Toxic World Of Social Media: Mental Health, Focus, Stress & Digital Minimalism

00:00:00.000 | Just the other day, Australia passed a law, the first in the world of its kind, to ban

00:00:05.320 | social media for children under 16 and to offer stiff fines to social media companies

00:00:09.360 | if they don't put in the right safeguards to make this ban possible.

00:00:13.280 | I'm going to get into this law today.

00:00:15.480 | I'm going to go through the main arguments from both sides.

00:00:17.680 | So I will quote a key player both for and against this law, and we will go through these

00:00:22.440 | arguments together piece by piece, and then we will conclude where I stand on this or

00:00:26.880 | similar types of legislative action.

00:00:29.840 | The final part of this deep dive, I will then connect what's going on in Australia with

00:00:35.080 | all of our general struggles to control the role of technology for better or for worse

00:00:39.880 | in our lives.

00:00:40.880 | All right, let's start with some details.

00:00:42.920 | I'm going to read a couple of quotes from a recent CNN article about the law, just so

00:00:46.780 | that we are all starting from the same page with information about what's going on.

00:00:50.760 | So let me read here.

00:00:52.960 | Australia's parliament has passed a world first law banning social media for children

00:00:57.240 | under 16, putting tech companies on notice to tighten security before a cutoff date that's

00:01:02.080 | yet to be set.

00:01:04.000 | Under the new law, tech companies must take reasonable steps to prevent underage users

00:01:09.280 | from accessing social media services or face fines of nearly 50 million Australian dollars,

00:01:14.040 | which is about 32 million US.

00:01:17.700 | It's the world's toughest response yet to a problem that has seen other countries impose

00:01:21.400 | restrictions but not hold companies accountable for breaches of a nationwide ban.

00:01:25.640 | The ban is expected to apply to Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and X,

00:01:31.640 | but that list could expand.

00:01:33.040 | All right, so that's just a quick summary.

00:01:35.440 | A couple other points.

00:01:37.400 | The bill was backed by most members of Australia's main opposition party, which is the Liberal

00:01:42.000 | Party.

00:01:43.000 | It does have some opposition, including some fierce opposition from independents and some

00:01:47.680 | of the smaller parties, including the Greens.

00:01:50.440 | And in terms of the Australian public, it has pretty large majority support.

00:01:55.520 | All right, so a strong social media ban for users under 16.

00:02:01.880 | Let's start for the arguments in favor.

00:02:04.600 | So the best summary I could find about the arguments in favor of this bill came from

00:02:10.440 | a quote from the prime minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, who in that same CNN article

00:02:15.400 | I mentioned before said the following, "We know that social media can be a weapon for

00:02:20.080 | bullies, a platform for peer pressure, a driver of anxiety, a vehicle for scammers, and worst

00:02:26.440 | of all, a tool for online predators."

00:02:31.300 | This sentence packs in a lot of different arguments, so it's worth briefly unpacking

00:02:36.400 | into its constituent parts.

00:02:39.480 | So first of all, he's talking about social media being a weapon for bullies.

00:02:43.720 | So what's being captured here is that there is something about the pseudonymous communication

00:02:50.720 | that happens through these platforms, where you're talking to sort of visual, digital

00:02:55.520 | abstractions of individuals, typically just through text, not actually interacting with

00:03:00.320 | real flesh and blood individuals who are in front of you, who you can see and read their

00:03:03.220 | body language, feel the full force of social capital cost of what you're saying.

00:03:08.560 | It's pseudonymous.

00:03:09.560 | It's abstracted.

00:03:10.560 | It's digital.

00:03:11.560 | And as anyone who has spent any time looking at, say, political discussion online knows,

00:03:15.620 | this leads to a lack of the standard interpersonal inhibitions that typically structure our interactions

00:03:21.880 | with other humans.

00:03:23.520 | And it can really lead to extreme behaviors.

00:03:25.240 | It can lead to behaviors that in person be considered really antisocial.

00:03:28.320 | And among adolescents, the young adolescents and pre-adolescents who are very sensitive

00:03:33.800 | to social interactions, social media-based platforms, online interactions can really

00:03:39.080 | lead to bullying or all sorts of, think of it as verbal, I don't want to say violence,

00:03:47.320 | but negative outcomes.

00:03:49.320 | It's a platform for peer pressure, he says.

00:03:52.400 | I believe what he's alluding here is the fact that pre-adolescents and adolescents are very

00:03:57.200 | vulnerable to groups and peer pressures, and there is a lot of niche online communities

00:04:01.280 | that can be very persuasive.

00:04:02.620 | Their brains aren't used to the persuasiveness of these online communities, and it can push

00:04:06.520 | them into weird or destructive behaviors.

00:04:10.400 | What we have to think about about these online communities is that you have this sort of

00:04:14.680 | digital competition that is being mediated by curation algorithms and engagement-driven

00:04:20.880 | metrics, which it's as if you have hundreds of thousands of small, weird, cultish niche

00:04:27.440 | groups all competing in some giant American Idol-style competition.

00:04:31.740 | And those are the most compelling win.

00:04:34.320 | So now, when you're the 13-year-old and you're on TikTok and kind of browsing things, you're

00:04:39.600 | on Instagram sort of browsing things, it's not just that you're going to find yourself

00:04:43.600 | in the niche communities that are going to sort of suck you in and maybe change your

00:04:46.660 | behavior in drastic ways, but you're being subjected to the A-team, the all-star team

00:04:52.280 | of niche cultish communities, because just the fact that you are being shown them in

00:04:56.000 | your feed means that they have survived these algorithmically-mediated tournaments.

00:05:00.960 | So it used to be, hey, maybe you ran into a weird crowd or a cult at the airport when

00:05:06.280 | you were growing up.

00:05:07.280 | Now it's like, no, we've scoured the country to find niche communities that are most effective

00:05:11.440 | at grabbing people's attention, and this can cause lots of problems.

