of whatever the Aztec's did. AI will allow kids to basically just sit in the room for 18 years and still get face -to -face contact, virtually synchrony, humor, social skills. So right, they could in theory sit in their room alone for 18 years and just be fed food and social experiences. You think we could do that? That's one scenario, but the more optimistic scenario is you talk about this five to ten hour flow of messages you need to manage. AI will do that for you and you'll have a lot more time again and you'll spend it meeting up with your friends.

42:33Like it is fun, right? The fact that it's fun means it's not just a public good. Kids will find ways of doing this. Oh, meeting up with kids have a great time with her together. But being on social media is not necessarily very fun. It's work. It takes a huge amount of time, especially for the girls. They're very anxious about AI. I will do that for us if we wanted to. Fine. Okay. So if you're suggesting that we could outsource all of that bad stuff to AI so that kids don't actually have to know what's going on in their friends' lives. They don't have to keep up with who said what to whom because they're never going to actually meet their friend in person.

43:07Then I would say, well, maybe that could work because We're all just alone in a room. But if you're saying that they will actually meet up in person, and then they each don't know what's going on each other's lives because they're AI took care of it. They're saying they read a digest or they hear a digest. Oh, right. Manage the flow. Yeah, but we're a year away from this working. You know, okay. So Google Gemini is working on it already. It's almost there. Again, in theory, you could be right. Looking at the long history of humanity, and I know you're, you know, I'm very sympathetic to Matt Ridley's book, rational optimist, you know, Steve Pinker's point about the better angel of our nature.

43:41So, and Robert Wright, Robert Wright's book non -zero. So, you may be right that I think I'm right that we're going into a dip. It's gigantic in terms of mental health impact, suicide rates, self -harm, hospitalizations, missed potential, but you might be right that this is early days, and in 30 to 50 years, the next generation, like where two generations from now could be so optimized that they're like superhuman. Do we agree on that? I don't know what superhuman means, but I think these things are gonna go well. Let's put it that way. Okay. And you think they're gonna go well because that's been the trajectory over the last couple of centuries.

44:20People can adjust to an amazing variety of circumstances and they take tools and figure out how to use them for better rather than worse. And more and more kids will succeed from the bad parts of social media. They'll just say, I'm in a form like a little polycule, but without sex. And my polycule will be based around not doing so much social media. Like my friends and I in high school, we didn't go to parties. We seceded from that. We were out of many loops, but we had a blast. And I think right, if you were together, yeah, people can still do that. I agree there's too much homework, by the way.

44:53Yeah, no, that's right. Especially in the early ques, there's no reason for it, you know, first, second, third, fourth grade. So, okay, I think we are reaching some agreement here, which is that the technology is currently hooking kids into a collective action problem. Most of them say they're only on it or on it this much because they have to be, they don't want to be, they wish things could be different. So they're kind of trapped now. I think we agree that if we could liberate the kids from that, so that they could really spend a lot more time hanging out together on supervised, they would be better off, they would be happier, and then they could have many of the benefits of the technologies.

45:26I agree with you on that. That's actually what I'm trying to do in my book. So in the book, after I go through the analysis of collective action problems, I say, here are four norms that will solve for the biggest collective action problems. And if we can do this, then we would liberate kids to do just what you were saying. So the four norms are, no smartphone before high school. Kids can have flip phones to communicate. Flip phones were not harmful. You can use them to communicate to say, I'll see you at four, let's meet at the mall, but you're not gonna type out long things about what someone said and how you feel.

46:02You're gonna wait till you see each other in person. So no smartphones before high school, the kids can still have laptops, they can have other things, but it's the constant connection in your pocket. That's what has really done them in. That's what brought about the phone base chart. So that's number one. Second norm, no social media till 16. So you have the most of the rest of the internet. you can connect in all kinds of ways, but to be to open an account, I'm not saying they can't see YouTube video, of course, or TikTok video. I'm saying they cannot sign a contract with a company to give away their data, to be exposed, to have an account, to have a name, to get sucked into the whole performance game.

46:41Let's just delay that till 16. The evidence shows, and actually this is from Orbin and Shibiltsky, a study that a couple years ago, that the maximum damage is done to The girls around 11 to 13 and boys around 14 to 15. So it's just delay until 16. That's the second. Third is phone free schools. There is no benefit at all that no one's ever pointed out of benefit to letting kids have their phones with them during class. Now in high school, maybe they use them for some lesson plans. I'm not saying there's zero benefits. But the distraction effect is so gigantic that as long as you can text, you will text.

47:13So just put the phone in the phone locker or in a yonder pouch when you arrive and you get them you go home. That's the third one, phone free schools. That would give them seven hours a day where they could talk to each other and to their teachers. And then the fourth one is far more childhood independence and free play. And this is all the Lennore Scenazi work, free range kids, she and I and Peter Gray founded an organization called Let Grow. If there are any parents listening, if you have kids under 12, please go to let grow .org. We have all kinds of ideas and advice and ways that you can give your kid a healthier or more play -based childhood, which fosters development, happiness, competence.

