Why Mental Health Is Getting Worse - Jonathan Haidt 

Hello you savages. Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - chriswillx.com/books/ Here's the timestamps: 00:00 The Uniqueness of the New Generation 01:10 What Does a Good Childhood Look Like? 07:06 Changes in Parenting Styles 10:59 Lack of Discipline in Modern Parenting 15:16 The Importance of Risk in Play 20:47 Is the Education System Ruining Kids? 27:16 The Problem With Ideological Academia 30:45 Latest Data on Social Media’s Impact 38:47 Primary Harms of Technology on Kids 46:12 Is Social Media Use Addiction or Compulsion? 49:48 How Boys & Girls Use Technology Differently 56:46 The Male Sedation Hypothesis 1:02:37 Are Gen-Z Bothered About Status? 1:12:34 Latest Data on Female Mental Health 1:17:31 Why is Anxiety the Most Prevalent Feeling? 1:21:11 How We Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis 1:28:04 Where to Find Jonathan

When you give your child a phone, you're not just giving them access to the internet and the whole world. You're giving the internet and the whole world access to your child.

My school board is looking to ban cellphones. I listened to this podcast, shared it with my teacher; my teacher shared it with the principal; the principal shared it with the entire staff within our school. They loved it! And the solution that Jonathan Haidt presented is exactly the thing our education board needs!

Mate, your ability to mix bro-speak with articulateness is unmatched!

Haidt is a legend. As a 33yr who didn't understand Gen Z culture, The Coddling of the American Mind gave me insight on why the generational changes happened. His new book was sold out at every Barnes & Nobles in the DC area this weekend! Looks like many others are realizing how informative his literature is.

Ugggh I think a big reason the risky play is no longer allowed in schools is honestly liability issues, which is so sad and just a disservice to kids.

I deactivated my Facebook over a month ago. And i actually don't wanna go back. I feel much better without it.

tomorrow i will delete my facebook account. Insta's been done already. Im done with this shit. I was one of these who didn't have a phone until 2016 and my mates said I was notoriously hard to get hold of. Im going back to those times.

My 11yr old son starting a phone free high school in Sept. Something I'm pleased about!

Dude, many MANY people early on thought it was a really bad idea to give your young child a tablet or phone. I think this is rewriting the past by parents with regrets, to say we thought it was a good thing. Like, maybe you have a small group of friends that thought that, but the science was skeptical very early.

I think Gen X got really lucky. I feel so blessed to have been raised with a mix of boundaries and freedom. We were lucky enough to be raised without luxuries but entered the workforce just before the digital age.

Kids need structure. I grew up in a liberal household in the 1960's - 1970's and there were rules but not enough. Several don't (somewhat inconsistent) but no do's. So, my brother and I flew by the seat of our pants and adopted rules from other families. It left me feeling rudderless. I needed more structure.

I was waiting for you to have a conversation with Haidt for the past 2 years. I'm halfway through the Anxious Generation and looking forward to listening to this podcast. Thank you Chris for platforming this legend of a man.

As a teacher...PHONE FREE needs to be it. I work in SEN and good heavens...this is an ISSUE.

OMG - 15 minutes in... and I have been nodding my head in agreement for the majority of the time. I see the result of gentle-coddling parenting in my now 19-year-old stepdaughter... it's horrible. I see how her mother and father have really stunted her and any accountability for being tardy, sleeping late, wrecking her car, doing CHORES, being respectful etc. is overlooked by them. I stand back in absolute horror... smh. But, for my sanity - I've disengaged because I was viewed as old-fashioned (mind you, I'm 12 years younger than her parents). My role before disengaging was in developing her into a responsible young adult who understood the importance of volunteering, service-before-self, being accountable, learning, being curious, having manners, chores etc - this was frowned upon by her momma... so...yeah - now they have an entitled young lady who is incapable of being an adult...good luck!

13:21 I tell my kids about once a week that life is not fair, has never been fair, and won't ever be fair, focus on what you have control of and do your best

"Have you read a book for pleasure" They have SOOOOOOOOOO much more homework. Even if they don't have social media or are on the phone like my kid. It's all busy work when they get home. They are exhausted! I'm too exhausted because I'm having to help a tired frustrated child with the dumbest busywork you could imagine. This isn't normal.