00:05:15.800 | One of the issues that these niche communities have exacerbated in pre-adolescence and adolescence

00:05:20.440 | we know is eating disorders.

00:05:22.920 | You can fall into these communities that are very compelling and very much glamorize very

00:05:29.280 | dangerous disordered eating behavior.

00:05:32.120 | Some of the small number of very powerful lawsuits right now that have been waged against

00:05:35.880 | META are specifically aimed at the damage caused by eating disorder communities online

00:05:41.800 | and what it did to kids.

00:05:43.360 | There's a lot of other things as well.

00:05:45.520 | All right, a driver of anxiety.

00:05:49.160 | The evidence here is clear.

00:05:51.000 | I've read the evidence.

00:05:52.000 | I've read the counter evidence.

00:05:53.000 | I've read the counter to the counter evidence.

00:05:54.000 | I've read the counter to the counter to the counter evidence.

00:05:56.400 | We have multiple independent streams of data that exactly matches self-reports.

00:06:01.640 | You cannot ignore self-reports.

00:06:03.280 | That's probably the strongest signal of all.

00:06:05.880 | That heavy social media use among young people makes them more anxious, and there's a lot

00:06:08.760 | of drivers for that, including these other issues that we're mentioning here.

00:06:13.600 | The scammers and online predators.

00:06:15.380 | This seems to be a real focus if you read the press coverage in Australia around the

00:06:19.620 | bill because it's the most concrete.

00:06:22.560 | When you put people on a pseudo-anonymous, open-access, global conversation platform,

00:06:28.880 | bad people are going to find the kids on there.

00:06:31.900 | It's like letting your kids free at 2 a.m. at the port authority.

00:06:38.400 | Most people there are probably pretty normal, but there's the weirdos, and they're probably

00:06:41.120 | going to find you, especially if you're walking around looking a little bit clueless.

00:06:46.380 | Because of this, online predators is kind of obvious.

00:06:50.080 | The scamming thing is becoming a real issue.

00:06:53.520 | There's been a slate of suicides, for example, recently that comes from these sexploitation

00:06:59.320 | scams where the scammer will meet you online and get you through various platforms to send

00:07:09.580 | them compromising or embarrassing video or photos, and then they say, "Yeah, we're going

00:07:13.120 | to send this to your parents unless you give us like $60,000."

00:07:16.480 | Kids can't handle that, and they feel trapped, and terrible things happen.

00:07:19.520 | It's very dangerous to put people who are young into, again, an open-access, global,

00:07:27.420 | pseudo-anonymous conversation platform.

00:07:31.880 | Everything that the prime minister is arguing here, I think every one of these is actually

00:07:37.160 | a real valid point and a real valid concern.

00:07:40.200 | There's some histrionics sometimes when we're talking about technology and kids.

00:07:43.320 | This seems not that.

00:07:45.960 | This list of issues, I'm like, "Yeah, this is a solid list of real issues that have real

00:07:49.300 | harms that come from kids or young adolescents using social media."

00:07:54.440 | All right, so what is the opposition saying?

00:07:59.440 | So we have some quotes here.

00:08:00.960 | I'm going to pull from, I found the best summary of the opposition came from an AP article

00:08:06.700 | I found that's sort of summarizing what the various opposition said.

00:08:09.680 | All right, so let me quote this, "Critics of the legislation fear that banning young

00:08:15.520 | children from social media will impact the privacy of all users who must establish their

00:08:19.280 | older than 16.

00:08:21.660 | Opponents also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of the positive aspects

00:08:25.160 | of social media, drive them to the dark web, discourage children too young for social media

00:08:30.200 | to report harm, and reduce incentives for platforms to improve online safety."

00:08:35.480 | All right, there's some legitimate arguments here.

00:08:38.600 | I'm going to take these one by one, not necessarily in that order, but let's take these one by

00:08:42.680 | one.

00:08:45.560 | So the first issue here is with the age-gating mechanism.

00:08:49.440 | How do we know who kids are?

00:08:51.040 | All right, there's a couple arguments surrounding this.

00:08:54.440 | One is this a technical argument.

00:08:56.560 | This is really what the social media companies are pushing.

00:08:58.520 | They're saying this is too hard.

00:09:00.480 | It's not really our responsibility.

00:09:02.920 | We don't know how to do this.

00:09:04.320 | You're not being clear enough.

00:09:05.320 | I would say this is the main lobbying pressure point they applied in Australia, which was

00:09:10.680 | the companies, "We don't want to argue about the harms or lack of harms, but we need more

00:09:15.500 | time and more studies," basically trying to slow walk the bill, because we don't know

00:09:19.080 | technically how to do this.

00:09:21.480 | And so don't give us these technical demands and just say, "Do it or we're going to fine

00:09:25.200 | you $50 million Australian dollars."

00:09:26.520 | So they're trying to slow walk it.

00:09:28.960 | I think this is a general response that the social media companies are having right now

00:09:33.120 | to this style of legislation, including COSA in the US, which is slow walk bills that have

00:09:39.800 | regulatory teeth, until you can do enough type of controls or options on your own that

00:09:46.440 | people will feel like, "I think they have enough stuff in place now.

00:09:49.560 | We don't need laws."

00:09:50.560 | Hey, it's Cal.

00:09:51.640 | I wanted to interrupt briefly to say that if you're enjoying this video, then you need

00:09:56.160 | to check out my new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:10:03.620 | This is like the Bible for most of the ideas we talk about here in these videos.

00:10:09.040 | You can get a free excerpt at calnewport.com/slow.

00:10:14.440 | I know you're going to like it.

00:10:16.240 | Check it out.

00:10:17.240 | Now let's get back to the video.

00:10:19.280 | The other concern about this is the privacy concerns.

00:10:21.920 | It's a little confusing.

00:10:22.920 | In the US, some of the advocacy groups that are pushing these concerns are also heavily

00:10:28.620 | connected to the social media companies themselves.