47:48So those four norms, if we could do it, then I think we would roll back a lot of the mental illness. We'd free kids up for a lot more time to play with each other and hang out together, and then I'd be much less worried. Now, for instance, do you agree with me on those norms? It depends what you mean by them. No social media before 16. Is that enforced by the government or by parents? So ideally, first of all, the parents can't really enforce this stuff. It's like saying, you can't drink alcohol before 21, but it's up to the parents to enforce that. Bars, bars never have to check ID. The parents should stop their kids from going into bars.

48:24Well, how do you do that unless you lock them up at home? So, it's unrealistic to think that parents could actually do this. And many parents, you know, you've got families with two married parents with graduate degrees who are really concerned about this, they can't stop their kids from getting on these platforms because there's always ways around it. The platforms have to do something. They have to do something to help us. They do nothing, nothing. They know when a kid is a lezzin. The minimum age is currently 13. They don't enforce it. They know when a kid is limb. They won't do anything to kick these kids off.

48:52So that has to change. I'm a parent, say I have a 15 year old, I want the kid on Twitter, is the government gonna stop me? So there are a couple of options here. But now, tell me your number one option. What's your view? You're talking around a bit. Okay. My number one option is that the age be raised from 13 to 16 and enforced. So the government will stop me from raising my 15 year old the way I want to. I'm totally against that. Well hold on a second, hold on a second. The current way it's written, this goes back, this is copper. The Child Online Privacy Protection Act says that it was done in 1998, I think it was 7, it says that like these big, like AOL or you know time warn or whatever when the early internet, at what age are you allowed to take data from a child without that child's parents permission or knowledge or a cent at what age?

49:3713. And you think 18, well you'd think it should be 18 because you're signing a contract, the terms of service is a contract, so you'd think of 18, but they said, well, that's not realistic. Let's make it lower. Ed Markey was in the house then. He said 16, he thought was the best age, but lobbyists, they got it pushed down to 13 and he said he knew it was the wrong age at the time, but he was the best he could do. So it's 13. So that's the age in which you're allowed to sign a contract without your parents' knowledge. Now, if we just push that up to 16, then the law would be with your parents' permission, you can do it.

50:07So, in some versions of this legislation, you would say the age is 16 without parents' permission, but if you have your parents' permission, then it can be as low as 14 or 13. So what's wrong with that? Are you saying if parents can give permission, you still would object? No, I'm fine with it being up to the parents, but your view is also, it should be up to that the parents and the government doesn't step into this? There are parental controls on Instagram, as you know, much better than I do. And not that many parents do it, right? So with parents, it's okay. I don't see why your stuff is such a big change, at least on that issue.

50:45Tyler, very few people are able to use parental controls. Well, even people, again, people who are very well educated, who are trying, they're very, they're complicated, they're ways around it. At some point, let's say, Let's take pornography. Do you think it's okay for 11 -year -olds to be on porn hub? They don't even have to say they're 18. They just go on. Do you think that's okay? You're shifting something back to me. There's a dual issue that either it's up to the parents, in which case your recommendation won't matter much, or the government steps in, which you won't say you're for, but at least in your Excel and Ed talk, you at least raise the possibility.

51:22So I'm asking you, are you for the government stopping me from having my 15 -year -old on Twitter. Yes or no? No. So it's up to the parents? No. Then it's up to... I'm in favor of helping parents to raise their kids the way they want. Right now, the number one concern of parents all across America is not their kid getting pregnant or abducted or in a car accident. It's social media and the internet. That's what parents are mostly afraid of. It's the number one concern by far even for parents of six and seven year olds. Okay? So something's going terribly wrong here. The government set up the internet such that there are zero, zero guardrails by age.

52:03Nothing. You just, if you're nine, you just say, you know, nothing. The government set up that way. They gave blanket immunity to these industries. They said, and not only are there no age guards, but you have complete protection from lawsuits. No one can sue you. So what we have is a complete got I want to curse here disaster. Okay. It was set up by the government to run this way. It's not like any other industry. And it is destroying a generation. The mental health catastrophe is bigger than anything we've ever seen. And what I'm saying is not the government should decide what I'm saying is we parents are stuck in these horrible collective action problems.

52:41We cannot get out. We cannot get out. But you haven't told us how to get out. So now you're raising the possibility. So parents can sue, say, meta, Facebook, if the kid gets on and the parent didn't actually approve it, given how many customers there are, isn't that just destroying the company through? Hold on, hold on. Okay, wait, so let's look at this is slightly off topic, but the very relevant here, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gave them a protection from liability for what other people post. That makes sense. But it's been interpreted so broadly by some lower courts that if parents want to sue a meta or TikTok because it addicted their kids because they built design features like the constant refresh, the eternal feed, they designed it to be as addictive as possible, but they can't be sued for their design choice.

