May 12, 2024 • 27 mins
Jordan Klepper sits down with author Lexi Freiman to unpack how her new book, "The Book of Ayn," helps readers understand narcissism through the lense of satire, and how ego deaths can lead to enlightenment. Plus, NYU professor and author, Jonathan Haidt, discusses his latest book, "The Anxious Generation," and how the shift from outside play to the internet and social media has negatively affected young people's mental health and development.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest today is an.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Author who've laid This book is the Book of Iron.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Please welcome Lexi Freeman.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Welcome, Thank you, welcome, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Lexi. Yes, I love this book.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
This book is so funny and seering.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Do you like Syring?
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I love Syrious. You love Syring? Yeah? You want a
seering novel. It gets into the ship.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It makes fun of a little bit of everything and
reveals something about yourself. I mean, it reveals nothing about me.
I don't see myself at any kind of literature. But
I love this book.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I think.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
This book starts it follows somebody who gets canceled. Yes,
and then one of her first moves is she finds
the writings of Ain Rand.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yes, and you.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Describe her initial her initial thoughts about Iinrand as the
character says, and the main character says, I had always
considered her the gateway drug for bad husbands to quit
their jobs and start online stock trading.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
What is a compelling about Iinrand for you and starting
a novel like this?
Speaker 5 (01:33):
I mean, to me, she was, you know, basically the
worst person I could write a book about, which really
appealed to me. She's so contentious within the culture. But
I had recently watched a documentary about her when I
started thinking about this, and to be honest, I mean,
(01:54):
her ideas are provocative and difficult, but she also just
had like a crazy sex life, which I found. You know,
she was essentially in an open relationship at the end
of her you know, in her sixties, she was having
an affair with like a man twenty five years younger
than her. So, like iron Rand was basically a polyamorous,
(02:16):
Like she had a polycule, which I think people sort
of like don't know about her, and it kind of
destroyed her in the end. She ended up sort of
like having a nervous breakdown when he was cheating on her.
It kind of undermined her whole philosophy of selfishness in
a way, and I found that incredibly interesting and funny.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
She's just funny, funny.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
If there's one thing that's gonna take Iran down, who
thought it was going to be polyamorous.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was polyamory.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
It was polyamoring that did it in the end, which
I just find delicious.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
I think it's fun I think your book sort of
looks at what it means to be selfish. It sort
of examines narcissism, Like what to you is interesting about
the idea of narcissis and if you can make it
about me, well.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
I mean, you know, I'm not the first person to
say this, but the culture is pretty narcissistic, and so
you know, wanting to write a satire about the culture,
you know, you want to write something that's going to
speak to all sides. And I kind of felt like,
you know, narcissism is also something that speaks to the
(03:27):
nature of the artist, which this book is about someone
who's grappling with this idea of selfishness and wanting to
be the best and wanting to be interesting and special
and have you know, contrarian opinions. But then there's also
this desire to be empathetic and to do good in
the world. And it's the kind of the conflict between
(03:47):
selfishness and altruism that is ain Rand's whole philosophy that
I feel is kind of distilled in the artistic temperament,
in the artist's personality. That feels like this really interesting
kind of paradox to me, and narcissism plays into that
really beautifully is and is also funny.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It starts, it starts to unpack, start to unpack this
idea of cancel culture, Like, how do you see that?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Is there an upside to cancel the culture?
Speaker 5 (04:16):
I mean, yes, sure, there's you know things, things it
moves the needle, There's there's cultural change in a way
that can be good. And then there's also just you know,
I had a conversation about this with a canceled person,
and the conversation when in the sort of direction of
you know, what being canceled kind of affords you the
(04:38):
opportunity to do is to kind of kill your ego
and not give a shit anymore about like what people think,
and because the ego is all about reputation and trying
to succeed, and and when that's not a possibility for
you anymore, then you get to pursue enlightenment, which I
think is the other thing we could all be doing
with our lives if we want.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
You're saying, in order for me to get enlightened, I
have to first get canceled.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Is that what I need to do tonight? Tonight? Maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm gonna hold off. I want to. I want to
hold out too, that ego just a little bit longer.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I think enlightenment is good for you know, as you
get older, and you know, we are all supposed to
be sort of shedding our egos and not caring about
these things that preoccupy us in our youth. So I
feel like getting enlightened is something you could put off
for time, you know, retirement slash enlightenment and that that seems.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Like a good thing.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, working at Walmart Mark, go go, go work at enlightenment, right,
that's the time.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yes, Now this is a sattire. I think it's.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I think it's it's it's fascinating how you're so specific
in this book and you're able to satirize the left
and the right as you move this character through these spaces.
I guess I'm curious. I always view satire and the
Daily Show. We dabble in it here and there, but
more other than me, it seems like satire is a broadsword.
It's rarely uh, it's it's a scalpel.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
It seems as if you find complexity in it. How
do you find complexity and satire?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I think you just have to be really specific. You
have to be really generous. Like the reader is smart.
You can't try to trick them with easy kind of
ideas and jokes.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I you can. I mean sometimes it can be very rewarding, yes,
and a lot of people will fall for it.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
But if you want to kind of if you want
the reader to really come on side with you, and
especially with your most transgressive material, then you've got to
really not take them for granted, and you've really I
edit the crap out of my books. I go in there,
I try to see it from all different sides, and
I really try to get as specific as possible, you know,
so that the reader feels like I respect their intelligence
(06:50):
and I you know, I'm thinking of the thing they
might argue back with me about, and I get specific.
You know, there's a scene in the book, a sex
scene where the character is pretending to do the locker
room scene from Jerry Maguire.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Do you remember that fit?
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Yeah, So you know, I watched that scene a lot,
and I really got very specific about how you might
perform certain sexual acts while doing the Jerry Maguire locker scene.