My daughter turned 14 today. She doesn't have a phone, just a tablet, and we don't plan on getting her a phone for another year, most likely. It gets easier to say "No" if you make a practice of it and incentivize the phone as a privilege that must be earned with maturity and behavior expectations. Almost all her friends have phones so she does feel left out, but not to the extent that it causes her serious distress. I love Joe Rogan but he didn't think that Haidt's list of restrictions would be adopted by parents and I disagree. It is definitely possible and more parents are coming around to the dangers of letting their kids have social media. I am white-pilled on this issue. We can do it!

I have two kids below 3 and I am terrified of how social media will effect them..

The vicissitudes of life include indignity, misfortune, and injustice. The more we are able to regulate our nervous system, radically accept unfairness when it's outside our sphere of influence and let go and move on, the more resilient, content and self-assured we become.

Attention fragmentation undermines our ability to focus, our productivity, and our performance. It's not just teens who are prone to this; adults are switching (aka multitasking) and constantly getting distracted by pings from Slack DMs in order to "be on top of everything" at work. This ironically leads to spreading oneself thin and compromising quality in the name of agility and speed in the current Zeitgeist of hustle culture running on sympathetic nervous system with chronic dysregulation.

My daughter's middle school does not allow phones to be used during the day. They have to be off and in lockers. The principal changed the whole atmosphere of the school 2 years ago with just that one rule. We don't allow social media until after high school. My now 21 year old son thanked me for keeping him off it. He only missed out on some slang words but those changed quickly so he didn't care. I'm sharing this with my friends and hoping they spend the time watching. Excellent interview! Thank you!

For myself and my friends growing up “Teen” movies and shows about drama and about toxic social dynamics (ie Laguna Beach, Mean Girls, the OC etc) had a MASSIVE impact. Then magazines like Girlfriend and Dolly that on one page would talk about fashion and makeup then on the next page would be full of celebrity weight stats and “fashion faux pas” gave us another layer. THEN msn chat, MySpace and tumblr gave us access to conversation with people who benefited from our vulnerability in a way our parents had no idea about. I remember chatting in random chat rooms with men when I would have been 12 years old. My parents had no idea that was a thing let alone what I was able to hide. My ability to behave older and more mature meant my parents trusted me instead of guiding me but they didn’t realise how little an idea I had about what damage I was doing to myself. On the home computer with dial up internet.

This is now my favourite episode of MW. (Watched all of them) ❤️ Chris asked so many interesting questions and Jonathan was so comfortable. What a precious and important conversation.

Kids and adults are anxious today because no one spends time outside, no one learns actual skills anymore and living in concrete with traffic every where is stressful. Let’s get back to basics: animal husbandry, growing your food, kids spending the day outdoors until dinner time.

I've been calling this out for 10+ years

Wow! "What ways can you be wrong about this evidence" 34:25 I have never heard any interviewer ask this question. They all should ask this! Bravo!

34:21 "In what ways can you be wrong?" Love the style of thought.

I've played a lot of video games. My biggest mistake was not persevering in games I wasn't good at, save scumming until I got the perfect play, not pushing the difficulty to the highest I could try. I got used to playing it easy, and restarting anytime I wanted, which didn't help me in real life when something went sideways and I had to salvage what I can. Instead of doing my best I just crashed.

Wow, Chris! This dude is really interesting. I completely agree with basically all his points. I thought this was just going to be another boring Thursday. Thanks, Chris, you made my day brighter!

It’s so sad that humans have devolved to a point of not being able to face social anxiety, so much so that they are unwilling to experience normal feelings of rejection. As part of gen x, I feel so so sad for the younger generations who find normal human experience something they should avoid at all costs. You learn through your failures. Success, even in dating, is born from learning from the success and failures you have through real life interactions. So, so sad.

I'm going to be sharing this so widely! All parents should watch

As the famous experiment showed: the kids who chose to give up a small pleasure (one marshmallow/chocolate/etc) for a bigger one later (two marshmallows 15 min after) tended to be better off in life. One takeaway is that parents need to be cognizant of how their choices affect their kids now vs later. You may want to give the child a moment of pleasure now, or you could refrain and allow them to gain much greater rewards later down the line. It's complex, for sure, but the point is to have the ability to judge when it is best to have less happy kids now in exchange for more sustained happier and better people in the future. "What's wrong with kids these days? Why can't they forgo instant gratification?" needs to be superseded by the same question but replacing "the kids" with "the parents".

