Why Young People Are Struggling | Angela Duckworth

15:39Angela Duckworth:I actually think on the contrary, and there's good scientific evidence that they're developed. Also, like, what would that even mean that like you somehow got born with like the tattooed interest that you were going to be a commodities trader or something like that? What would that mean to have interest like at birth? So obviously they're developed. But I think, you know, recently, again, I guess my students are on my mind.

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18:32Angela Duckworth:I had the author David Epstein join our class, and he has written about a lot of the same topics that I have. And in his remarks to my students, I mean, he was really kind, like take the train up from Washington, D.C. My students had been assigned his TED Talk on range. and then I was like, I'll just text David and see if he wants to actually come and like talk about it. And so he did. And he said, you know, a lot of times what looks like grit is really fit. In other words, if you are doing something where you feel really interested in it, you can look like somebody who has a lot of grit because you're voluntarily wondering about it.

19:13Angela Duckworth:Like when nobody asks you to, you're showing up early, you're staying late, your eyes are like saucers. And I agree with you, Mike, I know what you mean. There are people for whom, for example, like when you were describing your idea of passion as a skill, I was thinking about, you know, those people who like whatever they're eating, like it looks like the most delicious thing because like the way they approach their food is like, you know, they really are savoring it, right? Like I've, I have a few vivid examples of people where, oh, right, like you could give them a whole range of things. And it's all delicious because it's what they bring to that experience.

19:49Angela Duckworth:You can tell by the way they chew and swallow. You know, you're like the way they cut their fruit. I'm like, wow, I wish I could eat like that because then basically it'd be like being roommates with Julia Child. So I understand what you're saying, but I also think people have to make choices. And I think about my mom, for example, who she grew up in China and she really did, you know, fall in love with painting. And she immigrated to this country. She was the first in her family to immigrate here. She didn't speak English. She was very poor. And she just had this dream of becoming a painter. And she heard stories of these museums in the United States and classes where even women could become painters.

20:28Angela Duckworth:And so she, you know, was studying here and she did coursework at, you know, Ivy League schools and was very encouraged. And then what happened is that she married my dad, who was a great man, but not a lover of art and not a feminist, I'll say. And instead of becoming a painter, my dad had the idea that my mom should open a needlepoint. Like, you know, I don't even know if people know what needlepoint is, but these canvases and like you stitch them and you make pillows and things like that. So my dad had this idea that my mom, instead of painting her true passion should operate a wholesale needlepoint.

21:05Angela Duckworth:I would say company, but it was quite small. So anyway, like a whole wholesale needlepoint concern. And that's what she did for like 40 years. And, you know, I guess you could say that she brought passion to that. I mean, she did as good a job as she could as a little CEO of a little company in Pensacola, New Jersey that made needlepoint canvases and shipped them across the country to retailers. But it was only when my dad got sick. He's now passed. He had Parkinson's and he had a few falls. And there was a time toward the end of his life where my mom, because my dad was like immobile and he slept a lot, like my mom had her freedom again.

21:41Angela Duckworth:I mean, it was like 50 years since she had come to this country to pursue her dream. And she was finally able to paint again. And on the very last day of class, my mom was the guest speaker. And the very end of her interview where she told her life story. The last question was, what advice do you have for these young people who are at the beginning, not the end of their lives? My mom's now 90. And, you know, first she hemmed and she said, like, you know, I don't have any advice. Like, you know, don't listen to me. And she sort of made a self-deprecating joke. But then we pushed her and we were like, no, really, what would you say to somebody who's 20 years old, 70 years younger than you.

22:22And she said, follow your passion.

22:25Angela Duckworth:Do something that you want to do. When I paint, the hours fly by. All I want to do is paint. So I think we mostly agree, these are two different ways of using the word. They're both true. But I personally think that if you can develop a passion that is what you really want to do, then so much of life becomes easier for you. And I think also the path to excellence almost invariably includes that.

22:57Dr. Michael Gervais:Thank you for sharing your mom's story because it actually hits a really personal note. I am really afraid that my way of living like your dad's my framework my thinking my way that i've organized my life would be something that could potentially pull my loved ones away from what they want to do and so i do think about that all the time like what do you mean i get to do a lot in my life. And that means that I'm making choices. And some of those trade-offs, I don't consider them sacrifices. I do consider them trade-offs. Some of those trade-offs maybe are not the best thing for my family.

23:43Angela Duckworth:For the people that you care about in your life.

