Shadowing Practice: NYU Professor: Do This for 2 Weeks to Get Your Focus, Motivation, & Life Back - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Today, on the Mel Robbins podcast, Dr. Jonathan Haidt, the world's leading researcher on how social media and quick dopamine is devastating to mental health.
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The average American teen now spends five hours a day on social media, mostly watching short videos.
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I think 40% of American two-year-olds have their own iPad.
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With a new warning about how it impacts boys.
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Boys now have a slot machine, a porn theater, a video game parlor.
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They have all of this stuff in their pocket with them all the time.
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Meta has agreed to pay up to $17 billion in damages
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due to the claims that Facebook and Instagram have harmed the mental health of young people.
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The biggest damage is the destruction of the human ability to pay attention, to focus, and to pursue goals.
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Dr. Hyde is here to teach you how to get your life back right now.
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If you're addicted to something and you stop doing it for the first few days, it actually can be painful.
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But if you stick with it, within a week or two, your life comes back.
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Jonathan Haidt, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
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Mel Robbins, it is great to be here.
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And of course, one always says that, but the welcome that your team gave me, I have never seen anything like it.
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So it's a real pleasure to be here.
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Well, we are very, very excited that you made the time to come to Boston.
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I have had you on a list of people I want to sit down with for well over a year.
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And I want to start out by talking about what could change about my life
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or about my kids' lives or the lives of some of the youngsters that I care about.
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If I really take to heart everything that you're about to teach us and share with us about this shocking research, and I apply it to my life.
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So what we'll be talking about here is how to regain your attention, how to improve your habits, especially your digital habits.
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And if you do this, then I can offer you, the listener, the viewer, the same thing that I offer my students at New York University.
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I teach a course called Flourishing, and they say if you stay with the program, if you make these changes to your habits, by the end of the course you will become smarter,
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stronger emotionally, and more sociable.
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And if you become smarter, stronger, and more sociable, then you will on average be more successful in love,
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broadly construed and in work and love
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and work is the magic formula in psychology for happiness
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and flourishing going all the way back to sigmund freud so
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if you are more successful in love
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and in work then i guarantee you you will be happier i feel like this is one of these topics
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that makes everybody anxious the title of your blockbuster bestseller
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and all this research the anxious generation is the right title
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because i know we have a sense that there is something deeply wrong Yeah, that's right.
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And that we are losing parts of ourselves.
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We are losing parts of our connection to other people.
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We've all had that experience of just walking down the street and nobody's talking to anybody.
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Everybody's staring at their phones.
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You see families sitting out at a restaurant.
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Everybody's on a device.
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And my heart quietly breaks.
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And I also feel this deep sense of panic.
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And so are there things that we're going to learn today
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that may give us a sense of control pullback or like exactly what to do?
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Because it almost feels like this is one of those topics
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that the genie's already out of the bottle and we're all screwed.
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Yeah.
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So something big changed between 2010 and 2015.
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I've called it the great rewiring of childhood.
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And you and I are gonna talk about that.
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What happened when everybody switched over from having flip phones or basic phones, the millennials went through puberty with the Motorola Razr, to by 2015 everyone has a smartphone.
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We've gotta get to the point where we can return our phones to being tools
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that we use when we want to do something.
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You take it out.
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The smartphone used to be a Swiss army knife.
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Even had flashlight and maps, like it was amazing.
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We've got to get back to where it's a tool that you use when you want something, as opposed to a thing that's dominating, controlling your life and altering your consciousness and telling you what you need to do now and when.
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So, and it takes some work.
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I'm not gonna say it's easy, but it's actually pretty simple.
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Like the things you need to do aren't complicated.
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With a little practice, you really can regain control of your attention and then you'll regain control of your life.
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I would love to start with just really digging into your research in this blockbuster book, The Anxious Generation.
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What effect does living a life where you're constantly connected have on you as a human being?
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Yeah.
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So the most important component of happiness, research in positive psychology has shown this for decades, The most important thing is relationships and relatedness.
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We humans are ultra-social creatures.
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We have intense social needs.
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We need to have close relationships, supportive relationships in our family.
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And then as kids, especially as they reach adolescence, the plan is they kind of move out.
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They stop being under your tutelage, under your protection, and they need to begin creating their own life.
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And that means that they need to make it in the world of prestige of their peers.
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So that's always been the case.
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And that's why I don't, what it was like for you, I hated seventh grade.
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Middle school was the worst.
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Like I generally liked school, but middle school was horrible.
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And suddenly you realize like, wait, how I look, suddenly it's something matters so much.
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So middle school is a very, very difficult time.
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It always is, you can't remove that.
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But if now suddenly everyone is online and everyone is connected and the companies tell us, oh, it's how you make connections.
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It helps kids get together.
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But what kids need is a few close friends.
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And early on, what we were told was, oh, this is, you know, lets them, you know, have an Instagram page, they'll have all these friends, they'll have all these followers.
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But it turns out that that doesn't bring you closer to your friends, it replaces them.
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Because the average American teen now spends five hours a day on social media, mostly watching short videos.
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They're not even liking each other's posts, it's mostly short videos.
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These five hours a day pushes out everything else time with friends, sleep, sunshine, reading books.
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You know, if you have kids, imagine taking five hours out of their day and saying, you know, you have to go do something for five hours a day.
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Now get everything else done.
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Everything else is gonna suffer.
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And that's what these devices did.
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When the kids got on social media, it severely damaged their relationships because it gave them quantity at the expense of quality.
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They now had hundreds of friends that they never saw.
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And instantly- Well, I also think it's stunning that the five hours spent watching short form,
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It's not even five hours spent chatting with friends or talking to friends or doing something with friends.
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That's right.
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So this is something very important for people to understand.
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Social media used to be social.
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Social media used to actually be called social networking systems.
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That was what we called them around 2006 to 2010, social networking systems.
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Facebook was a social networking system.
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You put up your page, you've got your information, maybe your photographs, and you can go check out your friend's page and they can check out yours.