We didnt get dial-up internet until I was 13. My life was awseome when I lived in the world, wind in my hair flying around on my bmx bike enjoying life with good friends. My 20s was a mess, drugs, depression and self worth issues. My early 30's, I went back to being the boy that took one of the prettiest girls in school to senior prom many years ago. Old habits die hard. Preserve and foster the good things inside you, people. Ask God for forgivness and guidance. There are real God-fearing local churches around, same as 100 years ago.

Many young people are not learning social skills needed for interacting face to face with other humans. Interacting thru a screen is not the same as in real life.

8:12 Best of both worlds. Strict boundaries but lots of freedom within those boundaries. Kids thrive :-)

My 13 year old daughter has a smart phone but has certain restrictions such as not being allowed to use TikTok and not being allowed to put herself online. She also reads a lot of books and is on pace to read over 50 books for pleasure this year, plus being involved in theater at her school. Additionally, she exercises via bike riding, plays board games often, and goes to church regularly. There is a way to allow certain online interactions while balancing it with other things.

Just listening to Jonathan’s book The Righteous Mind - read by him. I used to think he was somewhat mainstream but I did not appreciate how much he is top of his field. He links some of the most significant thinking of our times. I got interested in Autism, then The Red Pill idea, then Ian McGilchrist on left/right brain and the modern world, the whole woke thing, Robert Sapolsky on free will and they have common threads with Jonathan’s work. For me Jonathan nails the key concerns most clearly of those I have listened to. He has a wonderful clarity and perceptual reach and he sees the dangers of our current experiment. I really recommend people to follow his thinking.

Chris is possibly the best interviewer I know of. The quality of his questions are second to none.

One of my favorite pod casters hosting one of my favorite modern intellectuals. Thank you for this stimulating conversation, Chris. Excellent questions. You did a great job making Prof. Haidt feel comfortable to expand on his opinions more deeply than I have seen in other places he's given talks. Bravo, and congratulations on your Austin shoot and your 2M sub milestone!

It’s great hearing Johnathon speak, no emotional biases, with many references to real data. I like his concept of “phone-based” society. Makes a lot of sense.

Jonathan u r a gift !!

Chris is PASSING ROGAN on great podcasts🎉🎉🎉

22:30 it's validating to hear this because I feel like being made to take tough classes having to do with complex math at 4yrs old in South Korea in 1994 was just not the move my parents should have made. My earliest memories are chronic stress from failing those classes, esp. with my difficulty focusing on academic studies. There were a lot of tears, sadly. Also didn't get to play a lot with kids my age.

Thank you for this Chris and Jonathan! ❤

Amazing conversation. I love Haidt.

I can absolutely relate to the unstructured time in childhood, freedom to play and take risks, and reading actual books. Gen Xer, here.

Haidt is the man! Looking forward to this one.

Thank you for covering this topic! So important 🙏🏼

Completely agree with Jonathan Haidt (as usual). Another great person to chat with on the subject of mental health in the young would be Georgia Ede, a psychiatrist. She’s easy to find on RU-vid and has recently published ‘Change your Diet, Change your Mind’.

An hour in, will definitely be sharing with my family and friends with kids. Its a must watch to help the parents (especially if they're older) understand the dynamics between social media and children.

This was great, thank you both!

I agree with pretty much everything I just listened to. One other factor that I think has played into the issues of children and teens not socializing is the cost. Everything costs way too much and there's nowhere to go for free. I think of the malls my buddies and I hung out in back in high school. They are all closed now. There's no place I can think of that kids can go and just hang out that doesn't require them to spend lots of money to be there. Think of how much more gas, car insurance, and even used cars cost now than they did a decade or two ago. So not only have we limited where these kids can go, we made it far more expensive to get there. Early on, you mentioned hobbies, which are increasingly expensive and exclusive. My dad and I were big into model trains when I was growing up (he still is) and he's repeatedly commented, showing off stuff he has now at its incredible quality and detail, but also that a single freight car now costs more than the full starter sets you used to get at Toys R Us and how if we were starting out now, we'd never have gotten into it, as it costs too much. Same with the tabletop wargaming I still do. It's an adult hobby that requires a full time income even though its ultimately playing with plastic army men. The same goes for sports. How much does it cost for a kid to play most sports now? I wonder if that also is factoring into parental risk aversion- who can afford the ER bill when your kids breaks something? Plus the fear of getting sued by other parents because your little King Arthur bonked their little Mordred over the dome a little hard with their stick sword. Or that State taking your children away for the same reason. By today's standards, I would have been deemed far too free range and DSS/DYS would have definitely been contacting my parents if not taking me away entirely.