00:10:30.880 | There's a lot of complicated backstory when it comes to who's arguing what, but let's

00:10:37.000 | just take the concerns in abstract and separate them from who's pushing them.

00:10:41.800 | There's a privacy concern.

00:10:44.240 | Forget the kids.

00:10:45.240 | I now, as an adult, have to prove that I'm 16 or older, and that's a privacy concern.

00:10:50.000 | Do I have to upload my license and show a social media company?

00:10:54.520 | Now a social media company knows who I am, and now I guess they can track what I'm saying

00:11:01.560 | or they can punish me in the real world for things I'm saying online, so there's privacy

00:11:05.360 | concerns around it.

00:11:07.280 | Ultimately, I think these are solvable issues.

00:11:11.760 | There's a couple of different ways to think about it.

00:11:14.240 | One is, and this is what the Australian legislatures are doing, it's a rip-the-band-it, like, look,

00:11:17.560 | you got a year, figure something out good enough.

00:11:20.280 | That often tends to work.

00:11:22.360 | I think there's many examples of regulation of this general flavor that have some sort

00:11:28.840 | of technical complexity that is eventually solved, where you say, look, you have to do

00:11:32.000 | it, and something is solved.

00:11:33.720 | It's imperfect, but something is solved.

00:11:35.880 | It should be said, there are, in the American context, there are other web-based services

00:11:41.440 | that have to do things like this, so notably in multiple U.S. states, pornographic websites

00:11:46.640 | have to do various types of age verification.

00:11:49.560 | It has not led to as big of privacy arguments because I think there's not as big of a lobbying

00:11:56.080 | effort to protect those sites.

00:11:58.240 | Let me tell you my preferred solution here.

00:12:01.040 | I do think, from a technologist's standpoint, the approach of saying the sites and apps

00:12:08.120 | need to age-gate, I actually don't think that's right.

00:12:11.200 | I don't think that's the right way to do this.

00:12:14.320 | There is privacy and technical concerns.

00:12:16.400 | Those are fair points.

00:12:17.400 | I actually think the right way to do this is at the operating system level.

00:12:22.000 | Here's my proposal, and I've talked about this before in various forums.

00:12:27.380 | My proposal is, what is something we know someone under 16 can't do?

00:12:33.520 | They can't go and buy an iPhone and set up cellular service for that iPhone, right?

00:12:40.960 | That we know an adult does.

00:12:42.880 | These 13-year-olds who have phones and they're using the phones to go on Instagram or to

00:12:47.120 | go on TikTok, the one thing we know is their parents set up that phone for them.

00:12:51.360 | You can't sign contracts.

00:12:52.680 | You don't have the money for it.

00:12:54.200 | You can't have a cellular contract.

00:12:56.760 | So I think that is actually the choke point for age verification, and I think it is as

00:13:02.200 | simple as this.

00:13:05.200 | When you buy a phone and set up a plan or add a phone to your plan, as the owner of

00:13:09.520 | this plan, the person who the plan's name is in, you just specify this is an under-16

00:13:16.000 | or above-16 phone, a single bit.

00:13:20.680 | We trust you.

00:13:21.680 | Yeah, you can lie, fine.

00:13:24.240 | We're not doing any more verification.

00:13:26.080 | There's no government.

00:13:27.120 | There's no government documents.

00:13:29.640 | There's no photos.

00:13:30.640 | There's no looking at your behavior.

00:13:32.660 | Just parents say this phone is for a kid, this phone is for an adult, and then if that

00:13:36.640 | kid gets older, they can change that.

00:13:38.360 | The same place they change the credit card you use for your billing.

00:13:43.240 | Now the operating system just has a single bit.

00:13:46.480 | Any service who wants can query the phone and say, is this someone who is 16 and older

00:13:51.800 | or not, and they get one bit yes or no.

00:13:55.160 | I think that's going to solve.

00:13:56.600 | That gives you like 90% there.

00:13:58.560 | There's no privacy concerns here.

00:14:00.360 | Technically it's pretty straightforward.

00:14:02.680 | From an effectiveness standpoint, it largely works.

00:14:04.960 | Yes, like adults can lie, but so they can do that with any of these bans, just set up

00:14:10.840 | an account and give it to their kid, give them their password to use.

00:14:13.880 | But this is simple.

00:14:15.600 | It gets rid of privacy issues.

00:14:17.120 | It gets rid of technical concerns, right?

00:14:19.040 | Now all these websites have to do is just access, make an OS call, is this an adult

00:14:25.000 | or not.

00:14:26.000 | And it simplifies a lot of things.

00:14:27.960 | So I do think it's a solvable problem.

00:14:30.040 | I don't want to dismiss it, but it's not a showstopper.

00:14:32.440 | And I am very suspicious of slow walking.

00:14:34.200 | Like eventually with these things, you have to just push something through.

00:14:38.480 | This has been, I think, more or less the approach with some of the US state laws that have age-related

00:14:43.960 | restrictions for various technologies.

00:14:45.720 | They're kind of saying, just figure it out.

00:14:46.720 | Ultimately, you do have to do something like that, but I like my OS solution.

00:14:50.360 | All right.

00:14:51.440 | Another argument, social media will become worse without the excuse of protecting kids.

00:14:56.840 | And kids will sneak in and not tell anyone because they're not supposed to be there.

00:15:00.120 | I don't buy this at all.

00:15:02.320 | This idea that the only thing keeping TikTok, Instagram, X, whatever, these are whatever

00:15:11.320 | services are being targeted here.

00:15:12.760 | The only thing keeping them from 8chan, just like straight up chaos, is the fact that we

00:15:20.280 | worry about kids being on there.

00:15:21.600 | That's nonsense.

00:15:22.960 | These companies don't care about kids.

00:15:24.160 | They haven't been doing almost anything for kids other than adding some privacy controls

00:15:27.760 | that parents can control.

