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Rules and restrictions may

1:05

apply. Welcome to

1:07

Unashame. This is a very... It's a

1:09

first. It's a first. It's a first.

1:11

It's a unique situation we have today

1:13

as we start our podcast. Never done

1:16

this. Because we've already had our podcast,

1:18

but we're now starting the podcast. Well,

1:20

Zach, you know, yesterday, because he was

1:22

in charge of this. I got a

1:24

guess coming on. I'll give you all

1:26

the details and I'll send you some

1:29

questions. Last night at about 11 o'

1:31

o'clock, I was like... Missy's like, what

1:33

are you looking for? I was like,

1:35

I'm looking for the details that Zach

1:37

was going to send me. It was

1:40

literally the last thing he told us

1:42

yesterday. To be fair, to be fair,

1:44

my wife's van literally capoot is

1:46

gone, blew off, engines. So I've been,

1:48

I had to deal with some issues.

1:51

Maddie, can you send him a cheap

1:53

violin and he can use it as

1:55

a prop where we can just say?

1:57

Let's just play that violin. found a

1:59

doctor who, you know, I was, I

2:02

was and

12:20

be comfortable there. One of our

12:23

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12:25

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that I call the game changer. Welcome

13:55

back to Unashamed. We have

13:57

our guest with us. super

13:59

excited about and we put

14:01

Zach in charge of finding

14:04

us fantastic guest and he has

14:06

done it yet again. Dr. Jonathan

14:08

Hite, Dr. Hite, welcome to the Unashamed

14:11

Podcast. Thank you so much and

14:13

please call me John. Okay John.

14:15

He is a professor at NYU

14:17

School of Business. He's written some

14:19

books. One is called The righteous

14:21

Mind, the Coddling of the American

14:23

Mind and the one I'm holding

14:25

in my hand. for those of

14:27

you watching today is that a

14:30

listing says the anxious generation had

14:32

the great rewiring of the childhood

14:34

of childhood is causing an epidemic

14:36

of mental illness and I have

14:38

to tell you John when I

14:41

got the book started on

14:43

an airplane I could not put it

14:45

down. It's and it's really amazing

14:47

because all of us like

14:49

I'm 60 jases 55. You're

14:51

in the range. Yeah, and

14:53

Zach is nearing 50 I

14:55

think. And so, you know,

14:57

they have children of this

14:59

generation kind of on the

15:01

back end. Mine are more

15:03

grandchildren in terms of what I

15:05

see you talking about in this

15:07

book, but it's so. Apropos for

15:10

everything we talk about in terms

15:12

of social media and everything like

15:14

that. So it's very well done.

15:16

I just wanted to first of

15:18

all just say thank you for

15:20

writing it. It's amazing. Well thank

15:22

you. Thank you Al. You know

15:24

everyone who has kids has seen

15:26

this. Something's going on with the

15:28

kids and the screens and that's

15:30

what the books about. Well Al

15:32

you mentioned that that was in charge

15:34

of this so I didn't get the

15:36

email that... Dr. Hite would be on.

15:38

So I'm like, this is my orientation

15:41

to your work. And so before

15:43

I, you know, ask how this

15:45

got started. I'm just

15:47

fascinated by this picture because

15:49

on the cover. Yeah, there's

15:51

this little girl and there's all

15:54

these little balls and but she's

15:56

on her cell phone. It's a

15:58

little emotional. I think is what

16:01

is meant to be. But this reminds

16:03

me of the experience I had with

16:05

each of my kids who are now

16:07

all grown and I will have to

16:10

admit have turned out quite well and

16:12

respected humans. But the number one issue

16:14

in their teenage years was that cell

16:17

phone. And so I was just wondering

16:19

how this got started. Sure. And actually

16:21

works pretty well if you haven't read

16:23

the book because this gives me a

16:26

chance to just sort of lay it

16:28

out the big picture for all the

16:30

listeners who haven't read the book. So

16:33

what the book is about is that

16:35

something changed around 2012. I'm a college

16:37

professor and we saw this with the

16:39

students coming in to campus around 2014-2015.

16:42

They were just much more depressed and

16:44

anxious. And a lot of surveys found

16:46

the same thing. It wasn't just college

16:48

students. It was all kids who were

16:51

born 1996 and later. We now know

16:53

them as Gen Z. They're not millennials.

16:55

It's a different generation. They have much

16:58

higher rates of anxiety and depression and

17:00

self-harm and even suicide. So what happened?

17:02

And why was there no sign of

17:04

trouble before 2012? All the way up

17:07

through the 90s through 2010. There's no

17:09

sign of a mental health problem. And

17:11

so what my book is about. is

17:14

about how this period, 2010 to 2015,

17:16

was the great rewiring of childhood. If

17:18

you were born in 1995, you're the

17:20

last of the millennials, you went through

17:23

puberty with a flip phone. You didn't

17:25

have a smartphone when you were in

17:27

middle school, you had a flip phone.

17:29

And a flip phone is good for

17:32

talking to your friends and texting them.

17:34

You're not talking to strangers, you're not

17:36

looking at your, you're not on your

17:39

phone 10 hours a day. But if

17:41

you were born in the year 2000,

17:43

You are Gen Z and you turn

17:45

15 in 2015 and you got a

17:48

smartphone. If you're a girl, you probably

17:50

had Instagram. You're spending all this time

17:52

posting pictures of yourself. People are commenting

17:55

on it. It makes you angry. And

17:57

a whole bunch of ways kids who

17:59

went through puberty on a smartphone were

18:01

kind of blocked. They didn't get to

18:04

do the things that kids normally do.