23:46Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. So this is like the part that haunts me. Yeah. when i'm done here and let's say that i you know my hopefully my son or my wife survives and me and like they're like yeah he was a good man and then it kind of stops you know like

24:06Angela Duckworth:i mean if you ask my mom if she could rewind time if she would make different choices well i've asked her that she wouldn't make different choices i think she does mourn the decades of her life when she was doing what she didn't want to do. But she would not go back and make different choices. In other words, those trade-offs also confronted her. And we could say like, oh, it's too bad that she was a woman, that she had a certain place in a family. Okay, that may be true. But there were trade-offs for her too. If she pursued her art and had huge fights with my father and took time away from the children in order to pursue her passion, traveled, you know, regardless of our school schedules and so forth.

24:50Angela Duckworth:I mean, I think those choices that you're talking about are real and just, you know, in a spirit of confession. So when my daughters were young, so now they are out of the house, they're 24 and 22. And I remember getting a Christmas card and they would like, you know, they're like their grandmother, actually both grandmothers, they like to draw. And so I get this, you know, card and it's like a picture of like all the different people. It's like a comic strip and, you know, like all the different people in the family. And there's, you know, dad and he's like raking the leaves or doing something family man like.

25:23Angela Duckworth:And then, you know, whatever the girls are doing, you know, dancing or reading books. And then there's me and you can't even see me because my laptop is in front of my face. And you could just see like the top inch of my head. And then it says like, you know, comic book style, like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And I remember looking at this portrait of me and thinking like, okay, like, you know, tradeoffs, right? Because it's true. When my kids were young, I was working all the time. I mean, I guess that's probably true now and was true when they were older too. And, you know, I just want to acknowledge, like, you're right, Mike, there are these costs on the other side of the ledger.

26:01Angela Duckworth:And I think that's a very important perspective. But if you then consider that, you know, assuming that you're going to have a paid job, which many people want to have and many people need to have, I just want to say that when you make these choices, if you have freedom to make choices, you know, to choose something where you're like, I think it's interesting. I think people's interests are not evenly distributed. Like, can you imagine how many people have tried to explain private equity to me? I'm like at Wharton. It's like, OK, Angela, I explain private equity to you one more time and how it's different from hedge funds.

26:38Angela Duckworth:And I'm like, OK, I have a coffee and a pen and a notepad and I can understand this. And like mid-sentence, like their first sentence, I have just wandered off and my brain is not thinking. And that's because I have negative five interest. in private equity and hedge funds. I can't even believe that I remembered those phrases to utter them. So if you ask me about like psychology, I mean, there are articles, Mike, that I read and I'm like, oh, yeah, I think that was like on page 78. There was like a paragraph on the top right hand and there was this graph. You know why? Because I'm interested. I'm goddamn interested in psychology.

27:14Angela Duckworth:And so I just want to encourage everyone, I guess I think about young people a lot to to sort of you know gravitate to recognize have some awareness of where their where their attention goes and to honor that because I think there's so much external pressure and you know so much social influence about like what you should do I don't know I don't know what I would

27:39Dr. Michael Gervais:be if I weren't doing something that interested me well I think that that's where one hook back to the passion intersection that we're talking about is like passion about what you do and then passionate about who you are. I think the more bedrock of the approach is something to do with like, what about being passionate about becoming your best? What about being passionate about being a great support and challenge mechanism for other people to really be a great teammate or to be a great partner or a friend or coworker? You got to have your stuff together. You know, you have to be able to be buoyant in the topsy-turvy world that we're in.

28:16Dr. Michael Gervais:And it doesn't mean that you don't get kind of pulled down by, again, sometimes external circumstances or internal framing. But that idea about being passionate. What does that look like then?

28:26Angela Duckworth:I know you want to ask me, but I want to ask you. So I'm just going to ask you, like, so what would that look like? So if I were a young undergraduate in your class, right, so what would you be advising me to think, to do, to say? Where does that take me? This idea of buoyancy and in this topsy-turvy world, which I could not agree more with you about.

28:52Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay, so what would that look like? I think the kind of the first framing I would have is that we don't know how long you're going to be in this world. Back to your point, this flower is a good analogy. And there's a moment under the sun that we're going to have together. More concretely, how do you want to do life? And most people say, well, I want to do guitar or I want to do teaching or something. No, no, no. How do you want to engage in all the things that you do? How do you want to be versus what do you want to do? I think is more fundamental.

29:17Angela Duckworth:How do you want to be what you want to do? Yeah. Okay. That, that, I think that's a very meaningful distinction. And I would say, you know, that my, my undergraduate course and a lot of my work is more about like what you do than how you, you know, how you are, right. Because we are human beings, not human doings. And I think that's actually very important. But you know, one of the things like being in the business that we are, right, which is like, we study the nature of human nature, we advise on how to like, carry out your next day and you know, how to have a relationship and so forth. I think it's always incomplete.

