Regulating smartphones? Jonathan Haidt vs. libertarians | The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

[@fearthehoneybadger]

I saw a number of social media CEOs interviewed who said they keep their children off social media.

[@markn866]

That does not mean usage of social media must need legislation though...

[@noname-xo1bt]

@@markn866 Just means those CEOs are better parents than the people crying for mommy government to come parent their kids for them.

[@anamegoeshere]

@@noname-xo1bt yeah but those same CEOs want your kids on those platforms and playing games and spending real money on stuff for a facebook game.

[@bl3313]

Tobacco, fast/junk food, and entertainment execs also keep their children from using their product.

[@anamegoeshere]

@@bl3313 that is a false lie lol go google that sh it

[@KairosDBT]

I have the book, and I find it informative. It confirms my present experiences with kids in my life and in my work as a therapist. Johnathan's work is research-based and intellectually honest, acknowledging the limitations of the present research. He continues to welcome debate, engagement, and challenge in his response to the mental health epidemic among our youth, which seems clearly correlated with, if not caused by, the emergence of smartphones and the unscrupulous business practices of social media platforms.

[@IAmInterested-cc4hr]

Ummm you could resolve the issue buy not giving your kid a smartphone

[@KairosDBT]

@@IAmInterested-cc4hr , exactly.

[@gurugeorge]

I think there's enough evidence to show that (not smart phones per se but) social media has been a very disturbing and dangerous phenomenon. I think we should treat smart phones in relation to kids (even to some degree adults) with circumspection, as we'd treat other things that are useful and/or fun, but have potentially big or dangerous downsides, like guns or chemicals or fireworks, just regulate them sensibly. It shouldn't be especially difficult to settle on some norms and common standards. But to some extent that hangs on the evidence. If we can reach a consensus on what, precisely, the level of danger or damage is, what the entire context is, then we can go from there, if we have the will.

[@stormygeo]

Libertarians will watch this country go up in flames and cry "why did this happen?"

[@TheThoughtAssassin]

“As long as it isn’t the government”

[@JG-qt3pn]

I learn about the dangers of social media on social media.

[@WeekzGod]

Social regulations and institutional regulations are perfectly acceptable. State intervention I'm not so keen on. But certainly on an institutional level his policy suggestions are absolutely correct. Libertarianism isn't about no regulations its about not having excessive government which means the people need to govern themselves.

[@BrickfallOfficial]

I agree with pretty much everything Prof Haidt says here except his solution.

[@harryschiller5368]

The solution is right, Libertarianism is unworkable

[@fletchergull4825]

Mad props for having him on after the diss video!! Needed to be done

[@HC-xl2en]

Social media without a doubt is affecting us all. The profit driven, attention focused nature of the algorithms has completely changed civilisation compared to 15 years ago. It's hard for me as gen x to stay sane. I can't imagine how I'd be as a pre teen or teen. The fact that social media is still not regulated after all the evidence, both scientific and personal, tells us that we are not on the right path with technology. Tech could be such a great benefit to mankind but it doesn't look like most of us are going to see the utopia that tech enthusiasts tell us are coming

[@HH-ru4bj]

I think the quick summary of regulating smartphones to protect childrens development, is an answer to a question we already solved generations before smartphones had been invented, but continue to misplace the blame. The problem ultimately is parental negligence, and what parental engagement is there, is poorly structured and managed. The negative influences of child reliance on these devices, were the exact same complaints said for video games, tv, and living in the city. Smartphones rot your brain, video games rot your brain, and tv rits your brain. So the solution is to take them away and force your kids to go outside and do stuff on their own. That's all well and good, but many parents don't want to do that. They are content with their children zombified in front of a screen (I say this while typing from a phone), so long as the children aren't driving them crazy, running around with kids they don't approve of, or setting fires in the woods. Congratulations, the kids are the safest they've ever been, but they don't have any social awareness, critical thinking, or sense of self or independence. Smartphones and TV or videogames are just the excuse masking the underlying problem of negligence.

[@poxpower]

Great talk. Does seem like his policy proposals come mainly from the standpoint that there already exists many similar policies. Maybe more fair to see it's a pragmatic approach than what he'd want an ideal world to be.