Excellent conversation

Yes! Thank you!!

This reminds me a lot of some of Bo Burnhams ideas that he tries to communicate like one of his quotes where he says “if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.” And also reminds me of a video essay about him titled “Bo Burnham tried to warn us”

Great episode. I love the eclectic assortment of guests. Thanks Chris

Phenominal! - Absolutely Fantastic information!!!!

God forbid should we decide to actually parent and inculcate strong values for our children to enable them to navigate their environment as they grow.

Thank you Johnathan Haidt for your work. Great interview. Children need to spend more time outdoors in nature with other kids. Worked great for me as a child.

As a video game lover and a father to boys who love to play games, I'm kinda tired of people talking down about video games and calling it a "waste of time." Anything can be destructive and addictive ie: food, gambling and social media. Its all about moderation and learning how to have self control, something I've been working on with my boys. Gaming is my decompression time. Does it serves it's purpose? Yes, so its not a waste in my life, in fact, it's very crucial.

I think the person you were trying to think of who invented CBT for dating rejection might have been Albert Ellis. He created something called REBT which was where CBT came from. His book How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable changed my life

Humanity is an organism that some times goes through illness, but I am confident that it heals itself in the end, always.

This one has been one of the best conversations on this channel. Please bring more people to speak on these specific topics. Kudos on your work, Chris

This is the best episode of this podcast I've yet seen, and I'm only halfway through.

Protect and provide. Both are important! ❤

Spend time feeling your body (not with your hands... with your attention). You'll realize that anxiety is actually the feeling of fear, expressing itself in your body as muscles and tissues in specific spots, tightening and tensing. The feeling of fear is a kind of pain, though it's never as bad as you think, and the solution is to face it. What do I mean by that? I mean a) realizing that your anxiety is a physical thing (clenching) that is expressing itself, in that moment, in some spot on your body (around the heart, behind the eyes, in the voicebox, in the abdomen), and that b) you can create a habit in which you dare yourself to put your mind on that icky feeling, over and over and over. It's as if the muscles/tissues (the fear) need to be noticed in their clenched state, and then they'll relax. It's a kind of a faith, because you don't know when or why you're going to feel anxiety. And you can't talk yourself out of it. And yet when it comes, you've learned that the only thing to do is look straight at it, with your mental attention, on the physical feeling of discomfort. And then it relents, and in those moments you begin to act with a grace you never had. And then the anxiety comes back (you get lost in narrative, dramatic thought, forgetting to feel your body) and you feel anxiety again. It's a cycle. It's a game (not trivial). It's you willingly feeling what your body shows you, over and over and over, in as many moments as you can. Again, it's faith - since you don't get to choose what you feel. You just dare yourself to feel it. It's a different kind of courage. And you become, in those moments in which you've accepted the sensation of anxiety - you become a better version of yourself because you stop, in big ways or in little ways, lashing out at the world. You're no longer thinking "I've had it up to here," because you've taught yourself to feel a lot more. That doesn't justify any given feeling, nor any given reaction. Simply, it lets you act more calmly, more fluidly, more gracefully. All from they payment of what I see as a penance: the willingness to feel the icky feeling of anxiety in as many moments as you can remember to. I realized this a couple years ago through singing, and you can hear it on my channel - the improvement of my voice, because of this practice, over the last few years. But it's much bigger than that. It'll change your life.

Awesome interview thanks!

Brilliant. Great podcast.

This was brilliant and very insightful. Thanks guys!!

Great Discussion!! Chris Williamson X Johnthan Haidt

Chris ….thankyou and just to let you know I jumped on when you were at 250,000 subscribers as I thought you had an insightful manner and you hit upon super important themes around the health of young men and I also have a 21 year old son who is dealing with all these issues that you talk about …. In the vein of this current guest I suggest a fantastic guest is Christopher hedges to me one of the most knowledgable individuals out there over many years ..if you want to get a very educated and insightful take on many of our societal issues that you are currently delving into… we would definitely tune in as many of your audience would and individuals who may not know him would benefit hugely, I imagine….👌

One of the most valuable lessons my parents taught me is that life is not fair. "Life's not fair" was always their response to "that's not fair".

So insightful! Never thought of it this in this way.