29:48Angela Duckworth:I feel like there's always some thing that we're trying to draw people's attention to. And necessarily, that means we're just like drawing attention away from other really important things. So I want to agree with you. There is a kind of like life philosophy to borrow some terminology from our good friend, Pete Carroll. Like there is a kind of philosophy and approach to how you want to be. And I think that is important. But it's not that I don't think it's important, but I want to acknowledge that like, you know, it's not something I teach a lot about or have studied as a researcher.

30:17Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah, no, no, that's right. Yeah. And then I think the next part of that, when you ask the question is like, to do that, once you get clear on that way of being, and that's a wide open idea, like you're going to need a whole handful of mental and psychological skills to be that buoyant person.

30:37Angela Duckworth:And I completely agree that like using the terms, well, like that is the right word for it, right? Because it's not like you have it or you don't, or it's a disposition or it's a choice or like, it's like, no, it's like, you know, it's a learnable set of techniques that you, that you get better at. I think that's not obvious. Like, cause sometimes people are just sort of like, oh, I love that person. Like, I love the way they move through life. I love the way they show up, but you're like, I can't be like that. or, you know, that's the way they are. But, you know, it is a skill, you know, a set of skills, like you said.

31:10Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. Let's take this as to think about the skill building and then stitch it to your idea of or our idea of being parents. What have you come to understand about how to raise kids and to do it in this world? And if you could speak to the parents in this community about the things you hope they would really understand or start doing or stop doing, I would love to tap into that part of you.

31:35Angela Duckworth:I am, you know, by no means an oracle, but I have lately been thinking about the mental health of young people, partly because I have a wonderful new graduate student named Abby. And she said to me, you know, Gen Z, my generation, is really struggling. And I said, oh, yeah, I think I, you know, read an article here or there. She was like, no, like really struggling. So I've been thinking about young adults. I've been thinking about teenagers. Just the bare facts are startling, Mike. So if you look at historical data on, for example, things like how lonely do you feel? How anxious do you feel? How depressed are you?

32:17Angela Duckworth:Do you feel like you experience, you know, a lot of despair? So these are measures of ill being or, you know, say the opposite is, you know, the absence of them is well-being. You could also ask people how happy they are, how connected, etc. Well, social science has been asking people of all different ages those same questions for decades. And that means we have a movie. We have a movie of how people feel at different ages, 18, 28, 58, 78. But we also have a movie of like how that has changed, for example, since like 1995 to like 2005 and then 2015 and so forth. And here's what the movie tells you.

32:53Angela Duckworth:Traditionally, the happiest time in life, at least in adulthood, because these surveys usually start at age 18, is in your younger years. So like the younger you are, the happy you are. And there's this kind of famous U shape where as you approach middle age, like my age, you know, I'm 55. So like I should be the unhappiest on average. Right. So so, you know, why would that be? You know, people have said, well, you know, their parents are dying. True. Or parents are getting sick. Yes. For a lot of people, they're having professional crises. You know, they're kind of reckoning with some of the limitations of what they've been able to accomplish.

33:29Angela Duckworth:Many people are going through divorce or other relationship problems. For some, you know, little kids, little problems, bigger kids, bigger problems. So there was a lot of ink spilled on the midlife crisis and, you know, why it is that in our 50s, we're less happy than when we're like, you know, in our early 20s. But I mean, it makes sense to people, right? Right. Then, by the way, as you progress through the 60s and even to like, for example, like early 70s or so, like people do generally get happier. And maybe that's because they have perspective and maybe because some of these problems go away.

33:58Angela Duckworth:But that's not what the movie tells you about what's been happening in recent years. So since about 2010, the data looked very different and the middle aged people look the same and the old people look the same. But what's different is that the young people are incredibly unhappy. They are at historical levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and despair. And so I have been thinking about what the heck is going on. And I don't think it's, you know, it's for Angela Duckworth to give you a complete answer. I don't think, honestly, anybody really has a complete answer. But I do, first of all, want to just acknowledge that, you know, sometimes CEOs ask me, they're like, well, you know, I've heard about this mental health crisis and the young and I'm like, oh, it's real.

34:43Angela Duckworth:Like hospital admissions for self-harm are up. Suicide attempts are up. All the survey data around the world, actually, it's not just the United States, are painting the same grim picture.