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That's perfectly healthy.
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There's no problem with that.
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And it was also very static.
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Yeah.
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It was sort of like looking at a flyer.
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Yeah, that's right.
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It was not addictive.
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There was no dopamine issue.
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No. It connected people and it let you catch up with your friends very quickly.
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Yes.
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So a lot of things change.
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So the iPhone comes out in 2007.
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Okay.
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But very few kids have one.
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And there's no app store, no push notifications.
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2008, you begin to get the app store and push notifications.
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2009, you get the share button, the retweet button.
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And then you get newsfeed in this period also.
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So instead of going to check out your friend's page, now suddenly it's your newsfeed.
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And it's not just updates from your friends.
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It's news updates.
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It's commentary.
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It's culture war stuff.
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It's isn't he stupid.
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It's can you believe those Democrats, those Republicans.
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So now you're getting push notifications about things that aren't your friends.
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And this begins to sort of ramp up the overstimulation, the anxiety.
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But you can only do Facebook when you sit down at your computer.
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And if you're a teen, you may have to sit down on your parents' computer.
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So nobody is on for five hours a day.
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So that's where we are in 2008, 9, 10.
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2010, the iPhone, I think the 5, has the first iPhone with a front-facing camera.
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That's also your Instagram comes out.
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But it's a photography site.
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Teens aren't on it.
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By 2012, now lots of teens are getting an iPhone, whatever, 6, whatever it was by then,
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an iPhone with a front-facing camera and an Instagram account because Facebook buys Instagram in 2012.
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And that's when all the girls rush onto Instagram.
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And so 2012 is the pivotal year for girls, especially.
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For boys, the curve's a little more curvilinear.
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There's not such a sharp elbow for boys at 2012.
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For girls, it's very sharp 2012.
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So imagine being a 12 or 13-year-old girl in 2010 versus 2015.
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You're always concerned about your status, your reputation, your looks with the small group that you're talking to.
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And now suddenly by 2015, everyone is talking about your looks.
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Everyone is commenting on the dress you wore.
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Everyone's commenting on your skin, your breasts, your hair, everything.
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This is horrible for girls.
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This is a horrible way to put girls through puberty.
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So that's why we see girls suffering immediately.
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And that was what my early research was on.
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It was really clear.
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Social media, especially Instagram, is harmful for girls, especially anxiety, depression.
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And for older Gen Z, which is those born 1996, 7, 8, 9, I think that's the main story.
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And it looks like the boys aren't doing so bad.
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Okay, but now let's trace it forward a bit more because everything changes.
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By 2015, now the video games are moving onto the phone.
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And now boys get their quick dopamine hits.
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They begin to get addicted to their phones for video games.
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Now that everyone has high-speed internet, now porn, boys can watch porn anywhere, anytime.
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And so a lot more boys are getting addicted to porn, which makes it much harder for them to ever talk to a girl
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or flirt with a girl or seduce a girl or get a girlfriend.
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For boys, the thing to keep your eye on isn't necessarily social media.
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It's quick dopamine.
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Boys now have a slot machine, a porn theater, a video game parlor.
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They have all of this stuff in their pocket with them all the time.
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And you're a boy, it's going to be just lots and lots of stimulation, which is going to make it very hard for you to ever pay attention.
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Boys especially lose executive function, the ability to make a plan and follow it.
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For girls, it's constant social comparison.
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It's constant stuff about clothing, looks, makeup, you know, was it get ready with me videos that the girls watch.
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So it is having a different effect on boys and girls, but they end up in the same pit of despair.
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And why is it important to understand that it's a slot machine?
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So could you explain to the person listening?
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So I think we know from a common sense standpoint that slot machines are not a good thing.
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They're designed to keep you pulling the lever.
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If you're an adult, you've probably walked through a casino at some point.
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You see people zoned out, pulling the slot machine.
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But can you explain to the person who's listening, who's never heard this explained to them,
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why it's important to understand that it's the same way a slot machine is designed?
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That's right.
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So the original internet was wide open.
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It was very difficult to make money on it.
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People put things up.
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But once you get push notifications, the app store, all that stuff, a lot of companies develop what's called an advertising-based business model.
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they make their money from showing you ads.
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And a company like Facebook was the first to really pioneer this.
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If they make money from showing you ads, then they'll make more money if they show you more ads to keep you on longer and keep you more intense.
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And so the business incentive for them was to figure out how to keep everyone on longer.
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And they told their engineers that they said, your bonus will depend in part on you raising, increasing the engagement numbers, which means time spent on the device.
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And you know this because you're involved with class action lawsuits now.
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And so we have the evidence that these are designed in a way to keep you and your kids on them longer.
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That's right.
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So first, so I know people who worked at Facebook and they told me about the bonus structure.
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But because so many parents are suing Meta, in the course of the lawsuits, we have a process of discovery.
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The attorneys can request documents.
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Also, there are whistleblowers like Francis Haugen, who brought out thousands of screenshots of internal documents.
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And so here, I'll just read a couple.
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So here's a discussion among two researchers at Instagram.
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One of them has a PhD in neuroscience.
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And he says, it seems clear from what's presented here in this internal report
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that some of our users are addicted to our products.
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And I worry that driving sessions incentivizes us to make our product more addictive without providing much more value.
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How to keep someone returning over and over to the same behavior each day?
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Intermittent rewards are most effective.
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Think slot machines.
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Now, I wanna just make sure that as you're listening or watching, you understand what that means for you and me.
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One of the reasons why you catch yourself, and it's not your fault, sitting on your phone for two or three hours when you didn't mean to, you just went to go get a text,
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next thing you know you're scrolling, is that if you notice as you scroll, every once in a while you get a funny meme.
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Exactly, it's reinforcing.
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But then you scroll through a bunch of boring stuff and then you get another funny one.
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And then you scroll and you start to think, oh, I should get off this thing.
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And then you see a funny one.
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That's right.
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But you don't know how often.
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And then you go to put your phone away.