So you know, you just you do it, You just
you you commit and you and you really go all
(07:27):
the way with it.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
If obsessing it and thinking about sex scenes from movies
could make you a great author, I think I would
be a great author.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I'm curious. I'm curious what you say about the editor.
That's all it is, right, I'm.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Curious when you talk about editing too, like are you
are you having a conversation with yourself as you're writing
that with like more extreme points of view than you
don't know if you fully believe and you're writing that
thing out, and then your editing process is a chance
to essentially see if it if it holds water exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
I'm always, in a sense trying to cancel myself as
I'm writing. I'm thinking of like what would someone who
thinks the opposite of this say? And then what would
the counter argument be? And like how would I destroy
myself if I wanted to? That's how I write. I'm
(08:16):
just constantly thinking of these other arguments, and in a sense,
it just makes your writing better and better, and in
a weird, corny way, it makes you better because the
more you think about what the other side might think
and try to make your argument better. You know, the
smarter and the more kind of compassionate you become. And
(08:36):
I think that's why I get away with saying some
of the things I say in the book, because it's
done with you know, I'm not I think I'm respecting
these characters and their complexity and their wholeness and understanding
why they think what they think and looking for the funny,
funny parts really and the absurd parts, which you know,
(09:00):
who do.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You imagine your audiences when you're writing?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Oh God?
Speaker 5 (09:04):
I mean, I think it's just like this mean voice
in my own.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Head you're trying to quiet.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Yeah, it's literally just me being as mean as I
can to myself. I don't know's there's probably a few.
I think there's a couple of critics I think about
a little bit. Ones I respect and ones I don't.
They're in my head, some of my friends who are
writers that are kind of in my head. But yeah,
(09:36):
and yes, definitely like these people I imagine holding really
different opinions to me. I feel like there's like an
avatar of that person that's sort of they're saying, but
what about you know this? And why aren't you thinking
about this? And I'm like, okay, okay, and then you know,
you go back in. So I don't know. It's a
(09:57):
whole there's a whole parliament of people in there telling
me that I'm getting it wrong.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Well, I would say, I think you got it right.
I find this book hilarious, fantastic. Congratulations. I hope at
least one of those voices in your head is happy
with the product. The Book of ID is available now.
Lexi Freeman, We're going to take a quick Greg.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Right back after this. Welcome back to the Daily Show.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I guess tonight is a social psychologist who teaches ethical
leadership at New York University. He's here to talk about
his latest best selling book, The Anxious Generation. Please welcome
Jonathan Heit. Jonathan, I see people walking all over Brooklyn
(11:00):
holding this book. It's talking about.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
The Great Rewiring. Talk to me, what is the great Rewiring?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So something happened to young people born after nineteen ninety five.
All of a sudden in the early twenty tens, their
mental health collapsed. Rates of anxiety and depressions skyrocket it
self harm is up like one hundred and fifty percent
for younger teen girls. Suicide is up fifty percent. Something
happened in the early twenty tens. And my argument in
(11:27):
the book is a tragedy in two acts. The first
act is the loss of the play based childhood. It's
what anybody over forty in this audience had. You were
out with your friends after school, there was nobody supervising.
You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how
to face adversity. So that's what kids have had for
tens hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being
(11:48):
a mammal.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
You play, you.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Develop skills. We began to crack down on that to
lock kids up in the nineties, to not let them out.
So we're restricting what they most need, which is play,
from the nineties through the two thousands. But mental health
doesn't collapse, then it's actually pretty stable. Then we get
act too, which is the arrival of the phone based childhood.
And what that is is in twenty ten, everybody had
(12:12):
a flip phone. The iPhone had come out, but most
teens had a flip phone, no front facing camera, no
social media on the phone, no high speed data. And
by twenty twenty fifteen everyone's got all those other things.
Now suddenly everyone has a smartphone, front facing camera, high
speed internet, social media, especially Instagram on the phone, and
(12:34):
almost like someone turned a switch in twenty thirteen, girls
in America and many of the countries suddenly become very anxious, depressed,
and self harming. And so that's what the book is about.
Something changed between twenty ten and twenty fifteen, and I'm
trying to explain what it is.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You say, in an act to they introduced Chekov cell phone. Yeah,
and we know what ends up happening after that. You
look at sort of the adolescent brain. How dumb and
stupid is a thirteen year old brain?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
I would say, not dumb and stupid at all. I
would say it's in the process of remodeling. And it's right,
it's still in the early phases. So we have you know,
children have a brain which is actually almost full size.
By age six, the brain is almost full.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Oh, fact check that. I don't think that's I don't
think that's right. Okay, can you must be right?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yes, the rest of childhood is not about growth. It's
about picking which neurons surviving, which ones get eliminated. It's
all about wiring up, and that happens slowly in childhood,
but then around age eleven twelve, for girls. Puberty starts
a couple years later for boys, and you get this massive,
quick rewiring of the brain to sort of locked down
into an adult configuration. It starts more in the back
(13:45):
of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is the last part
to develop, and so around the age of thirteen, kids
emotional areas are rewiring. They have the beginnings of sexual
urges and lust. They're very emotional passionate, but they don't
have the self control to say, like, no, I'm not
going to spend a fifth hour on TikTok. I'm just
going to keep going because I can't stop myself.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
And when does that stop?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Because I'm looking for that and like eight, like when
does that part of my brain close off and I
can put the phone down?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Well, in your case, I really can't say. But for
most people buying.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
A sequel again Smart Smart.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Twenty five is when when the front of cortex is
done rewired.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
I'll tell you when that happened.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Well, it's interesting how you're talking a lot about not
only these phones come in and they change the way
kids think in the way society thinks, but you talk
about raising a child an anti fragile child, and you
make some bold claims in this book, one of which
is right here. You claim that this Merry go round
(14:49):
playground spinner is the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Defend yourself? How is it? How person all?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Okay? What is better?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I mean it? Teeter totter. It's just a metaphor.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You're down, you know, It's just it's what life is
all about, you know, work with somebody else.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
One's up, ones down. There's no way to stay in
the middle.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
The key.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Okay, While I have no citations to prove my claim,
the psychological thing I'm trying to get at there is thrills.