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36:35Angela Duckworth:In terms of like, you know, a conversation that I would love to ask you, Mike, what you think, I do think that technology, which has been the primary suspect, you know, if you ask like the social scientists like John Haidt or David Blanchflower, like what's going on, they will point to screens. because they will say, you know, look, what happened in like around 2010 is like the advent of real social media, like really taking off. I'm sure that is a huge part of it. But what I wonder about is whether screens have contributed to a general erosion in social connection that isn't just about like going on Facebook, seeing how pretty everybody is and feeling terrible about yourself.

37:12Angela Duckworth:I wonder about the displacement of genuine conversation, hanging out. It's very slow. It happens in 1x, not in 2x. It's not edited. There's no soundtrack. Sometimes it's boring. It can be awkward. People smell. Like there are all these things about like actual human interaction, which, you know, is also on a striking decline. So these trends are not just that happiness is down, but also the percentage of time that people spend in real life with another person, looking at them, talking with them, is on a downward ski slope. So I worry a lot about, you know, these as a parent. And I don't have, you know, great answers.

37:54Angela Duckworth:But I do think bucking the trend, like knowing that the trends are not in the favor of the young people you care about, and just at least recognizing that if you just go with the default settings of the modern world, you know, things are not great. And so something has to be done that's countercultural. it's not terrible by the way like these are things that i had my vague periphery vision i'm like oh yeah people aren't happy but then i always like saw these graphs i was like i mean just google david blancheflower like google david blancheflower dot dartmouth and you'll be like oh my god yeah

38:25Dr. Michael Gervais:now we'll put that resource uh in the show notes as well what do you think by the way like you think

38:30Angela Duckworth:about um these topics at least as much as i do yeah i mean i think there's a couple things to

38:36Dr. Michael Gervais:call out. I'm nodding my head to everything you're saying. And there's a couple of things that I think about, which is, so you and I are the same age and, you know, generation Z that we're talking about are, you know, I don't know, they're like 13 to 25 year olds, somewhere in that range.

38:48Angela Duckworth:13 to 28. Yeah.

38:50Dr. Michael Gervais:28. Those are kids that our generation raised.

38:53Angela Duckworth:Yeah.

38:53Dr. Michael Gervais:I don't know. I barely knew what was up at age 18 and 21. And so I think about if I would, if my parents were doing the things that we did to the Gen Z kids, I feel like there's a custodian issue here of thriving. And so I, okay, that's one that I just want to introduce. Like we raised them.

39:14Angela Duckworth:I had not, I had not thought about that. Right.

39:16Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. We raised them. You know, my, my parents left me to drink water from the hose if I got thirsty and we would never do that now, you know, like it's gotta be like ultra triple filtered water. Okay. Yeah. You know, but like, there's something about like just a little bit of that roughness that allows for some scrappiness, call it grid but like there's something here that we have done and then the second order and i do want to get to like some practical things that you're thinking are important for parents but the other thing is like you and i and i think everybody it's a big word that's listening would not want our kids to eat junk food but we feed them junk light you know so we're not feeding junk food anymore we're feeding junk light and tolerating junk light and allowing that junk food to be part of it.

40:03Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah.

40:03Angela Duckworth:Like just elaborate on what you mean by that.

40:06Dr. Michael Gervais:So I think the new, the new kind of health is going to be sunlight and not that we need to see people having a tan. I'm not saying that, but like the effervescent aliveness that comes when we're with nature is nearly in refutable for most people. It doesn't mean you need to be kind of deep in the wild and like have dirt all over you, but just like, you know, like seeing a tree and having a blue sky.

40:28Angela Duckworth:Yeah. Yeah.

40:29Dr. Michael Gervais:There's something about that, that tickles the ancient part of our brains. It says, All right. Yeah, good. Horizon gazing is a parasympathetic nervous system activator, meaning that it helps the rest and digest system turn on. And you can't have that peripheral kind of gaze when you're zoomed in on a handheld device or a computer or in a room even. So, okay, so junk food to healthy food, that's an arc that has been taking place over the last number of years, let's say, as an emphasis. And junk light to healthy light. So I'm just thinking about it more primarily.

41:04Angela Duckworth:Yeah, you really literally mean L-I-T-M-T. Yeah, yeah.

41:07Dr. Michael Gervais:Right. I want my son, I've got a 17-year-old son, I want him to have more sunlight. Yeah.

41:12Angela Duckworth:You know, there have been, as you know, like lots of research on, you know, the effect of parks on well-being and green space and walkability. And, you know, there are some random sign of experiments on nature. But I just think that the profound shift, I mean, I looked this up once. I mean, let's assume that there was a time where people spent quite literally 100 percent of their time outdoors. it's not that far in our evolutionary history right because it's like there were no buildings to be and so you're outside you know again most of the time maybe there was like you built a shelter or something right and so when you were sleeping you know you slept in this makeshift shelter but now i think by some estimates you know people will only spend like minutes like outside like really outside you know like under the great blue canopy and and what the heck is the effect of that profound shift from our evolutionary origins to this like bizarre artificial illumination.