00:15:30.760 | We are not, I do not buy this concept that our current social media experience is mediated

00:15:35.480 | by these companies being worried about kids.

00:15:37.960 | They're mediated by trying to keep their customers.

00:15:40.360 | What will our customers bear?

00:15:42.600 | If Instagram turns themselves into 8chan, most adults won't want to use Instagram.

00:15:49.640 | We see X decided we are going to get less content moderatedly, and then Blue Sky came

00:15:54.960 | along and said we'll get more content moderation.

00:15:58.960 | These found different audiences.

00:16:01.200 | People are carefully trying to titrate what their content's like.

00:16:07.080 | Threads are saying they're going to turn down political content, and we're going to turn

00:16:10.460 | up this type of content.

00:16:11.460 | Anyway, so I don't buy this idea that, oh, we know the kids aren't here.

00:16:16.760 | Let's bring out the Klu Klux Klan memes or whatever, because you're going to lose all

00:16:21.860 | your customers.

00:16:23.400 | I'm also not that convinced by the argument that, well, now kids will sneak in and not

00:16:27.600 | report what's going on because they're not supposed to be there.

00:16:31.000 | They're not reporting what's going on now that they're seeing that's bad.

00:16:35.080 | That's not compelling to me.

00:16:37.160 | I think the craziest argument against is this idea of, well, if kids can't use social media,

00:16:43.640 | they'll turn to the dark web.

00:16:45.480 | This is a canard, not just a canard, it's like a complete factual inaccuracy that I

00:16:53.000 | have been railing against for a long time.

00:16:57.240 | Social media is not the internet.

00:16:59.640 | Social media is a small number of services that essentially run their own private version

00:17:03.460 | of the internet that are accessed through internet protocols.

00:17:07.720 | But a lot of commentators, especially people who grew up on this or the companies themselves,

00:17:11.360 | like to equate social media with internet themselves.

00:17:13.840 | So they say if you're not on a social media platform, what's left?

00:17:17.720 | The dark web.

00:17:19.840 | That's crazy.

00:17:20.840 | The dark web is a very specific thing.

00:17:23.360 | It's sites and services that don't publicly have domain names that are accessible through

00:17:29.720 | standard DNS services or so that you only can get to them if someone has told you specifically

00:17:35.520 | how to log into them so that they can have less scrutiny from law enforcement.

00:17:39.480 | It's like this very small corner of the internet that's used for hiring hit men and drug trafficking

00:17:44.280 | and child pornography.

00:17:45.560 | You have all of the internet outside of social media that's not the dark web.

00:17:49.720 | I've never had a social media account.

00:17:52.040 | I use the internet a lot.

00:17:53.840 | I'm not on the dark web.

00:17:56.120 | So I do not like this idea that the internet is social media, and if you're not on social

00:18:01.360 | media, you're on some dark website ordering hit men.

00:18:05.040 | All right, the final argument is kids will isolate and lose the positive benefits of

00:18:08.920 | social media.

00:18:09.920 | I think this is the point that's most worth arguing.

00:18:12.280 | It's the point that's most relevant when it comes to concerns about social media bans.

00:18:19.060 | It's not one that should be dismissed.

00:18:22.200 | Now the key to this, let's get fine tuned.

00:18:27.080 | The key to this argument is discerning between two different subgroups of kids.

00:18:32.280 | And this is why I think it's confusing for people when they hear this argument on either

00:18:36.240 | side of it is because they're mixing together two different groups of kids.

00:18:40.840 | For most kids, losing access to internet-based community is not a problem.

00:18:49.440 | For most kids, actually, the moving more sociality to digital communication itself is causing

00:18:54.740 | more harms.

00:18:55.880 | For most kids, if you move them back to a more localized in-person sociality, that's

00:19:01.560 | actually really healthy for kids, because it's very complicated to build up your social

00:19:05.720 | skills to mature as a social being.

00:19:08.360 | It takes lots of practice, and you need all of the sources of information we're evolved

00:19:12.880 | to take in.

00:19:13.880 | We need to see people in front of us.

00:19:14.880 | We need to see their body language.

00:19:15.880 | We need to struggle.

00:19:17.220 | We need the friction of trying to navigate complicated in-person social interactions

00:19:20.800 | to get that practice that's going to make us better at it.

00:19:23.160 | So for most kids, it's kind of what you need, actually, is like what I had in the 1990s

00:19:28.360 | as a junior, as a high school student.

00:19:30.640 | It's actually fine.

00:19:31.640 | Most kids are going to be fine.

00:19:34.040 | There is, however, certain kids who perhaps are in a marginalized group living in an area

00:19:42.080 | where there really is very little support.

00:19:43.440 | Maybe there's just not very many other people like them.

00:19:45.520 | They really do feel isolated.

00:19:48.180 | In-person sociality is not going well.

00:19:50.880 | Traditionally, they would have had a very hard childhood.

00:19:54.540 | They would have felt very isolated, and maybe on social media they can find other people

00:19:59.960 | to support them, find other people who are of a similar community that shows that they're

00:20:04.880 | not alone.

00:20:07.320 | All of this could be really useful for that group.

00:20:10.160 | So that's the group, I think, for which that's true.

00:20:13.480 | That's where you need to be worried about when it comes to this particular type of argument.

00:20:21.560 | One thing I'll say here, and one way we can think about this, is asking the question of

00:20:28.320 | whether social media platforms are inherent in Internet-based support communities.

00:20:37.600 | There are Internet-based support communities that come through social media.

00:20:40.480 | Social media kind of makes them easier to find, and typically it's a good interface.

00:20:43.840 | It's easy to use.

00:20:44.840 | You can find your particular—maybe you're on TikTok pretty quickly, for example.

00:20:50.240 | Just automatically find you want to see videos from these type of people, and you'll see

00:20:53.960 | them a lot.

00:20:54.960 | You don't have to do much.