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And then what ends up happening, at least for me, I notice,
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is that I feel this lingering pull that maybe there's something good that is on that thing.
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That's right.
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And so I go to pick it up again, and because I don't know, there's this interesting thing that happens when you start to realize that this is by design.
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That's right.
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That it's the fact that you don't know if there's a funny thing coming yet.
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You don't know if you're gonna like the next thing that keeps you on it.
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That's right.
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That's exactly right.
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At the end of the day, the device is neutral.
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That's right.
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It's the software that's on the device and the apps in particular,
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and the social media platforms and the shopping-ification of social media that has led to all of this addictive behavior.
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So it's gonna devastate the deep connections.
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They're not gonna have the deep connections.
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They're gonna have lots of shallow connections.
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That's really bad, especially for girls.
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That's one.
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Why is it really bad for girls to have shallow connections?
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Boys are developing friendships, as my friend Richard Reeves says, he runs the American Institute for Boys and Men.
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He says, girls like to connect face to face.
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Boys like to connect shoulder to shoulder.
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Like we're doing something together.
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We're hiking.
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We're building something.
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We're whatever.
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There's also an enormous difference between connecting and performing.
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And there are times when kids need to learn how to boast, how to impress others.
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But it shouldn't be most of the time.
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And it shouldn't be when they're with their friends.
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And as soon as girls get social media, and now everything's about their profile and who liked them
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and why did he like her post but he didn't like my post
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and all the stuff that girls do a lot more than boys about like the, you know, the going further on why they thought that or did that.
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It drives them into just an endless loop of that kind of thinking, as opposed to just connecting and having fun and sharing secrets with a friend.
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Then there's the sexualization.
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If you just think about what healthy development is for a girl, the British have a phrase, don't put your daughter on the stage, Mr. Worthington.
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It's from like an old play or something.
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But you don't want to raise a girl on a stage.
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That would be devastating to her because what matters is her looks.
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The world judges her for her looks and that's what she cares about.
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Social media is just devastating for all the things girls need to do to turn into competent, happy women.
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So that's why my group says, we say very clearly in the book, no social media till 16.
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Why is the internet a uniquely dangerous place for a young person to be wandering around unprotected?
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So it's kind of insane to put children in with anonymous adults.
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I mean, imagine if there was some place where you could just drop your kids off
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and they're going to interact with all kinds of men who are wearing masks and we never know who they are.
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That's completely insane, but that's what happens on a lot of platforms, even Roblox.
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You know, Roblox is a virtual space where people wander around, they interact with other people.
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Some of them are men who want sex.
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So once you get into any of these platforms that allow communication among strangers, this is a sick thing to do to children.
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But it's common.
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We just accept it.
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It's just common.
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And where did all the sexual predators go?
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If you hang out at a park, people report you'll get arrested.
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So they all moved to Instagram and a few other platforms.
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So research done by Arturo Bejar was a Facebook employee.
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He was working on Instagram.
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and his daughter, his 15-year-old daughter, created an Instagram page because the two of them enjoyed restoring classic cars.
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And she kept getting hit on by men showing creepy things.
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15-year-old girl, photographs of her fixing cars, like, she has to go through this?
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And so Arturo says, I wonder how common this is?
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And he's able to do research and he finds that 15% of, I think it was 14 to 16-year-old teens, and here boys and girls were getting it equally,
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said 15% of them get an inappropriate approach from a stranger every week.
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Every week?
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Every week.
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If you just look in the past week, the question he asked was in the past week.
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And what year was this?
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This was around 2018, 2017.
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So this was eight years ago?
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Yeah.
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It was 15%?
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Yes.
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So his questions were in the past week, has this happened to you?
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And one of them was an inappropriate approach from a stranger or has made you feel uncomfortable, something like that.
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And so it is just ubiquitous.
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Of course, look, most men are very decent and would not harm a child.
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But if it's 5% or whatever it is, some percent, these platforms give them free reign.
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And I should clarify, once your daughter gets on Instagram or TikTok, it's not just strange men who are going to be doing stuff.
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It's the boys in her class also.
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There's a book called American Girls.
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It's horrifying.
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I forget the author.
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But she goes through how boys use nude pics of their female classmates as currency.
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And the eighth grade boys, if they can get a pick of an eighth grade girl's breasts, they can then trade that to a high school boy who will get them beer.
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I mean, things like that.
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Just that girls' bodies become currency and the degradation, the humiliation.
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So it's just there's a degree of sex
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and degradation to life online where children are interacting with strangers and there's no rules and no one's accountable.
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So that's why my group says, we say very clearly in the book, no social media till 16.
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I find it really fascinating that you have two divergent things happening when it comes to parenting and modern society.
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On the other side of the coin,
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in real life, we've become like so psycho overprotective that we're over protecting our kids from real life experiences.
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I want to read to you from page 90.
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American parents have lost so much trust in their fellow citizens
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and their own children that many now endorse the near total elimination of freedom from childhood.
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Now, this is a report that's over 10 years old and it's still stunning and it's way worse.
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and this reports from Pew Research Center,
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parents on average say children should be at least 10 in order to play unsupervised in their own front yard.
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This was 10 years ago.
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People were saying, I don't want my kids playing alone in my own front yard, even if I'm in the kitchen.
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Holy cow, they say that kids should be 12 before they're allowed to stay alone in their own home, unsupervised for one hour.
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they should be 14, which is basically high school, before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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I can summarize the whole book by saying we have overprotected our children in the real world, where they need a huge amount of experience unsupervised,
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and we have underprotected them online, where there's a huge amount of threats and not a lot of benefit.
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we've denied kids the freedom to become tougher, stronger, more independent.
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We put them on computers instead because we thought, well, that's safe.
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They're on computers.
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Maybe they'll be like Steve Jobs.
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Maybe they'll, you know, start a company.
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Good.
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He's on a computer.
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And we didn't understand as the internet changed, we didn't understand that putting our kids on the internet exposes them to all kinds of terrible people
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and companies that want to addict them.
