Jonathan Haidt: How Phone Addiction & Social Media Are Making Us Anxious - And What To Do About It - Tools & Tactics

13:59Michael Bosstick:Yeah, like we used to have the landlines and the pagers and the dial-up modems. That's right.

14:03Jonathan Haidt:So I guess my question is, when it comes to adults, how much is in their own hands?

14:09Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So let me say something which will be a partial defense of Michael, which is this.

14:13Jonathan Haidt:Oh!

14:14Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Well, okay. It goes like this. The reason why this has sucked in all of society, the reason why we're all getting stupider, new data has come out in the last year or two, IQs were rising for 50 years, 70 years, up until 2010. And then they've begun dropping ever since. We can't blame this on individuals. The reason this is happening is that the companies have put us all into a series of collective action problems. So collective action problem is a common term in the social sciences It's where I want to do something, but I can't do it because of what everybody else is doing I don't get to make the choice for myself And so for example, I would like to wait until my daughter is 18 to give her a smartphone But everybody else has done it in fifth grade And so my daughter is now left out and now if I do the right thing, I'm hurting my daughter Now in the long run, it's good for her, but she's going to be suffering We're going to fight And so most people give in because the collective action pressure is really, really strong.

15:13Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so for both, I think, X and Instagram, a lot of adults have to be on it for professional reasons. I assume you guys are running a company. You can't just not use these platforms at all.

15:24Michael Bosstick:Imagine doing this show and then just saying, hey, where does this live and how do you -

15:28Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, right, just put it up on YouTube and hope for the best and not do anything. That's right. So we're stuck in a system in which everybody expects everybody else to be on. They expect people to respond quickly to texts. And we have to get back to a system in which people sort of guard their own consciousness, their own attention, and we don't expect everybody to be on all the time. It's just so bad for us.

15:48Michael Bosstick:When did you personally get so focused on this topic and this subject and this area of life?

15:54Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So I'm a social psychologist. That means I study human social nature. And my own research is on morality, moral judgment, how morality varies across nations originally, and then how it varies across left-right, like the American culture wars, like two different cultures. So I've been studying political polarization for a long time. My second book, The Righteous Mind, is about political polarization. Now, this came out in 2012. And so, you know, Facebook was new. It wasn't particularly toxic. There wasn't really any news feed when I was writing the book. And so I was interested in, so I didn't really think of it as a villain.

16:28Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And it wasn't that bad in its early days. And that's the thing, you millennials, you remember when it came out and you made the most of it. But what I observed, things changed right around 2014. It was as though there was a disturbance in the matrix and things got weird and they got weird on campus. And I was teaching at the University of Virginia most of my career and then I moved to NYU in 2011. And we began to see students freaking out about little things and a speaker's come to campus, this is gonna kill people. We have to shut it down. What? Just don't go to the talk. And so I wrote an essay with my friend, Greg Lukianoff, called The Coddling of the American Mind.

17:08Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:It was a great essay, by the way. Well, thank you. Because in 2014, the students coming out to campus were not millennials. We didn't know. We thought they were. But they were suddenly different. And they would freak out, some of them, they would freak out if someone said a word that they didn't like or assigned a book in class that had a scene that they thought was traumatized. Like, what, Shakespeare? I can't assign Shakespeare? You need a trigger warning?

17:31Jonathan Haidt:Disney got a trigger warning too.

17:33Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, that's right. Everybody went in for it. Not because they wanted to, but because they felt if they didn't, they'd be attacked. So that weirdness all broke out around 2014. It wasn't like this in 2012. What caused it? Okay, so at the time, I didn't know. At the time, we thought, well, we're overprotecting our kids. Maybe social media because the timing is right, but we don't know. Now we know. Social media originally, it was just like a glorified address book. Here's my page. Oh, let me go to your page. That's fine. But then you get the news feed, 2007, 2008, and then you get the iPhone, which is okay at first, but then you get the app store and push notifications.

18:10Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so we go from 2006, 2007, it's not a very toxic tech environment. By 2012, 2013, it's push notifications about things in the news feed, about the horrible thing that those people did, and what's your opinion of it, and you better condemn it, otherwise we'll condemn you for not condemning it and so everything gets frenetic everything gets public display also meta said meta because meta's job has always been they literally incentivize their engineers by saying if you can increase the time people spend on on instagram or facebook we give you a raise and so meta engineers realize hey let's let people fight in the comments before 2014 you know if barack obama said something you'd have comments that were full of hate but that was it like some guy said some terrible thing.

18:52Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:That's it. But after 2014, some guy says a terrible thing, and then other people fight with him. And before you know it, it's just a slugfest in the comments. Now imagine that our public life, imagine that our democracy, democracy is a conversation. Imagine what the conversation was like when it took place either in person or through letters to the editor in the newspaper, so I had a slow and thoughtful. And then it turns into a free-for-all on Twitter a thousand times a day. And so I began to realize, oh my God, how is our democracy going to make it through this? So I got into this focused both on the students who were suddenly much more fragile and on the politics, which was suddenly much more explosive.

19:34Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so those were my two interests. And I started writing a book. The title was going to, I got a contract for it. I still have the contract called Life After Babel, adapting to a world we may never again share. It was going to be a politics, like what's happening to our country and i wrote the first chapter which was because i had all this leftover data on teenagers i wrote the first chapter say look what happened to gen z the first generation to move their social life onto instagram and social media and smartphones they immediately became depressed and anxious like within a year we released it starts 2013 the the increases so i was going to start with one chapter on what happened to teens and then i was going to say now let's look at our country and we instantly went crazy too but once i wrote that first chapter which became chapter one of the anxious generation and i saw the graphs here i'll draw all the which camera is this camera i'll draw all the graphs in the book they all go like this tooth you know from like 1998 whatever you're measuring which is bad it's sort of steady you know in the late 90s into the 2000s 2010 2011 no sign of a change maybe up and down a little bit you hit 2012 elbow hockey stick.

20:38Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Like it goes up and up and up. Whether we're talking about hospitalization for self-harm, whether we're talking about feelings of uselessness and pointlessness, whether we're talking about depression, anxiety, they all go shooting up around 2012, 2013 for Gen Z, which is kids born 1996 through about 2010, 2011. They went through it. It severely damaged their childhoods. It deranged social life. And once I saw these graphs and that it wasn't just us. That's what blew my mind when I said the same thing happened in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia.