00:20:55.960 | Or you can find a Facebook group or a Reddit thread that's of a particular community, and

00:21:01.840 | the interface is there, and you have a nice app, and so it could be really useful.

00:21:06.480 | But there is a lot of Internet, like we just argued, that's not through these global conversation

00:21:10.240 | platforms.

00:21:11.240 | There's a lot of Internet that can be leveraged successfully to help young people find support

00:21:16.040 | communities.

00:21:17.040 | You have, for example, the whole world of things like newsletters and podcasts, which

00:21:20.440 | often spawn their own communities.

00:21:22.440 | If you belong to a sub-stack newsletter about something you really care about, you're probably

00:21:27.480 | familiar with the fact that there's a comment section on the newsletter post, there's chats

00:21:32.120 | that happen back and forth with the author of it, and they're niche communities.

00:21:37.400 | It's people who are interested in this very thing.

00:21:38.800 | It's a small group of people.

00:21:40.760 | It's much more cohesive.

00:21:42.440 | There's no algorithmic curation.

00:21:43.940 | There's no engagement.

00:21:45.800 | It's not 100,000 people talking about this and the most outrageous stuff being curated

00:21:49.520 | for what you see.

00:21:50.520 | It's there's 600 people here.

00:21:52.880 | We're kind of on the same page.

00:21:53.880 | We set up our own community norms, right?

00:21:56.840 | You can have a very strong community.

00:21:58.840 | There's communities run by teens themselves.

00:22:01.800 | These are based around discussion boards or chat channels, et cetera, that just don't

00:22:04.680 | happen to live in a social media ecosystem.

00:22:07.720 | Community groups themselves could run their own online services, be it web or app-based,

00:22:11.200 | where people could come together and chat and share resources and have appropriate moderation

00:22:15.160 | for exactly what this community is.

00:22:19.880 | Moderation is not a bad thing.

00:22:21.560 | Moderation is hard when you're trying to apply rules to 600 million Twitter users.

00:22:27.460 | Moderation is much easier.

00:22:28.460 | This is a group for teens from this background, and there's a few hundred of us on here.

00:22:35.240 | That's a very easy community to moderate compared to we need rules for 600 million people.

00:22:39.680 | So my argument there is that is a fair point.

00:22:43.560 | We need to think about groups that are finding support in the internet and make sure that

00:22:46.440 | we don't wrench them away from that, but we should start thinking about finding that support

00:22:49.920 | in ways that does not necessarily involve global conversation platforms, these social

00:22:54.560 | platforms.

00:22:55.560 | All right.

00:22:56.560 | So there's the arguments for and the arguments against.

00:22:59.140 | I've gone through each of those.

00:23:00.280 | What's my take?

00:23:02.160 | I would say I'm generally in favor of legislation like this at this moment.

00:23:05.960 | Not because I think it solves all the problems, like put a law like this in place and then

00:23:09.720 | we can all go home.

00:23:11.400 | Our kids will be safe and we don't have to think about it.

00:23:14.320 | What's good about this type of legislation is the signal it sends, and it is a signal

00:23:19.520 | that is fundamentally techno-selectionist, to use a piece of terminology that I like

00:23:23.280 | and that I introduced.

00:23:25.560 | It shows that we can notice that something that we embraced and had many good attributes

00:23:31.360 | is having unexpected negative side effects in certain instances or certain groups, and

00:23:36.320 | it's perfectly appropriate to say, "Well, great.

00:23:38.640 | Maybe we should pull it back there," that the arrow of the future with technology is

00:23:46.120 | not unvaryingly straight.

00:23:48.320 | It's like a meandering river.

00:23:50.260 | It's generally heading towards some sort of proverbial future sea, but it takes turns

00:23:54.160 | and has oxbows, and we can say, "This technology is great.

00:23:57.120 | Let's try it out.

00:23:59.000 | That service didn't work.

00:24:00.080 | Kids shouldn't use this.

00:24:01.080 | Actually, if we change it to this, this works better."

00:24:03.040 | We can edit and reflect and curate and change our relationship to technologies that already

00:24:08.200 | exist, even technologies that are already widely used.

00:24:11.360 | I also like that legislation like this sends a message to parents, right?

00:24:16.820 | It's okay to say, "I worry about this.

00:24:18.480 | I don't like my kids using this."

00:24:20.400 | When you have a law that's like, "Kids shouldn't use this," it makes it so much easier to

00:24:25.460 | actually tell your kids, "I don't want to use it."

00:24:27.160 | It makes it so much easier for your kids not to feel alone when they don't use it.

00:24:31.000 | This is something that opponents often don't understand about these type of laws, is they

00:24:34.400 | say, "Well, wait a second.

00:24:35.880 | So many kids will get around this.

00:24:38.680 | It's not that hard to get around if they really want to."

00:24:42.040 | That's not the point.

00:24:43.040 | I think the point is not trying to get 100% compliance.

00:24:45.920 | It's trying to make the lives of families and parents who are really worried about this

00:24:49.960 | 100% easier.

00:24:53.400 | Because now it's not, "I will be the only one in my class who's not on Snapchat and

00:24:58.200 | my life's going to be terrible," to now the kid has to argue to a parent, "Will you break

00:25:01.880 | the law for me?"

00:25:03.520 | That's a much easier place for parents to be.

00:25:05.440 | So I think that's fine.

00:25:07.560 | I'm also generally not in favor of the approach of, "Why don't we just instead make social

00:25:12.260 | media safer for everyone?"

00:25:13.440 | I just think that's an impossible thing to do.

00:25:17.920 | It's somewhat techno-utopian.

00:25:19.760 | It gets very vague.

00:25:22.060 | It runs into all sorts of issues.

00:25:25.340 | I just have not, I don't have a lot of confidence that there's a way legislatively to make social

00:25:31.400 | media good for everyone.

00:25:32.920 | It ends up being like having extra long filters on the cigarettes you sell the kids.