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While most people are focusing on the phones, the larger message that I want to bring to everyone is keep your eye on childhood.
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Don't focus on the phones.
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Keep your eye on childhood.
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What kind of childhood do you want for your child?
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Do you want a childhood that's going to prepare them for adulthood, that's going to give you a confident young person able to go off and travel, go get a job, go to college?
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Or do you want someone who's going to just spend their life keeping up with the memes on five different platforms?
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So, you know, Dr. Height,
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let's talk about voice, because we've talked specifically about the reasons why social media is psychologically devastating for girls,
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especially ages 10 through 14, which is why your recommendation is no social media until 16.
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What is the impact on boys when you give them a smartphone too soon or they have access to social media too.
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So for boys, don't keep your eye on social media.
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For boys, keep your eye on anything that's like a stimulus response reward thing.
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So it starts with video games.
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And I remember my son, we had simple games on the iPhone.
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And I remember seeing addictions for him where he would get very irritated.
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If you took it away, he'd scream, he had to have it.
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If when you take something away, the kid is very upset, that's a definite sign of dopamine adaptation.
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That is, their brain has gotten accustomed to a lot of quick dopamines that when you take it away, now their brain is in a deficit state.
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It takes a couple of weeks, you know, a couple of weeks to sort of get over that for the brain to restore itself.
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Okay, so just hover here for a second.
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So for boys, what you're teaching us so far is it's less about all of the stuff on social media.
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The bigger picture is when when it comes to boys and brain development,
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the addictive nature of social media and short form content and all this stuff makes them super addicted to it.
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And then when you go to try to limit it, now you're gonna get the outbursts.
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Now you're gonna get the issues.
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And that's a sign that you got a problem.
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That's right.
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Maybe a metaphor that would be helpful here is imagine, you know, imagine a thousand, it's kind of a weird metaphor, let's try it.
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Imagine a thousand fishermen with big hooks, dropping their hooks down, and your boy is sitting there on the ocean floor.
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And all of these hooks are baited with the most amazing possible things.
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And they're all trying to get your boy to bite.
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And this is his entire childhood.
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It starts with the video games, and those are amazing.
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And there's so many coming at him on every possible surface.
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And it's the short videos and the memes.
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And then when he gets a little older, it's the porn.
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And then it's sports betting, my God.
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States have legalized sports betting and kids are able to get around the age limits, but there's gambling in almost everything now.
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So for boys, it's open season on their dopamine system.
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Open season, companies are sending out fishing fleets to try to suck out all the dopamine.
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That's what you need to keep your eye on for boys.
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And what does it do psychologically to your son?
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Okay.
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Dopamine is the hormone of motivation.
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And what you want is slow dopamine.
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What you want, especially for boys, boys' outcomes are more variable than girls.
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Boys can be incredibly successful and they're overrepresented at that.
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And also among society's losers, they're way overrepresented in that.
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So boys, the outcome of their life is much less certain than it is for girls.
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If boys are able to apply themselves and work towards a long-term goal, they can be incredibly effective and successful in the world.
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And they often end up with a certain kind of ambition that you find more in boys than girls.
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But boys are also so easily lured into becoming lazy bums that never move out of the house.
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So if you're frustrated because your son is not launching
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or he's in the basement or he's dropped out of college or he's lost motivation or never sees his friends, there is a direct link.
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Yes, a direct link.
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Because, so think about it this way.
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we all have to learn how to do hard things.
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Children have to do hard things over and over again.
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If you present a child with a path, either you can do this really hard thing to get a candy bar, or you can just have the candy bar.
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Which do you want?
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I'll take the candy bar.
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So it used to be that you had to work to get things.
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So for example, the biggest project for me when I was in middle and high school was getting a girlfriend.
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I'm not saying sixth grade, but by ninth grade, It was painful to not have a, because some boys had a girlfriend.
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So that was sort of a long-term project.
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And I would try to flirt a little bit and I didn't know what I was doing, but that's how you learn, is by trying and failing, trying and failing.
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And then when you finally succeed, it's amazing.
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And yes, it's dopamine, but it's also a deep feeling of satisfaction.
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And so if boys have that over and over again, they struggle for something, they get it, they get the pleasure of success, that's how you make a man.
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Whereas if you always say, you have a choice, you can work hard or I'll just give you the reward, what you're going to end up with is a boy who's not really capable of doing much in the world.
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We talked about mental health and mental illness a lot here.
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But what I've discovered since the book came out is
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that that's actually not the biggest damage that this stuff has done to our kids.
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The biggest damage is the destruction of the human ability to pay attention, to focus, and to pursue goals.
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That is the destruction of what we call executive function, the ability to formulate plans, orchestrate what you need to do, keep it in mind and pursue it.
408
While all the while your phone is saying, come look at memes, come look at videos.
409
So if a boy has the ability to delay gratification, to keep his eye on the prize, he's gonna be effective in this world.
410
Women don't want a man who's nothing.
411
They don't want a man who has no achievements.
412
They don't want a man who's going nowhere.
413
So a lot of our boys are basically consigned to unmarriageability
414
because they've been damaged by this and they don't have the ability to really pursue long-term goals.
415
I have never heard anybody explain it this way.
416
I've heard lots of amazing researchers and experts talk about the crisis in men and in boys.
417
and oftentimes, especially as a woman, and I have a husband who is in that field.
418
He leads men's retreats.
419
He's a death doula.
420
He is about to finish his degree in spiritual psychology, deeply concerned about it.
421
But it often feels like it's always been pitted as it's the rise of women and the empowerment of women.
422
And what I'm hearing is so compelling.
423
And so I want to make sure that I'm getting this right, Dr. Height.
424
And I want to make sure as you're listening, that you're gaining this key and critical insight into what's actually happening, especially for boys and young men.
425
When it comes to girls and the ways that social media has entered a central role in their life,
426
it has replaced connection.
427
It has made them perform.
428
It has exposed them to hypersexuality.