This is something I talk a lot about in chapter
three that kids need to play, but they especially need
risky play. Kids literally need to face risk. If you
don't give them risk, they'll find a way to get it.
They'll climb up on walls, they'll climb trees, if they skateboard,
(15:40):
they'll skateboard downstairs. Kids need to sort of need to
have some actual risk. And so, yes, you're right, A
swing a teiner drip. It's really big and you could
come crashing down. There is risk and to hurt these
kids well, because you have to put kids in a
situation where they can get hurt, because only then do
they learn every day how to not get hurt. And
what we've done since the nineties is we've put them
(16:01):
in places they are so safe there's no chance to
get hurt, which means they don't learn how to not
get hurt. The human program of evolution is kids face
risk that they're a little scared, they have to be
a little scared, they overcome it, and then they're more
confident the next time around, and that's the path to adulthood.
But we stopped that in the nineties. We said no
more of that. We're going to keep you overprotected forever,
(16:21):
and then we're going to send you to universities like
mine where you're coming in still not ready for independent living.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Now you take that, and then you also then fast
forward to this modern era where kids are obsessed with phones,
they're on the internet, they're on social media sites. Is
there an argument, though, that the anti fragile way in
which kids need to it's not to pull this thing
away that they need to be exposed to the risk
that the internet has. I mean, this is the world
that they're going to be born into anyway. Shouldn't they
(16:49):
be learning and how to navigate that at an early age?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, in theory, yes, but let's look at say sexuality.
We want them to learn how to have sex. Does
that mean we should give them running start at age eight?
There are certain things that are not appropriate at that time.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
I didn't. Just to be clear, I did not say
that this was not.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
This is that that's not Thenically yeah, that was yeah, yes, yes, boy, yeah.
So I've heard this before in theory, like, oh, you know,
are you why are you? You know you're you're saying
we're where we need to protect them less in the
real world, but you're saying we need to protect them
more in the virtual world. Isn't that contradictory? Not at all,
(17:26):
Not at all. Kids where mammals. Kids need to be
out playing, rough housing, putting their arms around each other, touching,
out in nature. This is the way a lot of
us grew up. You play outside, and when you put
kids in an environment where everything goes through the phone,
as soon as you give your child the phone that
they're going to use that. Now, the latest stats are
around nine hours a day they're on their phone, and
(17:46):
a lot of them, it's almost all the time because
they're always checking. That blocks out time and nature time
with friends. Time with friends is down sixty five percent
since twenty ten. Kids need time with friends. Texting and
sending emojis doesn't compensate. It's done instead of time with friends,
and that I think is why as soon as they
moved on to social media and the boys onto multiplayer
(18:08):
video games, they got so lonely. Loneliness surged along with
depression and anxiety.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
It's interesting you talk a little bit about in childhood
discover mode versus like defensive mode, and even in a
world of the arts, I did improv comedy forever, and
I think the mindset of that is a discovery mindset, right,
and so you're constantly looking for something. It was interesting
in reading this in terms of how to raise a
child and to put them in that open mindset.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
But it seems.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Remarkably reflective of just how society feels right now. And
I don't know if that's because partially because of our
connection to social media and the anxiety that is there,
but do you see parallels there as well that we
are inadvertently too in defensive mode because of these devices
that we have in our pockets in our hands.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, right now it does seem like everything is going
to hell, because it actually is.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Oh that's o kind. Yeah, it's not just my phone
telling me that.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
That fut I'm great. But it wasn't that well, it
wasn't that way in twenty twelve. So the fact that
this happened in so many countries at the same time,
and a lot of people say, oh, well, you know
the global financial crisis, that must be what it was
like there were real economic difficulties. Yeah, that was two
thousand and eight. Why do the numbers not begin going
up until twelve twenty thirteen, when the economy is getting
(19:24):
better and better. So you can't make the claim that
things were so terrible in Obama's second term compared to
his first, that all of a sudden, teens, especially teen girls,
suddenly fell off a cliff. That just doesn't work. So,
you know, if this had all started in twenty twenty,
we could say, well, yeah, you know, COVID and all
the craziness that's going on, But this started in twenty twelve.
(19:45):
There's no other explanation that anyone's proposed for why it
happened so many countries and hit girls the hardest.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It was interesting.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You have a chapter in here that looks at also
faith and I'm an atheist. I know you mentioned that
you are an atheist as well, but you speak to
or of this this God shaped hole. I think it's
a Blaze Pascal quote. God shape hold everybody's every human
heart right, and that this lack of religion is something
(20:11):
that is affecting childhood in a way that I get
as an atheist. I always had my dukes up when
that comes about. You said you were one, so you
you earned yourself a pass. Okay, But this lack of
sort of religious institutions in this modern media landscape, how
do you see that as something that's affecting like a childhood.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So the way to think about this as as an
atheist without getting defensive.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Is good luck.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
No, I've been I've been working on this professional for
many years. I finally got it down. Let's se it, okay,
just just looking at it descriptively. Psychologically, religious people are
a little happier than non religious people. That's been true
for a long time, just as married people are happier
than non married people.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
On average.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Your milage may.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Vary, but.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
People need to be tied in, locked in in a community.
I'm a big fan of Emil dirkhim the Sociologist is
my favorite thinker of all time. When we're not tied
and locked in, we're free. But that doesn't make us happy.