00:25:38.640 | Sometimes something is just not appropriate for one group that's better for another.

00:25:42.120 | Yeah, we do our best.

00:25:44.240 | This social media is an interesting thing.

00:25:45.760 | It's entertaining.

00:25:46.760 | It's also kind of dangerous.

00:25:47.760 | So maybe just kids shouldn't be there.

00:25:48.840 | That's often easier than somehow trying to go through.

00:25:52.040 | We tried this with movies and then we figured out it's better just to have ratings and say,

00:25:55.640 | you have to be older than 16 to go to the R-rated movies.

00:25:58.940 | It was easier than trying to have the Hays Codes or whatever that was trying to make

00:26:02.680 | all movies appropriate for all people.

00:26:04.940 | We didn't get as good of movies with those in place and it was just easier to say, "Well,

00:26:08.520 | if we want to be really violent or whatever, maybe just young people shouldn't go there

00:26:11.760 | unless a parent really wants them to see it and the parent can make that choice and that's

00:26:15.320 | the R-rated movie system."

00:26:16.320 | All right.

00:26:17.320 | But I want to emphasize two things here.

00:26:20.160 | What's talked about in these type of bills does not capture all the harm of the internet

00:26:25.240 | facing kids.

00:26:27.280 | Much of the digital bullying that's happening right now with kids is happening on group

00:26:30.160 | text messaging apps, not in social media platforms.

00:26:33.800 | Snapchat is where this used to happen, but that's really just a glorified text messaging

00:26:36.920 | service that kids like to use.

00:26:39.580 | So if you really want to help the bullying issue, this is where having a culture of kids

00:26:44.600 | aren't just on their own phones all the time makes more of a difference.

00:26:47.880 | This also ignores online games.

00:26:51.160 | Online games are a huge source of the sort of predation, online exploitation, predation

00:26:54.800 | issues.

00:26:55.800 | You know, a lot of parents who maybe would not give their kid a phone thinks it's fine

00:27:01.160 | that their kid is playing Minecraft on a server on their iPad, not realize they're playing

00:27:06.800 | that with unknown adults who are able to interact with them.

00:27:10.120 | So it's sort of missing out other sources of predation.

00:27:13.860 | But mainly this is missing out on this type of bill, this type of discussion is missing

00:27:17.560 | out on the fact that these types of devices and the content accessible to these devices

00:27:22.200 | is hugely distracting and addicting for young people.

00:27:25.720 | It's digital fentanyl for a young person.

00:27:27.620 | Think about any 14-year-old you've ever known or have ever seen who's been given a smartphone.

00:27:32.600 | It is glued to their eyeball.

00:27:35.500 | The ultra processed content, be it coming through a social media platform or through

00:27:38.820 | online games or through like hyper addictive web content or video, you know, hyper addictive

00:27:43.860 | video content, whatever it is, the growing kid brain can't handle this.

00:27:50.200 | Like we thought this was bad enough in the 70s when latchkey kids like got glued to TV.

00:27:54.860 | This is like a hundred times worse.

00:27:57.780 | Now this is not something that these type of bills are trying to handle, but it is one

00:28:01.260 | of the largest issues.

00:28:02.260 | We're going to see it in the questions that we're about to answer here.

00:28:04.900 | This causes real issues for people.

00:28:07.760 | It causes real issues to sort of all out distraction and addiction of these devices.

00:28:12.560 | So honestly, if you want to know what I think is most appropriate, it comes back to my main

00:28:17.000 | suggestion, which is it's not just social media, it's unrestricted internet access.

00:28:21.880 | That is a problem when you're younger than 16.

00:28:24.600 | So no, you shouldn't have a smartphone or a tablet with unrestricted internet access.

00:28:29.520 | I mean, you can just do what you want on this without supervision until you're 16.

00:28:34.280 | That's really the move here that if I'm a parent or I'm a community group, that's really

00:28:37.860 | the move here that probably matters.

00:28:40.020 | That's not something that I think could be easily legislated and I don't think it necessarily

00:28:42.820 | needs to.

00:28:43.820 | This could be a cultural shift.

00:28:45.440 | So again, laws like Australia is fine for signaling that it's fine to make different

00:28:48.880 | choices in your family, but the lack of unrestricted internet access for kids before 16 is probably

00:28:53.960 | like the bigger choice that's going to make a bigger difference.

00:28:56.840 | All right.

00:28:57.840 | So how do we connect this to all of us?

00:29:00.240 | Well, what we are seeing here is techno-selectionism in play.

00:29:05.980 | This idea that it's okay to try, watch, and change.

00:29:10.400 | Try, watch, and change.

00:29:12.120 | The introduction of a technology doesn't mean it always has to be used.

00:29:15.640 | Your prior use of a technology doesn't dictate your future use of a technology.

00:29:20.040 | Be aware of the impact of technologies.

00:29:21.700 | Make assessments of this impact of technology and make changes accordingly.

00:29:26.340 | That's what all of us should be thinking about.

00:29:28.800 | There's probably a technology in all of our lives that needs the equivalent of the Australian

00:29:32.540 | ban.

00:29:33.540 | Someone to come along and say, "Hey, just stop using this.

00:29:36.400 | Maybe it was good before, but it's causing more trouble than it's worth."

00:29:39.200 | We should be comfortable with moving backwards in this sense without thinking it's progress

00:29:44.200 | turning backwards.

00:29:45.200 | So I think there's a general message here of techno-selectionism.

00:29:47.240 | All right.

00:29:49.540 | That's enough on what's going on in Australia.

00:29:51.440 | Let's get to some questions about these general topics.

00:29:53.560 | But first, let's hear a word from a sponsor.

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00:31:25.520 | My wife literally plugs it in outside of our bedroom, just so it's technically not in there.

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00:35:20.780 | Let's get back to the show.

00:35:21.780 | All right.

00:35:22.780 | We're back.