21:14Michael Bosstick:It was a worldwide thing.

21:16Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Right. So like either, you know, there was some additive in the food everywhere in the world, you know, or there was some cosmic radio, I think, like what could cause this? Oh, that's the year. 2012 is literally the year that we went from most people having flip phones or basic phones. You know, the iPhone came out in 2007, but it's really 2012 is the pivotal year when everything flips now. Everyone's getting an iPhone with social media on it.

21:41Jonathan Haidt:So really interesting, by the way, what you said about if someone condemns something, they want you to condemn it. And if you don't condemn it, they're going to condemn. Like it's very interesting what you said about that. But what is the fix to the problem?

21:58Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So we have to distinguish between children and adults. Because in America, we have a generally libertarian attitude, which you expressed, which is adults are responsible for themselves. We generally don't like it when the government tells adults what they have to do. There better be a darn good reason. And so what is the fix to change adults' behavior? That's very hard. There are some design fixes. People assume that regulation means content moderation, like the government is gonna say, you can't post that. And then you end up in just, that's a terrible way to go and it doesn't work. But there are design changes you can make.

22:32Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so for example, the real problem is caused by the virality, the virality and the algorithm. So people have a right to put up content promoting suicide. That's, you know, if you're an adult and you want to put up a video promoting suicide as a way out, you know, that your first amendment right, you can't be forced to not put that up on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. But for God's sakes, why do the algorithms keep pushing that to your child? Like, how does it happen? And so the toxicity isn't just the stuff posted. The toxicity is that the algorithms amplify whatever gets the most clicks, whatever seems to be the most engaging.

23:10Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:They're not trying to hurt kids, although given TikTok, we don't know. But I don't think Instagram is trying to hurt kids, but they don't seem to care that kids are getting hurt. And so there are all kinds of design changes that would make things less viral. The biggest change of all would be if platforms had what we call know your customer laws. So you can't just open a bank account without telling them who you are. You can't just money launder. Your bank has to know who you are. Now, it's not public. People don't know that I have an account at this particular bank, but the bank knows who I am.

23:43Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:TikTok, these companies, they have no idea who they are. And a lot of the people are Russian agents, Chinese agents, drug dealers. They have no idea. This is a wildly inappropriate place to have a nice conversation or for your child to be. So what I'm hoping is that somebody will create a platform that has know your customer laws, rules. That is, everyone on the platform was verified by the company as a real human being. And if that person sextorts kids or sells drugs, they actually get kicked off. And there could even be criminal penalties if they do criminal things. Did X try to do this or are they doing it?

24:17Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:No, no, there's, oh, I'm sorry. There is the authentication. There is the blue check mark stuff. So actually, but that's right. So imagine a platform that said, everybody has to be verified. I would much rather be on that.

24:29Michael Bosstick:Or even imagine a platform that said, anybody who is not verified could maybe not be a real person or could be somebody. I think, to your point, the problem with a lot of these platforms, and I don't know how much truth there is to this, but you'll hear people say, I'll use the China example. are countries that maybe don't have our best interests. Is it true that potentially they could have these bots that are trying to show division?

24:55Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:We know they're doing that. The Chinese and the Russians, we know they're doing that.

24:59Michael Bosstick:So the question is, is you could be arguing with a bot that is the entire intention is to make you upset and angry.

25:04Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And they know that one of the main cleavage points is racism, sexism, antisemitism. They're trying to enrage us. This is our weak spot. You know, we're like, what is it? You know, Samson, you know, the biblical figure of Samson, or Achilles. Our Achilles heel is that we're easily divided. We're a powerful country where we're easily divided against ourselves.

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26:56Michael Bosstick:Quick break to talk about the Soap app. What if I were to tell you right now that there was something that you can listen to right now that would absolutely change your life? It could help you sleep better. It could help you feel less anxious. It could help with depression. It could help with anxiety. It could help you have more energy. It could help you feel happier. Well, there is something out there and it is called the Soak app. We have had the founders of Soak on this podcast twice now to talk about the incredible product that they've created. Here's what they do. Soak frequency compositions are created in clinic by a team of experts for specific outcomes.

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27:51Michael Bosstick:If I'm feeling a little bit stressed or anxious, they have frequencies for that as well. You can also use these while you're working out if you need that extra boost of motivation. Lauren and I are always looking for that next edge, that next thing to make us feel better, operate better, and just feel happier and Soak compositions are perfect to add into our assortment of things that we use. So check them out. Visit soak.com slash skinny and use code skinny at checkout to get your first month free. That's S-O-A-A-K.com slash skinny and use code skinny to get your first month free. You have nothing to lose.

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30:00Jonathan Haidt:One thing that I do not play around with, I've been doing it for two years during every workout is creatine. I love creatine. What I've noticed most about it for me is that it tightens my skin to the muscle. I know that sounds so weird, but I notice like more definition from the muscle. I really like to habit stack it. So what I'll do is I'll take a cup before a workout and I'll do some aminos and add my scoop of creatine and froth it up with ice and enjoy it while I'm working out. The creatine that I love, the powdered creatine, is by Momentus. I like this brand because Momentus is the gold standard in creatine.

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31:15Jonathan Haidt:So you can just pour them in your water and take them on the go. Creatine isn't just for muscle. It's an essential daily fuel for your brain, your body, and your long-term performance. And I can tell you we've interviewed so many experts, and all of them recommend creatine for men and women. Check them out. Head to LiveMomentous.com and use code SKINNY for up to 35 % off your first order. That's SKINNY at LiveMomentous.com. I'm of the mindset that I wish these platforms would do all these things, but it's not going to happen for us to snap our fingers. So I guess my question for you is as parents, let's say the platform stay the same.

31:53Jonathan Haidt:What can we do to support our children in the best way?

31:57Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, good. So let's move back to the kids because what I'm saying was we look at the adult situation, it's very hard. I don't really know what to do. If we look at the kid situation, it's actually pretty easy and I know exactly what to do. Because we're stuck in a set of collective action problems, we all feel we have to let our kid on because everyone else is on. Everyone's talking on Snapchat. I'm excluded. and I keep getting the question, well, how can we make it safer and nicer? You can't. You cannot make talking with strangers on these platforms nice. So how about just no? How about we do this?