18:06

And that is the story that I'm

18:08

telling in the book about why we

18:10

see this very sudden increase in depression

18:13

and anxiety and self-harm and suicide right

18:15

around 2012. Well, and I thought, so

18:17

you started. and end the book with

18:20

an analogy that I love. We love

18:22

analogies on this podcast. So you talked

18:24

about what it would look like to

18:26

send your kids to Mars. That's how

18:29

you open the book. And then you

18:31

talk about the end, how do we

18:33

bring them back to Earth? So talk

18:36

about that in terms of how foreign

18:38

the idea is that we would turn

18:40

over our children to an entity. beyond

18:42

our ability to impact and influence. That's

18:45

right. So I love metaphors and I,

18:47

you know, in my teaching and my

18:49

writing, I always try to try to

18:51

give people a kind of a feeling

18:54

for the phenomena with a good metaphor.

18:56

So the metaphor that I chose for

18:58

this after working on this for years

19:01

was, what if your nine-year-old daughter comes

19:03

to you and says, Mommy, Daddy, I've

19:05

signed up for a trip to Mars,

19:07

I'm going to actually move there. and

19:10

I'm going to finish growing up there,

19:12

and I'm going to be part of

19:14

the first colony of humans to live

19:17

on Mars. It's very exciting. What would

19:19

you say? I mean, of course you,

19:21

like, what the hell is going on

19:23

here? But, you know, even if, like,

19:26

I always wanted to be an astronaut

19:28

when I was a kid, so even

19:30

imagine that, you know, I was willing

19:32

to say, well, okay, let me hear

19:35

you out. It turns out that the

19:37

people running this space colony, they don't

19:39

give a damn about kids. They didn't,

19:42

they have no idea if the kids

19:44

are going to be okay. They didn't

19:46

even ask the question. They didn't do

19:48

any testing. They just want to get

19:51

as many kids as they can, bring

19:53

them to Mars, let them grow up

19:55

there, and then maybe they'll send them

19:58

back when they're adults, maybe not. So

20:00

this is a horrible situation. We'd

20:02

never let that happen. But that's

20:05

kind of what happened when we

20:07

gave our kids smartphones and Instagram

20:09

and all these other apps. And

20:11

then those companies now own our

20:13

children's lives. Not for everybody, but

20:15

half of all teenagers, say they're

20:17

online almost constantly. About half of

20:19

them are basically on social media

20:21

most of the time. So half

20:23

of our kids in a sense

20:25

have gone off to this different

20:28

way of growing up. Now you

20:30

might have said back then, well,

20:32

maybe it's okay. you know, the

20:34

technology would be good for them.

20:36

Maybe they'll be super social. And

20:38

I thought that back in 2010,

20:40

like maybe this is going to

20:42

like stimulate brain development. But now

20:44

it looks like it had a

20:46

devastating effect, not just in the

20:48

US. The reason I'm so passionate

20:51

about this is that it's not

20:53

just us. It's the exact same

20:55

thing happened in Canada, the UK,

20:57

Australia, Scandinavia. We have good data

20:59

from a lot of countries. Something

21:01

happened to kids around 2012 in

21:03

so many different countries. That's why

21:05

it's trying to convey the sense

21:07

of kids being taken away by

21:09

a foreign You know company trying

21:11

to make money off our kids

21:14

And they're they're coming there many

21:16

of them are harmed or damaged

21:18

or blocked. Well, one things I

21:20

love about your work. It's a

21:22

scholarly work because it's full of

21:24

data and charts and graphs that

21:26

showed just what John just talked

21:28

about Our dad used to be

21:30

on our podcast, John, and he,

21:32

you know, he never, he's like,

21:34

you know, he's almost 80 years

21:37

old, and so he never understood

21:39

cell phones, he never understood computers.

21:41

He's famously, you know, says, I

21:43

never owned one. And so for

21:45

years, anecdotally, he has said what

21:47

you say with data and evidence

21:49

that it just seemed to him,

21:51

like it was a bad idea

21:53

to send your kids to Mars

21:55

in this situation as you laid

21:57

out. I wanted to ask you,

22:00

you'd make a distinction of difference

22:02

between how it affects boys and

22:04

girls. Obviously our audience is a

22:06

lot of young people, a lot

22:08

of young men especially, but a

22:10

lot of young people, a lot

22:12

of people just starting families. So

22:14

what did you notice about the

22:16

difference between the breakdown in how

22:18

this works between boys and girls

22:20

in terms of effect? Yeah. So

22:23

let me address this both to

22:25

the young men and the young

22:27

women. who are listening that is

22:29

those who are in their 20s.

22:31

You know, Gen Z is turning

22:33

30 this year. So if you're

22:35

in your 20s, you're Gen Z.

22:37

And I also especially want to

22:39

address everybody who has a son

22:41

or a daughter. And so the

22:43

girl story and the boy story

22:46

are different. I didn't know this

22:48

when I started writing the book.

22:50

I thought the story was going

22:52

to be social media for girls

22:54

is really strong. Girls who... Spend

22:56

a lot of time on social

22:58

media or two or three times

23:00

more likely to be depressed or

23:02

anxious. For boys, they're a little

23:04

more likely, but not that much.

23:06

So it looked like social media

23:09

is really particularly bad for girls.