00:35:23.780 | Let's do some questions.

00:35:24.780 | Without Jesse here, I'm going to have to read these questions myself.

00:35:27.840 | This is no fun.

00:35:28.840 | All right.

00:35:29.840 | Our first question comes from EM.

00:35:30.840 | EM says, "I recently lost my iPhone and my life has gotten exponentially better as a

00:35:36.520 | result.

00:35:37.520 | I easily keep up with my graduate school work and research goals.

00:35:40.560 | I'm spending more time reading and immersed in my hobbies and am taking better care of

00:35:44.160 | myself by sleeping enough and eating well.

00:35:47.040 | I spend maybe an hour a week on social media on my laptop, but here's the problem.

00:35:52.040 | I've realized that I am profoundly lonely.

00:35:54.560 | I moved across the country away from all my friends from graduate school and now that

00:35:59.640 | I'm not spending hours every day fake socializing on Instagram, I'm actually noticing that loneliness.

00:36:04.160 | Any advice?"

00:36:05.160 | Well, I like this because there's also a little case study hidden in here.

00:36:10.540 | Notice all the fantastic stuff that happened to EM when he lost his iPhone and then later

00:36:16.200 | just changed his social media to something he just does on his laptop one hour a week,

00:36:21.920 | which by the way, you're allowed to do.

00:36:24.080 | And by the way, I make this argument in digital minimalism, but when I talk to adults who

00:36:28.240 | give me a case that they need to be using social media, 95% of the time the things they

00:36:35.320 | say they need to use social media for could be handled in one hour a week on their laptop.

00:36:40.440 | So they use that small number of things.

00:36:42.800 | I need to be on the Facebook group for my running club to justify five hours a day of

00:36:48.200 | scrolling on their phone.

00:36:49.200 | So I really love seeing that.

00:36:50.920 | I love, and I'm going to emphasize what EM got out of this, he easily keeps up with his

00:36:57.480 | work now, makes progress on his research goals.

00:37:00.240 | He reads, he's in hobbies, he sleeps.

00:37:03.640 | All this good stuff happened when he got rid of the phone addiction.

00:37:07.320 | Okay, the loneliness.

00:37:08.320 | Well, this is important because it underscores one of the more insidious side effects or

00:37:16.000 | attractions maybe I should say of our current digital world.

00:37:21.000 | It simulates, these services and apps and devices simulate deep human needs.

00:37:29.040 | Now not in a sort of deep way where it's actually going to satisfy those needs, but just enough

00:37:34.640 | to be alluring, right?

00:37:36.560 | It's like they have evolved to say if we can offer a satisfaction of deep human needs,

00:37:42.180 | that will make us particularly alluring to people and we can become a real part of their

00:37:47.420 | life and therefore harvest their date and eyeballs.

00:37:51.600 | So fake socializing as he talks about it, so being on social media and talking with

00:37:55.120 | people with digital typing back and forth on these various sort of global conversation

00:37:58.640 | platforms, draws on our deep human need for sociality and sort of makes us feel vaguely

00:38:05.180 | speaking like, okay, I guess we're social.

00:38:07.720 | Like in a rational way, we're social, we're talking to people all the time.

00:38:11.840 | But the problem is, and I argue this in detail in Digital Minimalism, it's not actually fulfilling

00:38:16.380 | our need for sociality because the deep parts of our brain isn't seeing another person.

00:38:21.800 | Where is this person?

00:38:22.800 | What do they look like?

00:38:23.800 | When are we sacrificing non-trivial time and attention on their behalf?

00:38:27.520 | So the deep part of our brain is not seeing real human relations.

00:38:30.200 | It's just the rational part of our brain saying, "I'm very social, I'm very social."

00:38:33.440 | And so we're actually very lonely but don't realize it.

00:38:38.220 | And so what we see here is once EM actually took away the fake socialization, he realized,

00:38:42.720 | "Oh, I have been really lonely.

00:38:44.400 | There's not real people in my lives.

00:38:45.880 | I was papering it over.

00:38:48.960 | I was papering it over with this."

00:38:50.720 | There's other needs these fulfill where they do similar things.

00:38:53.600 | For example, we have this drive for competency, to be good at things, because it increases

00:38:58.620 | our status in the community tribe as someone who's useful and valuable, and we build a

00:39:02.760 | lot of meaning on it.

00:39:04.280 | Video games can get in there and toy with that.

00:39:06.000 | "Oh, you're leveling up.

00:39:08.240 | You just killed all the Nazis in this base in Call of Duty.

00:39:11.420 | It plays with that."

00:39:12.600 | So you're like, "Yeah, that's fine.

00:39:14.080 | I'm okay.

00:39:15.080 | I feel like I'm doing enough to feel competent."

00:39:17.200 | But you're not actually doing anything that's building real competence.

00:39:21.320 | There's no real friction.

00:39:22.320 | You're not building up real hard skills in a way that our body recognizes, our communities

00:39:26.320 | recognize.

00:39:27.320 | That comes to haunt you.

00:39:28.320 | And at some point you're like, "Why do I feel so hollow and angry or adrift or isolated?"

00:39:33.320 | It's because I wasn't actually building up a tangible skill that's valuable to the community.

00:39:37.120 | I was pretending to build up a skill.

00:39:39.360 | It simulates that.

00:39:41.360 | It gives you numbers.

00:39:42.360 | You're level six, and you do some button pressing, and now you're level seven.

00:39:45.440 | It sort of simulates it, but it's not really giving you what you need.

00:39:48.640 | So Ian, what should you do?

00:39:49.740 | You have to do old-fashioned, the old-fashioned work of actually building connections.

00:39:55.840 | So join communities and be useful in those communities.

00:39:59.600 | Over time, try to get a leadership position in those communities.

00:40:03.880 | That's a great way to be around people, to feel useful, to feel less lonely, and to feel

00:40:06.920 | connected.

00:40:07.920 | You'll meet people that way as well.