429
We see a direct causal link in a spike in anxiety, a spike in mental health disorders,
430
self-harm, suicidal ideation, and eating disorders.
431
Yes.
432
With boys, the impact of all of the short-form content and the dopamine and the addictive nature- The gambling,
433
the porn, all of it the porn, all of it, that your boys, your brother, your sons, your spouse,
434
your boyfriend have all been exposed to.
435
It has a direct and causal link to destroying motivation,
436
to imploding executive function, and to creating sort of almost like a depressive state of just not feeling engaged
437
or excited by anything.
438
That's right.
439
That's perfect.
440
Yeah, that's exactly the way that I would put it.
441
That's terrifying.
442
It is terrifying.
443
And there's a big social class divide here.
444
That is, as Richard Reeves has shown, he wrote the book of Boys and Men.
445
If we look at wealthy families, you know, educated, you know, college educated, married couples, the girls are doing a little better than the boys in those families.
446
They're anxious as hell, but they're...
447
That's right.
448
They're anxious as hell.
449
They're more anxious, but the boys and the girls are both finishing high school, and they're generally going to college.
450
But as we go down in social class, it's the boys that are really, really dropping off.
451
So that in the bottom half, economically, we see a huge gap between boys and girls.
452
And this is terrible for so many reasons, one of which, as I mentioned, is that girls generally don't want to marry down.
453
They want to marry up.
454
And the supply of young men who are worth marrying keeps shrinking
455
and shrinking because so many of them are lured off the path of development into just quick, easy dopamine addictions.
456
What do you do if you're listening to this
457
and your heart is sinking and you see this in your brother or you see this in your boyfriend?
458
Yeah.
459
And as you're learning about this, you also are going to go home and see them sitting on the couch, scrolling through short form is they've got the game on yeah
460
and they're placing a bet what do we do like what's the first thing to do
461
if you're concerned about a man who had this impact him
462
or you are concerned about a young adult or a boy
463
that you're starting to see they don't want to do sports
464
they're kind of pulling out they spend a lot of time
465
in their room no moral judgment let's you know understand what's what's happening here um
466
and of course it's very hard to even change yourself it's
467
very hard for a person to make new year's resolutions just
468
say i'm gonna have better habits it's even harder to change another person
469
so if it's just you trying to persuade this person to change
470
that is really really hard but there's a couple things
471
that can really help you okay one is to have
472
that person agree and be on your side and so
473
if you talk to them and see do they see it as a problem or not
474
and most young people do they they're very clear what do
475
you hear from young people what do you hear from the boys
476
and from the young men that when they hear
477
that it's not their fault because i think that's a very empowering thing yeah to hear
478
that the lack of motivation the lack of gusto the lack of passion
479
and direction you're like it's not your fault you're not a loser you were preyed upon
480
so what do you hear dr height when you're in front of boys
481
and when you're in front of these audiences about what boys
482
and young men are saying when the realization is holy cow this rotted my drive and executive function.
483
What are they saying?
484
I can tell you from the young men in my course at NYU is that in every class, there's a couple that are gaming addicts,
485
especially, that spend huge amounts of time on all of this stuff.
486
One young man, he was spending 10 hours a day on video games and social media, 10 hours a day as a college student.
487
He goes to classes and he's on, like, that's it.
488
That's all he does.
489
You come to New york city to go to college
490
and all you do is sit on your bed and you know scroll or play video games
491
and when in the course
492
when they we get their digital habits right you know start by moving it off your phone onto a computer
493
and then possibly just deleting entirely their lives open up
494
and i remember one uh one young man um he got
495
back five hours a day from electronic devices he started working out
496
which he didn't do before he had time to go out with friends which he didn't do before
497
and in the course of going out with friends, he got up the guts to actually approach a girl in life, not on an app and flirt with her and became his long-term girlfriend.
498
And so his life completely turned around.
499
This is a 19 year old young man.
500
Life completely turned around because he regained control of his attention, which also gives you back control of your time, which gives you a sense of agency because you're not always like,
501
oh, I'm so rushed.
502
I've got to do this and this and this and scroll through this and this and this.
503
So I've seen many young men, And just their lives blossom.
504
Now, what do you want to say to the teenager
505
or the middle schooler who's frustrated with their parents and feels like they're the only one?
506
What do you want them to know, Dr. Haidt?
507
Well, I would start by acknowledging the pain.
508
I would start by acknowledging that none of us want to be left out, and especially at that age, that it is painful.
509
So I would acknowledge that.
510
And then I would also say that in the long run, other kids are gonna look at you as the cool one because you're gonna develop the skills and the confidence.
511
You're gonna learn how to do things in the world.
512
You're gonna retain a sense of focus and sharpness.
513
So in the long run, things are gonna be better for you.
514
Well, sometimes the most loving thing that you can do is something that your kids hate you for in the moment.
515
And that's the job of being a parent.
516
That's right.
517
The job of a parent is to work yourself out of
518
a job to create a self-governing functional young adult yes
519
and uh even though it's painful
520
and i'm not i'm not coming here as the expert who
521
did this all right as i said i did a really
522
good job on social media i did not do a very good job on general computers
523
and watching videos on the computer you know during covet everything was on the computer
524
so i know how hard it is i can almost hear
525
the person listening copy link text to brother copy link send a boyfriend copy link
526
send a husband copy link yeah send to my colleague that just got laid off because
527
nobody has ever explained to me the way that you just did the direct connection between social media apps,
528
video games, short form content, five hours a day on average of being online and how it is destroying motivation,
529
drive, executive functioning, confidence, and zest for life in young men.
530
Yes, that's a good phrase, yes.
531
And so I think there is probably a million young men, I'm not kidding when I say that,
532
who will be receiving this episode from mothers and sisters and girlfriends and colleagues and friends and fraternity brothers.
533
And what do you wanna say to the guy who has started to feel that sense that he's not himself,
534
he's not exercising, he has trouble motivating at work, he's feeling like the world is moving forward and he's sitting still.
