Brought that lens to reading this book. I want understand whats going on. Im also a mom, so i really want reasons to be hopeful. So those are some of the perspectives i had in reading the book. Im curious what lenses you brought to writing it so im im also a social scientist. Im also a professor. Im also a father i have my my children are i have a son 17 and a daughter 14. And i said, you know, my own research is on the psychology of morality. I looked at how morality helps us understand the political divide. I have looked a lot at what social media is doing to democracy. I didnt set out to write a book on kids because thats not my expertise. Although have studied a lot of developmental psychology, i set out to write a book on what social media is doing to our country and how its making it difficult to have reasonable politics. And i thought id the first chapter off with, well, what happened to teens when they move their social lives onto onto a onto smartphones and social media in 2011 2012. What happened to them that i was going to move on and then just talk about democracy. But once i wrote that first chapter, i realized, oh my god, this is the graphs are shocking. The increase in Mental Illness is so vast and it happens in many countries. So anyway, so that drew me into it. And i think what i, what i can bring, even though im not primarily a developmental psychologist or a clinical psychologist, is as a social psychologist, im really aware of and focused on how we influence each other and you cant understand social media and the addiction to it and the difficulty of anyone stepping out unless you understand social web that people are in, the incredible concerns that we all have about reputation, what people think of us, and how much more intense that is for teenagers. So i bring that. And also im in a business school. I moved to the Nyu Stern School of business in 2011. Im i was at the university of virginia before that. And ive learned so much about business. I didnt know much about it before i came here. We dont learn much about business or capitalism. You know, in most of our schools. And so understanding the Business Models that facebook developed in particular the ad, the advertising driven engagement maximizing Business Model, has also helped me to understand why were in this deep, deep trap. Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about that Business Model, about the attention economy were in and how that factors into your thinking. So lets go back. I find it, you know, its very helpful, especially for you know, older listeners who remember the nineties, who remember how amazing it was when we first got got a web browser, when we first could like type in, you know, anything and google will or altavista, i think was the original one now would answer it. I mean, it was like we were gods, you know, you have omniscience, you can find anything. So the, you know, the early internet was incredible and the millennials grew up with it and it didnt harm their Mental Health at all. Their Mental Health is a little better than gen x before them, and it didnt harm democracy at all. In fact, it seemed to be really helping democracy in the nineties, so, you know, we we all started off very optimist stick about all of this and a point that i come back to again and again in the anxious generation is that when smartphones and social media came in, in the 20 in a to thousands, that really changed everything. Our Relationship Technology changed the technology was no longer a servant that we called them when we needed something. But once we got smartphone ads with the app store and hundreds, thousands of apps and notifications, now, there was the opportunity for companies to use us. There was the opportunity for facebook worked out the worked out the mechanics of this first. Originally, facebook had no revenue. It was just, hey, you know, lets connect people and for free. That seemed wonderful. But once they worked out their revenue model, which is that the us, the people using the the service are not the customers. They dont pay the money. They get a free service. And if youre getting something for free on the internet, probably youre the product. Well, i shouldnt say that there are kids, we get it for free. But in this case, if youre getting this companys service, youre actually the product, the customers, the advertiser. And once they develop that of free to use. But you pay with your data and your attention and, your receptivity to advertisements. Many other Companies Adopted it and then the race was on. Whoever could grab a Young Persons eyeballs and hold on would win. But if you didnt grab them and hold on, someone else would. So you better be as addictive as possible, as engaging as possible. And thats why the early, you know, even in 20 17,008, 229, it wasnt bad like it wasnt hurting kids Mental Health. But by 2015 it was. So thats the key turning point, that Business Model and you write in the book about some changes to the technologies themselves that you feel like made a big. I know the front facing camera is one of them. Talk to us a little bit about some of some of what changed around then that you feel like has has had such a big impact. Yes. So again, i didnt i didnt know this just from common knowledge. It wasnt until i first teamed up with tobias rose, stockwell, who has a wonderful book, outrage outrage machine, and then my Research Partners at roush really dug into it in detail when you lay out the story of what change technologically its a really amazing story. And so it starts. In 2007 with the introduction of the iphone. And there too, i remember my first iphone. It was magical. I mean, it was like a Digital Swiss Army knife. It had all these Amazing Things on it, could use it for all sorts of things. So i loved it. It was not harmful. My two year old son loved it, loved swiping left, you know, loved watching things. It there was no app store, there were no notifications it was just a tool that you use when you wanted it. And then in 2008, you got the