42:04Angela Duckworth:Like you don't know what time it is. Like I wouldn't even be able to tell you what time it is except for looking at some clock because I have none of the cues. And I remember actually having a conversation with a pediatrician who I will not identify only because I asked her, I was like, you're a pediatrician. So I don't have a permission. So I'll just say, I was like, what do you think's going on with this like general ennui and malaise of this younger generation because, you know, some social scientists point out that it is, at least statistically, the safest historical era in history. You know, you don't walk down the street and get murdered in general.

42:34Angela Duckworth:You know, you're not going to get pickpocketed. Why is everybody so unhappy? And she said, you know, I wonder if it's lack of nature, not the presence of something bad, but the absence of something good. And William James and Henry David Thoreau, and, you know, many great thinkers have wondered about the curative effects of being in nature. So I think, Mike, like when we when we think about this phenomenon of declining mental health in the young, I mean, I, again, don't have all the answers. But I do think that, you know, spending hours and hours staring into a blue rectangle in the palm of your hand with like like not real life.

43:09Angela Duckworth:It's all curated. It's it's all, you know, designed to make you like look at it again and then not just experiencing actual life, nature, everything else that we've been talking about. I have to believe that's got a lot to do with what's going on.

43:25Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay. We're like super alignment. And I think a best practice, and by the way, you bring up William James. We have so much to learn still from, let's call like one of the first like applied psychologists for what could be, you know, like.

43:42Angela Duckworth:Yeah. Energies of N. I mean, there's a joke in my tribe of, you know, academic psychologists, which is like, there's nothing anybody could study that William James didn't already figure out. It just takes you like a hundred and some years to like collect all the data and, you know, pre-register hypotheses and do all the statistics. But like basically, William James wrote it all down, you know, habit, interest, boredom, self-control, you know, relations, spirituality. I mean, yeah, he pretty much.

44:12Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. I mean, he was a great first mover to this, like. He was. He would have been a great set-up. Yeah, that's for sure. Okay, so we're saying get outside. Give a handful of other things we can do as parents.

44:27Angela Duckworth:So, yeah, I definitely think getting outside. Right. You know, you mentioned food. I absolutely you know, you are what you eat. It's true. And the fact that over 50 percent of calories in the typical American's diet is coming from ultra processed food, meaning like it's manufactured, it's fractionated in tiny components. it's resurrected in ratios that don't exist in nature. Nature does not have high-carb, high-fat food. There are no foods in nature that are simultaneously high-carb and high-fat. And when you get that, your brain is just like, oh my God. It doesn't know what to do. It's just so rewarding.

45:01Angela Duckworth:So I would call these supernormal stimuli. That's what Nico Tinbergen, the Nobel Laureate ethologist, called these stimuli that were exaggerations of naturally occurring stimuli that elicit exaggerated responses. And I think we're living in a world of ultra-processed food and ultra-processed stimuli that are super normal. They are outside the range of experience. And so, like, yeah, like, of course your kid wants to keep eating chicken fingers with ketchup because, like, it's so delicious. And that's not even the most ultra-processed, right? Let's take Doritos. So I think rule number one you said is, like, more nature.

45:35Angela Duckworth:Number two is, like, real food. I mean, I think being, like, completely crazy and being like, We pretty much only allow real food into our kitchen. And yes, there'll be the occasional party. But we're going to be that family that is crazy about eating healthy. Sign me up. If I had grandchildren today, that's exactly how I would raise them.

45:56Dr. Michael Gervais:So no, like, just to interrupt on it, like, I don't know, no Trader Joe's pizza. No kind of organic chicken fingers.

46:05Angela Duckworth:Yeah, that's a very – I think the definitions of ultra-processed food are various. But one of the definitions that I find to be useful is like you literally couldn't make it at home. And why is that important? Because in the processing, there has been like a kind of a combination, like a recombining of things that is like so outside of human experience that like, you know, the range of – So I would allow Trader Joe's – I also love Trader Joe's. If you are what you eat, then I am Trader Joe's. But like I think that it's not like you shouldn't have tomato sauce because it's like, oh, that was – It's like, but you can make tomato sauce.

46:37Angela Duckworth:And guess what? Like I could make a pizza.

46:38Dr. Michael Gervais:I like it. That framing is actually super simple.

