Oprah and Jonathan Haidt on How Social Media Is Changing Childhood

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Hey, everybody.

Hey there.

A warm welcome to you.

Thanks for joining me here on the Oprah podcast.

I am actually really excited to talk to Jonathan Haidt about his book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

This book is doing something that you actually don't see often these days.

It's causing a real shift in public opinion and even policies in a big way.

For anyone under the age of 25 and certainly for other age groups, much of life is lived through smartphones, tablets, and on social media.

On this episode, we are asking the question, at what cost?

It takes away from so many things in my life.

We are only just beginning to understand the impact social media and smart devices have on the mental and emotional health of young people whose brains are still developing.

I know this is an issue that is top of mind for many of you parents.

When he does not have access to social media or his phone, he gets very agitated.

He gets very angry.

He

has what I would call a teenage temper tantrum.

Social psychologist, NYU professor, and best-selling author Jonathan Haidt is on a mission to reach parents not only about his belief of the harmful effects of smartphones and social media, but also to help them take action now to prevent potential long-term damage in their children.

It is urgent that you restore your brain.

You're still young, but if you do this until you're 25, then the damage might be permanent.

Jonathan's New York Times bestseller, The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, digs into the skyrocketing mental health crisis in young people.

We have to change the way we're raising kids.

We have to give them back an exciting, fun childhood in the real world, not on a screen.

Jonathan Haidt joins us.

Thank you for joining me from your office at NYU.

Hello.

Hello, Oprah.

How nice to be back talking with you.

So this book has been on the New York Times bestsellers list now for one year.

And I would say it's because it's resonating.

And anytime I run into parents who are talking about what to, I don't know, what are we going to do about all these phones?

I go, have you read The Ancient Generation?

So many people have read it.

What do you think it is that's kept it on the New York Times bestsellers list and has kept you running from one seminar to the next talking about this?

Well, thanks, Oprah.

It's very easy to answer that question.

The answer is that all over the world, all over the developed world at least, family life has become a fight over screen time.

It wasn't like this in 2010.

I mean, we fought over television a little bit, but it's once our kids kids all got iPads, iPhones, social media apps, and that all happened around 2012.

It's been a fight over screen time.

We all hate it.

We're all feeling trapped.

We're all looking for a way out.

And I think that's why the book has been a bestseller around the world.

Okay.

So what's going on with the teens who are basically addicted?

Would you say that there is an addiction problem?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Let me share with you two horrific stats.

And you might expect this to be the suicide stats that you and I talked about last time, you know, up 50% for adolescents since 2010, up 140%

for younger teen girls.

Those are horrific.

But there are two other numbers I can't get out of my mind.

One is 48%,

which is the percentage of our adolescents in America who say that they are online almost constantly.

The phone is always in their hand.

They're always checking it.

Even if they're talking with you, they're thinking about what's on the phone.

They are checked out of life.

They're never fully present.

They're almost constantly involved in social media.

That's one number.

48% of our teens, that's happened to.

And then what I just found yesterday, which I can't believe, but here it is, 40%.

That's the number of two-year-olds, two-year-olds in this country who have their own iPad, their own iPad.

Which means that in the last few years, what that means is that Americans, and it's the same thing in Britain, I know, Americans have basically realized, hey, if I just give the kid an iPad, I can have some peace.

I can check my email, I can make dinner.

And we're using it as a babysitter.

So, yes, you ask me, is it addiction?

Yes.

From the age of two all the way through the teen years, at least half our kids are hooked.

I would say addicted.

Wow.

And according to the CDC, 11 to 14-year-olds are spending up to nine hours a day on their screens.

And you call this the great rewiring of childhood.

What impact, you just said it's addiction, but what impact is all this screen time having on young minds?

I can't,

I'm blown away by that two-year-old statistics.

Right.

I think the best way to understand it is for

older people, at least if you were, say, 35 years old or older, you probably grew up playing outside with friends.

You had some freedom.

And so I'd like

everyone watching, think back about the most exciting, wonderful things that you did as a kid.

What are your best memories?

Okay, now let's go through it and let's see what it's like for that half of our kids who are online almost all the time.

What's it like for them?

So did you ever laugh with your friends?

Do you ever share a laugh with your friends?

Of course.

I just did a quick calculation before we talked here.

Somewhere between 200,000 times and a million times is probably about the number of laughs that we shared with a friend.

Imagine cutting that by 90%.

Take 90% of it out of your child's life because they don't see their friends very much.

And typing LOL is not the same as laughing hysterically with your friends.

Did you ever look out a car window and just daydream?

Did you ever do, of course we did, we all did that.

Okay.

Imagine taking out 100% of that because now as soon as the kid gets in the car, they have a device, they're on the device the whole way.

That's right.

Did you ever play outside?

Cut 70% of that.

Did you ever read a book?

Cut 60% of that.

Did you ever have a hobby?

Cut 80% of that.

So when our kids are online about 8, 10, 12 hours a day, there isn't time for anything else.

It pushes everything out of childhood.

And that is a sad childhood.

We've got to stop this.

Yeah, I read an article recently about

the college kids arriving in school now.

Many of them have not actually ever completed a book, which was

so startling to me, you know?

You didn't have to actually read a book.

You read sections of a book or portions of a book or you got this online.

You know, I find that really to be incredible.

Well, that's right.

