The Great Rewiring of Childhood

What's eating Gen Z?

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Jonathan Haidt makes his long-heralded return to The Remnant to discuss his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. He and Jonah discuss the unique issues facing Gen Z and the mental health crisis brought on by the proliferation of smartphones and social media. And unlike many other public intellectuals, Haidt has solutions. In regular Remnant fashion, Jonah also steers the conversation into the differences between the French and English Enlightenment, and how understandings of human nature can affect how we parent.

Show Notes:
—The Coddling of the American Mind
—The Remnant with Rob Henderson
—The Remnant with Tim Carney
—What the Web Needs: More Gated Communities
—New York Magazine on the freedom of sex
—Hayek’s Nobel speech
—Heterodox Academy website
—Let Grow website
—The Anxious Generation website

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Comments (41)
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  1. Rebecca

    My kids’ (Catholic) K-8 school has adopted an optional program related to smartphones called Wait Until 8th; as the name says, it asks parents to agree to delay giving their child a smartphone until at least 8th grade. At a school of 675 kids, almost half of parents in each grade level signed up; as a parent, as Jonathan Haidt makes the point, it’s a lot easier to say no to your kid when none (or very few) of their friends have a smartphone yet either and so many parents are on board.

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    Kimbaukusfitzgibbon

    Wonderful podcast. I remember the transition from flip phones to smart or iPhones in part because of the precipitous rise in teen suicide, which before today I never saw as predominantly a girl issue. As a teacher of mathematics at religious independent high schools, I’d ask my students to stay on task and engaged in class, and in turn I’d give them 2-5 minutes of social time at the end of class. Before the smart phone transition, my students would engage with one another, but after it they were all on their phones during social time.

    As a former teacher who tried to get students’ cell phones limited access during school hours, it’s not going to be an easy road getting that done because of parental objections. I do whole heartedly agree with the plan of no phones in middle school.

    Jonah thank you so very much for speaking out about porn. My contract confidentiality agreement prohibit me from writing anything specific, but teen boys and girls viewing porn most certainly changes them in unhealthy ways. Most importantly, IMO they lose an ability to understand the profound intimacy that should come before a sexual relationship with another person. Just my opinion.

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  3. Randall Briggs

    This was really good! I like Jonathan Haidt a lot, and he and Jonah had a wonderful conversation.

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    Ben Connelly

    Really good podcast. Always good to hear from Jonathan Haidt. I was surprised how close he came to agreeing with the “neoconservatism” charge. One thing I’d push back a little on: perhaps it was just my experience and my friends, but I was a kid in the 2000s and late 90s and I climbed trees all the time. I was one of the worst offenders in my elementary school for climbing on or inside of things, and for climbing very very high in trees. But I was never stopped. My parents had no problem with it and would watch me climb thirty or forty feet in a tree sometimes. And my teachers only occasionally got mad. I thought at the time I was overprotected but in retrospect I definitely wasn’t. There were kids in my elementary school doing backflips off of the swing set and we used to have a game of jumping off of the playscape (about 12-15 feet) and landing on the ground.

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    Seth B

    Joathan Haidt could serve as a voice double for David Lat. (Or vice versa.)

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    TJ

    Jonah, I really appreciate the intensity with which you are now approaching the porn problem. I have been waiting for somebody on the right to be honest and serious about the porn problem for a long time. My wife and I are going through the foster and adopt process currently. We watched a video of this gal in Minnesota who has been working in the system forever and talks about how essentially the nation is getting a negative return on investment. A.k.a. kids do way better with their biological parents. The solution she ultimately ends up giving is more resources for families. Do you want to solve all these problems? Solve the family. But that can be extended, you want to solve the family? Solve the marriage problem. Solve the marriage problem? Solve the guys using porn problem. There’s obviously more to it than that, but I do not think families repair without getting rid of porn in some sort of meaningful way.

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    Mkapnick

    This was so great Jonah as were the previous 3 with Rob Henderson, Tim Carney and Allen C. Guelzo. I need to find the time to listen to them again, this time one right after the other. I know you don't have time to write a new book but......I see the arc of a one : )

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  9. Jo Jijive

    I really really wish that, if Jonah's going to do his Why I Am Not A Libertarian bit, he'd get to the point and give specifics. I really think there's more of a diversity of libertarian thought than he gives libertarians credit for. I first saw him do this shtick in a podcast with Katherine Mangu-Ward, and he just tossed off the "I'm a libertarian except for the children" thing, with no explanation of what he meant by that.

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    1. Austin from Atlanta

      I hear you, but he's talked about it maybe 10-20 times in great length. It comes down to his prizing localism over absolute rights & the need to prioritize some social goods (like difficulty accessing illegal drugs rather than at a simple brick & mortar retailer). I wish I knew the episodes to point you to, but he has covered it many times. He's in a tough spot because people keep asking him to explain concepts that the people who have been listening a while have heard him talk about a dozen times (like people who say he needs to explain "neocon" when he has like 50 times.)

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      1. Jo Jijive

        OK, but then I wish he'd, at some point, write up a document entitled "Why Jonah Isn't A Libertarian" and post a link to it on every podcast or G-File on which he feels the need to mention that he's not a libertarian "because children aren't fully fledged adults". I don't know a single libertarian who wouldn't agree with that. My experience suggests that his comments about "children don't have the same rights as adults" is addressing a fringe element of libertarianism.

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        1. Austin from Atlanta

          I don’t recall the specific comment you’re referencing, but it’s definitely not a core part of his argument. He is well connected at Reason magazine and has been on panels about the difference between conservative and libertarian for decades, so I don’t think he’s working from a caricature or anything like that. I’m sure he will address it again soon.

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          1. Jo Jijive

            I went back and re-listened to the end of the podcast before I posted my comment. Jonah specifically made the point that children don't have the same rights as adults, and he did it in a context that suggested (not said explicitly, but suggested) that libertarians feel that children have a right to look at porn on the internet because they have the same rights to access information as adults. If he wasn't saying that, I'm not sure why he made the statement about children's rights just before going on for several minutes about blocking children from seeing porn. *If* he was suggesting that a standard libertarian position is "children have the same right to see porn as adults", then I think that's a fringe position. I could be wrong.

            In any case, immediately after the children/porn thing, he said he was very sleep-deprived, so maybe that wasn't a part of the pod on which I should be focusing. I've just heard him say he isn't a libertarian because of children with no further explanation a couple of times now, and I always wonder what he means.

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  10. Jo Jijive

    Guys, when it comes to things like age verification and gated internets (".kids"), the devil is truly, truly in the details, and in the unintended consequences. There are so many questions: what exactly will be allowed on the ".kids" domain, who decides that, how is it enforced, etc. ad infinitum. It's so easy to try to do these things and wind up with a government-controlled Great Firewall. You start out trying to keep 5-year-olds from seeing porn, and you wind up with the government deciding what's true. The US government's ongoing efforts to manage the truth, including but not limited to pandemic information, is Exhibit A for this point.

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      JonathanRRogers

      Jonah and Jonathan agreed about age verification for porn sites. I understand the reasons for this and am skeptical of the feasibility. I don't think Jonah appreciated that Jonathan is calling for age verification for much more than porn sites, especially the ill-defined "social media." Must all usage of YouTube be age-verified? What about The Dispatch?

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    2. Eazy-E

      And the incentives for regulatory capture would be huge.

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