46:41Angela Duckworth:Like impossible to make, impossibly delicious, impossible in terms of the ratios of fat and sugar, coloring, flavoring and marketing. Right. Just like I would I would say like, you know, what was it? Mark Bittman, like eat food, not a lot, mostly leaves. I mean, the advice on nutrition is really boring at this point. But right, like I would avoid highly processed, impossible and impossibly delicious food or impossibly addictive food or whatever. On screens, I will say I'm doing the largest cell phone policy study that's ever been done with a chorus of like top economists. So we are surveying every school in the country about what their school cell phone policy is.

47:21Angela Duckworth:It's called Phones in Focus. And it's bipartisan, by the way, Mike. It might be the last bipartisan issue there is. So there are red states, there are blue states. It's endorsed by the National Governors Association. And what we're finding is, first of all, that educators who answer the survey at Phones in Focus, they are like screaming through the survey that kids need our help in limiting their screen time. They're saying that like the schools need to take collective action. And one of the things that you should know about screens is that it is what economists call collective action problem.

47:52If you are the only kid who is not on Instagram, that's actually very hard for you for all the obvious reasons.

48:00Angela Duckworth:But if all of the kids were not on Instagram, for example, if in a school the policy was that you cannot be on your phone from the first bell to the last bell, you have solved a problem collectively because nobody's on the phone. You don't have to worry about what you're missing out at one in the afternoon because nobody else in your entire ecosystem is on their phone. So I think that one of the things I would say as a parent is not only should you do common sense things like limit your screen time, like don't let them charge their phone in their room, you know, make up a set of rules that you maybe discuss together so that there's an understanding of why those rules exist.

48:36Angela Duckworth:But honestly, I would choose my daughter's school based in part on their cell phone policy. I think if the school principal said, you know what, I really believe that every teacher needs to figure this out on their own. And like I would be like, oh, I'm not sending my daughter to the school. So I would say that choosing your school in general is one of the big decisions that parents make. As a psychologist, you know, we said, OK, nature that goes across the board. If you're 2 or 12 or 22, get out in nature. What about ultra processed food? If you're 2, 12, or 22, eat less ultra-processed food, eat more real food.

49:09Angela Duckworth:Three, you know, solve the screens problem in collective ways, like put yourself in situations where, you know, everyone has decided not to be on their screens. But I will also just add this about adolescence. When children enter puberty, the influence that parents have on their behavior, on their attitudes, on how they talk, how they dress, it goes down by a lot. And you don't need scientific research, although there's a lot to back that up. But, you know, any parent who's like had a teenager is like, oh, yeah, that's when they stop listening to you. And that's developmentally normal. But when you enter that phase of parenting, you have to think, what zip code have I decided to live in?

49:46Angela Duckworth:And where do I send my kid to school? Because guess what? Those are the environments that will shape your kid. And maybe they're not listening to you, but they're sure as heck listening to their classmates and their peers. and by choosing the school or the zip code, you know, or the sports team or the music teacher, right? Like you are still exerting some benevolent influence. You know, I shouldn't ramble on, but I do think the whole job of parenting is to create situations in which kids can thrive. And I think there is a difference of opinion here. Some people have a more of a sort of laissez-faire attitude towards parenting.

50:20Angela Duckworth:I'm not saying that kids need to be coddled or that we have to hang out with them all the time, but I do believe that good parenting is intentional. And if you just sort of like, yeah, well, they'll figure it out. And like, you know, they'll be who they are. And like, you know, when we raised our daughters, we'd be like, I know they do that that way. But you are Duckworth. And a Duckworth family, we write thank you notes. You know, like in the Duckworth family, we sit down to dinner together and we don't have our friends. In the Duckworth family, like we don't eat at different times. Like you're Duckworth.

50:48Angela Duckworth:We're going to do it the Duckworth way.

50:49Dr. Michael Gervais:okay so this is awesome i want to tell you a quick story which is this is my i'll work backwards my son's school does not for the last two years has not allowed cell phones so there were early

51:00Angela Duckworth:adopters to that and what a gift that's a great word for it like when my son came home it was