32:27Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Four norms, we roll back the phone-based childhood. So here they are. No smartphone until high school. Just, you know, what's happening is really exciting. Parents are actually buying their kids landlines. There's a tin can. It's this wonderful, simple landline. And if in your neighborhood, if a bunch of the kids all get landlines, they can call each other just like you did in the 90s on a phone. No problem with that. They're giving their kids basic phones that just text and call. That's it. That's what I want to do. In Texas, they're passing laws to

32:56Michael Bosstick:ban them in the schools.

32:56Jonathan Haidt:When you say give the kid a smartphone in high school, that to me even feels like, I almost, I don't know. That feels like a lot for a high school or two.

33:07Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:No, you're right. So what I did in writing The Anxious Generation was I didn't try to say, what's the best age. What I did is I said, we're all stuck. We're trapped. We have to pick a target age as a floor and say, how about we all just clear this out of middle school? Let kids get through middle school without this craziness. Got it. So, let's just say nobody get your kid a smartphone before ninth grade in America, ninth grade in Europe, let's say age 14 or so. How about that? How about we just agree on a norm? Now, a lot of parents, because you're going to get such good results with this and your kids are going to be normal and happy and they're going to go outside and play.

33:42Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So a lot of parents might wait later, but let's just set that nothing before high school. And that also includes unfortunately an iPad because almost everything you do on a smartphone you can do on an iPad. So don't give your kid their own personal iPad that they can keep in their room and use. I'm not saying they can't use an iPad at home sometimes, but just don't give them their own. That's norm number one. Norm number two, no social media before 16. This is an inherently adult activity. Agreed. Looking at dick pics from strangers. Like this is, you know, so really it should be 18 or 21. But my goal wasn't to say what's optimal.

34:14Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:It's what could we get?

34:16Jonathan Haidt:What's optimal? If you could re-raise your children right now in your perfect world, what are you doing?

34:21Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Oh, well, first of all, I would say as a country and as a planet, we should recognize, we should have recognized long ago, social media, it's like gambling and porn. Right. If adults want to do it, they can do it. But this is just not appropriate for children. So it should be 18. Legally, 18. That's what it should have been.

34:36Jonathan Haidt:I agree with you.

34:37Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so the no smartphone before high school, I would have made that a norm, not a law, but a norm that we don't give even smartphones until I would say 16. I think that would be a better age. So smartphone at 16, social media at 18, I think would have made a lot more sense. But just to finish with the four norms that I did propose, so we've got no smartphone before high school, no social media before 16. The third is phone-free schools. And this is where it's been absolutely spectacular. 39 states have passed legislation in the past year or so to get phones at least out of class which helps but then they're all on it during lunch and recess so the states that just did in class are not getting that much benefit but 19 states passed something like our model law at anxious generation we have advice for legislators we have model laws which is bell to bell you come in in the day you put your phone in a yonder pouch or in a phone locker or an envelope something and then you get it back at the end of the day i love that idea and it's amazing what happens there was a there was a viral video of a teacher in alabama on the third day of phone free school he put up on tiktok and instagram he said today 100 of my students 100 paid attention in class did the in-class assignment, turned it in.

36:00Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Then when they were done, they talked to each other. Like I'm trying to convey his amazement at what happened. And then he says, was it this easy of a solution all along? Is this really all we had to do? So teachers have hated the phones. I mean, how can you teach when your kids are watching TikTok and porn and video games. So teachers have been put in an impossible situation. Phone-free schools works like magic. And so the 19 states, including New York State, that did it this year or last year are getting spectacular results. What we hear, the main phrase we hear is, one, we hear laughter in the hallways again, because it used to be a zombie apocalypse.

36:43Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Everyone's checking their Instagram in between classes. Now they're talking and laughing. And the other thing we hear is discipline problems go way down because why would you lure a kid into the bathroom to beat the hell out of him if no one's taking a video to put up on social media there's not much reason for violence if you can't take a video of it so violence drops disciplinary problems drop is texas one of the states i don't i don't know what texas did i'd actually i i don't know we gotta get texas on

37:12Michael Bosstick:board i think texas i have a question for the for the benefit of the parents say you have children and you're looking to do as you say, how do you communicate with your children and start setting those boundaries without blowing up the family and having a constant fight? If they feel, hey, everybody else has Snapchat or everybody else has Instagram or whatever, what's the conversation that takes place and how do you hold that boundary?

37:33Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Sure. So if your kids are young, yours are, you have a lot of control to frame it. And we have a kids version of the anxious generation coming out in December for kids age eight to 12 called the amazing generation. and it has a great graphic novel and it really tells the story of what's happening to you, what happens to your brain. So if you can control the environment for your kids early on, you're gonna have a lot more success and it's not gonna be a blow up. But if your kids are already in that, they're already on devices, it is much harder, that's true. But here's what you need to do. Kids are terrified, not of being separated from their device, but of being left out.

38:13Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so if you go to the parents of your kids' friends, because most, if you're feeling this way, I guarantee you a lot of the other families, we're all going through the same thing, all over the world, we're going through the same thing. So, if you talk to the parents of your kids' friends, and you say, you know, say your kids are 14, 15, they've been on for years, and you say, we got to do something about this, are you in? And if you can get three or four kids' families to say yes, now you can say, I'm not going to make you delete your Instagram, but we're going to put some real restrictions that it doesn't take over your life.

38:45Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So we're all doing the same thing, which is all screens out of the bedroom at 9.30 or 10 o 'clock at night. Like everything, you know, it lives on the kitchen counter. It doesn't go in your bedroom. So we're going to put limits on that. You're not going to be left out. Everyone else is doing it. Video games, you're playing three hours a day. We're going to go to two hours a day on Saturday and Sunday only. You don't do any video games during the week, but don't worry. Your best friends are doing the same thing. But guess what? Want to get together with them? Great. hey, if you can ride a bicycle down to a pizza shop and get, great, do it.