[@meisherenow]

Seems a lot less easy to enforce that not selling cigarettes to kids.

[@vegai]

We have "just" to get the parents to understand how harmful this is. Parents are the main source for children's smart devices. Well, at least currently.

[@harryschiller5368]

Aaron Brown, the critic, was incredibly pompous and unconvincing. He did not interface with the key claim of Haidt, that social media was keeping children inside and trapping them in their own heads. He just got up and took two minutes to discredit a book that he could never have written.

[@IAmInterested-cc4hr]

No this has to end. We need parent to be authorities again not more government authority. Parents need to parent and yes as well schoola shouldnt allow students to have cell phones. But you have a generation that cant walk to school if they have to cross any roads

[@glennmitchell9107]

Would any smart phone manufacturer be willing to make a kid specific smart phone? One that looks similar to an adult smart phone but that has restricted connectivity to the internet. It would take photos, and maybe videos, but those photos and videos would only be able to be sent to a parent's phone or computer. Chat would be restricted to other family members, or to whomever the parents designate. All activity on the kid's phone would be logged on the parents' phones or computers.

[@blueoval250]

You wouldn’t need a specific phone for that an app could it, my guess is it already exists.

[@glennmitchell9107]

@@blueoval250 An app can be hacked or deleted. A purpose built phone could be designed so that it couldn't be reprogrammed.

[@qazmko22]

There have been items like that in the past... and there will be more in the future. The Firefly Mobile Phone comes to mind for being parodied in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid". kzbin.info/www/bejne/sKWreGRubMaBask

[@glennmitchell9107]

@@qazmko22 The idea is to give kids phones that look like the smart phones their parents have, but without all the features and connectivity.

[@someone2021]

If there is enough profit involved...of course! Anything to do with kids is profitable.

[@erichmiller7707]

we never learn. Experts forced a SA morning replacement of Bugs Bunny with educational programming, adult supervision on the playground, every aspect of life, cigarette vending machines banned(Jonathan admits only 1/3 of teens were smokers at the time) we walked down this path of non functioning adults. More push away from self control is crazy.

[@MargaretCampbell583]

He is right

[@wagnersouza4463]

I think the lack of play based childhood have a large portion of the fault of the genz situation in USA, than social media alone. Smartphone and social media get thing way worse, but if kids would have more play based the impact would be lower. We brazilian also faced the smartphone childhood problem, but we have a class factor, so even the lower classes kids also having a smartphone based childhood, the lower kids from gen Z here still wild. Even we have seen fewer kids on streets, still have a lot of them riding bikes, wheeleing bikes on streets and avenues in groups. Lots of kids go to the public school without any adult, the public parks are always full. Still playing lot of soccer on streets ( it's is a cultural thing here ), but basketball nowadays gains a lot of popularity among brazilian gen Z, so it's very easy to see kids with basket balls hangin around. Kids skateboaring on street is also very common. And all of this happen in the lower class neigborhood, places that tends to be more violent, with lack of infra strucutre, or public places to play. But, when we look to middle class to upper class, things are now way different than lower classes. Parents are paranoic with safety, had fewer kids, live in safer places in general ( most low middle class live in violent neigborhoods among poor and working class ), kids generally go to the private schools, in Vans, instead walking with friends alone, because private schools usually are far away from home, but even that, public school kids in some cases also have to go to school far away from home, but they take buses alone. This class of kids tend to go to therapy soon, worse than that, kids goin to therapy became status symbols, because their parents also going to. These kids have a lot of extracurricular activities instead of playing. Parents in middle class now tend to say that "kid's place aren't the streets, kid's place is the schools". This is so insane that is very common the kids from middle class to upper have more activities than their parents.