And the last time you and I spoke, we focused on mental illness, anxiety, depression, and we're going to talk a lot about that today.

That's really, really important.

But what I've learned since you and I last spoke is that I think an even bigger harm that happened to our kids is the destruction of their ability to pay attention.

Because this is, we're not just talking about 10, 20% of the kids, we're talking about most of them.

I teach at New York University, very smart kids here in the business school.

A lot of them say they have a lot of trouble reading.

As one of my students said, I read a sentence, I get bored, I take out TikTok.

That's the way they've, it's always been.

TikTok has always been there for them.

And it's almost always, it's always more entertaining.

than whatever reading I could assign to them.

So yeah, their attention is fragmented, shattered.

So you also believe, you say in the anxious generation,

which should be in every parent's home, whether your kids are 2 or 12 or 15, you believe that parents are over-protecting their children in the physical world, you say, or real world, while underprotecting them online.

And why should this sound an alarm for the parents who are listening to us right now?

Yeah, because look, we all want to protect our kids.

I have a daughter, 15, and a son, 18.

We all want to protect them, but we've got to protect them from the right things.

When you and I were growing up, Oprah, there was a crime wave.

There was real danger, but kids still played outside.

It didn't usually hit the kids that much.

So kids still played outside.

All kids played outside.

And when we were together, we were safe.

Since you and I were kids, the crime rate has plummeted.

It's much safer now.

There's much less drunk driving.

So, and child molesters, we started locking them up.

We didn't used to lock them up when you and I were kids.

We thought they were just eccentrics.

So the physical world, the real world, is actually safer than it was 40, 50 years ago.

Crime went way down in the 90s.

Where did all the child molesters go?

They went onto Instagram.

Yes.

Because that's where it's really, really easy to talk with children and to ask them for a photograph and maybe a photograph of them

in their bikini.

And before you know it, you have a naked photo of them and you can...

Show us your stomach or show us your this or show us any body part.

That's where they all are.

Exactly.

So what I'm trying to say is that we've got to lighten up, loosen up, let our kids out into the real world where it's actually much safer and that's where children need to develop.

They need to play with each other in person.

And we've got to tighten up on the online world where there are lots of strangers talking to your child if she's on social media.

Jonathan, you've said giving social media to teenage girls is like handing them a gun.

I think that is so potent.

How do young women use social media differently than young men?

Yeah.

So first let's just look at how young young women and young men are socially.

Girls are much more interested in their relationships.

They need a few good friends.

They talk a lot.

Boys don't talk as much.

Boys do things together in larger groups.

And so social media has been completely devastating for girls because the way a friendship develops is you share secrets, you talk one-on-one, you talk in a small group, you gossip.

But on social media, it's this giant conversation.

People are performing.

They're not really connecting.

And this is happening in middle school, especially at a time when girls are just beginning to develop.

They're just starting puberty.

They're very self-conscious about their bodies.

And what are people talking about?

Your face, your hair, your boobs, your skin.

It makes girls.

It's so sad to me how it pushes girls to be sexual and shallow.

I just opened an account on Snapchat because my daughter wants Snapchat.

So I opened an account for myself pretending to be a 14-year-old boy.

I can't believe

what it makes the girls do.

It's disgusting.

And so

if you're going to go through puberty on Snapchat or Instagram or TikTok, it's going to be bad for girls.

Now, for boys, it's not as emotionally damaging.

But boys get sucked into crazy, destructive behavior.

And it's things like, let's attack some kid so that we can get a video of it and post it.

And it's, again, it's dehumanizing, it's degrading.

So this is why I say no kid should be on any of these social media platforms until at least 16.

This is just not appropriate for children.

You cannot make this stuff safe for children.

You were saying that, though you went on Snapchat as a 14-year-old, your daughter is 15.

So is your daughter on your daughter's on Snapchat?

No, she is not.

I will not let her on Snapchat.

What I've seen is so disgusting.

It's not pornography.

I'm not seeing pornography.

But what I'm seeing is that it makes the girls all pose in this sexy, semi-porn way.

It just pushes the girls to be shallow and

sexy.

There's no way I'm letting my daughter on Snapchat.

Oh, and also Snapchat keeps pushing me to connect with people I don't know.

And that's how you get in the.

That's how you start talking to adults in other countries who want money or sex from you.

That's right.

That's right.

I am so glad you've joined us for this vital conversation that I know many of you are concerned about.

Coming up, we're going to be talking to a teenager who's so addicted to his phone, he even takes it in the shower with him.

You'll hear what Jonathan has to say about that next.

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Welcome back to more of my conversation with Jonathan Haidt about his belief in the harmful effects of smartphones and social media on teenagers' emotional and mental well-being.

Okay, since we have Jonathan here, we wanted to hear from parents and from teens.

Carrie, she says her 17 year old son nick spends 10 hours a day on his phone even watching videos in the shower wow nick i didn't know you could bring the phone in the shower but apparently i didn't either

yeah it's turned into like an issue um

whenever like i go to um take a shower i end up with the phone in the shower so Because you can't be without the phone long enough to shower.

I guess I can.

I just like the attention span, not my, I like to watch the videos.

They're interesting to me.

Okay.

Would you, okay.

So Carrie, let's hear from you.

What concerns you most about Nick's phone usage?

Thank you both for being here, by the way.