39:17Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Here's money. Go, go, go. And so the fourth norm, after phone-free schools, the fourth norm is far more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. We have to give our kids back an 80s or 90s childhood where they're out on their bicycles. By the age of eight, kids can have a lot of independence. Not in every single neighborhood. Sometimes you have automobile risks. You have crime risks. I'm not saying it can work everywhere. But you can begin giving your kids some independence. Even just you go to a supermarket and you say, honey, can you go get a quart of milk? It's an aisle seven.

39:48Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And your seven-year-old can do that. And when they come back with the milk, they're going to be so excited they did it. So we can begin giving our kids independence from the age of really seven. What are the effects of a relationship with the phone?

40:05Jonathan Haidt:Meaning like, say you have a partner that's always on their phone. What is the effect of that?

40:11Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:One thing we know is that we are in a sex recession. There's a lot less sex going on. And it began in the early 2010s. It began as soon as we went from a flip phone, which is tedious to text on. Once everybody had a distraction device in their pocket calling out to them to check up on three or five different platforms, plus text, plus email, sex began to drop. And the clearest indication is when you look at married couples. Because dating is complicated. the apps seem to make it easy to have sex, but actually the kids on the apps are having less sex than ever. But the amazing thing is that married couples who traditionally have had the most sex because you're right there, like you're together every night.

40:52Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Married couples used to have regular sex. That's declining because everyone has to check at night and then you're tired or you're distracted. You're just not in the mood. So it is damaging marriages. It is damaging childhood. It is damaging our democracy. It is damaging the workplace. Young people are so used to having multiple screens. What I hear from employers is that they don't seem to understand that when they're talking to someone, they shouldn't be checking their notifications. When they're at their desk working, they shouldn't have their phone in front of their computer so that they can be constantly task switching.

41:27Jonathan Haidt:It feels dismissive. When you're sitting with someone and they're on their phone, it feels dismissive. And listen, my phone is like how I make a living. So I'm not like trying to be self-righteous at all. I'm just saying it feels dismissive. What is the effect of when the parent is on the phone in front of the child all the time? Yes.

41:47Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So we have to break it up by age. The most serious damage I believe is done when parents are on their phones with their infants or toddlers. Because the infant comes into the world. They can't control their muscles. they're trying to make sense of the world. And the first thing they do is lock eyes. That they get right away. Not in the first couple, but you know, a couple weeks in they begin to lock eyes. And then they begin to smile. And then that's when it really gets magical. And what they're looking for is the back and forth. The psychologists call it serve and volley or serve and volley or serve in response.

42:24Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Like you do something, you go, and then the kid goes, ha, ha, ha. And then you do it again. And the kid goes, you know, so, but you get that back and forth. That's really important. That's synchronous interaction. But what happens? You know, both parents are working. Everyone's busy. You got a ton of email coming and you have to make dinner. You're with your one-year-old. You're with your six-month-old. What do you do? You're like, you know, like, you know, here, you know, here, here's a block to, here's a little puppet to play with. And you're on your phone and your kid is trying to say, you know, trying to get your attention.

42:53Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, adorable. Yeah, yeah. But what this does, the child is developing what we call an internal working model that is a mental model of how things go and what mom is like and what dad is like. And if mom is always giving off, like, I can't get the serve and volley going with mom because she's always on her phone. Oh, but dad, he's the fun one. Like, oh, yeah, dad is great. It's going to damage the internal working model of the mother. And so it's really important when the kids are little. When you're present, be present. when you're engaging with them, be fully engaged.

43:27Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Okay, so let's start with that, with the infants. As they go on later, it's not quite as damaging, but you are showing them this is normal. Like we're at dinner and something comes up and oh, I got a notification, so I'm gonna check out of dinner. You're teaching them this is normal. So the kids are gonna copy our example. The key idea is that when we're present, we need to be present. And when we're working, we need to be working. and it's what's called continuous partial attention. That's a phrase that parents often find useful. Most of us are stuck paying continuous partial attention to our kids.

44:01Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And that is, it's dismissive. It's saying, you don't matter. I mean, they see the back of your phone all day long.

44:06Michael Bosstick:And it's tough because they can't communicate the same way an adult would. Like if Lauren and I were at dinner and every time she was talking, I was kind of going to, like I'll hear from it right away. She will say, get off your phone, pay attention.

44:15Jonathan Haidt:I will literally pinch him with my toe under the table.

44:17Michael Bosstick:Good, good, good. But with your kids, they don't have the ability to communicate in that way. Well, that's right. So you get away with it longer. That's right.

44:24Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, you're right. You're right. So as a parent, you have to commit to raising your kid as distraction-free as possible, at least up until high school. I mean, get them through puberty. So 15, 16 is when sort of the main part of puberty ends. You really, you know, beyond that, you have a lot less control. Once they're older, you have a lot less control.

44:42Jonathan Haidt:Ed Milet came on this podcast and he gave me such a good tip that I've tried to do every time. and he said that he when he had his kids he used to walk into the house like on his phone like finishing up some emails and he realized the connection was off and so he started keeping his phone in the car when he would walk in and the walk-in was actually intentional and so it's a big

45:05Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:deal and they come running to you gotta like it's almost like you gotta hour i honestly am to the

45:11Jonathan Haidt:point where i'm what i'm hearing from you for my own self is like i almost want to just put my phone on airplane mode somewhere else when my kids are around because it just doesn't sound like there's a lot of pros.

45:22Michael Bosstick:I think this is an important part of the conversation and where adults can learn more is like we live now in a time because of this device that people feel they need to respond instantly to everything and that they also need to comment instantly on any world like okay doing what we do for as long as we've done it with a public platform anytime any event happens in the world. There's a segment of people that rise up and say, you need to say something.

45:48Jonathan Haidt:Now. Now. Now. Don't give me one second to even think about what you think about it.

45:52Michael Bosstick:And then there's a segment of people that if you do say something are upset that you said something. And I'm not saying one's good, but the pressure from society and the pressure in the workplace is that you act now and respond now instantly. Don't think about it. Get on it. Get engaged. And so So I think that these conversations are really important because we've been trained to go through and just be active all the time.