51:04Dr. Michael Gervais:amazing i said so what do you think and he says dad i think we all know it's good he goes it'll be harder for some people you know but it's cool it's fine and i was like great you know i love that we all know i think we all know that you know and so if we work back though he was like nine and so he went through he goes to a small school so there's a group of friends and parents uh i think he was like nine or ten years old and all the parents got together and like hey listen let's let's do something really special let's like do no cell phones in their hands until they're 15 like what do you wait really so you were part of this group yeah and so this is this was i guess like 10 years ago or something and or less and all the parents are like yeah yep for sure let's do it okay cool you know and everybody was pretty sport-minded outdoor you know influenced and it was awesome and then uh my son got to be like 13 and he says hey guys I just want to let you know that um such and such you know not only did he get a cell phone but I saw him like he was on Instagram and so my son was kind of hinting like you know maybe maybe the seal is broken a little bit like oh that's too bad that they didn't kind of adhere that's a bummer and then like the following year almost everybody except him and one other friend out of a group of like say seven had cell phones and social media and so we talked to the parents like what are you doing you know we did a all for one one for all like what are you doing they're like oh well the pressure and this and i was like that is whack you know like are they saying that like all the

52:34Angela Duckworth:pressure on these kids that we need to get the phone all the social pressure oh okay and i guess they were maybe pointing to the collective action problem.

52:42Dr. Michael Gervais:You know, that's exactly right.

52:43Angela Duckworth:Yeah. Yeah.

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55:30Angela Duckworth:I'm still with you. But also, you hear them and you know they're not making it up, right? The pressure is enormous. And by the way, I am not holding myself out as a model parent. I gave my daughters phones, and I say I because I really take the blame for this. When we moved to the city, so we still live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Now we live in downtown. And my daughters were in fifth and sixth grade, respectively. Right. And it was just that very beginning of that school year that they said and, you know, fifth and sixth grade, that's what, like 10 and 11. Right. They were like, Mom, you know, we need a phone so that we can like, I don't know, call if there's an emergency.

56:03Angela Duckworth:And I was like, OK, right to the Apple store. And so that was not a great parishing decision. But but at the same time, the pressure is enormous. I mean, here's an example that is hard to generalize. I get it. But Andover. OK. Andover is not every school. Andover is also, you know, largely a boarding school. There are some day school students, but mostly these are boarders and it's an elite private school. But recently somebody forwarded me the letter that the headmaster of Andover sent out and it was on their cell phone policy. And it was very thoughtful and it's Andover, so it was extremely well written.

56:35Angela Duckworth:and they basically have a heads up policy, meaning that the head would like watch these kids walk around like this with their head down like we all do. Right. Practically walk into a tree if you, you know, don't like look up at the right time. And so the policy this year is it's heads up. It's like you can't just like have a phone that's out and like, you know, that you're staring into while you're supposed to be interacting. And there are times that you're allowed to go on your phone, but there are also, you know, many times during the day that you're not. And I only bring that up because it is a collective action problem.

57:09Angela Duckworth:I think it's very hard for even a small group of parents within a school. Because when I say like, you know, being countercultural, it is like swimming against the ocean current. So, you know, anybody like you who spent a lot of time in the ocean is like, guess what? The mighty ocean usually wins. Right. So you got to like maybe find a place where the tide is going in the direction that you want. And that might mean, you know, the school that you send your kid or if you have a sports team that your kid joins and the coach says, like, we have rules and everybody's going to eat a certain way and everybody's going to, like, gather here.

57:42Angela Duckworth:And when we gather, we're going to be looking at each other because phones are in our lockers. Like, that is, I think, your only prayer once your kids come of a certain age.

57:50Dr. Michael Gervais:Oh, I love all of this as, like, be connected to the groundswell as opposed to, like, always pushing against the current. and and then i'll add one more piece to it which is you said like in the duckworth family this is you know we do this and i go oh yeah because i use that all the time as a gervais i say and so i look for those moments to be counterculture i look for the moments we call it being oh i love

58:17Angela Duckworth:this it's like almost like it's a teachable moment it's a great thing right to like yeah it's like

58:22Dr. Michael Gervais:leaned into those moments yeah and so i really like it like and so you just call it what it is like, look, everyone's going over there. We're going to zag on this one. And as Gervais, we look for those moments, you know? And so, and I really like that framing. He's 17. He has a phone. He does not have Instagram. We have an Instagram account for him. It's on my wife's phone. This sounds uber controlling, but it's like this really nice little moment where he's like, Hey mom, can I get on Instagram real quick and just kind of check in? And it's probably like, I don't know, he's really pretty got a full schedule.