Thank you, Nick, for joining.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you and gratitude for having us and letting us talk to Jonathan and yourself about this.

What concerns me the most is really the mental health issue.

Anxiety, depression, especially depression is very prevalent in our family on both sides, my husband's side and my side.

Addiction is also huge in our family.

And my main concern is that this addiction to the phone will turn into an addiction of something else, drugs, alcohol,

pornography,

all of the things that could be available.

And

we were talking about him being in the shower with it.

I realized last summer, he was coming in from cheer practice and I was in the kitchen.

The garage is right off the kitchen.

And

I could hear the Instagram reels going.

And it's literally a 20-foot maybe walk from his car into the kitchen.

And he couldn't be

not entertained for that amount of time.

So I, in passing, said something to our 20-year-old daughter, Molly.

I said, hey, do you know your brother?

Like, I'm starting to see that this might be a problem.

And she goes, mom, he's in the shower and he's got the Instagram, the reels going and he's got the TikToks going and all of this.

And that's when I was like, this is a real problem.

Nick, do you think you're addicted?

Do you think you have a problem?

Oh, yes, 100%.

100% there's a problem.

Okay.

That's a good start.

That's a good start.

Is it, Jonathan, a good start?

That's a very good start.

If he sees that there's a problem, then it's going to definitely be possible to solve it.

And so,

Carrie,

you're absolutely right to worry about his mental health.

Now, for girls, the connection between social media use and depression, anxiety is much stronger.

It sounds like, Nick, are you suffering from depression or anxiety right now, or is that not really your issue now?

That's not really an issue right now, I wouldn't say.

Okay, because what I see happening is we focused a lot on social media and girls, because that's a very strong connection.

That's really devastating the girls.

And it took me a while to realize while I was writing the book that the story for boys is actually very different and addiction is at the center.

So,

Carrie, Nick, do you know the word dopamine?

Do you know what dopamine means, the neurotransmitter?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So

watching the videos.

Well, it's so what it really is, what dopamine is, it's said to be the reward neurotransmitter because it makes us feel good.

But the key thing is it's the motivation neurotransmitter.

So when you do something and then you get a reward, you then are motivated to do it again.

And then you get the reward and you dig yourself deeper and deeper.

And if you do it a lot, your dopamine neurons adapt.

They're trying to get back to a normal level.

So they become less sensitive to dopamine.

So now you need more and more dopamine.

So Nick, what happens if you are separated from your phone for an hour or two?

Is that no problem or do you start to feel something?

I feel like I can go an hour or two.

I would say it's more of like the longer

hours without it.

Okay, what happens to you when you go hours without it?

Like, I just want to sit there and just like watch a video.

I don't necessarily like I want something to entertain me.

Okay.

Well, good.

I saw Carrie shaking her head.

Carrie, yeah, go ahead.

Carrie.

Yeah.

When he goes without, when he does not have access to social media or his phone, he gets very agitated.

He gets very angry.

He

has what I would call a teenage temper tantrum.

He cannot go hours without a phone.

We went on a cruise last summer and

he was

miserable the whole time because he didn't have access to the phone if we weren't on land.

Wow.

Can I ask you, but don't you have to be without it in school?

Because hasn't Florida banned the phones in schools?

They have on paper banned the phones in schools, I think he can tell you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They banned it like by law, but it's really like a school-to-school basis.

every school is different so for majority of the schools i believe it's our electronics that we get um think pads services some schools even get uh mac books they all like they just start to break down because they're so old and they're so overused the issue is the school the technology is not good and so they have to get on their personal electronics in order to complete the classwork because everything is online okay even when they're

that that's a separate issue which is a very serious issue, which is that all of this ed tech, all of these screens in front of students, it turns out, is really bad for their education.

Test scores have been dropping around the world since 2012 because of it, in part because of the educational technology.

But let's get back to the question of addiction.

Because Nick, what you said, I was about to say, oh, good.

Well, then it's not really addiction.

It's just a habit.

But what Carrie said tells me that you are addicted.

Your brain is addicted.

And here's how I know, because

Anna Lemke, one of our country's foremost experts on addiction, she wrote the book Dopim Nation.

She says the five universal symptoms of withdrawal from an addictive substance, this is what happens to addicts when you take away the drug for a day.

Here are the five.

Irritability, insomnia, dysphoria, craving, and anxiety.

And it sounds like you've got most of those, which tells me that your brain is dependent on constant stimulation.

Are you able to read a book?

Can you read a whole book like, you know, an hour at a time paying attention, or is that hard for you?

I can read a book.

I wouldn't say I can read the whole book, but I can read a majority of the other books.

You cannot read a whole hour at a time.

Absolutely not.

You cannot.

Okay.

So, Nick,

what I'm going to recommend for you is what I'm just drawing from what the experts say is if this is a dopamine issue, and clearly it is, then the way to break it is to go a month without it.

You have to go through detox.

The first few days, the first week will be hard, but then what you're going to find, and this is what my students at MYU find, your life opens up.

You can pay attention.

You have more time in your day.

You experience things.

So if you can find a way, the two of you working together, you know, ideally, you could start it if you can take a vacation somewhere.

If you could send him to some sort of summer thing for a week or two or a month, summer camp or some experience, that really helps.

So make the real world interesting as possible.

But

what would really help you is going a month to let your brain reset itself to a normal setting.