We don't have we have nothing to push against, we
have no sense of meaning. It's like if you try
to raise a plant not in the ground, but just
(21:12):
like up in the air, and it just can't be done.
And so religious kids are rooted in traditions, faith, rituals, community,
They go to church every Sunday. The Jewish kids have Shabbat.
They literally can't use electronics for a day. So they
were always happier than the secular kids. But what happens
after twenty twelve, It's quite remarkable. In all the graphs,
the religious kids get a little more anxious and depressed.
(21:34):
The secular kids get much more anxious and depressed. So
what I'm saying is, especially if you're an atheist, you're
gonna have to work much harder. You're gonna be much
more intentional about rooting your kid in stable social relationships.
If you give him an iPad and then he graduates
to a phone, and it's all this network, that network
interacting with strangers and weirdos and bots and ais. That's
(21:55):
not a community that's crazy making.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It might just be easier to get him to believe
in angels.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Well, then take away the iPad.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I've had it there. I do want to You've written
a lot of very interesting books.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
The book you wrote before this, The Coddling of the
American Mind, you co wrote, sort of looked at safetyism.
It looked at the college, the college landscape. And now
what we see on college campuses, these protests are breaking out.
I wonder, as somebody who looked closely at that and
the ways in which students kind of moved through it,
what you see now in these campuses.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, so you know, I don't want to comment on
the substance of the protest. This is a complicated issue.
I respect people on all sides. We all agree on campus,
we all agree students have a right to protest constitutionally
protected it. But two things I see going on is
one is the protest and this is boo. Greg lukian Off,
my co author, first notice in twenty fourteen that the
shouting down of speakers, the activism on campus that was
(22:54):
really illiberal, and it was intimidating, and it was stopping
people from speaking. It was based on arguments about fragility,
about my mental health or her mental health, like we
can't let this person on campus because it'll be dangerous,
it'll be harmful. Speech is violence. So that's a new
idea that comes in with gen Z because they haven't
been given an anti fragile childhood. They've been given way
(23:14):
too much therapy. They think everything is trauma. So we
see that by beginning in twenty fourteen twenty It wasn't
there in twenty twelve. It was a very new in
twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and so the protesters. Now I
don't know the details, but like, you know, just one
thing I read this morning. Someone sent me a quote
from a student at Harvard where she was in the encampments,
and she said, if Harvard cares so goddamn much about
my mental health, why don't they just divest and you know,
(23:37):
do all the things that we're demanding, Like, yeah, you know,
you should do you know, Harvard, you do these because
our mental health is at stake. That's something new, and
it's just not going to get them very far. In
political life going forward once they leave campus, Like, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Here, I read this book.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I want to do this right. How do I helicopter
parent my child correctly? Like, what are some tactical things
I can take away from this?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Well, you just push them out of the helicopter.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Sorry, learn how to fly right. That's not anti fradul
for birds.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
It works, I guess, not for us. So the key thing, okay,
So the key thing to the solution. So even though
you know a lot of my books, a lot of
my writing is very dark about things are actually going
to hell in a lot of ways. But this one,
we can solve it in a year or two. Because
the reason it got so bad so quickly is that
we're trapped in a it's called a It's a social trap.
(24:35):
It's a collective action trap. The reason why we all
feel we have to give our kid a smartphone by
the time they're ten is because everyone else did. And
your kid says, you know, dad, I'm the only one.
I'm being left out. So we're all we're you know,
we're all doing that. And the reason my students are
spending so much time on TikTok, they say, is because
everyone else is and I have to keep up. I
have to know what's happening. So we're all trapped in this.
(24:57):
What that means is that if we decide to escape,
we can escape together. So I proposed them in the book.
There's a lot of suggestions, but four norms that will
break these collective action traps. First, no smartphone before high school.
Just clear this out of the lives of elementary and
middle school kids. Send them out. Give them a flip phone,
a dumb phone, a phone watch so you can text them,
but don't give them the entire internet, including strangers all
(25:21):
over the world who are trying to get at them sexually.
Like this is just craziness. So no smartphone till high school.
The second is no social media till sixteen. You know,
the things that are sent around on social media, the
things they're exposed to, Like I just recently learned about
the video A Cat and a Blender, which was popular
while ago. I know it is exactly it is exactly
what it sounds like, so you know, and this is
(25:42):
just this is just part of childhood. Is hardcore porn,
animal cruelty, beheading videos. So you know, let's just at
least wait till they're sixteen before they see that stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I was gonna say, that's the appropriate age to watch
a canital lenders.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
At sixteen, it's like, ah, you get to drive a
car and then what you shit? Worst thing out? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah. What I'm after here is not the optimum age.
It's what's in a minimum age that we could actually
all do together, because that's the key. If most of
us do this, we solve the problem. The third norm
is phone free schools. This is the most powerful one
that we can do instantly. So if you're watching this
and you have kids that go to a school that
lets the kids keep the phone in the pocket, send well,
(26:20):
buy a copy of my book for the principal note
to you. I have you know, I have videos. Send
them a video of my talks on phone free schools.
Every school needs to go phone free by September. The
phones are They don't just make the kids anxious and lonely,
they make them less intelligent. Test scores have been dropping
around the world since twenty twelve. Once the kids bring
a phone in school, they're doing this they're not listening
to the teacher. So get rid of phones in schools.
(26:42):
And then the fourth norm is far more independence, free play,
and responsibility in the real world. We have to. So
it's this is not just about let's take away, take away,
it's let's give them a real childhood, the kind of
childhood that us older people, the kind that we look
back on. So so if we love our children, the
(27:05):
best thing we can give them is a real human childhood.