Software Development kits which allow apps to allow developers to develop apps. You get the app store, you get notifications in 2010, you get the front facing camera. So now young peoples lives are not just taking photos of each other, but of themselves. Much more of selfies become much a much bigger deal. Instagram is founded in 2010, but it doesnt become popular until 2012, when facebook buys it high Speed Internet. You know, the early internet was really slow, and its in this period around 2010 to 2012, thats when were really moving quickly to high Speed Internet and unlimited data plans. Before then, teens had to conserve their texting because they were paying for each text. My point is, in 2010, most teens at great majority had a flip phone limited data, no front facing camera. They used the phone to text each other and to call that was it by 2015, most teens, 70 or over 70 , have a smartphone. Most have an Instagram Account, especially the girls. They have high speed data plans. And so now its possible for the first time to be online all the time. The millennials couldnt do that. Gen z could. And did. And you call gen z the anxious generation. Thats the title of your book. So tell us who is the anxious generation . What mar t beginning in mind d how did we get here . Yeah, so the way that the way that i discovered this was originally through the work of jean tanguy. She wrote a book called i gen and. She had an atlantic article where, you know, author people need to understand authors dont make up their own titles. The atlantic is very good at making up titles that will sell. They made up the title have smartphones destroyed a generation. And so because it was a kind of an overthetop title, jane took a lot of flack for that. A lot of psychologists criticized her because what she was showing was these graphs of Mental Health of, lets say, Mental Illness, of depression, anxiety were like little hockey sticks, like they were flat. And then they would go up in 2013, 2014 and 2015. And i thought, wow, three years of data. I see that. I see the upturn. But if this goes down next year, shes going to be really embarrassed that it didnt go down. It just kept going up and up and up and its continue going up ever since. So the teen Mental Health crisis began in 2013. Thats when all the numbers began going up in 2011. Theres no sign of a problem. 2013. 2014 is when everything goes up, but it takes us a while to notice it because know we researchers, we dont get the data, the data collected. It takes two years before you see the published and but we began to notice on campus around 2014, 2015 that all of our Mental Health centers were flooded. We couldnt keep up with the demand. And so at the time, we thought our students were millennials, people were telling us, oh yeah, the millennial generation, you know, born in 1981 through 1999 or 2000, nobody really knew. But it turns out that if you were born in 1996 or seven, you have much higher odds of being anxious and depressed than if you were born in 1992 or 93. Its that sudden. Its the most sudden change ive ever seen in longitudinal data. And i think its because the millennials went through puberty on the early internet puberty, an incredibly important period of brain development. The brain is really rewiring itself into a final adult locked down configuration. Millennials went through with flip phones and the early internet, and they came out fine. Their Mental Health is good. Gen z, i think is defined by the fact that they went through puberty and social media many hours a day and that messes you up socially, developmentally. And i think neurologically and i know thats part of your thesis in the book, but there is another component of your argument in the anxious gen as well. Will you talk talk to us a little bit about what that is. Oh, yes, thank you. Because everyones so interested in the phones because thats all front and center. But actually my story, not a simple story about all of those kids. They got phones and then they were ruined. Its actually a two part story. I can summarize the whole book by saying we have overprotected our children in the real world anweave under protected them online. So my previous was called the coddling of the American Mind how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation failure. I wrote that with my friend greg lukyanov and we spent a lot of time we were trying to understand. Why are College Students suddenly so fragile . Beginning in 2015 . It wasnt like this in 2012, 2013. Why are College Students so fragile that many think theyre being harmed if a visiting speaker comes that they dont like . If theres a book assigned that they think has difficult content, the students in 2014 2015, which is different from those from those before, so we were looking especially at over protection a large part of our argument was we were trying on play researchers such as peter gray and the work of Lenore Skenazy, who wrote this wonderful book, free range kids. And we argued that because children are antifa fragile. That was the key word in that book where kids are not fragile. Theyre not going to break if they experience a setback. Actually, they need to experience setbacks. Its like the immune system. The immune system. If you protect a kid from dirt and germs, the immune system cant develop because the immune system requires disease, germs, bacteria in order to develop and become strong. So the story that i tell in the accesseneration is that childhood was always based on play, especially unsupervised, vigorous, outdoor, rough and tumble play, pretend, play, all kinds of play kids playing with each other without adult supervision so that they learn how to regulate their behavior. They learn how to resolve conflicts. Play is what all mammals do. And in the 1980s and nineties, americans began to freak out about child abduction. We thought if we ever let kids out, theyll be kidnaped. So we cracked down on childhood independence. In the nineties, we largely stopped letting them out. And so by