I see his face, though, Jonathan, when you say a month.

Can you imagine?

He can't be without it for an hour.

So the idea of a month feels like punishment, feels like torture, feels like, how in the world is he going to do that?

Are you getting anxiety even hearing this, Nick?

Like you're going to be disconnected from the world?

Disconnected from the world, disconnected from your friends and what that means and

all of that.

Nick, do you think you could do that or is that impossible?

I wouldn't say it's impossible.

I feel like it would take a lot out of me.

It would take everything out of me to do it.

That's right.

Okay, it would.

Okay, can I ask this, Jonathan?

Can I interrupt?

Is it like other

addictions where you have to hit rock bottom or at least reach a place where you see, I mean, in the beginning, Nick says he

realizes that he's an addict and has a problem.

But maybe he doesn't think the problem is enough

to actually cause him long-term problems and doesn't understand the consequences of the long-term problems.

So until you actually realize that this is dangerous to my brain and my mental health,

why do you need to give it up?

Yeah.

That's right.

That's the way to think about it.

So Nick, let me ask you a question.

Do you want someday to get married?

Do you want to have a girlfriend and a a wife or a spouse?

Is that something you want?

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you think that

a woman would find appealing a man who is on TikTok all day long and is not capable of paying attention?

No, 100% no.

And do you want to have a job someday?

Do you want to earn money and support yourself, support a family?

Yeah.

And do you think any employer is going to find it useful to hire someone who can't focus on what they're supposed to focus on and is always on multiple screens and watching videos?

Yeah, no, they don't want that.

They don't want that.

So

it is urgent that you restore your brain.

You're still young.

The damage is not permanent yet.

But if you do this until you're 25, then the damage might be permanent.

Your brain is very flexible still for a few more years, but by 25, the frontal cortex is kind of done changing over to the adult pattern.

At that point, it's going to be much harder to get your attention back.

So start now.

What will that mean at 25 if he doesn't stop?

And what you just said about the brain.

Yeah, so think about like learning languages.

You know, we can learn a language without an accent before we're 13 because what the brain is doing, it's in the child form, it's very flexible.

It can become lots of things and it can become a native speaker of Spanish or Russian or Chinese or anything.

But then as you go through puberty, different parts of the brain start locking down, as it were.

They start assuming the adult pattern and there's a kind of a myelin sheath.

There's a sheath around the neurons that kind of makes them more efficient, but less flexible.

And so that's going forward in your brain.

And the last part of the brain to lock down is the prefrontal cortex.

That's the area that does focus, attention, planning.

That is absolutely vital for being an adult.

And all over the country, you are not alone.

Half, at least, half of Americans are giving that up.

They're saying, Let's let TikTok shape my frontal cortex so I never have to think.

If you do that till you're 25,

I can't say for sure, but it sure looks like it's going to be permanent.

Because

between 25 and 26 is when that pre-frontal frontal cortex locks in.

That's when you're fully an adult, when the whole brain has been developed after 25, 26, right?

That's right.

I mean, it's not a sudden thing, it's a gradual thing in your early 20s.

So the sooner you start, the better.

But by 25, it's locked into adult position.

Yes.

What do you think of that?

Like, when he's saying, like, everything is on our phones, like our whole lives, like my job is on my phone.

How I see what I work, how I communicate with my coaches, how I communicate with like other students, it's all on our phones.

How we hang out with each other is online.

I think what he's asking is how do we, how does he give up the phone when every single thing in his life is attached to it.

His job, his school, his friendships.

Yeah, that's right.

That's the question.

And that's why everyone's trapped, because that's true for everyone.

We all got sucked into this because we all felt like we had to give our kids a phone and Snapchat because they say, everyone else has it.

I am left out.

And so what we're trying to do, what my team and I are trying to do is get everyone to realize we're trapped.

And Nick, you realize that, that you're trapped.

And the way to escape from a social trap is together.

So if you could find three other families, three friends to do this with, and I bet you can, you might think that you don't know three where the parents would be receptive, the kid would be receptive, but I guarantee you things are changing fast this year.

You will find them.

If you can do this with a few friends, and instead of just sitting there swiping, you go out and do fun stuff.

You go places with your friends.

You can go to an amusement park, go shopping, go to a beach, go swimming.

Does he replace the smartphone with the flip phone?

Yes.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you, Oprah.

Yes.

So by all means, talk to your friends.

Talking to your friends one at a time on the phone is great.

And so a flip phone, a basic phone, that way you and your mom can keep in touch, you and your friends can keep in touch.

And now your computer, I'm not saying going without a computer.

I understand.

For work, for school, the computer is essential.

But a computer is not as addictive as a touch screen.

The touchscreen is stimulus, response, reward, stimulus, response, reward, infinite loops.

Computer's a little slower.

It's not quite as addictive.

So I'm not asking you to give up communication.

You can have a flip phone.

I'm not asking you to give up all sorts of other things on your computer.

I'm saying it sounds like you're going to need to take a break from your smartphone for a while.

There's also a program called Brick.

It's a little device.

You can block almost every app and just use it for whatever the few apps you need.

So there are ways to do that, but I would recommend going cold turkey for a month if you can.

And he will feel in the beginning exactly what addicts feel when they go cold turkey.

It will be painful.