Too short! Y’all are great together

I did my own experiment snd stayed off social media for 2 weeks and my anxiety was decreased dramatically. I see the same in my child. Now, we stay away from screens with the exception of intentional use for necessity. As a parent the hardest part is being more present and creating activities and family play. People are so distracted and not living in the present. Great conversation.

What an amazing episode. Just to comment on the video game mediation. There are many scenarios where kids will argue about a decision that was made and whether it was the correct one or not. EX: a team members goes into a house to fight someone without notifying his teammate and gets eliminated. They could argue about why he was alone, why he went in the house in the first place, why they weren’t communicating, etc. There are rules in the game, but the strategy is dictated by the players.

Excellent work. 6 month old boy at home, don’t know if I can’t get my wife to watch this but topic has def been top of mind.

Amazing chat guys. The issues you discussed need massive amplification because you have your fingers on the pulse of the problems.

Awhile back I made the direct connection between parents that don't let your kids struggle with anything/experience discomfort/fail and anxiety about minor little things in life. The reparenting around that one has been a long slog. It's also interesting to consider that we stop kids from climbing onto 'dangerous' places and hold their hands as they take their very first steps. What if we allowed kids to take 'dangerous' climbs but asked them along the way 'what's your plan' and 'what will you do next' instead of scolding them or telling them 'be careful' (which is meaningless direction to a child).

Great episode, inspiring and engaging!

to Jonathan Haidt: Some video games do have that level of disagreements; usually MMOs or games where you spend alot of time with the same subset of people which is I believe the point you were trying to make about around 42:11. Edit: Also, amazing discussion - gained so much from it.

Congratulations on the big visual, audio podcast. 🙌🏽

Brilliant, brilliant discussion Love Hadit

Your the first podcast I religiously watch. Great chats :)

As a young adult every one of my friends I speak to about this sees it the same way smokers do cigarettes. It's usually the "I know it's bad, but... Some crap excuse to them chasing dopamine or being insecure or fomo.. etc ". Some are starting to catch on to this brain rot and are trying to direct their attention to healthier things, however those seem the few minority of people and as you look at those younger than us it seems to be progressively worse and worse.

So much wisdom....the phonification of girls and so much more. I need to rewatch 💖👏

Chris, you are on fire. Keep rocking like that and you will be Nr. 1 soon.

As a GenX I don’t remember anyone complaining about us or is complaining about anyone else. It was the 90s and we had a hell of a great time. Maybe too much booze but still had a great time.

Epic conversation gentlemen!!

The damage being done to our young is immense but the action and interest from the average adult is minimal.

Soo good!

Interesting podcast. I want to say, a lot of addictions young people are engaged inares actually coping for bad parenting of their caregivers. The only way I see to fight addictions is to solve the root problem.

Great conversation, wise people

Christopher, you’re such a hard worker. I see you man.

I wanted to say something on the video game addiction thing. I have been addicted to both video games (when I was a teenager) and stimulants (when I was in my twenties), and in addiction from chemical substance recovery it's common to having so-called "using dreams" where you have dreams about the use of the chemical substance. But what I noticed recently is that ~20 years later I still have dreams of playing World of Warcraft. I also had a lot of good times playing that game and think it helped me a lot with cooperation, but I certainly didn't sign up for a lifetime of dreaming about it for the rest of my life when I was 15 years old and unaware. I often also wonder if the video game addiction (which I'm not saying everybody does get addicted to it) primed me in some way for the stimulant addiction, but I'm not a psychiatrist. I also wanted to say that there was another MMORPG called Final Fantasy 11 and it had an entry screen in the game that warned you about getting addicted to it. This was years before World of Warcraft and I think the game companies should be more open about what the consequences of their games are; especially since it was apparently known to game makers in the timeframe of Everquest.

Epic convo

You’re very good at this interview malarkey, Chris

Chris is on the grind pumping these good casts out 💪🏾. Upward and onwards my friend, nice work!

Great interview. The effects of beauty, and selfcare, face creams etc with 10 year olds is not just in social media, it is in the classroom and is spread by only a few girls who have access to social media, or from their mothers. The stuff my girl comes home with is ridiculous, and I'm constantly rectifying what other girls tell my daughter. My daughters school ban phones, which is great. I do limit the apps my daughter has access to, and she has a limited time on apps she can contact her friends on, and her sim card is removed every night to reduce emf and allows her to sleep without being pinged at 3am. You can make a smart phone just for communication. Whenever she wants to have a friend round, I all up for that, come round for tea.