Joe Rogan & Jonathan Haidt - Social Media is Giving Kids Anxiety

you're raising your kids here what what's your policy on letting them out man it's slippery how the hell is your oldest well I have a grown one who's 22 and then I have a ten and eight okay and it's hard man because I don't even like when they go over on sleepovers over my friends house because that's scary whose problem is that it's everybody's problem you know it's a well I mean the parents I mean we're pretty selective about the parents but there's a lot of parents don't pay attention their kids at all meaning they

just tune out and they get on the phone the kids are sticking Forks into the [ __ ] outlets and you know there's there's a lot of weirdness when it comes to the styles of that people have been raising their children what is this this graph you just pulled up yeah so you know so depressive episodes yeah so I guess I'll just narrate it for people who are listening that watch video you know so you said before it's like a virus came out of nowhere and that is sort of what it's been like so what's

happening in America and I know it's happening the same in Britain and Canada I haven't looked at other other places yet haven't dug into those stats what's happening is that rates of depression and anxiety were fairly stable from the you know 90s through the early 2000s and what you see here and this is a graph that's in our book is that the the percentage of kids aged 12 to 17 in America who met the criteria for having a major depressive episode that is they're given a symptom checklist with nine symptoms and if you say yes

to five of them you know feeling hopeless and couldn't get out of bed if you say yes to five or more you're you're considered to have had a major depressive episode and what you see is that the rate for boys is around five percent and then around 2011 it starts going up and now it's around seven percent which is actually a somewhat substantial increase but as you can see in the graph the line for girls starts off higher because girls have more mood disorders more anxiety depression boys have more antisocial behavior alcoholism crime and violence

but girls turn it's called an internalizing disordered girls basically make themselves miserable boys make other people miserable the girls rate is higher but it was stable from you know 2000 or these math graph from 2005 through 2010 and then right around 2011 2012 starts going up and it goes way up to the point where it goes up from about 12% to now about 20 scent of American teenage girls have had a major depressive episode in the last year one in five so this is huge okay next slide now let's look just at college students so

this is more selective these are kids who've made it into college and what we see is that in twenty ten and twenty and twenty twelve when college students were all Millennials the rates were pretty low this is do you have a psychological disorder and they didn't specify that or they said such as depression and so we see about two to three percent of the boys the college men and about five percent of five to six percent of college women say yes to that question that's when it was Millennials but beginning in 2013 gen Z begins

arriving that's kids born in 1995 gen z begins arriving and so by 2016 colleges are almost all Gen Z and the rates shoot up way up yeah we're looking at these charts right now and folks who are just listening the it's like it's a like a jump ramp for a BMX racer I mean it really is crazy for women out of nowhere and it hits a 2012 it goes on a very sharp upward angle right it goes from six less than 6% to almost 15% in the space of four years that's crazy it's crazy Pope

you can't say that that's um I can't say crazy what can I say [ __ ] nuts no because some people might have a nut allergy it's preposterous really frightening and so this has huge ramifications make clear I think we have another another slide there you bring up the next one okay so some people say oh come on you guys are catastrophizing the increase isn't real it's just that you know this generation they're really comfortable talking about mental illness and so the fact that they say they're depressed just means they're comfortable it doesn't mean that

there's an epidemic I've heard this argument there's just an argument of recognition rather than of perfectly reasonable criteria change perfectly reasonable argument is it true well let's look at behavior so what this graph shows is the number of boys out of a hundred thousand who were admitted to a hospital every year because they cut they deliberately harmed themselves Department had to be hospitalized and what you see here is that there's no change over time so boys these graphs from 2001 to 2015 the lines are flat for all the different age groups and just notice at

the highest rates are around 280 out of a hundred thousand per year that's the situation for boys next graph bang the situation for girls is really really different so the averages are higher so self-harm has always been more of a girl thing than a boy thing fight you know boys are except for suicide okay that's but exactly we'll get to that that's right that's next so if we look at self-harm what you see here is that the rates were fairly stable up until 2009 and then bang just as in the last late same thing the