It will be painful for about a week because of what's going on in his brain, not just him being agitated, but what's actually happening in the brain.

Exactly.

Exactly.

All right, guys.

I hope this helps.

It does.

Thank you, Paul.

Something to think about.

Something to think about.

We'll check in later to see what actually happened.

Thank you, Nick.

Thank you for being willing to participate.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening.

I am so glad you joined me here on the Oprah podcast.

When we come back, we're going to talk to a mom who discovered that her daughter, a 13-year-old honor student and star athlete, was hiding a secret persona that she created online.

We'll hear what her daughter has to say about that next.

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A warm welcome back to you.

So glad to be with you here.

I'm with New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Height, and we're talking with parents and teens who are deep in the throes of smartphone addiction.

Leah is a single mom to a 13-year-old daughter, Estella, and she recently did a deep dive into her daughter's social media accounts.

And she was shocked by what she found.

Leah, what did you discover?

Thank you both for joining us here.

Thank you.

Leah and so

much for providing this space to talk about really hard things.

Yeah.

And Jonathan, for your research and expertise to keep our kids safe, because I'm almost through with the book and I'm mind-blown about everything that you've said.

It's just so tough.

And I'm honestly kicking myself as a mom for not checking my daughter's phone sooner.

You know, but there were no red flags.

I mean, she's a great student.

She's involved in school and an athlete.

But my eyes were opened up in January after Christmas break when I got a call from the principal at school and she said there was a conversation on Snapchat that happened over holiday break.

And, you know, I had no idea that these Snapchat conversations could be so mean-spirited.

And I was just mind-blown to see, you know, when I took her phone away and went through some of the stuff, I couldn't believe that, you know, people could be so vulgar.

And when I say people, I mean kids her age, you know, we're talking 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, you know, the profanity.

I was blown away at just.

the level of like, you know, hurt these kids give to one another.

And your daughter had a different, and what I, what I was reading from the producers is that you're, that Estella had

a very different persona online than the persona that you knew.

So Estella, hi, welcome.

Hello.

Did you purposely create or present a different persona online?

than you believe yourself to be?

I created the different persona because it was very common for kids like my age, like even some of my closest friends, they have it.

They have like fakes account, fake accounts on social media just to be like funny and just to like,

I did it because

I

wasn't allowed.

I have Instagram and I decided to download it.

So.

It was easier to catch up on sports and I could see what else was going on because I couldn't see it on the social media apps that I had.

Uh-huh.

And so

creating this different persona made you feel what?

Creating the different persona,

I kind of felt like uneasy making it because I knew it was the wrong thing, but I did it anyways.

And

once I just like,

I padded it for a few months and after, I thought I was just like, okay, she's probably not going to find out.

So I.

just felt more comfortable doing it.

Yeah.

So when I, yeah, so when I took her phone, I, you know, and I started taking a deep dive, I did find fake profiles on Facebook and Instagram.

And, you know, from my perspective, it appeared to be that she was just trying to have fun or be funny.

But what scared me most about those fake accounts is that I saw several messages from boys, older boys, messaging her.

And these are complete strangers.

And that really like was a gut punch.

You know, I was scared.

I was like, I'm not protecting my daughter enough.

You You know, when she's alone in her room and on her phone, I think she's safe, but it's quite the opposite.

It's, it's really scary.

What's your question for Jonathan?

Well, so I took away her phone.

You know, she hasn't had it for a month and I noticed a big difference in her.

You know, I noticed she was paying attention to, as we were taking drives to go to volleyball practice, she was paying attention to her surroundings.

And, you know, we watched movies more together.

We went to the library.

We're working out together.

So it was nice to do those real life things again, you know, instead of just being on our screens.

But she's going to be in high school in the fall.

And so what are, how do I set those healthy boundaries for her to kind of ease back into social media or allow her to be on social media so that she can feel included in this new space of, you know, new students and, you know, a new school, which I'm sure a lot of them will be.

you know, on social media.

Yeah, that's right.

Wow, there's so much in that question.

I'll just, I'll start with two points.

One is that you noticed the big effect of

these platforms, which is they take all of your child's attention.

That's the way they're designed.

The reason why these companies are worth trillions of dollars, we don't give them any money.

It's all because they drilled into our kids' heads.

They extracted all of our kids' attention and sold it.

So when your kids are on social media, they're not present.

They're not really with you.

They're gone.

And you saw that quite dramatically when you took the phone away for a month.

Second point that I think you made, which is very important, is that a lot of the worst stuff is happening when she's alone in her room.

That's what I hear.

That's when the really bad stuff tends to happen because they feel like they can talk to anyone.

It's late at night.

So I'll share with you my biggest regret about my own parenting.

I was so focused on social media, I didn't really think about the computer.

And this was during COVID, too.

You know, they all had to have a computer.

But here's the policy that I wish I had had, and I recommend this to everybody who has young kids especially: no screens in the bedroom ever, no screens of any kind in the bedroom ever.

Do your homework out in the kitchen or the living room.

Now, at some point, you might have to relax and let them take the laptop into the bedroom.

But if we establish the idea that

your kids can, if they're on these platforms, they have to be at least out in public.

They can't be alone in their bedroom.

That's where the worst stuff happens.

Okay, but now, on to your question.

What do you do now that she's entering high school?

Of course, you feel like you have to let her back on because everyone else is on.