And if we do it together, we can get this
done in the next year or two.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Just give your kids some space, a beer and a
bag of glass.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And this should be.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
It's a fascinating reading and an important one. The Anxious
Generation is available now.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Doun it out Explore more shows from the Daily Show
podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 5 (27:30):
Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on par
Amount Plus.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
This has been a Comedy Central podcast
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest today is an.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Author who've laid This book is the Book of Iron.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Please welcome Lexi Freeman.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Welcome, Thank you, welcome, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Lexi. Yes, I love this book.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
This book is so funny and seering.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Do you like Syring?
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I love Syrious. You love Syring? Yeah? You want a
seering novel. It gets into the ship.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It makes fun of a little bit of everything and
reveals something about yourself. I mean, it reveals nothing about me.
I don't see myself at any kind of literature. But
I love this book.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I think.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
This book starts it follows somebody who gets canceled. Yes,
and then one of her first moves is she finds
the writings of Ain Rand.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yes, and you.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Describe her initial her initial thoughts about Iinrand as the
character says, and the main character says, I had always
considered her the gateway drug for bad husbands to quit
their jobs and start online stock trading.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
What is a compelling about Iinrand for you and starting
a novel like this?
Speaker 5 (01:33):
I mean, to me, she was, you know, basically the
worst person I could write a book about, which really
appealed to me. She's so contentious within the culture. But
I had recently watched a documentary about her when I
started thinking about this, and to be honest, I mean,
(01:54):
her ideas are provocative and difficult, but she also just
had like a crazy sex life, which I found. You know,
she was essentially in an open relationship at the end
of her you know, in her sixties, she was having
an affair with like a man twenty five years younger
than her. So, like iron Rand was basically a polyamorous,
(02:16):
Like she had a polycule, which I think people sort
of like don't know about her, and it kind of
destroyed her in the end. She ended up sort of
like having a nervous breakdown when he was cheating on her.
It kind of undermined her whole philosophy of selfishness in
a way, and I found that incredibly interesting and funny.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
She's just funny, funny.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
If there's one thing that's gonna take Iran down, who
thought it was going to be polyamorous.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was polyamory.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
It was polyamoring that did it in the end, which
I just find delicious.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
I think it's fun I think your book sort of
looks at what it means to be selfish. It sort
of examines narcissism, Like what to you is interesting about
the idea of narcissis and if you can make it
about me, well.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
I mean, you know, I'm not the first person to
say this, but the culture is pretty narcissistic, and so
you know, wanting to write a satire about the culture,
you know, you want to write something that's going to
speak to all sides. And I kind of felt like,
you know, narcissism is also something that speaks to the
(03:27):
nature of the artist, which this book is about someone
who's grappling with this idea of selfishness and wanting to
be the best and wanting to be interesting and special
and have you know, contrarian opinions. But then there's also
this desire to be empathetic and to do good in
the world. And it's the kind of the conflict between
(03:47):
selfishness and altruism that is ain Rand's whole philosophy that
I feel is kind of distilled in the artistic temperament,
in the artist's personality. That feels like this really interesting
kind of paradox to me, and narcissism plays into that
really beautifully is and is also funny.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It starts, it starts to unpack, start to unpack this
idea of cancel culture, Like, how do you see that?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Is there an upside to cancel the culture?
Speaker 5 (04:16):
I mean, yes, sure, there's you know things, things it
moves the needle, There's there's cultural change in a way
that can be good. And then there's also just you know,
I had a conversation about this with a canceled person,
and the conversation when in the sort of direction of
you know, what being canceled kind of affords you the
(04:38):
opportunity to do is to kind of kill your ego
and not give a shit anymore about like what people think,
and because the ego is all about reputation and trying
to succeed, and and when that's not a possibility for
you anymore, then you get to pursue enlightenment, which I
think is the other thing we could all be doing
with our lives if we want.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
You're saying, in order for me to get enlightened, I
have to first get canceled.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Is that what I need to do tonight? Tonight? Maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm gonna hold off. I want to. I want to
hold out too, that ego just a little bit longer.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I think enlightenment is good for you know, as you
get older, and you know, we are all supposed to
be sort of shedding our egos and not caring about
these things that preoccupy us in our youth. So I
feel like getting enlightened is something you could put off
for time, you know, retirement slash enlightenment and that that seems.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Like a good thing.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, working at Walmart Mark, go go, go work at enlightenment, right,
that's the time.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yes, Now this is a sattire. I think it's.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I think it's it's it's fascinating how you're so specific
in this book and you're able to satirize the left
and the right as you move this character through these spaces.
I guess I'm curious. I always view satire and the
Daily Show. We dabble in it here and there, but
more other than me, it seems like satire is a broadsword.
It's rarely uh, it's it's a scalpel.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
It seems as if you find complexity in it. How
do you find complexity and satire?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I think you just have to be really specific. You
have to be really generous. Like the reader is smart.
You can't try to trick them with easy kind of
ideas and jokes.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I you can. I mean sometimes it can be very rewarding, yes,
and a lot of people will fall for it.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
But if you want to kind of if you want
the reader to really come on side with you, and
especially with your most transgressive material, then you've got to
really not take them for granted, and you've really I
edit the crap out of my books. I go in there,
I try to see it from all different sides, and
I really try to get as specific as possible, you know,
so that the reader feels like I respect their intelligence
(06:50):
and I you know, I'm thinking of the thing they
might argue back with me about, and I get specific.
You know, there's a scene in the book, a sex
scene where the character is pretending to do the locker
room scene from Jerry Maguire.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Do you remember that fit?
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Yeah, So you know, I watched that scene a lot,
and I really got very specific about how you might
perform certain sexual acts while doing the Jerry Maguire locker scene.
So you know, you just you do it, You just
you you commit and you and you really go all
(07:27):
the way with it.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
If obsessing it and thinking about sex scenes from movies
could make you a great author, I think I would
be a great author.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I'm curious. I'm curious what you say about the editor.