23:11

How does it? Why is it

23:13

so bad for girls? If you

23:15

want to trap a girl, if

23:17

you're a company, you want to

23:19

extract all the attention from a

23:21

girl and sell her advertisements. How

23:23

do you trap girls? You offer

23:25

them bait. As you guys would

23:27

know, how do you know, how

23:29

do you? How do you attract

23:32

an animal? Well a trap, you

23:34

have to put bait that the

23:36

animal finds attractive, but then the

23:38

trick is when the animal takes

23:40

the bait, now something changes and

23:42

they can't get out. That's what

23:44

a trap is. So Zach, you've

23:46

done quite a bit of work

23:48

in apologetics in terms of looking

23:50

at things that kind of point

23:52

to our belief system. And one

23:55

of those is the idea of

23:57

martyrdom, which we talk a lot

23:59

about sort of our founding fathers

24:01

in the church and the fact

24:03

they were martyred and persecuted, but

24:05

it's not just an ancient thing,

24:07

correct? Yeah. I mean, for me

24:09

it's more than an apologetic. I

24:11

think that we need to understand

24:13

these stories now that are happening

24:15

now. This is a real, this

24:18

is the history of the church

24:20

that continues into the future. And

24:22

what you're describing is a fantastic

24:24

ministry called the Voice of the

24:26

Martyrs. And Todd Nettleton, who is

24:28

the Voice of the Martyrs Radio

24:30

host, has written a new book,

24:32

and it's called When Faith is

24:34

Forbidden, Forty Days on the Front

24:36

Lines with Persecuted Christians. And these

24:38

are stories that Todd has written

24:41

in 20 years of travel in

24:43

these restricted nations and he has

24:45

met these courageous Christians and shows

24:47

exactly how they continue to be

24:49

martyr for their faith. They go

24:51

to prison. There's amazing stories. There's

24:53

one in there about an Iranian

24:55

man. Two different chapters dedicated to

24:57

him and when he went through

24:59

for the cause of the kingdom.

25:01

And it's very powerful, very encouraging.

25:03

And so as you go in

25:06

each step along his journey, you

25:08

sort of reflect then on your

25:10

own walk, which I find very

25:12

powerful. The copy of the book

25:14

is free, which you can't beat

25:16

that when faith is forbidden. So

25:18

here's what you do to request

25:20

your free copy of when faith

25:22

is forbidden, you call 844, 463,

25:24

4059. That's 844, 463, 4059. Or

25:26

visit the O.M.org/Unashamed. That's vom.org/unashamed. Girls,

25:29

what you put in the trap

25:31

is social information. Who said what

25:33

about whom? Who's dating whom? Who's

25:35

mad at whom? And girls care

25:37

more about social relationships. They're more

25:39

sensitive to it. So the girls

25:41

will go rushing onto Instagram. They're

25:43

all talking about each other. They're

25:45

all talking to each other. Now

25:47

they're trapped. Because any girl who

25:49

says, wait, this is crazy. I

25:52

want to be out playing. That

25:54

girl's now alone. because everybody's on

25:56

Instagram. So the girls get trapped

25:58

by social media, especially Instagram. there's

26:00

a few others. And then now

26:02

they're not spending time with their friends

26:04

as much. What girls need is a

26:06

couple of close friends. If they have

26:09

a few close friends to talk with,

26:11

to gossip with, to comfort each other,

26:13

they're probably going to turn out fine.

26:15

But what social media does is

26:17

says, how about you spend five

26:19

hours a day on this platform

26:21

interacting with hundreds of people?

26:23

So you don't have any time for your

26:25

real friends, and you're not going to

26:27

see them much. You're not going to

26:29

laugh with them much. You're just going

26:32

to share emogies. So that's what it's

26:34

doing to girls. Oh, plus the incredible

26:36

amount of sexual harassment of girls, and

26:39

plus the social comparison and the constant

26:41

comments on their face, their hair, their

26:43

breasts, everything. It's a terrible thing to

26:45

do to an 11, 12, 13-year-year-old

26:48

girl to put her on social media. So

26:50

that's the girl's the girl's story. And

26:52

I thought, well, the boys aren't doing as

26:54

badly, and they're not as depressed and anxious.

26:57

So if you look at the kids when they're

26:59

14, the girls look like they're doing

27:01

worse, and they are at 14. The boys are playing

27:03

a lot of video games, which are great fun,

27:05

and they're watching a lot of porn. But

27:07

what is the effect on the boys if

27:10

they spend their childhood playing video games and

27:12

watching porn? They're not doing anything else. So

27:14

here's the most shocking stat in the book

27:16

in the book, I think. When you

27:19

look at the rates of hospital

27:21

admissions for broken bones, how many

27:23

kids in America break a bone

27:25

and go to the hospital? Who do

27:27

you think used to break bones the most?

27:29

Young people, old people, boys, girls, like

27:31

who are the people who are ending

27:33

up in hospitals with broken bones?

27:35

Teenage boys, right? Yeah. That's what

27:38

it used to be. Teenage boys used

27:40

to have by far the highest rates

27:42

of broken bones until about 2010, 2012.

27:44

Then what happens? Once the teenage boys

27:47

are all spending their time now on

27:49

video games, and also on their

27:51

smartphones, and they are on social

27:53

media too, but once everything is

27:55

on the screen, teenage boys' rates

27:57

drop so low that they are now

27:59

less. likely to break a bone than

28:02

their fathers or grandfathers because teenage boys

28:04

aren't doing anything that's risky. And if

28:06

boys aren't doing anything risky, if they're

28:08

playing it safe, they're not going to

28:10

turn into men. Or at least it's

28:13

going to be harder, I should say.

28:15

Boys need to take more risks. They

28:17

need to learn how to manage risk.

28:19

They need to have conflicts in the

28:22

real world and learn to manage them.

28:24

They need to do sports. And the

28:26

video games are great fun, but they

28:28

don't really help the boys. is that

28:31

if you'll check in on kids when

28:33

they're in their late 20s, the girls,

28:35

they finish their education, they're more likely

28:37

to have a job, who's more likely

28:39

to be living with their parents at

28:42

the age of 30, it's the boys.