[@WhatEver-gu9pz]

He admits that he hasn't proven a causal link but is proposing a rather drastic solution that he downplays as being merely an inconvenience - namely requiring identification to access certain sites. We don't need age-gating. Parents are responsible for monitoring the content their kids view. He's comparing content to substances like alcohol and tobacco except there was no way a parent could lock a child from accessing a cigarette vending machine or going into a bar. That's not the case with media because the kids can be prevented from accessing content via parental controls. The same argument about age-gating for social media is the same argument of age-gating for television. We don't have such a system nor would most say it's needed. As for the lack of simplicity or the inability for some parents to not know how to use parental controls, you can have parents learn about parental controls from the seller for any cell phone that will be used by their child. This is just a way to bring in proof of id to using internet ie. preventing anonymous accounts. This guy should have stumped for Nikki Haley's campaign as he does a much better job arguing for why these media sites should require an id but hopefully people will dismiss this need for identification to "save the children" argument much as they dismissed her sillier arguments. Oh and this whole argument that he doesn't propose requiring a license so it's not so bad? Of course there is no way a driver's license could be required given that many people don't have one but the issue raised regarding requiring id's isn't suddenly a non-issue because he proposes allowing for various forms of approved id's.

[@Mrbobinge]

I'm 80. My question is: should there be an upper age-gate for watching You Tube?

[@thomas-k3d]

Haidt expertly handled the (fairly irrational) pushback he was getting

[@paultaylor7947]

i think they should introduce exam tests like driving a car leading on to a full licence

[@hmmmmmmmmmmmm938]

Why wasn't the old guy asked to rush when he was rambling about Fleetwood Mac and Kiss Me Whatever but the woman talking about her positive experience with social media was asked to?

[@JonathanRossRogers]

1:18:53 Obligatory Futurama reference: Don't Date Robots! kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqaoammnitF9lZYsi=9-S51j61weixPf_H

[@theflyoverlandcrank]

Somebody please tell Dr.Haidt to talk into the microphone.

[@Gawd-z3c]

Why does this video not show up in ReasonTV video list? Thank you.

[@99guspuppet8]

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ install a camera that faces the audience and have people who are introduced walk up to the camera and subtitle their appearance

[@iampdv]

I'd rather oppose any government regulation, but there could indeed be a relatively discreet way of age verification that doesn't require uploading personal data though the purchase of some kind of tokens/codes in an offline shop.

[@LegendTwentySeven]

The interviewer knocks middle school as a "Lord of the Flies" scenario that should be avoided - I feel like Libertarianism has similar parallels

[@authenticallysuperficial9874]

This is a social issue with a social solution. Our society is utterly degenerate and probably most of it can't solve the social problem. But that doesn't mean you get to introduce an antisocial, violent solution.

[@LibertyPlusTV]

This. We need to solve this by being better parents not authoritarian fascists. He even used the term "our children" - creeps me out!

[@paultaylor7947]

sometimes i wish i could own just one brand name device instead of them consisting of 4

[@WW3_Historian]

Parents don't HAVE to pay for phone service.

[@JohnKerbaugh]

And be socially ostracized? Some kids will be fine, some wouldn't.

[@skiphoffenflaven8004]

I mostly agree. But I do think it is mostly their fault and they need to own up to it.

[@newpilgrim]

Recognizing we don't have free will is a hard pill to swallow, but we need to shelve our ego. Wrapping up a doctorate in media psychology....I'm a researcher.... look at the research within the last 3 years. Head over to Google Scholar, settings, and check the open source box. You don't need to take JH's word for it.

[@aaroninternet4159]

Young people have the right to chose for themselves, as creative individuals with their own values and goals. Give them your arguments and evidence, but to ban smart phones is immoral. How is phone usage in schools at all damning of phones rather than of coercive education itself, which is nothing more than trivial status games laced with false and poisonous epistemology. Children are not property of their parents bred as tools to further society's current values.

[@DerMef]

Haidt gets the timeline wrong - I was 13 in 2001 and even by that time I was online all day and that hasn't changed since. Sure, that wasn't as common back then, but I don't think it's fair to say that it was still the same by 2010. I'd say from about 2005 onwards, most kids in developed Western countries spent a lot of time online. Broadband internet became common, there were extremely popular online games like World of Warcraft (released in 2004 in the US and 2005 in Europe) and webcams were definitely a thing, even though they weren't on phones yet. Characterizing kids in 2010 as still living in a very different world is completely wrong based on what I remember from that time. KZbin, Twitter, Reddit were all a thing by then and popular with kids. This didn't start in 2015.

[@tonyjohn3855]

It’s not being online that is the problem per se. it is having a smart phone in their pocket and the phone based apps. Those apps work with the phone to put people in reinforcement patterns that are the most damaging.