That's all it is, right, I'm.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Curious when you talk about editing too, like are you
are you having a conversation with yourself as you're writing
that with like more extreme points of view than you
don't know if you fully believe and you're writing that
thing out, and then your editing process is a chance
to essentially see if it if it holds water exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
I'm always, in a sense trying to cancel myself as
I'm writing. I'm thinking of like what would someone who
thinks the opposite of this say? And then what would
the counter argument be? And like how would I destroy
myself if I wanted to? That's how I write. I'm
(08:16):
just constantly thinking of these other arguments, and in a sense,
it just makes your writing better and better, and in
a weird, corny way, it makes you better because the
more you think about what the other side might think
and try to make your argument better. You know, the
smarter and the more kind of compassionate you become. And
(08:36):
I think that's why I get away with saying some
of the things I say in the book, because it's
done with you know, I'm not I think I'm respecting
these characters and their complexity and their wholeness and understanding
why they think what they think and looking for the funny,
funny parts really and the absurd parts, which you know,
(09:00):
who do.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You imagine your audiences when you're writing?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Oh God?
Speaker 5 (09:04):
I mean, I think it's just like this mean voice
in my own.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Head you're trying to quiet.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Yeah, it's literally just me being as mean as I
can to myself. I don't know's there's probably a few.
I think there's a couple of critics I think about
a little bit. Ones I respect and ones I don't.
They're in my head, some of my friends who are
writers that are kind of in my head. But yeah,
(09:36):
and yes, definitely like these people I imagine holding really
different opinions to me. I feel like there's like an
avatar of that person that's sort of they're saying, but
what about you know this? And why aren't you thinking
about this? And I'm like, okay, okay, and then you know,
you go back in. So I don't know. It's a
(09:57):
whole there's a whole parliament of people in there telling
me that I'm getting it wrong.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Well, I would say, I think you got it right.
I find this book hilarious, fantastic. Congratulations. I hope at
least one of those voices in your head is happy
with the product. The Book of ID is available now.
Lexi Freeman, We're going to take a quick Greg.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Right back after this. Welcome back to the Daily Show.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I guess tonight is a social psychologist who teaches ethical
leadership at New York University. He's here to talk about
his latest best selling book, The Anxious Generation. Please welcome
Jonathan Heit. Jonathan, I see people walking all over Brooklyn
(11:00):
holding this book. It's talking about.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
The Great Rewiring. Talk to me, what is the great Rewiring?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So something happened to young people born after nineteen ninety five.
All of a sudden in the early twenty tens, their
mental health collapsed. Rates of anxiety and depressions skyrocket it
self harm is up like one hundred and fifty percent
for younger teen girls. Suicide is up fifty percent. Something
happened in the early twenty tens. And my argument in
(11:27):
the book is a tragedy in two acts. The first
act is the loss of the play based childhood. It's
what anybody over forty in this audience had. You were
out with your friends after school, there was nobody supervising.
You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how
to face adversity. So that's what kids have had for
tens hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being
(11:48):
a mammal.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
You play, you.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Develop skills. We began to crack down on that to
lock kids up in the nineties, to not let them out.
So we're restricting what they most need, which is play,
from the nineties through the two thousands. But mental health
doesn't collapse, then it's actually pretty stable. Then we get
act too, which is the arrival of the phone based childhood.
And what that is is in twenty ten, everybody had
(12:12):
a flip phone. The iPhone had come out, but most
teens had a flip phone, no front facing camera, no
social media on the phone, no high speed data. And
by twenty twenty fifteen everyone's got all those other things.
Now suddenly everyone has a smartphone, front facing camera, high
speed internet, social media, especially Instagram on the phone, and
(12:34):
almost like someone turned a switch in twenty thirteen, girls
in America and many of the countries suddenly become very anxious, depressed,
and self harming. And so that's what the book is about.
Something changed between twenty ten and twenty fifteen, and I'm
trying to explain what it is.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You say, in an act to they introduced Chekov cell phone. Yeah,
and we know what ends up happening after that. You
look at sort of the adolescent brain. How dumb and
stupid is a thirteen year old brain?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
I would say, not dumb and stupid at all. I
would say it's in the process of remodeling. And it's right,
it's still in the early phases. So we have you know,
children have a brain which is actually almost full size.
By age six, the brain is almost full.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Oh, fact check that. I don't think that's I don't
think that's right. Okay, can you must be right?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yes, the rest of childhood is not about growth. It's
about picking which neurons surviving, which ones get eliminated. It's
all about wiring up, and that happens slowly in childhood,
but then around age eleven twelve, for girls. Puberty starts
a couple years later for boys, and you get this massive,
quick rewiring of the brain to sort of locked down
into an adult configuration. It starts more in the back
(13:45):
of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is the last part
to develop, and so around the age of thirteen, kids
emotional areas are rewiring. They have the beginnings of sexual
urges and lust. They're very emotional passionate, but they don't
have the self control to say, like, no, I'm not
going to spend a fifth hour on TikTok. I'm just
going to keep going because I can't stop myself.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
And when does that stop?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Because I'm looking for that and like eight, like when
does that part of my brain close off and I
can put the phone down?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Well, in your case, I really can't say. But for
most people buying.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
A sequel again Smart Smart.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Twenty five is when when the front of cortex is
done rewired.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
I'll tell you when that happened.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Well, it's interesting how you're talking a lot about not
only these phones come in and they change the way
kids think in the way society thinks, but you talk
about raising a child an anti fragile child, and you
make some bold claims in this book, one of which
is right here. You claim that this Merry go round
(14:49):
playground spinner is the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Defend yourself? How is it? How person all?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Okay? What is better?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I mean it? Teeter totter. It's just a metaphor.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You're down, you know, It's just it's what life is
all about, you know, work with somebody else.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
One's up, ones down. There's no way to stay in
the middle.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
The key.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Okay, While I have no citations to prove my claim,
the psychological thing I'm trying to get at there is thrills.