28:44

So the boy's story is not about

28:46

social media so much, it's about... missing

28:48

out on all the things that are

28:51

going to turn boys into men, and

28:53

instead spending thousands and thousands of hours

28:55

on video games, porn, and YouTube videos,

28:57

short videos, and TikTok. Yeah, that's interesting.

29:00

You also talk in the book, there's

29:02

kind of another side of that you

29:04

talk about with the overprotection of kids.

29:06

Talk about a little bit how that,

29:08

because that plays into it as well.

29:11

I actually believe there's a great crisis

29:13

of masculinity in the country in the

29:15

country right now in the world, for

29:17

a lot of the reasons you mentioned,

29:20

but there's coupled with that. is that

29:22

overcoddling of the American mind, particularly with

29:24

the boys. Talk about a little about

29:26

the safetyism and... Yeah, oh, thank you,

29:28

Zach. Yeah, because, you know, the conversations

29:31

tend to focus on the phones. That's

29:33

what everyone's interested in, what the hell

29:35

is happening to our kids with all

29:37

these screens. But thank you for pointing

29:40

that out, that the book isn't really

29:42

about screens. It's actually about childhood. And

29:44

there's two pieces to it. I can

29:46

summarize the whole book with this sentence.

29:49

We have overprotected our children in the

29:51

real world. and we have underprotected them

29:53

online. So when, you know, when us

29:55

older folk, I'm 61. So, you know,

29:57

you got to repeat that because I

30:00

think that is a key line. Okay.

30:02

Okay. We have. overprotected our children in

30:04

the real world, where it's actually much

30:06

safer than it used to be and

30:09

where they need to take risks, and

30:11

we have underprotected them online, which is

30:13

actually a kind of a dangerous place

30:15

where a lot of men are trying

30:18

to get to your kids and all

30:20

kinds of bad things happen. So we

30:22

have to work on both of those.

30:24

And so, you know, when me and

30:26

Al and Jayce were growing up in

30:29

the 70s, There was a huge crime

30:31

wave. I don't know what it was

30:33

like for you guys in Louisiana, but

30:35

I grew up in the suburbs of

30:38

New York and the whole air. You

30:40

know, there was a lot of crazy

30:42

stuff and a lot of drunk drivers.

30:44

Some of those drunk drivers were us.

30:47

I mean, we just took a lot

30:49

of risks and life was kind of

30:51

dangerous, but all kids went out to

30:53

play, right? Am I right? At age

30:55

seven, eight, eight, nine. Yeah, that's right.

30:58

And if you tried to come back,

31:00

your mom might say, get out of

31:02

here. Don't watch television. Get out of

31:04

here. Don't come back until dark. Don't

31:07

come back until dinner time. I actually

31:09

don't remember my parents even being around,

31:11

because we were all outside. So yeah,

31:13

they were around somewhere. We were all

31:16

playing. But that's kind of like what

31:18

Hunter Gather or Childhood is like. If

31:20

you look at, you know, ancient societies.

31:22

The adults aren't like watching the kids,

31:24

like the kids are socializing among themselves

31:27

and they're teaching each other and they're

31:29

inventing games. And one of the most

31:31

valuable things groups of kids can do

31:33

is get into an argument about, well,

31:36

what should we do? Or, okay, we're

31:38

playing this game, but you broke the

31:40

rules. No, I didn't. Like, all that

31:42

stuff is pure gold for social development.

31:44

This is how kids learn to be

31:47

citizens in a democracy where we're going

31:49

to disagree and the majority is probably

31:51

going to win. But you don't want

31:53

to crush the minority because you want

31:56

the game to keep going, you want

31:58

to keep the group together. So these

32:00

are such crucial skills to learn, but

32:02

we only learn those skills when we're

32:05

not supervised by grown-ups. Because if you

32:07

watch kids today on the playground, there's

32:09

always, it's so sad, I don't know

32:11

what it's like there, but in New

32:13

York City, you go to. playground here.

32:16

We got great playgrounds. What are you

32:18

going to see? You're going to see

32:20

one or two parents standing near the

32:22

equipment talking to their child who's on

32:25

the equipment. You don't see the kids

32:27

playing with each other. It's all each

32:29

individual child is being watched carefully so

32:31

that they don't fall or something like

32:34

that. We're so overprotective and we're blocking

32:36

those, just the unsupervised play. So what

32:38

I'm arguing is that In fact, what

32:40

I show with a lot of evidence

32:42

in the book is that kids used

32:45

to play outside, they used to have

32:47

to be unsupervised a lot until the

32:49

1990s. That's the decade when we freak

32:51

out in America and we say if

32:54

I ever let my kid out, he's

32:56

going to be abducted. A lot of

32:58

parents now start saying, I can't even

33:00

let my kid go two aisles over

33:03

in a grocery store because I heard

33:05

that a kid was abducted from a

33:07

gross, which never happened. Okay, there was

33:09

actually one case. There was one case

33:11

in 1980, which sort of was like

33:14

that, one case. But people freak out

33:16

in the 90s. And we don't trust

33:18

our neighbors anymore. We've lost a lot

33:20

of trust in our neighbors. And what

33:23

that means, that we have to supervise

33:25

kids all the time. And that falls

33:27

on the mothers mostly. Mothers start spending

33:29

a lot more time parenting, being with

33:31

their kids. It's not good for the

33:34

kids. It's not good for the mothers.

33:36

The kids need to be out with

33:38

each other. So that starts in the

33:40

first piece. That starts in the 90s.

33:43

And then by the time we get

33:45

to 2010, outdoor play is really reduced.