535
What is possible when you embrace the truth that this isn't your fault, but there's something you can do?
536
I would start with a conversation.
537
And, you know, I heard this episode.
538
You know, I think it would be helpful to you.
539
Do you want me to send it to you?
540
So at least because, you know, boys are very conscious of their status.
541
And if someone is calling them a loser and many of them know
542
that they're losers in the sense that they're not accomplishing it.
543
Well, of course, because you're sitting there and you see your friends excelling, or you used to play lacrosse.
544
On social media, you see them excelling.
545
Or you used to do this, or you're not able to like hit the marks at work and it's just like,
546
and you're putting out, and you just start to feel this sense that you're losing yourself.
547
That's right.
548
And I don't think anybody's gonna copy paste and go, hey, you're a loser, listen to this.
549
You know, you send it and you say, this is one of the most compelling interviews I've ever heard.
550
This professor at NYU is gonna explain something that I think you're gonna resonate with.
551
And I really hope you'll take a moment and listen to this, particularly around minute X, Y, Z.
552
Talk to me about the psychology of why you have to be a little bit, you've gotta be manipulative or strategic.
553
Yes, that's right.
554
And your approach, very intentional, because you want to make an impact.
555
And I think the best news here is it's not your fault.
556
This was done to you.
557
That's right.
558
And there's something you can do about it.
559
That's right.
560
So as with any other addiction, sometimes people be defensive or in denial about it.
561
But for the most part, they're gonna be aware that they have a problem.
562
And they're aware that other men are succeeding, other men are getting girlfriends, other men are driving fancy cars.
563
And so it's very important that you enlist the man in wanting to change.
564
Is there a vision of yourself in the future that you'd like to see, or are you happy with the way things are now?
565
And then also make it seem easy to change.
566
it can be hard to change overall, but it's easy to take a few steps. And so...
567
What are the first couple steps to take?
568
The first couple steps to take might be, let's just get your sleep in order.
569
How about, could we just do like everything gets shut off at 10 o'clock?
570
Try to put some structures in space and time.
571
If you're going to take a drug away from an addict entirely, they're going to have withdrawal symptoms, that it's gonna be very difficult.
572
But if you start saying, okay, you can take your drug, but not in these places and not in these times, it's not as threatening.
573
If the young man sees this as a goal, that they actually want to get there, and then they take a step, what happens?
574
Dopamine.
575
Progress gives you a hit of dopamine.
576
And it can become self-reinforcing.
577
So if you ask them, just quit video games entirely, or stop watching porn entirely.
578
Stop happening.
579
Yeah, that's too big a step.
580
But enlist them, help them make small changes, take small steps, and social support.
581
So it's hard to beat an addiction with nothing, but if you can swap in a healthier habit,
582
find another male friend who'll play basketball with them once a week or go on a walk.
583
Like if you played sports as a youngster, pick up league.
584
That's right.
585
That's what a lot of young men say is, and you'll see this in the books, young men will say, yeah, you know, I used to run, I used to play guitar,
586
I used to do all these things, you know, and I want to do them again.
587
I just end up watching, you know, playing video games instead.
588
So boys are really activity motivated.
589
Young boys and men are much more about doing things, action in the world.
590
So find ways to entice them into that with their friends.
591
Well, let's talk about the advice to those of us who blew it.
592
So you have kids in high school who are addicted to social media,
593
or you've been listening to this and you've seen your son withdraw or your daughter just have a spike in anxiety.
594
you feel that this could have been done differently, but now it's too late.
595
What do you want us to know if we feel just bad and panicked about the way that we handled it?
596
So I'm not gonna advocate, if your kid's whole life is on social media, I'm not going to say, delete their account, take them off,
597
because that would be really difficult for a lot of kids once they're deeply into it.
598
But you can help them have much, much better habits.
599
And remember that these apps, they expand like a gas to fill every available moment.
600
That's how we get to five hours a day of social media use for kids, is that it fills up every moment when it possibly can.
601
So you can stop that.
602
So no matter how addicted your kids are, you can certainly apply a new policy,
603
you know, new rule, all screens out of the bedroom at 10 p.m
604
and you don't get it back until you're on your way to school or something like that.
605
But put in limits so that especially to protect your kids sleep.
606
Well, let's talk about the limits.
607
So give me the specific concrete.
608
If you were to run your household with proper boundaries, with devices, what are they?
609
Yeah.
610
Here's what I wish I did.
611
Here's what I'd recommend.
612
Starting if you have young kids, you can have a computer in a common space.
613
You can have a TV in a common space.
614
And then you just simply have a rule, no screens in the bedroom ever.
615
Okay.
616
So the screens are in common places, no screens in bedrooms.
617
That's right.
618
Rule number one.
619
Rule number two is stories are good, but short form is bad.
620
And so what I mean is, we have to all understand, this isn't like no screens, no TV.
621
This is, understand that humans are storytelling animals.
622
We have always told stories.
623
We use stories to convey patterns to our kids.
624
This is part of enculturation.
625
All cultures use a lot of stories.
626
So if you want to have movie night with your kid once or twice a week, that's a good thing.
627
Like you should do that.
628
That's a really good thing.
629
They pay attention for a two-hour movie.
630
Maybe you have to break it up over two days when the kids are young.
631
But they pay attention to a story which transports you into a fictional space.
632
There's something magical and good about that.
633
When you get lost in a Harry Potter book, when you get lost in a movie, that's all good, okay?
634
And a TV screen can be a good way to do that.
635
So watching long videos with another person, a sibling, a friend, or a parent,
636
with a regular schedule, meaning only on Friday and Sunday, whatever, some regular schedule.
637
So it's not like, Mom, I'm bored.
638
Can we put on The Incredibles?
639
It has to be very, very regular.
640
This is when we do movie night.
641
You know, one of the things that has really helped me, and I just offer this in case it might help you as you're listening, is I love the rule,
642
because I like very concrete black and white things.
643
I don't like things that are like, you could do this.