This is something I talk a lot about in chapter
three that kids need to play, but they especially need
risky play. Kids literally need to face risk. If you
don't give them risk, they'll find a way to get it.
They'll climb up on walls, they'll climb trees, if they skateboard,
(15:40):
they'll skateboard downstairs. Kids need to sort of need to
have some actual risk. And so, yes, you're right, A
swing a teiner drip. It's really big and you could
come crashing down. There is risk and to hurt these
kids well, because you have to put kids in a
situation where they can get hurt, because only then do
they learn every day how to not get hurt. And
what we've done since the nineties is we've put them
(16:01):
in places they are so safe there's no chance to
get hurt, which means they don't learn how to not
get hurt. The human program of evolution is kids face
risk that they're a little scared, they have to be
a little scared, they overcome it, and then they're more
confident the next time around, and that's the path to adulthood.
But we stopped that in the nineties. We said no
more of that. We're going to keep you overprotected forever,
(16:21):
and then we're going to send you to universities like
mine where you're coming in still not ready for independent living.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Now you take that, and then you also then fast
forward to this modern era where kids are obsessed with phones,
they're on the internet, they're on social media sites. Is
there an argument, though, that the anti fragile way in
which kids need to it's not to pull this thing
away that they need to be exposed to the risk
that the internet has. I mean, this is the world
that they're going to be born into anyway. Shouldn't they
(16:49):
be learning and how to navigate that at an early age?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, in theory, yes, but let's look at say sexuality.
We want them to learn how to have sex. Does
that mean we should give them running start at age eight?
There are certain things that are not appropriate at that time.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
I didn't. Just to be clear, I did not say
that this was not.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
This is that that's not Thenically yeah, that was yeah, yes, yes, boy, yeah.
So I've heard this before in theory, like, oh, you know,
are you why are you? You know you're you're saying
we're where we need to protect them less in the
real world, but you're saying we need to protect them
more in the virtual world. Isn't that contradictory? Not at all,
(17:26):
Not at all. Kids where mammals. Kids need to be
out playing, rough housing, putting their arms around each other, touching,
out in nature. This is the way a lot of
us grew up. You play outside, and when you put
kids in an environment where everything goes through the phone,
as soon as you give your child the phone that
they're going to use that. Now, the latest stats are
around nine hours a day they're on their phone, and
(17:46):
a lot of them, it's almost all the time because
they're always checking. That blocks out time and nature time
with friends. Time with friends is down sixty five percent
since twenty ten. Kids need time with friends. Texting and
sending emojis doesn't compensate. It's done instead of time with friends,
and that I think is why as soon as they
moved on to social media and the boys onto multiplayer
(18:08):
video games, they got so lonely. Loneliness surged along with
depression and anxiety.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
It's interesting you talk a little bit about in childhood
discover mode versus like defensive mode, and even in a
world of the arts, I did improv comedy forever, and
I think the mindset of that is a discovery mindset, right,
and so you're constantly looking for something. It was interesting
in reading this in terms of how to raise a
child and to put them in that open mindset.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
But it seems.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Remarkably reflective of just how society feels right now. And
I don't know if that's because partially because of our
connection to social media and the anxiety that is there,
but do you see parallels there as well that we
are inadvertently too in defensive mode because of these devices
that we have in our pockets in our hands.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, right now it does seem like everything is going
to hell, because it actually is.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Oh that's o kind. Yeah, it's not just my phone
telling me that.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
That fut I'm great. But it wasn't that well, it
wasn't that way in twenty twelve. So the fact that
this happened in so many countries at the same time,
and a lot of people say, oh, well, you know
the global financial crisis, that must be what it was
like there were real economic difficulties. Yeah, that was two
thousand and eight. Why do the numbers not begin going
up until twelve twenty thirteen, when the economy is getting
(19:24):
better and better. So you can't make the claim that
things were so terrible in Obama's second term compared to
his first, that all of a sudden, teens, especially teen girls,
suddenly fell off a cliff. That just doesn't work. So,
you know, if this had all started in twenty twenty,
we could say, well, yeah, you know, COVID and all
the craziness that's going on, But this started in twenty twelve.
(19:45):
There's no other explanation that anyone's proposed for why it
happened so many countries and hit girls the hardest.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It was interesting.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You have a chapter in here that looks at also
faith and I'm an atheist. I know you mentioned that
you are an atheist as well, but you speak to
or of this this God shaped hole. I think it's
a Blaze Pascal quote. God shape hold everybody's every human
heart right, and that this lack of religion is something
(20:11):
that is affecting childhood in a way that I get
as an atheist. I always had my dukes up when
that comes about. You said you were one, so you
you earned yourself a pass. Okay, But this lack of
sort of religious institutions in this modern media landscape, how
do you see that as something that's affecting like a childhood.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So the way to think about this as as an
atheist without getting defensive.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Is good luck.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
No, I've been I've been working on this professional for
many years. I finally got it down. Let's se it, okay,
just just looking at it descriptively. Psychologically, religious people are
a little happier than non religious people. That's been true
for a long time, just as married people are happier
than non married people.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
On average.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Your milage may.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Vary, but.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
People need to be tied in, locked in in a community.
I'm a big fan of Emil dirkhim the Sociologist is
my favorite thinker of all time. When we're not tied
and locked in, we're free. But that doesn't make us happy.
We don't have we have nothing to push against, we
have no sense of meaning. It's like if you try
to raise a plant not in the ground, but just
(21:12):
like up in the air, and it just can't be done.