58:53Dr. Michael Gervais:It's like, I don't know, two, three days a week. You know, he

58:55Angela Duckworth:checks in for like i don't know 15 minutes yeah and kind of i think he's like cool with it he's like that's fine i don't that is awesome yeah he's like he's totally cool with it yeah so ed

59:05Dr. Michael Gervais:sheeran doesn't have a phone oh i'm on it okay yeah like here's amongst us you know google ed

59:11Angela Duckworth:sheeran phone it's like thank you lord i like i didn't think i could like ed sheeran anymore but

59:16Dr. Michael Gervais:like i do he's a true master of craft so i have these undergraduates just a couple years older

59:20Angela Duckworth:than your son. And the ones that, you know, like, well, they come down and talk to me about like their own cell phone histories. And, you know, the ones who had the parents who were like, you know what, we do it this way. And like, no social media, like, you know, we're sending you to this school. They are so grateful. And some of the most impassioned advocates of, you know, of focused phone free life are these Gen Zers, like, like my daughters. They are like evangelists. They're like, you know, young people like, mom, you have to work on this because like these kids really like they're not going to grow up right if they.

59:56Angela Duckworth:And then when you ask them, this is like my final discussion question in my class. I said, should you choose to have a family? What will your tech policy be? And oh, my gosh, like the din in that room listening to these kids like talk about what they were going to do differently with their own children, having learned the hard way about how, you know, these devices, which are magical, are really eroding life. So I, you know, we talked, we've covered a lot of ground. I will just say that like the modern world, something is not right. I mean, it's just like, you know, so if you just sort of like go with the flow with most trends, like, you know, I love that you're having this podcast and you continue to have these conversations because I think some intentionality about the way you really want to be is required because the default settings are not great.

1:00:40Angela Duckworth:I just add some urgency to the whole thing, you know?

1:00:43Dr. Michael Gervais:Yes. Okay. Right now it's like first quarter into 2026. And I feel bad for the people that set resolutions because we know that they're falling apart right now. But you know, the idea that there's a new year, new leaf, new approach to kind of some things you want to get better at, like, how do you think about, do you want to stay to parents? Do you want to stay to like, maybe just open it up in general?

1:01:05Angela Duckworth:I think my one piece of advice, right, for like, you know, you're at the beginning of, you know, maybe a little disappointed with like, you know, how you didn't follow through on a resolution or a goal. I think that what's helped me is to not ask, as I have for so much of my life, what's wrong with me? When I fail, I immediately think like, oh, what's wrong with me? And then, you know, usually in a sort of despairing, self-recriminatory tone. And I instead think, like, just like, what's wrong with my situation? And I know that may sound to some people like cowardly. And you're like, oh, you know, you said you don't want to be a victim of your circumstances.

1:01:38Angela Duckworth:You want to be able to live in your circumstances, you know, regardless of what they are. But I think like, you know what, like what can I change in this situation? I think is an agentic positive statement. Like, you know what, I don't like how I'm like not getting enough sleep. All right. Well, maybe I'll stop charging my phone in my bedroom. You know, I don't like how I'm eating. You know what? I'm going to like open up my refrigerator and literally throw out everything in this refrigerator that I don't want in my body. Right. Like, I'm going to go to Trader Joe's and buy some pre-washed spinach.

1:02:10Angela Duckworth:Like, maybe instead of using willpower to create this life that you want and always blame yourself, like, what's wrong with me and I can't do it? It's like, how can I change the situation around me to help me make the hard things that I want to do easier? And that, to me, has been a huge change in my life, Mike. Like, you know, when I ask, like, you know what, this problem is too hard. Like, who could I ask for help? Like, this thing I can't find. Like, I'll ask my husband to look for it for me. I mean, just not always what's wrong with me, but sometimes, like, what's missing in my situation that I can change?

1:02:44Angela Duckworth:It's a small shift, but I think it has huge benefits.

1:02:47Dr. Michael Gervais:Angela, you are a bright light. And the way that you're just framing really hard problems for people, you create an aperture opening experience where it's like, oh, I can kind of settle into this and see possibility. And I feel like, oh, yeah, there's some real choices. And you don't make it like reductionist that it loses its texture of the tension between, you know, route A or route B. And thank you for the way that you show up and the way that you continually inspire me, both in writing and in the way you just think about stuff. So I appreciate you.

1:03:21Angela Duckworth:Mike, that's too high praise. And, you know, I respect you as a psychologist, as a writer and as a teacher. So from you, I will take that as, you know, my highlight for the day. And, yeah, I look forward to our next conversation.

1:03:33Dr. Michael Gervais:Let's do it. OK, I look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks, Angela.

1:03:36Angela Duckworth:Awesome. Awesome. Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Morgan Housel, bestselling author and one of today's most thoughtful voices on money and human behavior. In this conversation, Morgan and Mike explore why financial decisions are rarely about math and almost always about psychology, how comparison quietly shapes our spending, why defining enough matters more than chasing more, and what it really means to use money as a tool rather than a scorecard. Join us Wednesday, February 25th at 9am Pacific only on Finding Mastery.

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1:05:17Dr. Michael Gervais:So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.