46:16Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Absolutely right. So let me give you two tips or two things that I hope will be helpful to help people disengage, help adults disengage. The first is you're absolutely right that we went through a period from around 2014, 2015 through 2024, 25, where it was like that. And this has been called the great awokening. This has been called call out culture and everybody hates it. and finally everybody's seen like, this is horrible. And I think in some sense it's on the decline now. So I think what you said a year ago would have been, yep, we're stuck in that, but I think it's changing. So now if you don't opine on the latest thing, not much is gonna happen to you.

46:55Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:It's much less than it would have been a year ago. So we can all step back. The second thing I wanna say is that I understand your impulse to just put it on airplane mode, but I have a better solution for you, which is turn your phone from a slot machine into a Swiss Army knife.

47:12Jonathan Haidt:How do you do that?

47:13Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So when the iPhone came out, all it was was a browser, a phone, a music player. So it had a few functions. And then there was also, there was maps and there was a flashlight. And that was really cool. I loved my iPhone and it wasn't addictive. When you needed a tool, you pulled it out.

47:34Jonathan Haidt:Like a Swiss Army knife.

47:35Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:The Swiss Army knife was not designed to keep you using the Swiss Army knife. There was no blade on the Swiss Army knife that makes you keep using it. Once you get the App Store and push notifications, everything changes. And now all these apps are trying to get to you, trying to get you to come back. And the ones that reinforce you on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule, the ones that give you little bits of pleasure, but at a random distribution, those are the addictive ones.

48:03Jonathan Haidt:That's the slot.

48:04Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:That's the slot machine. So what I'm saying is this, how many platforms are you on, first of all?

48:08Jonathan Haidt:I turned all my notifications off, and if the whole family was murdered at night, I wouldn't know because the phone's off. I have to create these boundaries, or you're just screwed. You have to have boundaries around.

48:19Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:That's right. But here's what I would suggest that everyone do. And I teach a course called Flourishing at New York University. I work with college students and MBA students. They make a huge amount of progress when they get this under control. Step number one, get all these things off your phone. I'm not saying you have to quit Instagram and TikTok. Just get it off your phone and you can still have it on your computer. And maybe you'll get to the point where you just check TikTok on weekends on your computer.

48:46Michael Bosstick:Meaning like you have X or Instagram, which is only on the desktop or the laptop. Because the thing is - Not in your pocket.

48:51Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:That way you're not going to it all the time. So because I never really was on social media other than Twitter and X, I've used that, but only on my computer. So I still have no problem with my phone. My phone has never been addictive for me.

49:04Jonathan Haidt:You don't have an Instagram account?

49:05Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:No, I don't. I mean, well, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. I have one professionally, which me and, you know, my team manages. So I am on Instagram, but I'm not able to like to run it all. But in terms of my daily habits, my daily habits, I do check X probably every day, but because I never do it on my phone. So if I'm waiting in line somewhere, it's not like the slot machines. Hey, come back and play slots. You never know what you'll find. I'm going to try that. So that's what I urge you to do. Yeah, just get off your phone.

49:30Jonathan Haidt:Hold on, say it. Yeah, okay.

49:31Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Let's get the commitment on screen. This is like a vow of marriage.

49:33Jonathan Haidt:What are you going to do? Say it in front of everything.

49:35Michael Bosstick:For sure, I'm going to just put X on the, especially after yesterday, I'm going to put X on the computer. I don't really even do Instagram outside of memes. Other people help us with that. No, no, no, no, no, no. I've never done it. Be honest. No, no, I don't. Oh my God.

49:47Jonathan Haidt:Taylor, how many memes has he sent you in the last? I send memes. I send memes. You're such a liar. You're not listening to what I'm saying.

49:52Michael Bosstick:I don't post myself a lot. Okay, but you're on Instagram.

49:55Jonathan Haidt:Yeah, yeah.

49:55Michael Bosstick:But I'm saying I don't need to be on there to. Checking all the time. Yeah, like nobody else can post.

49:59Jonathan Haidt:Taylor's literally looking at your meme that you just sent him an hour ago right now

50:03Michael Bosstick:you're not listening to what I'm saying I'm saying I don't post I have people that can help me post content so I don't really actually

50:10Jonathan Haidt:what are you going to put on your computer?

50:11Michael Bosstick:I'm going to put the apps on the computer just go to the website I don't use TikTok at all and I stopped sending dick pics like 10 years ago

50:19Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Lauren what are you going to commit to?

50:21Jonathan Haidt:I don't go on TikTok so that's already good

50:24Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:I don't go on X

50:26Jonathan Haidt:but I do go on Instagram a lot

50:29Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Do you endorse, like, do you feel that this is a good use of your time? You're perfectly happy with your Instagram habits on your phone?

50:35Jonathan Haidt:No, I think I can get better. I think I can get better. What I would like to do, what can I do with Instagram? I don't know that I could put it on a computer because of my work.

50:44Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:What do you mean? Why can't you just check it on your computer? Just go to Instagram.com.

50:49Jonathan Haidt:How do you post stories?

50:51Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:You do it on the computer.

50:53Michael Bosstick:You load the file on the computer. Yeah.

50:55Jonathan Haidt:Can you actually do that?

50:56Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Almost anything you can do on a phone, pretty much you can do on a computer.

50:59Michael Bosstick:Okay. They're all desktop-based apps. I mean, I don't even...

51:02Jonathan Haidt:Okay.

51:02Michael Bosstick:They're all web-based applications. Yeah.

51:04Jonathan Haidt:You can do the font and the colors and all this stuff on Instagram stories? Can someone confirm this? Okay.

51:13Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Look, if you want to have an iPad that you keep at home, if you prefer to use the app interface, maybe you have it on an iPad that you keep at home. The thing is, do not have a slot machine in your pocket.

51:24Jonathan Haidt:So Instagram's a slot machine.

51:25Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:But it's also like a little bit of that hand-to-mouth function too, right?

51:28Michael Bosstick:They're all, what? The like hand-to-mouth function of the picking it up all the time. Yeah, it's like a cigarette. That's right.

51:32Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, that's right. And people use it as a crutch, you know, and you see it. Like as soon as everybody walks in the elevator, everybody pulls out their phone. You know, you walk around New York City, it's like everyone's on their phone. I saw a cartoon the other day. It was everybody on their phone with a blind person's cane tapping because none of us are looking where we're going.