33:47

Kids aren't doing a lot outdoor. They're

33:49

spending a lot of time on the

33:52

internet, on the computers. And then when

33:54

they get social media and smartphones, 2010

33:56

to 2015, that's when their mental health

33:58

collapses. So that's the story that I

34:00

tell in the book. There's two pieces

34:03

to it. Which can be tracked. I

34:05

mean, I read a book back in

34:07

2017. iGen and she had put the

34:09

doctor put the staff is like a

34:12

line graph of the adoption of the

34:14

iPhone and then the increase in depression

34:16

suicidal ideation anxiety disorders and it was

34:18

almost a mirror image as as the

34:21

iPhone was adopted by by children and

34:23

young people that it was a mirror

34:25

image of the increase in mental illness,

34:27

which is just fascinating to think about

34:29

how well that correlates on a graph.

34:32

That's right. That's exactly right. So Jean

34:34

Twangy is a professor in California at

34:36

the University of San Diego State University,

34:38

and she's a friend of mine. And

34:41

when I was writing the Coddling of

34:43

the American Mind, I was talking about

34:45

over protection. But I noticed, Greg Lukiana,

34:47

my co-author, we noticed that social media

34:50

might have something to do with this.

34:52

We didn't know. We didn't know. It

34:54

was 2017. And then Gene's book comes

34:56

out. IGen. And she's got graph after

34:58

graph showing just what just what Zach

35:01

just said, that all the mental health

35:03

problems, they all sort of track the

35:05

degree to which kids are spending time

35:07

on smartphones and social media. Now what

35:10

Gene showed is. is what's called correlation.

35:12

That is, this happened and this happened

35:14

at the same time. And in the

35:16

sciences and in medicine, that's the starting

35:18

point for an investigation. Like, okay, these

35:21

two things happened together. Did one cause

35:23

the other? We don't know. We can't

35:25

be sure. Lots of other things happened

35:27

in the early 2010s. Maybe it's something

35:30

else. And so what Gene and I

35:32

have both been doing since then is

35:34

collecting the evidence that it was the

35:36

phone-based childhood, growing up on a phone.

35:39

the mental health and other problems. And

35:41

we think we've got a lot of

35:43

different kinds of evidence. I'll tell you,

35:45

one of the shocking kinds of evidence

35:47

is the words of the companies themselves.

35:50

There's a lot that's come out because

35:52

so many parents have lost their kids

35:54

to suicide, cyber bullying, drug overdoses from

35:56

fentanyl, laced drugs that they got on

35:59

social media. So all these parents are

36:01

suing, meta, and Snapchat, and Tik Talk.

36:03

And a lot of documents have come

36:05

out from those lawsuits. And so my

36:08

group and our substack, our blog at

36:10

after babble.com, we've collected just TikTok in

36:12

its own words. And it is absolutely

36:14

shocking what they said in their internal

36:16

emails and their internal reports. They know

36:19

that their product is addictive. It was

36:21

designed to be addictive. They know that

36:23

it's shattering kids' attention. It was designed

36:25

to grab every little bit of consciousness

36:28

it could. So from all three of

36:30

those companies, we have all kinds of

36:32

quotes. They know they're doing this. Here's

36:34

another piece of evidence. What do you

36:37

think the founders of these companies do

36:39

with their own kids? Do you suppose

36:41

they give them? Smartphones and TikTok? Hell

36:43

no! They keep their kids off. It's

36:45

well known. In Silicon Valley, a lot

36:48

of the executives at these tech companies,

36:50

they send their kids to a school

36:52

called the Waldorf School because it has

36:54

no technology. These people know that this

36:57

stuff is bad for kids. So they

36:59

don't give it to their kids, but

37:01

they want to give it to your

37:03

kids, because that's how they make their

37:05

money. So there's also a lot of

37:08

scientific evidence and there are experiments, but

37:10

everything's lining up to say it wasn't

37:12

just a coincidence. Growing up on a

37:14

smartphone, social media, blocks child development, blocks

37:17

social development. You get kids who are

37:19

more anxious, fragile, and full of problems.

37:21

You know, you never really plan on

37:23

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37:26

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37:28

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37:32

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underwriting and health

39:03

questions. That's an interesting

39:06

name to your blog site too,

39:08

because we talk a lot on

39:10

this podcast about the kingdom of

39:13

God coming and that it's an

39:15

acts chapter too. There's a story,

39:17

what we call the... We think it's

39:19

the rec, like it's, it's the

39:21

redemption of Babel, you know, or

39:23

Babel is the division. Yeah, I

39:25

don't know this. Acts. Yeah, no.

39:27

Yeah, Acts 2. Acts 2. The

39:29

day of Pentecost, and so, and

39:31

the Christian world, this is, this

39:33

is like, when the Holy Spirit

39:35

shows up or act, or the

39:37

tower of Babel, Genesis 7, was

39:40

that there was the creation of

39:42

nations, and then God, Genesis 12,

39:44

pulled out his portion, Israel. But

39:46

what happened is they. their language

39:48

that was confused. So you have

39:50

this, this orientation, a scattering of

39:53

community. They were spread out to

39:55

the ends of the earth, so to

39:57

speak, and in the Max chapter

39:59

two in Christ and His. Escatological

40:01

Kingdom is he's bringing all of

40:03

that back together and so where

40:05

in Babel the language was confused

40:08

in acts too they could each

40:10

nation could hear each other in

40:12

their own native tongue and they could

40:14

understand. Oh wow! So it's this beautiful

40:17

picture of of community, what we would

40:19

call embodied communities. You call it embodied,

40:21

that's great, okay. I'm writing that down.