But as our parents used to say to us, if everybody else jumped off the bridge, would you jump off the bridge?

This stuff is so bad for girls, especially.

Social media is so bad for girls that I'd like you to consider keeping her off until 16.

And I know that's going to really sound horrible to Estella.

My daughter is 15.

I don't let her on.

She says she's the only one who doesn't have Snapchat.

But she also says that she sees what it does to the other girls.

And she says that her friends will text her

if there's something important.

So she's not completely left out.

Now, it's hard to get a lot of people.

They will text her because she has a smartphone.

They will text her because she has a lot of different things.

No, no, she does have a smartphone.

She just does not have social media as far as I know.

Okay.

I mean, she could be hiding it from me, but it's not on her phone.

So is that possible?

Do you think you could is if you could especially find a few friends, a few other families who would do the same and keep them off social media, but let them get together in person a lot?

Estella, is Leah and Estelle, is that possible?

I think so.

Estella, what are you thinking?

Oh, I think it's possible for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're going to have a much better life.

You're going to be able to have the phone.

You're going to have better friends.

You can have the phone.

You can have access to the phone, use of the phone.

You can text your friends.

You can be in contact with your friends, but you are just not on social media.

That's what I'm recommending.

I did notice, too, like when she didn't have her phone, like for at least, you know, five or six days that she didn't even want her phone.

So her withdrawal was only a few days because earlier we were talking with Nick and Nick and Carrie, and they were saying that, you know, Nick can't be without his phone in the shower.

So

obviously,

Jonathan recommended also going for a month without the phone.

And

it seems daunting, I think, at first.

But how soon did you notice that she started, that the dopamine hits were eased?

I would say just a few days.

I was

noticing her being more attentive.

You know, when I'd asked her to do something for me, I didn't have to repeat myself.

You know, she was

attentive and present enough to hear it.

Yeah, present enough to hear it.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Well, you have the book.

You've read the book.

You've heard the advice.

In reading the book, you know how dangerous this is, especially to young girls.

And so now you have a choice as to how you, the both of you, will decide to manage it.

And I really hope that it works out for both of you.

Thank you, Leah and Estella.

Thank you both.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks for joining us.

Good luck out there.

I hope you stay with us.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and I talked to a teen girl who says her phone addiction is taking over every aspect of her life, from her concentration at school to how much she's sleeping, everything.

Jonathan's advice for her and her mom.

Next.

I welcome you back to the Oprah podcast.

I'm with best-selling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

We're talking with parents and teens who are sharing their struggles with smartphones and social media and the impact on their mental health.

So, Mala is a doctor and mom of three teenagers.

She and her 16-year-old daughter, Uma, are joining us from Toronto.

Mala and Uma, welcome and tell us what's going on.

Hi.

We're so thankful to be here today.

Thank you both for allowing us to have this conversation with you.

You know, Okra, I started watching you when I was applying to medical school in 1994.

Wow.

Wow.

That was a good year.

That was a good year.

Yes, that was a good year.

But that's really 30 years of absorbing your wisdom and education.

And I just, I truly want to just thank you for that.

And Dr.

Haidt, I was told of your book last year, and I pre-ordered it.

And I have to say, like, first of all, it's groundbreaking,

absolutely fascinating to read.

But more than anything, it was so validating to me

after reading it, just in my own real world experience with my three Gen Z teenagers here at home.

You know, the one thing I will say is that I noticed right away how addictive these devices are.

You know, as a physician, I'm very conservative.

I like rules.

We have a lot of rules in this house, as the kids would tell you.

But, you know, and I knew one thing.

I knew I wanted to wait as long as possible before giving my kids a smartphone.

I knew that much.

We didn't have this data then, but I knew that.

So that was in 2018 with my eldest son.

So he was 14 when he got his phone.

The second boy was close to 14.

And then Uma, being the youngest,

was more like 13.

And honestly, since that time, it has been an uphill battle, uphill battle every day

for the last five years or whatever it's been.

And my kids have truly lived like a phone-based adolescence, as you described.

Conversations at home would be like,

what are you guys doing?

Are you on your phone?

Have you done your homework?

Are you doing your homework or are you on your phone?

Have you checked in your phone?

We had all those rules.

But

I think the important thing is with teens, when they get older, it is very hard to control things.

They will find a way.

Even as younger kids, they find a way.

Anyway, so my concern is mainly with my daughter, Uma, who's here.

But so she's 16 now and has had

social media probably for the last year, year and a half.

And what I've noticed with her is very different from the boys.

The boys would always play video games.

But with Uma, what I've noticed is in the last year or so, just a change in her attention and her focus.

It's very subtle,

probably hard to measure.

But I think more in terms of school performance,

test taking, exam taking,

your focus during exams, being able to finish and complete tests and exams.

All of these things I feel have really have really changed.

Did you hear Jonathan earlier, Mala, say that

giving a girl

social media at a young age is like giving them a gun, that it affects girls very differently than it affects boys.

And you've read the book, so you understand that that is true.

So what you're experiencing in real time is actually a reflection of everything that Jonathan has done through his research, right?

You're now living it.

Uma, let me ask you, how do you think it's affecting your mental health?

Yeah, I mean, I think my phone is just, it's super addictive.

I feel like I'm on it all the time.