rates for girls go shooting up so the rate for 15 to 19 year old girls is up 62% since 2009 now notice the rate for the Millennials that is the rate for the oldest girls aged 20 to 24 that's only up 17% so whatever it happened it's not affecting the Millennials it's affecting Gen Z I think ways there wasn't it the advanced key because I think there's one number missing there okay I'll just go forward okay the number oh there it is there it is the rate for the youngest girls check that out now the

youngest court these are 10 to 14 year old girls these are preteens okay they didn't used to cut themselves they used to have very low rates but bang beginning in 2010 it shoots up it's up 189 percent it is nearly tripled in the last five or six years what's the gone we don't know for sure but the reason why so because of the huge sex difference the leading candidate and the timing look at that timing is social media so if you look at what happened in this country and all around the world facebook opens up

to the world in 2006 you know you don't have to be a college student but very few teenagers have a Facebook account 2006 2007 the iPhone comes out but it's very expensive and very few teenagers have one by 2010 2011 around half of American teenagers have an iPhone or Samsung they have a smartphone and have access to social media in middle school because even though for Facebook and Instagram I think the minimum age is and was 13 you know I mean my son is 12 a lot of his friends have Instagram you just lie so

middle school kids are now getting on social media by 2010 2011 you've got a lot of them and that's what I think is the main cause of this because social media does not really affect boys very much but man does it affect girls why is that so if you look at so a couple of reasons first look at the nature of aggression within the sexes boys bullying is physical okay boys are physically dominating and then the risk is that they're gonna get punched okay so you give everybody an iPhone what do they do with it

games and porn they don't use it to hurt each other boys your toys that's right it doesn't affect their bullying but girls aggression the girls are actually as aggressive as boys there's research from the 80s and 90s on this if you include relational aggression girls don't bully each other by threatening to punch each other in the face girls bully each other by damaging the other girls social relationships spreading rumors spreading lies spreading a doctored photograph saying bad things excluding them it's relational aggression and so it's always been really hard to be a middle school student

it's always been harder to be a middle school girl than a middle school boy okay so beginning around 2010-2011 we throw in this brand new thing into the mix okay girls here's this beautiful thing in your hand and here's all these programs where you can damage anyone's social relationships any time of the day or night with deniability from an anonymous account go at it girls and so the nature of girls bullying is hyper charged by social media and smartphones that's one mechanism the other two mechanisms are the social comparison because it's always been hard to

be a teen girl emerging with Beauty standards and impossible beauty standards and when we were kids you had impossible beauty standards that these models were all doctored up and then Photoshop okay so you've got these impossible beauty standards out there but beginning with social media especially in recent years your own friends can put on a filter and Instagram to make their lips big skin cleaner their eyes bigger so your own friends are more beautiful than they are in real life you feel uglier so that's the social comparison of beauty and then probably the biggest single

one is the fear of missing out the fear of being left out so all kids are subject to this everyone's concerned about whether they're included or whether they're they're excluded but girls are much more sensitive and so suddenly when everybody is tracking each other's who was invited who's there and especially any program in which a girl puts something out and then waits to see what other people say about it that is what's really damaging I think we again let me stress we don't know for sure there are some experiments on this but it's mostly correlational

stuff we're talking about here correlational data but the overall experience of being a girl who was born in 1995 or later and got this stuff in middle school is different from being a girl born in 1990 let's say we didn't get this stuff till college are you concerned that this is a trend that as technology becomes more and more invasive it and with these new technologies as they emerge that this is gonna be worse yes yes but it doesn't have to be the soap so I think in the last two years we're really waking up

to this the founders of this technology it's really interesting so first of all it's important to note as many people have read the a lot of the creators of this technology do not let their kids have it so they know that these things were made to be addictive they're made to grab eyeballs and not let go so that's one thing we all should keep that in mind that the makers of this are wary of it second they've gotten more and more addictive as they've gotten better and better as they've evolved so they're getting more and

more and for tonight is an example of you know extremely addictive game and it does but so even when you if you've ever been to a a casino and you've seen kids you've seen people sitting at those machines like zombies just you know hour after hour pulling that crank because there were psychologists working out the variable reinforcement schedule for the gambling companies psychologists they're helping companies manipulate users and that's happening to our kids too they're they're manipulated to stay on the device so once we're beginning to reel is the nature of these technologies the fact