40:23

Yeah, it's a, yeah, I think it's

40:26

like what, what, because what is the

40:28

hope, you know, I think about the,

40:30

what you've talked about a lot is

40:33

in the book and it's certainly. I

40:35

think we were all feeling it before

40:37

even the data had come in. We

40:39

were all feeling this disenbodiment. We were

40:42

all feeling the loss and trust in

40:44

community. There was a time when I

40:46

had to buy milk, not me personally,

40:48

my grandparents, when they bought milk, they

40:51

bought it from this guy called the

40:53

Milk Man. And I remember that when

40:55

I was like a thing, right? So

40:58

like communities were much more connected. And

41:00

we've lost that in the virtual world.

41:02

I actually think that the hope for

41:04

renewal of Western civilization is going to

41:07

be. coming back to local communities. We

41:09

love local parish model churches and like

41:11

doing life together again. I think it

41:13

seems like, like we're, we're, one author,

41:16

Martin Guri, he said we're drowning in

41:18

data, but we're thirsting for meaning. Absolutely.

41:20

Oh my goodness, I love Martin Guri.

41:22

And let's go into this, this is

41:25

fascinating, because I didn't know about acts

41:27

too, but I was very moved by

41:29

the Genesis story in Genesis. And so,

41:32

you know, because my own work before

41:34

I was, I set out to write

41:36

a book on what social media is

41:38

doing to democracy, because our country has

41:41

been weird since some time in the

41:43

2010s. It's not like it used to

41:45

be. Something weird is going on with

41:47

our politics. They rise in polarization. Everybody

41:50

believes something different. And so I was

41:52

looking around for metaphor. I love metaphors

41:54

and I was trying to, I was.

41:57

you know, starting this book, the title

41:59

of the book is, okay, so I

42:01

was starting the book and I was

42:03

looking for metaphor and I reread the

42:06

Babel story and when I got to

42:08

that line, God says, let us go

42:10

down and confound their language so that

42:12

they may not understand one another. Boom.

42:15

That's it. That's it. Because I always

42:17

thought, you know, so I'm Jewish, I

42:19

grew up not very religious. I had

42:21

a, you know, slight acquaintance with the

42:24

Babel story. I always thought God knocked

42:26

over the over the tower over the

42:28

tower. No, in the store in the

42:31

book, he just confuses their language so

42:33

they can't understand. And that's the way

42:35

you shatter a community. And so, so

42:37

that's why I picked the title for

42:40

the blog After Babel and the title

42:42

of the book I was going to

42:44

write is Life After Babel, adapting to

42:46

a world we may never again share.

42:49

And this is what Martin Gorey was

42:51

talking to you about because I drew

42:53

on him. He talks about how. uh...

42:56

you know the mass media age fifty

42:58

years ago with the newspapers and television

43:00

we might all see the same t.v.

43:02

show we might all have the same

43:05

understanding we'll have our disagreements but we

43:07

have a body of shared facts not

43:09

anymore now that we're all on social

43:11

media everything is fragmented so And so

43:14

right, the problem is the loss of

43:16

any sense of community. So I'm so

43:18

excited to hear about, I'll go check

43:21

out acts too, because I think you're

43:23

right. The way we fix this, at

43:25

least the way we bring some little

43:27

bubbles of sanity to our lives, is

43:30

going to be much more local. And

43:32

local parish churches is a great idea.

43:34

Well, and I love the way you

43:36

give the simple sort of two-step process

43:39

for, because I want to spend our

43:41

last few minutes together talking about... some

43:43

solutions for people who are really struggling

43:45

out there with what do I do

43:48

with all this because you talk about

43:50

one you know we can say well

43:52

just don't use the devices don't use

43:55

the social media but if you don't

43:57

have some outlet then as you then

43:59

talk about this idea of this safetyism

44:01

if they can't go out and experience

44:04

and have local community and fix then

44:06

they don't have a place to go.

44:08

flourishes. So I like the idea of

44:10

both sides. Well I was going to

44:13

bring that up too from solution-wise because

44:15

most of the things is just now

44:17

raising three teenagers and sending them out

44:20

there because I was like what what

44:22

can I do about that? I knew

44:24

there was a problem because I learned

44:26

that just being a parent I think

44:29

the biggest problem is it's so easy

44:31

to give your kid a scratch. So

44:33

you don't have to do anything. But

44:35

I noticed something, even when my kids

44:38

were real small, when it's real quiet,

44:40

there's trouble. You know, when you don't

44:42

hear them laughing at that, when it's

44:44

just silence. And so when they got

44:47

to be teenagers, I noticed that revolved

44:49

around three teenagers going into their own

44:51

separate rooms and getting in, you know,

44:54

into the cell phone and all these

44:56

fantasy worlds. And it's so weird that

44:58

all three of them had different things.

45:00

that different problems that came out of

45:03

that. But I've shared this story before,

45:05

but I just wanted to share it

45:07

with you and get your take as

45:09

far as solutions. You know, what I

45:12

wound up doing is I took one

45:14

of my kids' phones. Of course, I

45:16

asked them, is there anything in here

45:19

that, you know, Jesus wouldn't approve of?

45:21

I thought that was a good question.

45:23

And she was like, oh no, it's

45:25

all great. And but once I did

45:28

some digging, I found it. And it

45:30

was a social media media site, kind

45:32

of hidden. Which one was it? Do

45:34

you remember? Snapchat. Oh yes. And so

45:37

much degrading stuff to kids. Yeah. And

45:39

what I, you know, once I got

45:41

involved, I just followed all the trails

45:44

and she had like seven other friends

45:46

that were a group, but I saw

45:48

places of bullying and then I went

45:50

into each individual friend of hers and

45:53

then a couple of theirs, they were.