53:34That's insane. So the government has taken a hands -off approach so far and it's been a complete disaster. What I'm saying is we need to have these companies held liable for their decisions, not for some jerk posting some false thing. I understand that principle. The government has to return liability to the industries. We saw that in those hearings a couple weeks ago. Section 230 is given there. So that's the first thing. And the second is the government has to tell the platforms that they have some responsibility, some for age gaping. right now they have none, nothing. And that is completely untenable.

54:08So what I would like to see is take the law that you passed, 13 with no enforcement, make it 16 with enforcement, and then we can talk about whether we want to have a parental permission feature. That would be okay with me, where you have to be 16 to sign a contract and give away your data. But if your parents want you to have an account on TikTok at 13 and give away your data to the Chinese government, they can choose to do that. And let's see if TikTok and Meta can figure out a way to do parental permission. I'm betting they can. Well, Facebook has billions of users or you could call them customers.

54:41Let's say they have other users. So not customers. Well, they're, they're, they don't give them money. No, no, how are their customers? They're customers, right? You want to please your customers. But the point is, let's say, let's say meta has a 1 % failure rate in trying to do this, which would be a, you know, an amazingly good performance. Very hard to call. That'd be that'd be incredible. There's two. Oh, I would give them. They should get a bonus. They're sued out of existence in your scenario because they have billions of users and 1 % yes Like how much are these laws? What's good for? Wait, are you saying 1 % are harmed or you saying 1 % are on underage?

55:13Let's say 99 out of 100 times when the parent doesn't want the kid on the kid isn't on but there's a failure rate of 1 % And then the parents get to oh my god. I would just appear there'd be lawsuits No, no if If any company achieved 95 % let's say, then they would have some protection from liability because clearly they are doing a lot to age gate. But right now you go to most middle schools, everyone has an Instagram account. So they're doing nothing now. Whereas if they could get to 95%, I would say, wow, thank you Mark Zuckerberg. You really are doing what you said. you really are trying to keep underage users off.

55:55But right now, there's nothing. There's no obstacle to signing up. In two years, won't AI make most age gating just flat out impossible for everything? No, there's all kinds of ways that you could do age gating either by building something into the hardware, building something into the software. There are so many different ways of age verification now that they have their own trade industries. There's like the age verification, something association. There are a lot of different methods. And what I would like to see is governments could mandate just as they mandate that bars and casinos have to check age, right?

56:31I assume there's some law that puts the responsibility on the casino or the strip club or whatever, right? That these places, the government said you have to enforce the age limit, right? Sure, but but fakes are very easy. Even in my case, fakes are easy. Right, right, right. But the point is it's not effortless to walk in. You could get caught. So I'm not saying we have to get 100 % if we can get to 90 95 percent I would be thrilled right now. We're at zero. There's just no obstacle So that's what I'm saying if the government were to mandate that Facebook and all these platforms they have to do age verification But not mandate the way so in Louisiana they said for porn you have to show your driver's license I don't agree with that It shouldn't be the government says you have to show a government idea to use an internet I don't want that but they could say to porn hub you have to provide age gating We leave it up to you how, but it has to be 90 % or something reliable.

57:22And what I'm imagining is porn hub and meta would offer, here's five different ways that you could establish your age. Pick one. What do you think about that? I don't think it's going to matter much. I think a lot of... Because of AI? Not only because of AI. There's a long history as you know of trying to stop what your kids do, even before social media. Things matter a bit. the effects of those interventions, they strike me as pretty small. What percentage of kids shoplift regularly would you say? Is that most kids are shoplifting every day? Would you say? No, not at all. It's a physical thing, right?

57:59No, but the point is that with shoplifting you can do it, but it's risky. There's some possible cost. Whereas if we said, you know what? Total honor system, no enforcement, no cameras, no punishment, I think shoplift can go way, way up. If kids could just walk in this room, take whatever they want, shop, they'd go up. Napster shoplifting was huge, right? That was the online version. Exactly. Well, that's right. When there is zero cost for taking something, people take things. And in the same way here, when there is absolute zero cost, you can lie as much as you want about your age and nothing will ever happen to you.

58:33What I'd like to see is if, let's say, Meta took this seriously and they had a policy of, if we find out that you are under 13, then your account will be closed and you won't be able to come back on until you're 13 and a half or 40 or there be some penalty or you'll have your distribution will be there'll be some penalty for lying about your age. That would really change the incentives of the kids. An excellent episode. Thank you, John, repeating to everyone. Here is John's book, The Anxious Generation. Have the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Oh, thanks so much Tyler.

59:09I hope listeners will sign up for the after -bable sub -stack. It's free. I hope they'll enjoy the book. And I know they enjoy hearing the way you question people. It's different from everyone else's. I almost never get worked up. And somehow Tyler, you got me worked up. It was great fun. I am flattered by that. Thank you very much, John, for coming on. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show.

59:43On Twitter, I'm Attyler Cowan and the show is At Cowan Convos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.