644
No. I love no phone in the bedroom.
645
It gets put away at 10 o'clock.
646
You don't look at it again first thing in the morning until you're out the door or whatever.
647
I also, it has made a huge difference in our family.
648
We have no phones at the table, period.
649
Not allowed.
650
Not allowed on the table.
651
Not even to look up something quick.
652
Mom, I'm just looking up what you're talking about.
653
No, that's right.
654
That's what you do.
655
And my husband is a big policer, no dual screens when we're watching TV, unless somebody walks in with a laptop and says,
656
I can only watch with you guys if I can also send a couple emails.
657
Mm-hmm.
658
Yeah.
659
Make it if I try not to.
660
It's better to just say, just send them and then come in.
661
Yeah, that's right.
662
Because then they'll spend two hours sending an email versus the two minutes it takes and then shutting the laptop.
663
Exactly.
664
But the other piece for me that's made a huge difference because we can talk all we want about kids, but it starts with you as the parent.
665
I don't have my phone on my body.
666
Good.
667
And I noticed that if I don't have it on my body, it's like sitting on my desk or somewhere in the office right now.
668
At home, it's always in the kitchen or in my bathroom, like on the sink area charging.
669
If I don't have it on my body, I don't reach for it.
670
Yeah, that's right.
671
Can you say the rule about nighttime again?
672
Yeah, so the rule about nighttime, no matter where you are, no matter how deeply your kids are into this,
673
the rule has to be all devices out of the bedroom by 10 o'clock or something or other.
674
Because that's where the worst stuff happens is overnight.
675
So a lot of boys are developing porn addictions, and that's gonna be a little more controlled if they don't have it overnight.
676
And that's where a lot of the really the worst stuff, the sexual predation happens is overnight.
677
That is one rule we had.
678
You were not allowed to have your phone in your bedroom overnight.
679
And I would have to go in there and pull it out of their hands.
680
Like you have to be the heavy in this regard.
681
But what I also started to notice
682
is that it really had been impacting our daughter's sleep because they felt as though they needed to be available
683
in case a friend needed them in the middle of the night.
684
And so there is this psychological pressure
685
that your child may be feeling that they can then blame on you
686
when they text whomever they were talking to and said, my mom's about to take my phone, I'll see you in school tomorrow.
687
That's right, that's right.
688
And this is something that the kids themselves say.
689
In fact, I just did a session with some middle school and high school kids a few days ago in New York.
690
And when they were asked like, what advice you have for parents in the audience, one of them said, let your kids blame it on you.
691
They specifically, this was an eighth grade boy, he specifically said, impose the rules and then your kid can say, well, I don't have it, I mean, I don't have Snapchat because my parents won't let me.
692
Or I have to shut everything down at 9.30 because my parents make me.
693
Like, let them blame it on you.
694
So, Dr. Haidt, you've done a wonderful job waking us up, teaching us, empowering us.
695
And I'll speak for you personally, scaring me now that I see the dots all connected.
696
can you explain though the good news that is available to us now that we see the connection
697
what is possible particularly for men and women boys and girls
698
that have been impacted by this so what I can assure listeners is
699
that if you if you have any slot machine apps on your phone
700
if you have any apps that that are sending you notifications and and getting you to come back and scroll, if you just move them off your phone,
701
for starters, just use it only on a computer or on an old iPad, if you get it off your phone, you'll be less addicted to your phone.
702
And if you're less addicted to your phone and you turn it back into a tool, not a master of your life, you're going to find your consciousness sort of clearing and coming back.
703
And so what I'm saying is, if you change your habits, you're going to change the things that coming into your eyes
704
and ears and you're going to find that your attention is less fragmented
705
and when your attention starts coming together in larger pieces then you can work more quickly
706
and effectively with higher quality work and then you have more time
707
and if you have more time you feel less time pressure you're less anxious do you have research
708
that shows or proves that when you get control of your relationship with all these apps
709
and social media
710
that mental health conditions get better there is a body of
711
experiments they're called social media reduction experiments a lot of researchers
712
have said we're going to randomly assign people you know 200
713
people reduce their social media use to an hour a day 200 no change and we see what happens.
714
So we've collected, we found, I think about 35 of them by now.
715
Those that go on for at least a week, ideally two or three, and that focus on mental health, on anxiety and depression,
716
almost all of them find that the levels of those things go down if you're off for a week or two.
717
That's how quickly this can turn around?
718
That's right.
719
Because think about dopamine.
720
Your dopamine circuits will recover if you stop the stimulation.
721
And if you start thinking, you start doing other things.
722
But very important is that one of the groups that did this was Meta.
723
We know from the leaks, we know from all the documents that have come out, they did an experiment.
724
They called it Project Mercury, and it was Facebook users and Instagram users.
725
This was around 2018, I think.
726
And they randomly assigned them.
727
They requested that they, I believe it was stop using, stop using it.
728
And they just did it for one week.
729
And they found that the people who got off, their mental health improved.
730
Now, this was supposed to be a pilot study.
731
They were going to do a much larger study.
732
But once they found out, oops, oops, this looks bad, it looks like they never did the larger study.
733
But we have their findings from that, and they talk about it.
734
And one of them says it looks like it's causal.
735
This is not a correlation.
736
This is causal evidence.
737
So we know this very well.
738
If you're addicted to something and you stop doing it for the first few days, it actually can be painful.
739
but if you stick with it within a week or two your life comes back
740
I love that phrase your life comes back
741
because I think we all feel like we're losing yeah there's
742
a dead our lives there's a deadness for somebody who feels very inspired
743
and motivated by all this work and research
744
and advocacy are there is there a place
745
that someone can go to get tools to advocate changes at their local school
746
or to have guidance on how to talk within your own family about this.
747
So if you want to take action, please go to anxiousgeneration.com.
748
And at the website, we have a take action button.
749
And then you can choose, are you a parent?
750
Are you a teacher or educator?
751
Are you a legislator?
752
And so we have specific advice for all of them.