that what is good for adults may be terrible for 12 year olds 10 year olds and once we realize that these things are so attractive that they crowd out all the other healthy activities like playing outside playing with groups of friends once we realize that I think and I hope we'll get some reasonable norms and what I'd like to propose this is fantastic to be able to talk to so many people I'd like to propose is if you have kids especially if you have kids under about 16 please do what you can to talk with

other parents and especially with the principal of any schools you know and say we need some sensible norms because we can't solve this problem by ourselves so I want to keep my kids off social media but my son says well most of my friends are have Instagram accounts now if it was every friend and he was the only one who was excluded he will be really hard for me to stick to my guns I would do it would be really hard whereas if it was only a few of his friends and most of them weren't

it would be so easy and I heard this from parents over and over I don't want my kid on social media but I don't want her to be left out yeah and so if the principal would just say parents please this is getting this is getting out of hand this is harming kids look at the data look at the suicide rates look at the look at the self-harm rates we've got to do something what do you do a couple of things that's it I think it's pretty couple of pretty simple norms one all devices out

of the bedroom buy a set time at least half an hour before bed there is no reason why kids should have an iPhone or a computer or screen in their bedroom because so many kids are attracted to it they'll check their status overnight and it interrupts their sleep we can't be having teenagers who have interrupted sleep that there's just no benefit from that gave my daughter a Fitbit my ten-year-old too you know monitor all sorts of differently she was interested in it so we got her one for Christmas and she slept five and a half

hours the first night she had it on cuz we could check like what are you doing she's checking the Fitbit what what's what's going on him like this is not good like you can't wear this now and she's like trying to make all these arguments to keep but I'm like listen she's it's not distracting me I go if it's not distracting you then you shouldn't care if you don't have it on right because then it's not going to mean anything and then it was like this like a [ __ ] like she got checkmated these

things are so attractive so addictive I had one of those goddamn watches those Apple watches I had it on for one day and while I was doing the podcast it kept vibrating huh-huh I'm like oh my god I'm getting text messages on my wrist my wrist so wait and your brain is all developed yeah well okay okay but imagine if you're a 10 or 11 years I've seen it yeah you put something out there and you want to know did you know did Bill like it yet you know why did why did Mary like bills

but not like so so that's not rule number one you got to get devices out of the bedroom give them an old-fashioned alarm clock let them wake up an alarm cuts one to no social media till high school there is no reason why kids in middle school or elementary school should have Instagram Facebook snapchat any of those I agree they can text each other like when we were kids he'd call each other on the phone that's fine they can text each other but there should be no social media till high school because it's a it's

a social dilemma it that we can't solve alone we can only solve it if there's an agreement among parents and guidance from the principal please parents don't give your kid Instagram account my only concern is that they're not going to learn how to mitigate it or how to navigate it rather if we say nothing till high school and then when they get into high school then they they're confronted with it I would like them to have some skills or at least some understanding of what's going on now wait a sec so so I'm not saying

don't let them have access to these machines I'm not saying don't let them know I know exactly what you're saying you're saying though social media yeah and how about this the bullying that takes place in middle school is primitive and destructive and the bullying that takes place in late high school is a lot less and is not really a way what do you think that is well Mills like middle school kids are just coming into this there's some research zone gene twangy has a book called ijen and she has some data in there that suggests

that when you get social media in college it doesn't seem to harm you but when you got it in your preteen years it does hmm and so and she thinks that it's in part the nature of the bullying is such so you know sure we want them to know how to deal with this but you know they can learn it pretty quickly when they're 15 it's not like they need a running start from 11 to 15 right so I just see no good whatsoever from social media in middle school and I see a lot of

harm if you want your look I go around the country I talk about this they're almost the rule now is when someone in someone says oh my daughter's in high school and you know she's had it I say how is she doing does she have anxiety problems the answer is almost always yes mm-hmm and if it's not her then her friends are all crippled by or suffering from anxiety so I think we have to you know you have to wake costs and benefits a few years ago we didn't know for sure about the costs now