I guess because of the dopamine hits, sometimes I'll be on it and I feel like I can't get off, even though in my mind, like I know I need to.

I feel like it takes away from so many things in my life that I could be doing.

Things that could make me smarter, like reading or doing my homework or studying, or even things that could make me healthier, like exercising or going outside more.

So it's it's not even just my mental health, but also my physical well-being is impacted by my phone.

And yeah, I agree with my mom.

I think that it's impacted my focus.

I think at school, especially, my concentration is worse.

I think my attention span is shorter.

And it can impact my sleep too, which then can impact my concentration because I'll be on it at night or sometimes the light will interfere with like my ability to fall asleep.

So just all these factors are just, they're just super detrimental.

And I'm observing it not only in myself, but also in everybody around me, just as somebody who's grown up like with the evolution of the phones.

Yeah.

So Umla, that's very, what you say is very, very perceptive, that it's not always about mental health and anxiety and depression.

What you're seeing is actually the biggest effect of all, which is the shattering of the ability to attend to anything.

These things are designed to interrupt you, to call you back on.

They push you to connect to more people than you want to connect to.

And they end up taking five hours a day on average.

The American teenager spends five hours a day just on average.

So a lot are spending a lot more than that.

If you had five extra hours a day, do you think you could learn a foreign language or learn guitar pretty quickly in five hours a day for a year?

Definitely.

Do you think you could get into great shape?

Do you think you could read all kinds of books?

Do you think you could have all kinds of amazing hobbies?

And of course you could.

Five hours a day is basically all of your time beyond what you have to do.

And so your generation is trapped.

Your attention is being sucked out of you and it is making you less intelligent.

What I mean by that is it's not literally lowering your IQ on an IQ test, but it's lowering your ability to perform in the world as if you were smart.

So I teach a course at New York University called Flourishing.

It's 35 students.

They're all undergraduates, around 19 years old.

And the goal of the course is to make them stronger, emotionally stronger, smarter, and more sociable.

And in the smarter section, I say we can raise your IQ, your functional IQ, by 15 points.

First, regain control of your attention, turn off almost all notifications, move social media off your phone, onto your computer, and then get rid of it entirely.

If you regain your attention, you are going to perform in this world as if you are much smarter.

And if you don't do that, if you give all your time to an interrupting interrupting device that's designed to hook you, it's as though you're going to live your life as though you are a much less intelligent person.

What do you think about that?

Yeah, that's fascinating, actually.

Well, that our question to you, Dr.

Haiye, that was our question.

You know,

is there evidence to suggest that social media use directly impacts intelligence?

and IQ as measured through school performance or I don't know how, but that's what we were hoping hoping to find out today.

Yeah.

So what I can tell you, you know, and as a doctor, you'll appreciate this, is that there's a lot of correlational evidence.

There's not yet a lot of experimental evidence.

So we can say that from elementary school on, the kids who are spending a lot of time on screens are doing worse academically, even after you correct for social class and all that stuff.

So a lot of correlations.

We can also say there's a correlation in that test scores in the United States were going up slowly from the 1970s through 2012.

We were doing a little bit better job educating and educating our kids.

And then it turns around after 2012.

Exactly when all the kids get on smartphones, social media, iPads, Chromebooks, and school, exactly when everything gets screen-based, that's when education levels begin going down, not just in the U.S., but around the world.

So we can say humanity is getting less intelligent since 2012, not since COVID, since 2012.

I can't prove that it's because of smartphones and social media, but no one can come up with another story for why it started in 2012.

I don't know if you were watching in the beginning of this conversation, but what is going to happen to those two-year-olds?

40% of people now with two-year-olds, 40% of them, Jonathan was saying, the new survey shows, are on iPads at two years old.

What's going to happen to, they're not even going to be able to function in first and second grade with their brains.

That's right.

I'm hearing from more and more

preschool teachers who say that kids are showing up with language delays, with

they're not ready for school.

A lot of them aren't potty trained yet.

So an iPad is not a babysitter.

We have used it as a babysitter because it seems to be effective.

But you know what?

Opium and alcohol would be effective too at calming your child.

We shouldn't be using them.

So yeah, it is, that's why we've got to change quickly.

We don't have five years to change this.

We have to change this year, 2025.

We have to change the way we're raising kids.

We have to give them back an exciting, fun childhood childhood in the real world, not on a screen.

Well, thank you, Mala and Uma.

Thank you so much.

And thank you for your wonderful words at the beginning of this.

All those years, I helped raise you, Mala.

You did, Oprah.

You really did.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Good luck to you both.

I hope you take everything you've heard here and what you've read here.

And you're such a beautiful, already smart girl.

You want to enhance that in the world and be able to be fully present.

There's actually nothing better.

So good luck to you both.

Thank you.

So Alicia is a mom of two who says she notices a big difference between how boys and girls use social media, which is exactly what we were just saying here.

Jonathan, just, I hope you all were listening that for girls, it's different, boys, it's different.

Alicia and her 13-year-old son, Caleb, and 15-year-old daughter, Serene.

Is it Serene or Cyrene?

Cyrene.

Cyrene

are joining us from Houston.

Hi, Alicia.

What have you noticed?

What have you noticed?

What I've noticed is definitely harder for my daughter when it comes to communication.

Girls is so different than boys when navigating friendships.

There was a time when her friends, they decided to do a TikTok at school.