45:55

you know having these encounters with men

45:57

much older and like horrible show me

45:59

your show me my I'm looking at

46:02

all this stuff and so for two

46:04

days I became my child on there

46:06

I just played the game of course

46:08

they took them two days to figure

46:11

out that this is not who they

46:13

thought it was and that's when I

46:15

broke the news that I'm the dad

46:18

and I've been I know y'all quite

46:20

well now and so I just called

46:22

a meeting with their parents I was

46:24

like my daughter will be going in

46:27

a different direction and if you want

46:29

to be a part of that direction

46:31

I need to have a face-to-face conversation

46:33

with you and your mom dad or

46:36

guardian. What I was surprised. Wait, how

46:38

did it go? Did they respond? Did

46:40

you actually meet with the parents? Six

46:43

of the seven showed up with their

46:45

mom. Oh, that's fantastic. It was. And

46:47

look, and are some, this happened years

46:49

ago, but I mean, some of these

46:52

people are still my friends. A couple

46:54

of them actually came to the Lord.

46:56

And so, but, and there were three

46:58

or four that didn't go well. And

47:01

it wasn't because of the kid. It

47:03

was, because it was the, oh, how

47:05

dare you, you know, you know, you

47:08

know, you know, you know, you know,

47:10

you know, you know, you know, Kids

47:12

privacy, you know, but we had all

47:14

these conversations which I think was good

47:17

for my daughter to see and So

47:19

then I just implemented a rule we're

47:21

gonna make our house a place for

47:23

your friends And so they had to

47:26

turn in their cell phones when they

47:28

walked through the door and it which

47:30

is still a practice that they do

47:32

today even though I've lifted that practice

47:35

because now they're all in their 20s

47:37

But it's so weird how some of

47:39

their friends will come in and they'll

47:42

go turn their cell phone in at

47:44

the little beverage center But we ate

47:46

good food, we told good stories, we

47:48

played games, we did things together. Community.

47:51

That was a community, and that's just

47:53

what our house became, to fight this.

47:55

So you know, every time you think

47:57

about evil and how it unleashes in

48:00

the world, I think about that Texas

48:02

says they invent ways of doing evil.

48:04

I think about that when it comes

48:07

to abortion. Now it's the abortion pill.

48:09

that has come out and become accessible

48:11

to so many people and about 20%

48:13

based on a recent study of those

48:16

who have undergone chemical abortions suffer complications,

48:18

including death. And it makes sense, you

48:20

know, that young women are trying to

48:22

have abortions at their home and a

48:25

lot of bad things are happening. So

48:27

the pill continues to bring harm to

48:29

mothers and babies. It accounts for now

48:31

over 60% of all abortions, which is

48:34

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48:36

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48:38

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49:33

That is a beautiful story because you

49:35

basically figured out intuitively the conclusions I

49:37

came to in the book after all

49:40

this research. The problem is that each

49:42

of us as parents acting alone. If

49:44

we say no, you can't have Snapchat,

49:46

and I said that to my daughter,

49:49

she's 15, she says, dad, but everybody

49:51

in my school has it, everybody else

49:53

has it, except for me. So if

49:55

you're acting alone, your kid's isolated. But

49:58

the solution is that we act together.

50:00

And so here are the four norms.

50:02

This is the last third of the

50:05

book. Even though this problem is gigantic,

50:07

we can actually solve it if we

50:09

do these four things together. Most of

50:11

us, we don't need everybody, but if

50:14

most people do this, we solve the

50:16

problem. The first, no smartphone before high

50:18

school or age 14. You can give

50:20

your kid a flip phone if you

50:22

want to communicate with him, you know,

50:25

but nothing with a browser or social

50:27

media platforms. No smartphone before 14. Let

50:29

them get through early puberty first.

50:31

The second is no social media

50:33

until 16. Social media is designed

50:35

to introduce your children to strangers. They

50:37

will be talking to strangers. That's what

50:40

it's there for. It's insane. Children shouldn't

50:42

be talking to strangers. Okay? So it's

50:44

just, you know, I really, it should

50:46

be 18, but I'm just trying to

50:48

argue. Can we just agree on a

50:50

floor of 16? Just nobody should be

50:52

on it until 16. And then nobody

50:55

feels the pressure to be on it.

50:57

The third is phone-free schools. If you

50:59

can text your kids during the school

51:01

day, I guarantee you, they're checking their

51:03

text, they're sending text, everybody's texting everybody,

51:05

they're not listening to the teacher, they're

51:07

not even talking to each other. Hallways

51:09

in schools are very quiet these days

51:11

because all the kids are on their

51:13

phone all the time, but if you

51:15

have a phone free school, you turn

51:17

in the phone in the morning, they

51:19

get it back in the afternoon. Amazing things happen.

51:22

What the schools always say is they

51:24

hear laughter in the hallways again. The

51:26

kids are paying attention to the teachers, they're

51:28

flirting, talking, joking with each other. So

51:30

you've got to have phone-free schools. And

51:32

the fourth norm, and this is the

51:34

one that you've got, the fourth norm

51:36

is far more independence, free play, and

51:38

responsibility in the real world. Because if

51:40

we're going to take them off screens,

51:43

if they're not, I mean, not all screens,

51:45

they can watch some television, but if we're going

51:47

to. If they're not going to be grown up

51:49

on screens, we have to give them back a

51:51

fun childhood. My book isn't about screens, it's about

51:54

childhood. We've got to give back a fun childhood.