753
Also, letgrow.org if you wanna give your kids more of a real world childhood.
754
Those are the two organizations that my team and I have created to help parents and teachers and everyone else
755
give our kids back life in the real world.
756
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dr. Hite, for providing all these resources.
757
Thank you for this extraordinary book and for scaring the hell out of us, but also, no, but also, like, it's important to know the truth.
758
Yeah.
759
Dr. Hite, what are your parting words?
760
no matter how rich you are, you can't buy more attention.
761
And most of us give it away for free.
762
Young people tell me they get a notification every time they get an email because they don't want to miss anything.
763
But if you commit to not missing things, that means you're never fully present and you actually miss everything.
764
So turn off almost all notifications, put an almost infinite value on your attention.
765
Only give it to companies that are offering you something really valuable, like, of course, Uber and Lyft.
766
You should leave on notifications.
767
You want to know if the car is coming.
768
But no newspapers, no sports scores, no nothing should interrupt you.
769
Treat your attention as though it is sacred and precious.
770
And if you can get larger pieces of it, your life will change.
771
I cannot thank you enough for doing this research, for writing this blockbuster book,
772
for all of the advocacy that you're doing, for the support that you're giving to the class action lawsuits that people are bringing to try to get the laws changed.
773
And I really appreciate your work.
774
And I know that my life is going to change for the better because of it.
775
And I know millions of people's lives will as well.
776
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
777
Do not stop.
778
My pleasure.
779
And thank you, Mel, for all you do to bring psychological research out to the world.
780
You're welcome.
781
And thank you.
782
Thank you for making the time.
783
You heard Dr. Height say, your attention is the most important thing that you have.
784
In fact, where you pour your time, where you put your attention is what determines how your life is, period.
785
And so thank you for giving your single most precious resource, your attention.
786
to this conversation.
787
It matters.
788
And it's going to empower you to support your kids and support your family and support yourself in taking your power back.
789
And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you.
790
And I believe in your ability to create a better life.
791
And there's no doubt in my mind, if you take everything that you learned today and you apply it to your life, your life is going to get better and you're going to feel better
792
and you're going to feel more in control of it.
793
And you deserve that.
794
All right, I'm gonna welcome you in to the very next episode.
795
I will see you there the moment you hit play.
796
And thank you for watching all the way to the end on YouTube.
797
Thank you for sharing this.
798
I hope you were cutting and pasting the link to this
799
and putting it in your family group chat and sharing it with the people that you care about.
800
We all deserve to know the truth
801
and we deserve to know what we can do in order to take our power back.
802
Now, if you love this, do me a favor.
803
You see that subscribe button?
804
If it's lit up, it means you're not a subscriber.
805
Take a moment and hit subscribe.
806
It's the best way for you to say, hey, Mel, I love what you're doing here.
807
I appreciate you showing up for me.
808
And Dr. Height, I appreciate you being here too.
809
Thank you for doing that.
810
I truly appreciate your support because it's my goal that 50% of you that watch the podcast here are subscribers.
811
It's free.
812
That way you don't miss a thing.
813
And it's the best way to say thank you.
814
All right, I know you want to watch another video and I'm sure you're going to love this one next.
815
I'm going to welcome you in the moment you hit play.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “NYU Professor: Do This for 2 Weeks to Get Your Focus, Motivation, & Life Back”. This video has 815 sentences and 9961 words to shadow. The speech runs for 53:39. The speaker talks fast, about 186 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| dopamine noun | /ˈdoʊ.pəˌmin/ | A monoamine C₈H₁₁NO₂ that is a decarboxylated form of dopa, present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances including adrenalin. |
| addict noun | /ˈæd.ɪkt/ | A person who is addicted, especially to a harmful drug. |
| scroll noun | /skɹoʊl/ | A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll. |
| slot noun | /slɑt/ | A narrow depression, perforation, or aperture; especially, one for the reception of a piece fitting or sliding into it. |
| notification noun | /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/ | The act of notifying. |
| anxious adjective | /ˈæŋkʃəs/ | Nervous and worried. |
| addictive adjective | /əˈdɪktɪv/ | Causing or tending to cause addiction; habit-forming. |
| loser noun | /luzɚ/ | A person who loses; one who fails to win or thrive. |
| addiction noun | /əˈdɪkˌʃən/ | A state that is characterized by compulsive drug use or compulsive engagement in rewarding behavior, despite negative consequences. |
| causal adjective | /ˈkɔːzəl/ | Of, relating to, or being a cause of something; causing. |
| devastate verb | /ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/ | To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest. |
| unsupervised adjective | Not supervised; not being constantly observed. | |
| overnight adverb | /əʊvə(ɹ)ˈnaɪt/ | During or throughout the night, especially during the evening or night just past. |
| blockbuster noun | /ˈblɑkˌbʌs.tɚ/ | A high-explosive bomb used for the purposes of demolishing extensive areas, such as a city block. |
| flirt verb | /flɚt/ | To throw (something) with a jerk or sudden movement; to fling. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| turn around verb | To physically rotate (usually around a vertical axis) for a half turn (180 degrees), a whole turn (360 degrees), or an indefinite amount. | |
| bring out verb | To elicit, evoke, or emphasize (a particular quality). |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Do you want me to send it to you?
- Can you say the rule about nighttime again?
- Are you a teacher or educator?
- Hite, what are your parting words?
- You see that subscribe button?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to actually · used to play |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If you took it away, he'd scream |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has agreed · have harmed · have never seen |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is connected · were told · be called |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 235 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, addiction /əˈdɪkˌʃən/, sociable /ˈsoʊʃəbəl/, flourish /ˈflʊ̈ɹ.ɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, degradation /ˌdɛɡɹəˈdeɪʃən/, stimulation /stɪm.jʊˈleɪ.ʃən/, advocacy /ˈæd.və.kə.si/, inappropriate /ˌɪnəˈpɹoʊpɹi.ət/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like dopamine, addict, scroll.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.