And typically her Instagram account is usually to showcase like her volleyball and her track.

But this time she was doing a TikTok dance.

She kind of showed off her stomach.

And I was like, why would you do that?

And so for her, it was, well, that's what other girls are doing.

And I'm like, but that's not you.

And so it's really hard with navigating, you know, how do we navigate those conversations, wanting to fit in and then having a harder time maybe saying no to her peer group.

Whereas with my son, when he was in the restroom at school and some boys asked him to record a fight club, He just said no and walked out.

So it was a lot easier for him to say no.

So with my daughter, i definitely find that it's harder for her to say no to that peer group and to really understand you know some of the i guess the difficulties that come with social media and interacting on social caleb and sirene what do you all think of how social media is affecting you caleb let's hear from you um i think social media affects a lot of young guys in a lot of different ways because some guys like to talk about others.

But what I usually use social media for is sports,

clips, highlights, and really sharing reels in my interest with my friends.

But I'm not the type of person to gossip and be mean to somebody else on a social media.

And Cyrene, for you?

Typically for me,

we'd watch like,

you know, hair.

videos,

sports quit,

of course, makeup take time here and

things like that.

Yeah.

So, Alicia, what did you want to say?

Did you have a question?

My question is, how do parents fairly balance between the rules and expectations for their teens when they are different genders and they respond differently to similar situations?

Well, I think there's no law that says that you have to give them all the same platforms and all the same,

you know, iPads and

smartphones.

What I'm advocating for is that we all adopt some simple rules.

No smartphone before high school, no social media before 16.

But the threats to your kids are different.

And you, as the mother, as any parent, you have to defend your kids against the threats that are coming for them.

And so I don't think, are your kids demanding that

if you block something for one, you have to block it for the other?

If they're saying that, that's just something kids say.

Kids are really good at being lawyers and making arguments about why what you're doing is unfair.

But they'll understand.

Just from what your kids have said already, it's clear.

They understand what's going on.

Well, I don't know if you've read The Anxious Generation or not.

Have you read this book yet, Alicia?

Not yet.

Okay, you absolutely have to read The Anxious Generation because what Jonathan is trying to do is to get communities together to agree.

Because if you're going to quit your phone by yourself, you are going to feel isolated and alone.

But if you get together with other parents, go ahead, Jonathan.

Oh, yeah, that's the key.

When we try to do this alone as one family, then yeah, your kids are going to feel isolated.

Now, that still might be the best for them.

That's the decision that I've made for my daughter, and it's very hard.

But if you can do this with just a couple other families, it's a lot easier.

Focus on giving your kids a great childhood with lots of fun, exciting things in the real world.

Don't just focus on the screens.

But I know the screens are where we're all fighting about now.

Thank you, Alicia.

Thank you, Caleb and Cyrene.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all.

Thank you all.

Beautiful family.

So, Jonathan, here we are.

What can parents do right now to help their children escape what you refer to as the smartphone trap?

So let me give you just a couple of suggestions.

So

one helpful suggestion

is to say it's not screens per se.

It's not that you have to keep your kid away from every screen.

Keep in mind that stories are good things.

Humans are a storytelling species.

We've always always told stories around the campfire.

So if you want to watch a movie, a 90-minute movie with your child, or let a couple of kids watch a movie together, that's great.

It's social.

It's a story.

It goes on a long time.

But fragmenting time, iPad time, that's not a story.

That doesn't build concentration.

That builds distraction.

And so it's really the private touchscreen, an iPad or an iPhone in a kid's hand, it's constant distraction and interruption.

So that should be kept to a minimum.

I would say don't even give them their own one until high school, really.

You know, you can let them watch, use your iPad on a long car trip, but don't give them their own private iPad or iPhone until they are in high school.

You can give them a flip phone earlier or a basic phone watch.

So I'm not saying remove all screens from life.

You're going to let your kids watch TV sometimes.

A TV is much better than an iPad or an iPhone.

The other important thing I would want to leave everyone with is, and we've talked about this a lot in this session, how important it is to find other families or community or church group or anything to do this with.

Because what our kids fear most, they don't fear getting cancer.

They don't fear getting brain damage.

They fear being isolated.

They fear being left out.

They fear being made fun of.

And so when they feel alone, they panic.

And so I'm not saying go out there and tell your kid, I'm taking away your phone and your social media account now and you're going to disappear from.

So I'm not saying do that.

But if you can find a few other families that will do that this is going to be happening all it is happening all over the world now this is the year 2425 this is when the world is waking up to the fact that we cannot raise children on touchscreens it is it is damaging their brain development so we've got to stop and if we do it together we can actually do it

Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan and I are going to be talking again in a few months.

So keep an eye out for that.

We'll have an announcement.

We're excited to share with you and all who who follow his work.

So thank you to our parents and teens and Carrie and Nick and Alicia and Cyrene and Caleb and Leah and Estella and Mala and Uma for sharing your honest experiences with us here.

The Anxious Generation is available now anywhere where books are sold.

It continues to be a bestseller because parents need this information and are opening up to a new way of being with their children after recognizing that what Jonathan says in this book is so powerful and effective.

So, if you're wondering, what do I do and how do we solve it?

And oh my God, this is taking over our family, this is your answer.

See you all next week.

Go well, everybody.

You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

I'll see you next week.

Thanks, everybody.