51:52Jonathan Haidt:I will commit this and I will commit this on the podcast. Hopefully you'll commit it too It's kind of like a wedding vow. I will commit to not being To putting my phone away when i'm around my children in front of them

52:06Michael Bosstick:Yeah, we need to stop but no, I think like these conversations are very like I tell people all the time doing this show It's not only for the benefit of the audience. It's like we directly learn ourselves I mean a lot of the growth over the years is being able to speak to people like yourself that have these perspectives and expertise so that we can try to improve ourselves. We're not perfect at all. I have a question.

52:24Jonathan Haidt:I have a bone to pick about text message though.

52:26Michael Bosstick:What do you do with that?

52:27Jonathan Haidt:Because the text message kills me. I sometimes don't respond to text messages for two months because it's so overwhelming that I don't even know where to start. How do you mitigate that and manage it?

52:41Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Text is the hardest thing. When I work with my students, they understand they need to get the social media platforms up, but what do you do about texting? That's really, really hard. and especially a lot of young people, I know your audience is mostly, especially young people, people in your 20s, you know, my MBA students, they say, well, you know, yeah, I wanna block off time and do deep work and not answer my texts for three hours, but my boss expects me to respond within five minutes. What do I do? And so this too is a collective action problem. If everybody thinks that everybody is online all the time, then everybody can expect quick answers.

53:11Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so what you can do is with your friends, with your family, you can say, we're all overwhelmed. I'm gonna try to block my day. I'm gonna try to batch my day. And I'll have several blocks where I'm responding, but it might take an hour or two for me to get back to you. Don't expect me to respond within five minutes, and I won't expect it of you. Because we're all suffering from this. In the workplace, it's harder, but what I'm hopeful is that a lot of people will read, I always assign Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. I love that book. It's amazing. And once you understand like, oh yeah, if we're always responding, then we're always doing shallow work.

53:47Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:we never get to think. And so we can't be so responsive to our techs. We have to break away from the idea that everybody can reach everybody at any moment and respect a response.

54:00Jonathan Haidt:All right, let's talk about formula. So Bobby, it's not just another formula, it's a movement. This is a really, really cool company. It's the world's first USDA organic whole milk infant formula and it's manufactured right here in the United States. So I had the opportunity of interviewing the founder of Bobby and that industry is just wild. You really have to do your research. Bobby is clean label certified and it's trusted by 500 ,000 parents nationwide. I personally think that when you are picking a formula, it's important to look into it. this formula has had three years of research. It has had testing, retesting, and it's led by a mom who really, really cares.

54:50Jonathan Haidt:So if you're looking for a brand that's by a mom who wanted something better for her babies and yours, you got to check this out. Their ingredients meet the strictest organic standards in the world. Everyone is talking about this company too behind the scenes. I hear about it from everyone. I personally like that their manufacturing facility is in Ohio. You know where it's coming from. And it's really a premium recipe. If you're looking for a formula, you have to check out Bobby. They really support the whole feeding journey. They even have DHA to support brain development, which is crucial in the first year of life.

55:30Jonathan Haidt:And they gave you a code exclusively for our him and her listeners. Bobby is offering an additional 10 % off on your purchase with code SKINNY. Visit HiBobby.com for more details. That's H-I-B-O-B-B-I-E.com. People are loving dried raw dog food right now. And there is this brand called Get Joys and it's freeze-dried raw dog food. It's made with real whole ingredients like 100 % USDA sourced meats, pumpkin for digestion, salmon oil for skin, and coat health and no seed oils or anything artificial. They also have this thing in it, which is really interesting, called Belly Biotics. And it's a proprietary blend of pre, pro and postbiotics to support digestion, reduce inflammation and build a strong, healthy gut because joy starts from within.

56:21Jonathan Haidt:So the meat is raw and then it's freeze dried to retain 97 % of nutrients. They never use high heat or high pressure processing, which allows them to maintain such a high nutritional value and maintain the flavor. So if you're serious about what your dogs are eating and you want to support their gut, I think this is a really good one. A couple things to note. There's no thawing, no mess. It's shelf stable for easy storage and it's scoop and serve convenience, which is really nice and saves you time. I know I am very specific about what I feed my dogs. And if you want something that's developed by veterinary nutritionists with PhDs, you have to check them out.

56:59Jonathan Haidt:You should also know it's third-party tested, Get Joy freeze-dried raw dog food really thought of everything. As a listener of the Him and Her Show, you'll get 30 % off your first purchase of Get Joy's freeze-dried raw dog food plus two exclusive gifts, a free scoop, and a four-ounce bag of treats. Shop getjoyfood.com slash skinny to make your dog's food as intentional as yours. Again, that's getjoyfood.com slash skinny.

57:25Michael Bosstick:Quick break to talk about goodtoknow.org. Want clear, transparent information about your favorite beverages? we do too. That's why today's sponsor, American Beverage, launched Good to Know, a new platform with tons of information on your favorite beverages. No spin or judgment, just the facts. On the goodtoknowfacts.org website, you can explore 140 plus common beverage ingredients in one place for the first time. As a busy dad, I love having a resource that gives me clear facts so I can make the choices I know are right for me and my family. So if you're somebody trying to make the best choices for yourself without any judgment or to spin, goodtoknowfacts.org has you covered.

58:00Michael Bosstick:Like I said earlier, you can check out more than 140 common beverage ingredients, including what US and global food safety agencies have to say about them. It provides just the facts and no opinions or recommendations. And what I like about this is that it puts you in the driver's seat. You know what's best for you and your family, and now you can get clear information about what's in your drinks without having to dig through confusing websites. There is nothing worse in 2025 than having to be confused about what you're ingesting, what ingredients you're taking, and being confused about what you should give to your family or your children.

58:29Michael Bosstick:So if you want to know more than what's on the label of your favorite drink, goodtoknowfacts.org is a great place to start. So check them out. Visit www.goodtoknowfacts.org for more information. Again, that's goodtoknowfacts.org for more information.

58:43Jonathan Haidt:Let's talk about my favorite female-run nonprofit. I'm so passionate about the charity, I Stand With My Pack. It's dedicated to saving animals and preventing cruelty locally and globally. So I was introduced to this charity by a friend of mine, Lucy, probably about five years ago, and she was really passionate about how much that I Stand With My Pack helps dogs. So what they do is they rescue dogs from high kill shelters in Southern California, and they help them find loving foster homes or forever homes. There is an urgent need right now for donations and fosters. So even if you can donate a dollar, every dollar counts.