we do yeah no you're making total sense I'm purely playing devil's advocate and I'm on the same page with you I don't give my kids don't have phones and my ten-year-old it's shocking how many girls in her class have phones right and Facebook accounts and Instagram accounts and they I'll say it right now her friends are at higher risk than she is of having an anxiety disorder of being hospitalized because they're going to cut themselves and ultimately of suicide yeah it's so common and it's most of the kids in school now and when they get

older than 10 the number increases like parents hold out for as long as they can but as they get older and the kids want phones man everybody wants a phones right so let me put in a plug so I gave my son so I'm saying two contradictory things one is I'm saying we gotta let our kids out gotta start letting them out at least by age eight at least to go with their friends to playground stores we gotta start doing this and at the same time I'm saying that the technology has some negative effects okay

if you're gonna send your kid out I totally get what you were saying about your either panic like the first time that we let our son out in the park and then he didn't come home right when he said like and it was real panic yeah in part so two things one is we have to get used to that because he always does come home but secondly I didn't realize this when I gave him an iPhone my old iPhone there's a great little product the I'm not a turn-off Verizon no they don't make it it's

anything LG makes it but it's a gizmo or gizmo gadget and so it's as simple it's a watch it's a it's a big clunky thing but my daughter loves wearing it because it's kind of like a James Bond Dick Tracy thing it's a watch you press a button you turn it on you can call three phone numbers that's it three four yeah so she can call and so so now I can send her out to get bagels on Sunday morning she walks about six blocks in New York City it's incredibly safe how old is she

she is nine so oh yeah so and she is a much more independent confident girl because of it and she is proud of this fact that she is a free-range kid she can walk around our neighborhood I mean we live in Greenwich Village it's incredibly safe so she can go get bagels and it you know look she has no sense of direction so a couple times when she's been out doing there and she gets lost she just presses a button daddy I don't know where I am and if she's calm and I said we've talked

it through and I can track her that's the the reassuring thing I can see on a screen roughly where she is so I can say you know what do you see and I so come back this way and she always knows her she gets in trouble just walk home and start again yeah Oh what are you thinking Joe right what's with that facial expression nothing is just children wandering around on their own yeah has always happened mm-hmm yeah and as they have to do at some point I know but listen look at how you're even

reacting to this what but you're you're you're beaming up and you're adding a motion to your voice and you're smiling yes it's everything's gonna be fine everything you're doing this in a sort of you're not just reassuring you're selling it you're right I am selling it because we as a society bought into a set of beliefs that are based on falsehoods the risk to our kids is miniscule someone calculated at present rates of abduction by strangers if you put your kid in a car and you go into a store and you leave the windows open

your kids sitting there in the parking lot you'd have to stay in that store for 700,000 years before your kid is likely to be abducted well it does not depend on what neighborhood you live in I suppose so you know but still the point is that there's hardly any actual abduction and so actually this brings up a really important point I'd like to say you one of the sticking points here is that we're afraid to let our kids out because bad things can happen to us mm-hmm as well as to the kids sure and so

it hoped that would be the least of your concerns so number one concern would be your children's safety but are you getting in trouble that hope would be the least of your concerns not the least of them because I am selling something I am selling the idea that that the gigantic rise in mental illness of teenagers is caused in part because we've all protected them we have denied them the experiences of independence they need to develop their basic social sense and so I am selling idea that we've we've totally botched this and we need to

undo it and a big piece of that is we need to be removed from the fear of legal prosecution and so Utah the state of Utah passed a year and a half ago a year ago yeah they passed the first free range kids bill which says it puts into state law it says I forget what the exact terms but the gist of it is a parent cannot be considered to be negligent just by having the kids be unsupervised so if you send your kids out to the park you know you have to use judge obviously

if there's a pattern of neglect that's a totally different story but the mere fact that as you just said the story about well I'm teaching my kids to go outside I know that they're outside I told them to go outside you can't be arrested for that right and until we have legal protections it's gonna be very hard for anyone to do it because they you know the risk is you could be drawn into months and months of supervision your kids can actually be taken away from you if you give them independence in some parts of

the country it's interesting that Utah would be so progressive about that um yeah I don't know the history behind it it's such a safe place it's one of the reasons why that could be yeah so a big part of this is we don't trust each other anymore right you know if you don't trust your neighbors then you're you're not gonna let them out you're not let your kids out