[@stormygeo]

Smart phones came out in mass in 2010ish, I got the iPhone 4G. Getting on a desktop is a lot different than having the internet and social media in your pocket 24/7.

[@fletchergull4825]

He also makes a distinction between "modern social media" and old forms like MySpace and stuff which he considers relatively harmless. He draws the line roughly at the introduction of the like/dislike buttons and post commenting

[@petereames3041]

It's was definitely a very different world back then than now, but the seeds were starting to be sown then.

[@econoclast6284]

Adore this kind of open dialogue... This is the solution to civilisational decline.

[@jons42]

it's what teenage boys watch.... did you see what i grew up with? Ren and stimpy? beavus and butthead? grunge tv.

[@kellyhassen8071]

Psyco Media.

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

Its a Double edge sword that only can be fixed with parental freedom & involving smaller gathering closer nit education local community. State raised kids lose the soul which 1980s Prussian reforms did just this . We can't take 1900s structuralism problems and get it wrong . The adhad explosion was in 82-86 but outside of academics we was having huge peak cultural booms music style trends that over shadowed this problem. Its been an 80 year March into what we have become

[@JunkSock]

“Don’t recommend this channel.” Content farming

[@abramgaller2037]

Norms are OK ,regulations are not . Jonathan Haidt is truthful but exaggerated .

[@TimedNonTides]

Wasn't freedom ie tech, which made people anxious. It was govt creating culture in public schools. Pathetic excusing of govt is what's going on here

[@paxdriver]

15:25 lmfao! Jon says 2010 most people didn't have broadband. That's America's brand of capitalism hard at work. In fact in 2024 as I write this there are still areas lacking broadband for towns of 100's of thousands of people sometimes. The point: Winnipeg MB Canada had half adoption of broadband since 2002. The earliest in blue collar community was around 2000 we hand broadband always-on. Parenting is the issue. As kids we walked in groups because pedos were out there, that was the 90's. You call from a payphone if late our plans changed, you left notes at the front door and planned backup ways home. We taught kids to be responsible when they were young in safe little ways. Today a click of the app makes a purchase, there's no recounting change or mentally estimating prices with tax to see if you can afford it; even with video games, playing gameboy for 4 hrs hurts the neck and didn't look so great. It was easy to pull away from devices because they were linear and unimpressive yet still immersive. The graphics, and comfort of portability, and sound/animation today must make it much much harder to pull away, I have to say. I vividly remember my seag genesis, the first new generation gaming console I'd ever had. I started losing a looooot of sleep squeezing in an hour here and there. Even that was education though, feeling the punishment all day at school for trying to play video games that will still be there later. Even though it took 8 years to figure out balance, I'm glad learning balance started young because it took a really long time for me to learn how to prioritize my time even when I was compelled to instant gratification.

[@jimdandy8996]

Millennials more mentally healthy than Gen X? Lol Doubt that seriously.

[@MechaJutaro]

As intriguing as some of Haidt's work has been, he's also a case study in what made the phrase "Don't be such a f-g" so effective, for all of it's flaws

[@LibertyPlusTV]

Heidt said so many stupid things lol There is nothing special about social media specifically that makes it worse, chat, news feeds etc. existed before social media. I literally saw beheading videos when I was 11/12 years old LMFAO Netflix doesn't have "better stories" Also blaming someone's actions on a smart phone is fucking stupid. You can't blame the device or social media - people's decisions and lack of consequences is what's driving all the bad things he points out. And avoiding the question of how many people , NOT as a percentage, are killing themselves is dishonest AF.

[@IAmInterested-cc4hr]

Well that really isnt true, the swipe nature of instagram is particularly bad. Of course it is not at all the problem. The problem is that although everyone is supposedly broke they are buying their kids smart phones, flying their kids to vacations, involving therapists in childrens lives instead of just telling the kids they are fine. I believe the largest correlating factor of children being suicidal can be connected to the extension of our school lives.

[@LibertyPlusTV]

@@IAmInterested-cc4hr Yes as far as I'm concerned public school is a form of child abuse. It is literally no different than a prison. People put their kids in prison for their entire childhood and wonder why they are suicidal. It's insane.