59:26Jonathan Haidt:This goes to helping to cover medical care, food, transportation for rescue dogs. You can donate or sign up to foster at istandwithmypack.org. That's istandwithmypack.org. I also sometimes will just Venmo them. It makes it really simple. More information at istandwithmypack.org. something that's really helped me with my mental health is that i bookend my day good so i what do you do what's your morning and evening routine i don't touch my phone until like to to look at my phone it's probably about 9 30 which i wake up at seven so that's two and a half hours without the phone this has been i don't want to act like i'm perfect because this has been many years of figuring it out and then before i go to bed around probably like 8 30 my phone goes on airplane mode in the other room.

1:00:13Great.

1:00:14Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Tell me what you do after 8.30. What do you do between 8.30 and bed?

1:00:16Jonathan Haidt:I read my Kindle.

1:00:18Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Okay, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine.

1:00:19Jonathan Haidt:But I'm still even wondering, I read my Kindle in front of my children. I don't know that they know the difference between that I'm reading and I try to explain it. I'm reading my book to better my mind, not scrolling my phone. I don't know that they can understand the difference. Yeah.

1:00:36Michael Bosstick:I recently switched to physical books with an Amazon, like it's a little red light book light. Like it's all red.

1:00:42Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:so Michael's reading by candlelight okay I'm just kidding yeah right the little yeah yeah yeah no that that sounds great so let me tell you because so here are the here like the top tips I can bring your audience from from my flourishing class you know I tell them if you get nothing else from this course if you do these two things you're going to be your life is going to go better one is take charge of your morning and evening routines because that's going to set you up for for a good night of sleep, a restorative period. And so from, I have them lay out, what are the 10 things you do before you close your eyes?

1:01:14Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Okay. And like the last one tends to be, check their messages, their texts, their Instagram, everything. Most of them do this. It's either the second to last or last thing they do before they literally close their eyes. And what's the first thing you do when you wake up? What are the first 10 things you do? And again, it's like, open your eyes, grab your phone. So, okay, let's look at this. Do you like living this way? No, they don't. And so what I encourage them to do is see that period from about 10 at night or whatever until 8 or 9 the next morning. This is your recharge. This is for you. This is a time when you're not responding to everybody else.

1:01:47Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And if you do that, you're going to sleep better. You're going to start your day in control. Because what happens if you don't do that, the phone guides every moment that you're awake. Yep. And that means you're not living your life.

1:01:59Jonathan Haidt:I mean, I am someone that has gone through every different kind of relationship with my phone because of my career. And so I have seen the impact of too much phone in your face. I have felt it as an adult, which is why I'm so passionate about this subject for children, because I felt it myself. And if you don't have parameters and boundaries around your phone, it will take over.

1:02:21Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:It will take over. Okay, so you're doing pretty well. How about you, Michael? What's your evening and morning routine?

1:02:25Michael Bosstick:Well, Lauren's going to do this thing where she wears her phone. high horse i think it's waiting outside in the hallway now actually you know what i do pretty well in the evenings now because i get off and i put it on a charger away from the bed and i switch to hard books so i've improved over the last year i think i got grilled on a you know maybe 30 episodes back so i've been switching and now in the morning i get up really early because my daughter is is going to school early and i wait at least an hour before i touch the phone so that's

1:02:54Jonathan Haidt:that's where i'm at good okay you also read the newspaper i read a physical newspaper now that's

1:02:59Michael Bosstick:great i don't like to for some reason i've never been able to get onto the you know the ipad where

1:03:03Jonathan Haidt:do you think you have room for improvement because i was honest no i i think that like when you when

1:03:08Michael Bosstick:i hear you talking about the what did you call it the past not past when you have your the when you have the phone in front of your kid and you're kind of like oh the continuous partial attention yes continuous partial attention i can definitely improve on that and it's good it's a good reinforcement to hear you talk about it because every parent sitting there and i'll say you know a lot of parents are probably doing that right yeah the majority that's right and but the problem

1:03:29Jonathan Haidt:is what he said earlier is that every parent is thinking oh every parent's doing this so it's okay

1:03:35Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:what did you call that collective it's a collective action problem yes right we also look everyone else is letting their kid on the ipad all day long it must be okay but it wasn't okay we didn't know we didn't know that's why i shouldn't blame themselves like five ten years we didn't know now we're all

1:03:47Jonathan Haidt:sitting there scrolling and we're like, oh, every other parent's doing it, so it's okay.

1:03:50Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, that's right. I said there's two big things I want to convey. The first was get control of your morning evening routine, take charge of your day. I recommend with my students, they do the five-minute journal. Just anything where you lay out what would make today a great day or what do I want to accomplish today. Do that before you jump into the river of craziness. That's the first thing. The second thing, which if my students get nothing else other than this, their life is going to go better, which is take back your attention. And the way you do that is, number one, get all the slot machine apps off your phone.

1:04:21Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:We already talked about that. Put them on the computer and then quit a couple of them entirely, especially TikTok, just totally, you know, totally quit TikTok. And then the second thing is get charge of your notifications. Every app wants to send you notifications. And when you look through, you can go to the notifications, find out, look at the ones that are sending the most notifications and turn them off. You do not need a notification from any newspaper. Breaking news. You do not need that. Check it once a day. If there's a nuclear attack, I guarantee you, everyone around you is going to be freaking out and you'll know, oh, maybe I should check my phone.

1:04:55Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:You don't need to know when there was a shooting someplace else, when some couple in Hollywood is getting a divorce. You don't need to know that. Agreed. At the moment. So if you can shut off most notifications, other than like Uber or things where you really, yes, I want this company to interrupt me, everything else shut off. If you can regain your attention and get a better night's sleep, you're going to be a lot happier and more in control.

1:05:18Jonathan Haidt:One of my best friends is here and like the way we text is like, there's no like pressure on the text. It's like, sometimes she texts me on a Friday and I don't text her back till Monday. Sometimes she texts me on a Tuesday, like I'll text her on a Tuesday day and like we text in a way that's like get to it when you can get to it. I feel like there needs to be that sort of unspoken rule with friendships. It can't be like just because someone texts you like you said you get an instant response.