51:56

And even though the phone will suck them away

51:58

because it seems so interesting, when you... actually put

52:00

kids together without phones, they have a

52:02

lot of fun and they laugh and

52:05

they invent games. So, but if you

52:07

do all four, and if you have

52:09

a community, it's hard to do it

52:11

by yourself, but if you get a

52:13

community and a church parish or a

52:15

school, those are the two best units

52:17

where you really have people, you have

52:19

adults who care about kids, you have

52:21

kids who want to play with each

52:23

other. And so if you do that

52:25

in a community. Boom, you roll it

52:27

back and within a few weeks, within

52:29

a month or two, the kids are

52:32

going to be happier, having fun, they'll

52:34

adjust to not being on their phones

52:36

and everyone's better off. I think we

52:38

should, I think we should put that

52:40

into law. That's that way. In Europe,

52:42

I think I just read recently, didn't

52:44

they? In England, they passed a law.

52:46

or a minimum age mandate for... In

52:48

Australia, yes. Australia's the first country in

52:50

the world to do it. The tech

52:52

companies say that they can't do it,

52:54

but of course they can do it.

52:56

They know everything about us. They know

52:58

how old we are. So they can

53:01

figure it out how old we are.

53:03

And Australia's the first country with the

53:05

guts to say, you know what, you've

53:07

been trashing our children for so long,

53:09

we're going to raise the age to

53:11

16, and you guys have to enforce

53:13

it, you figure it, you figure it

53:15

out, doesn't have to enforce it, you,

53:17

it, it, you, it, it, it, it,

53:19

it, it, it, it, it, it, it's

53:21

the first. So that it would be

53:23

interesting to see if this ends up

53:25

being like, you know, smoking. Like we'll

53:28

look back in 50 years and think

53:30

like this would be the equivalent of

53:32

smoking in our grandparents generation. That's going

53:34

to be in five or ten years.

53:36

I guarantee, well, I believe that within

53:38

five or ten years, we're going to

53:40

look back on this and think what

53:42

the hell were we doing? Thank God

53:44

we're not doing that anymore. I just

53:46

read 40% of two year olds in

53:48

the United States have their own iPad.

53:50

40%. That means they're growing up 40%

53:52

because we've all discovered we all discovered

53:55

what you know what what you said

53:57

she just you give them you give

53:59

them a device and they're quiet it's

54:01

great it seems to work great they're

54:03

happy you're happy but you know you're

54:05

kind of blocking their brain developed so

54:07

it's a little bit of a double

54:09

whammy here because Jason mentioned this and

54:11

he's mentioned it before me times on

54:13

the podcast is a lot of times

54:15

parents themselves because even the parents, I'm

54:17

like, look, I've revealed this information and

54:19

they're like, well, you don't realize what

54:22

your kid is doing. You know, you

54:24

know, it was, it became a problem

54:26

like Little League Baseball where you realize

54:28

at some point, after a couple of

54:30

years of this, the problem is not

54:32

the kids. Yeah. Okay, you know, because

54:34

even the parents, I'm like, look, I've

54:36

revealed this information and they're like, well,

54:38

that, that's just. I'll run my house

54:40

like I want to. What I love

54:42

about what you're doing done is you're

54:44

saying as parents we can start something.

54:46

That then goes into pressure onto schools

54:49

to do the right thing and that's

54:51

get phones out. I'm hearing more and

54:53

more politicians say this now out loud.

54:55

Our schools need to be phone free,

54:57

which is good to hear. But that's

54:59

because that's come in pressure from us.

55:01

It's supposed to be we the people.

55:03

Well, and the teachers. The teachers have

55:05

hated the phones. The teachers have desperately

55:07

wanted to get rid of the phones.

55:09

But there are always some parents who

55:11

said, no, I need to call my

55:13

child whenever or anything. And the witnesses

55:15

goes into your over protection point. Exactly.

55:18

But I want to say, I want

55:20

to say that I personally learned the

55:22

value of democracy as a child in

55:24

child play. a particular cousin that was

55:26

a brutal dictator. His name is Jayce

55:28

Robertson. I realize they did it like

55:30

this, whatever this political setup is in

55:32

our child play, I don't want that.

55:34

I want to have a voice. That

55:36

was a nice way for Zuck saying

55:38

that I trained him to be the

55:40

man he is today. And we're all

55:42

strong men. That's exactly. We left our

55:45

thin skins at the door. All right.

55:47

We're out of time. Thank you so

55:49

much for coming on. The book is

55:51

called The Anxious Generation, how the great

55:53

rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic

55:55

of mental illness. We see this, we

55:57

know it, I love what Zach said,

55:59

we feel it as a people, and

56:01

we know something's not right. And you've

56:03

laid out some very... practical things but

56:05

also a very scholarly approach to see

56:07

that this is all backed up your

56:09

worldwide view of it and it's very

56:12

very powerful and so immediately I read

56:14

it I started sending quotes to my

56:16

kids my kids are in their late

56:18

30s and now they are having teenagers

56:20

and I'm like let's start implementing this

56:22

today start telling your friends so I

56:24

think it's a movement that unashamed nation

56:26

can be a part of I know

56:28

you guys are struggling with this because

56:30

we get your emails all the time

56:32

So this is something we can get

56:34

behind. Thank you for writing the book

56:36

and for coming out to tell us

56:39

about it. Well, thank you, gentlemen. I

56:41

hope your listeners will go to anxiousgeneration.com.

56:43

We have a lot of resources for

56:45

parents, for teachers, for legislators, for legislators,

56:47

this is a movement. And when you

56:49

get millions and millions of parents, and

56:51

especially the moms, I mean, the mothers

56:53

around the world are just up in

56:55

arms about this, when you get a

56:57

movement of parents, I don't think we

56:59

can be stopped. Thanks for listening to

57:01

the Unashamed Podcast. Help us out by

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leaving a rating and review on Apple

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Podcast. And don't miss an episode by

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