And so religious kids are rooted in traditions, faith, rituals, community,
They go to church every Sunday. The Jewish kids have Shabbat.
They literally can't use electronics for a day. So they
were always happier than the secular kids. But what happens
after twenty twelve, It's quite remarkable. In all the graphs,
the religious kids get a little more anxious and depressed.
(21:34):
The secular kids get much more anxious and depressed. So
what I'm saying is, especially if you're an atheist, you're
gonna have to work much harder. You're gonna be much
more intentional about rooting your kid in stable social relationships.
If you give him an iPad and then he graduates
to a phone, and it's all this network, that network
interacting with strangers and weirdos and bots and ais. That's
(21:55):
not a community that's crazy making.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It might just be easier to get him to believe
in angels.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Well, then take away the iPad.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I've had it there. I do want to You've written
a lot of very interesting books.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
The book you wrote before this, The Coddling of the
American Mind, you co wrote, sort of looked at safetyism.
It looked at the college, the college landscape. And now
what we see on college campuses, these protests are breaking out.
I wonder, as somebody who looked closely at that and
the ways in which students kind of moved through it,
what you see now in these campuses.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, so you know, I don't want to comment on
the substance of the protest. This is a complicated issue.
I respect people on all sides. We all agree on campus,
we all agree students have a right to protest constitutionally
protected it. But two things I see going on is
one is the protest and this is boo. Greg lukian Off,
my co author, first notice in twenty fourteen that the
shouting down of speakers, the activism on campus that was
(22:54):
really illiberal, and it was intimidating, and it was stopping
people from speaking. It was based on arguments about fragility,
about my mental health or her mental health, like we
can't let this person on campus because it'll be dangerous,
it'll be harmful. Speech is violence. So that's a new
idea that comes in with gen Z because they haven't
been given an anti fragile childhood. They've been given way
(23:14):
too much therapy. They think everything is trauma. So we
see that by beginning in twenty fourteen twenty It wasn't
there in twenty twelve. It was a very new in
twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and so the protesters. Now I
don't know the details, but like, you know, just one
thing I read this morning. Someone sent me a quote
from a student at Harvard where she was in the encampments,
and she said, if Harvard cares so goddamn much about
my mental health, why don't they just divest and you know,
(23:37):
do all the things that we're demanding, Like, yeah, you know,
you should do you know, Harvard, you do these because
our mental health is at stake. That's something new, and
it's just not going to get them very far. In
political life going forward once they leave campus, Like, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Here, I read this book.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I want to do this right. How do I helicopter
parent my child correctly? Like, what are some tactical things
I can take away from this?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Well, you just push them out of the helicopter.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Sorry, learn how to fly right. That's not anti fradul
for birds.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
It works, I guess, not for us. So the key thing, okay,
So the key thing to the solution. So even though
you know a lot of my books, a lot of
my writing is very dark about things are actually going
to hell in a lot of ways. But this one,
we can solve it in a year or two. Because
the reason it got so bad so quickly is that
we're trapped in a it's called a It's a social trap.
(24:35):
It's a collective action trap. The reason why we all
feel we have to give our kid a smartphone by
the time they're ten is because everyone else did. And
your kid says, you know, dad, I'm the only one.
I'm being left out. So we're all we're you know,
we're all doing that. And the reason my students are
spending so much time on TikTok, they say, is because
everyone else is and I have to keep up. I
have to know what's happening. So we're all trapped in this.
(24:57):
What that means is that if we decide to escape,
we can escape together. So I proposed them in the book.
There's a lot of suggestions, but four norms that will
break these collective action traps. First, no smartphone before high school.
Just clear this out of the lives of elementary and
middle school kids. Send them out. Give them a flip phone,
a dumb phone, a phone watch so you can text them,
but don't give them the entire internet, including strangers all
(25:21):
over the world who are trying to get at them sexually.
Like this is just craziness. So no smartphone till high school.
The second is no social media till sixteen. You know,
the things that are sent around on social media, the
things they're exposed to, Like I just recently learned about
the video A Cat and a Blender, which was popular
while ago. I know it is exactly it is exactly
what it sounds like, so you know, and this is
(25:42):
just this is just part of childhood. Is hardcore porn,
animal cruelty, beheading videos. So you know, let's just at
least wait till they're sixteen before they see that stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I was gonna say, that's the appropriate age to watch
a canital lenders.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
At sixteen, it's like, ah, you get to drive a
car and then what you shit? Worst thing out? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah. What I'm after here is not the optimum age.
It's what's in a minimum age that we could actually
all do together, because that's the key. If most of
us do this, we solve the problem. The third norm
is phone free schools. This is the most powerful one
that we can do instantly. So if you're watching this
and you have kids that go to a school that
lets the kids keep the phone in the pocket, send well,
(26:20):
buy a copy of my book for the principal note
to you. I have you know, I have videos. Send
them a video of my talks on phone free schools.
Every school needs to go phone free by September. The
phones are They don't just make the kids anxious and lonely,
they make them less intelligent. Test scores have been dropping
around the world since twenty twelve. Once the kids bring
a phone in school, they're doing this they're not listening
to the teacher. So get rid of phones in schools.
(26:42):
And then the fourth norm is far more independence, free play,
and responsibility in the real world. We have to. So
it's this is not just about let's take away, take away,
it's let's give them a real childhood, the kind of
childhood that us older people, the kind that we look
back on. So so if we love our children, the
(27:05):
best thing we can give them is a real human childhood.
And if we do it together, we can get this
done in the next year or two.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Just give your kids some space, a beer and a
bag of glass.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And this should be.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
It's a fascinating reading and an important one. The Anxious
Generation is available now.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Doun it out Explore more shows from the Daily Show
podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 5 (27:30):
Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on par
Amount Plus.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
This has been a Comedy Central podcast
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