1:05:46Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:That's such an interesting phrase an unspoken rule. Unspoken means we kind of assume people think it but what I'm going to suggest here is that we make this a spoken rule. That is because it turns out we're all suffering. Yes. We're all suffering from this. And so if you say it, your friends aren't going to be offended. They're going to be like, yes, I'm feeling it too. So I think we should also, what we should do with your friends is have them watch this episode and say, you know, we're all going to try to have better relationships because what we want is not the quantity of check-ins. It's the quality of sometimes really being together.

1:06:18Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And so if you have a texting relationship with people, what you might say is, how about we stop texting? How about we talk on the phone once a week or once a month? It's so much more satisfying. Yeah.

1:06:27Michael Bosstick:I also like a lot of time, I think that but because of social media in the way people present and you see all these, you lose a little bit of connection. You're like, I don't need to check in on how they are because I can see how they are. I saw them on that vacation, so it must've been good. No reason to talk about it anymore, if that makes sense.

1:06:43Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, yeah. Social media allows us to display anything that's one-to-many where you're putting up something so that lots of people see it. That's not communication, that's display. Whereas a telephone call or a FaceTime call, that's one-on-one, that's good.

1:06:58Jonathan Haidt:I love what you're doing. I think it's amazing and so important. Michael, you want to do some rapid fire questions?

1:07:05Michael Bosstick:All right, let's go. Rapid fire, quick ones. Biggest misconception about Gen Z?

1:07:09Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Biggest misconception about Gen Z is that they are lazy. They are not lazy. They work very hard, but they are just so overwhelmed with stuff. They're not able to do a lot of other stuff. so they're over stimulated they're over stimulated and distracted yeah oh i'm sorry one other one other gen z is that gen z loves their phones they don't they see how much it's hurting them they

1:07:36Jonathan Haidt:just feel trapped what surprised you the most when writing the anxious generation what surprised me

1:07:44Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:the most when writing it was the boy's story i knew that the girl's story was when social media came in they instantly got anxious and depressed i didn't know what the boys story was and it turns out it's not video games per se it's all the stuff that is distracting them and addicting them the boys story is about companies that are addicting boys and basically sapping their motivation to do anything which is why our boys are dropping out in the long run actually this whole phone-based childhood is actually hurting the boys more than the girls i believe most underrated skill kids today need? Starting conversations in real life, and that includes on the telephone.

1:08:23Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:It's awkward. It's awkward to call someone up. When we were young, you had a call and you say, oh, hello, Mrs. Smith. Is Billy home? And sometimes you had to make a little conversation with Mrs. Smith. And now a lot of kids, when the phone rings, they don't even say anything. They just wait for the other person to talk. So we need basic communication skills.

1:08:43Jonathan Haidt:Michael used to page me every single morning, 1431, which would say, I love you on the pager.

1:08:50Michael Bosstick:That's sweet.

1:08:50Jonathan Haidt:That's a true story.

1:08:52Michael Bosstick:It was for the booty call.

1:08:52Jonathan Haidt:You did it every morning. It was like a Monday. We were going to school.

1:08:57Michael Bosstick:I'll take a Monday.

1:08:58Jonathan Haidt:One sentence about how parents can raise resilient kids in a digital world.

1:09:02Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:The best way to prepare your children for life in the digital world is to protect them from it until their brain is largely developed. Do not let the digital world scramble their neural development. Keep them off of smartphones till 14 and social media till 16. And they're going to be much more prepared for life in the digital world.

1:09:22Jonathan Haidt:Jonathan, like I said, I love what you're doing. Where can everyone pick up your latest book? What are you working on? Tell us all the things.

1:09:29Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:So the main website for the movement, because it's not just a book. It really is a movement. And it's driven especially by mothers around the world. The website is anxiousgeneration.com. Okay. So start there. and of course by the book, Anxious Generation. But we have, as I said, on December 30th, we are publishing The Amazing Generation, Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World. It is ideal for kids eight to 12. It's really fun. It came out beautifully. You can pre-order that now anywhere. So what we're doing, we began trying to help parents set norms, follow the four norms. That was the beginning of the movement.

1:10:06Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:And now we're expanding to understand AI. Oh, parents, do not buy your child this holiday season. Do not buy your child any toy with AI. It's insane. It's insane.

1:10:18Michael Bosstick:I feel like that's a whole nother podcast.

1:10:20Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:Yeah, that's a whole nother podcast.

1:10:21Jonathan Haidt:I just think like no AI. Which by the way, open invite anytime. Okay.

1:10:24Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:I'll come back next year when everyone's got AI friends and chatbots and girlfriends and boyfriends.

1:10:29Michael Bosstick:That's a whole rabbit hole.

1:10:31Jonathan Haidt:You know, it might be fun to have a boyfriend that's AI. Just program what you want. Thank you for coming on. I will tell you on air and off air that I, anything that I can do to help you with what you're doing besides the show if there's anything I can talk on I'm really passionate about this and I'm trying to set it up for my own kids and it's not easy so if there's anything Michael and I can do because of what we do we would love to help

1:10:55Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:well thank you just helping me to reach your large and generally young audience is great I hope everyone will go to afterbabel.com that's my sub stack it's free we put out research we put out advice for parents and yet be wonderful for me to come back or for other members of the team to come back who have different parts of the story and to really especially promote the idea that we have overprotected our children in the real world. We have underprotected our children online. We've got to reverse those. We've got to give our kids back a play-based childhood. That's the main message I want to convey here.

1:11:28Jonathan Haidt:And you'll have to give my friend advice here. He watches porn about 15 times a day. So maybe you have some tips for him.

1:11:34Michael Bosstick:Not me.

1:11:34Jonathan Haidt:I think he's watching it right now.

1:11:36Michael Bosstick:He's over there.

1:11:37Jonathan Haidt:Thank you.

1:11:37Michael Bosstick:black hair gray jacket

1:11:40Jonathan Haidt:Taylor it rhymes with Taylor Oksmaner

1:11:43Michael Bosstick:thank you Jonathan you're the best appreciate you open invite anytime

1:11:47Lauryn Evarts Bosstick:thank you Michael thank you Lauren