about 2010, no one has seen a child outdoors without a chaperon in so long that some neighbors begin calling the police when they see a child outdoors without a chaperon. So we crack down on free play, which i think interfered with development. But and this is the millennials were talking about now they didnt get to play outside as much but theyre not depressed anxious yet so the story tell is that that weakened them that made them more fragile and then when they thrown into the whirlpool of social media and people say bad things about each other and youre exposed to all of horrible, horrible content. Thats when thats when adolescence were easily broken. And that i think, genz, im so curious about this. Im listening to some of your language and hearing words like broken and thinking about the idea that a generation is ruined. Im trying to reconcile it with of my own experiences with this generation, teens who are amazing and and im wondering, as you were choosing this title, as you were thinking about thi framing, youre a psychology ist and you were choosing this language. The this term, the anxious generation. You have any concern that branding that the current generation this way would be sort of a selffulfilling prophecy for teens. Oh selffulfilling prophecy. No, i didnt i didnt worry about that because i it as a as a call to action. Now first, i should say my original title that i propose was kids in space. And it was going to be about what happens when you take kids out planet earth. You know, like plants need soil. If you try to raise them in the air, theyre almost all going to die. And we took kids out of communities and we raised them in cyberspace. And so that was my original title was just kids in space. But publishers rightly pointed out that, you know, that nobodys going to know what that means. And they came up with the the anxious generation. But i think its a good. The book is actually not even really addressed to young people. Its really drsed to adults and teachers because we need to change what were doing very, very quickly. Im here to try to play a long game of persuading people over a five or ten year is that, you know, im here to say, look, the parents all see the problem. The teachers see it, not all. Okay. You and i are both professors. I need to be more careful. I need to be precise in my language. Not everyone sees the problem, but i think most do by now. So im trying to raise the call that something has gone terribly wrong. I should be clear in response to your question, most kids are doing fine. The majority of gen z are not depressed and anxious. So you know, if we say destroyed or broken, i dont that literally everyone, not even majority. However, i do think that the majority were influenced in ways that might make them a little a little weaker a little less confident. So speaking as a social scientist, you see gigantic differences, Mental Illness between generations. You know, you and i, were good at looking at averages and standard deviations, saying, is this a small effect or a big effect . These are really big effects statistically in terms of the difference between generations. So sorry, that was a kind of a convoluted answer, but thats how it came to be called the anxious generation. And they use the word so much anxiety is one of the main words they use. Even more than depression. Anxiety is the central is the central Mental Illness. And its a big part of a lot of their identities. So im not worried that this is going to cause them to be more the things coming out of their phones where people are glamorizing it, that thats what would cause for sure. I hear you on that. And talk to us a little bit about of the recommendations you have in the book about what you think its going to take for us to, as you say, like bring kids back to earth. I know you have some very specific force reforms that youd like to see. Talk to us about what they are and how you got there. Mm hmm. Okay ill do that. And then. And then i actually want ask you because you wrote a book on this, and i want to actually get country view from you. So ill. Ill do that just a moment. But here. Okay, here we go. The so, the four norms that i propose, i propose simple norms because were stuck in a series of collective action problems. You know, its its no good to tell a parent, just dont give your kid an iphone because if youre the only one who doesnt give your kid an iphone then shes cut off. Shes isolated. Shes alone. And that really could be bad for her. But what if if a bunch of parents whose kids are friends what if a group of us decide, you know what, were just gonna give our kids flip phones. They dont need a smartphone in sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. Were just going to wait till high school before we give them a smartphone. Well, now, if all your friends have smartphones, have i have flip phones, even if theres only ten of you in a grade of 50 kids, youre fine, especially if youre also given more free play, more time hang out together, because thats a lot more fun hanging out with your friends, going to get ice cream, riding bicycles. Thats a lot more fun than alone on your bed. Liking peoples posts. So anyway, the four norms are these no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16 phone free schools and far more independence free play and responsibility in the real world. If were going to take it, were going to greatly reduce screen time, especially in k through eight. Thats where a lot of the damage is done. Thats where we can easily reduce phone use. If were going to reduce screen time, we have to give back fun and joy and time to play in time with each other. So this is all about trying to roll back the phone based childhood and restore the play based childhood. I really appreciate that. Im wondering, i know youve been talking about these four reforms. What has the response been like from different people who youve engaged in some of these ideas . The response has been incredible. I have been involved in many social change efforts. I