00:40:09.720 | You also have to think about taking regular doses of what I call "vitamin people."

00:40:14.280 | Being around real people in person is necessary for your health.

00:40:19.620 | So it's not about, "Am I in the mood to be social this week?"

00:40:25.120 | Especially if you've been fake socializing, you might have lost that muscle and might

00:40:27.440 | feel very uncomfortable.

00:40:28.440 | It's, "Have I gotten a sufficiently large dose of vitamin people this week?"

00:40:32.680 | You go and you do things, or you invite someone you know or go to something you know to get

00:40:37.160 | that dose of vitamin people, and then over time, as the rewards come from forming these

00:40:41.760 | connections, it's less something you have to sort of force yourself to do, and it's

00:40:45.480 | something that you're really going to want to do.

00:40:47.040 | So yeah, it can be hard work to rebuild your social connection, but it's important, and

00:40:51.720 | I appreciate you highlighting the degree to which social media in particular can obfuscate

00:40:57.320 | the idea that you actually are very lonely.

00:40:59.020 | You just don't realize it.

00:41:00.720 | Let's move on with Fahad.

00:41:04.520 | Fahad says, "You mentioned the following Arnold Bennett quote in some of your books.

00:41:10.800 | One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties

00:41:15.880 | are capable of a continuous hard activity.

00:41:17.840 | They do not tire like an arm or a leg.

00:41:19.540 | All they want is change, not rest except in sleep."

00:41:21.680 | Fahad continues his question, "Do you still agree with what it says?

00:41:27.640 | Do we really not need a rest?

00:41:30.040 | Can we work all the time like robots?"

00:41:32.280 | Well, no, we can't work all the time like robots.

00:41:38.380 | That is exhausting.

00:41:39.380 | I talk about this in my book, Slow Productivity.

00:41:41.720 | Particular principle two, work at a natural pace.

00:41:43.280 | We need great variations in effort over different timescales.

00:41:48.120 | But Bennett isn't talking about professional work here.

00:41:51.340 | The argument he's making, and this comes from his book, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, the

00:41:56.480 | argument he's basically making is you don't need as much like veg-out resting as you think.

00:42:06.120 | That's what sleep is for.

00:42:07.920 | Sleep is for the restorative, "I'm doing nothing and my body is like recharging for the next

00:42:14.640 | day."

00:42:15.640 | He's saying, "With your other time, do stuff that matters, like do interesting high-quality

00:42:20.920 | stuff."

00:42:21.920 | Now, Bennett is actually pretty dismissive of work itself because he was addressing the

00:42:25.360 | sort of newly enlarged London middle class.

00:42:29.920 | They worked downtown and they would take the trains back to their suburbs.

00:42:32.840 | He was like, "Yeah, you got your job, do your job.

00:42:35.080 | All right, when you get home, you have eight hours until you go to bed."

00:42:38.960 | And what he's saying is like, "Don't veg-out.

00:42:41.220 | Do good stuff, like intentional, meaningful stuff at that time.

00:42:44.680 | It's going to energize you instead of exhausting you."

00:42:47.760 | Now his version of vegging out, if you read the book, because this is the early 20th century,

00:42:51.520 | is like drinking.

00:42:52.520 | Like, "Ah, I'm going to drink."

00:42:54.160 | I think he had like playing cards and drinking.

00:42:56.360 | I guess that's their equivalent of like vaping and scrolling social media.

00:42:59.880 | He's like, "No, do meaningful stuff.

00:43:03.200 | Read poetry and think big thoughts and have grand conversations or whatever."

00:43:08.320 | And I think there's truth to that.

00:43:10.400 | I think intentional activity is something that we crave.

00:43:14.520 | It doesn't have to be hard activity.

00:43:17.660 | It doesn't have to be like a real strain.

00:43:21.600 | But being intentional versus, "I'm now going to spend two hours on my phone while Netflix

00:43:28.240 | is playing," he's saying being intentional is going to be better.

00:43:31.880 | It's not going to exhaust you.

00:43:32.880 | It's going to give you energy.

00:43:33.880 | I think that's true.

00:43:35.320 | I think a softer way of thinking about this is in your time outside of work to embrace

00:43:40.080 | what I call the PIG, P-I-G, which is an acronym that stands for being present, being intentional,

00:43:47.320 | and seeking gratitude.

00:43:49.940 | So moment by moment in your after-work time, when you're deciding what to do next, be intentional

00:43:58.680 | about what you choose.

00:44:00.440 | Don't just stumble into something.

00:44:02.360 | Be present while you're doing it.

00:44:05.080 | Don't also be on your phone or only half pay attention.

00:44:08.160 | And seek gratitude.

00:44:09.160 | "Isn't this great?

00:44:10.160 | I really enjoy this.

00:44:11.160 | This is really good."

00:44:12.160 | PIG activities do not have to be mentally trying.

00:44:16.940 | It could be, for example, like watching a dumb movie with your kids.

00:44:20.800 | But if you chose to watch this movie, like we're all going to get together to watch it,

00:44:24.360 | you're present with them and the movie and what's going on.

00:44:26.560 | You find gratitude in being able to watch this movie that you remember from your childhood

00:44:30.640 | and your kids are there and it's like a nice night or whatever.

00:44:35.080 | That is a meaningful activity.

00:44:36.840 | It's not draining.

00:44:38.400 | It's not hard.

00:44:39.400 | You're not getting after it or crushing it.

00:44:41.860 | But it's different than, "I'm just kind of vegging with my phone."

00:44:44.280 | So maybe that's a softer way to think about Bennett is presence, intentionality, and gratitude.

00:44:50.580 | Live on purpose at most times.

00:44:54.040 | Even if what you're doing on purpose is something that's not particularly mentally trying or

00:44:57.140 | difficult.

00:44:58.140 | So anyways, thanks for bringing that up.

00:44:59.640 | And I like that book, actually.

00:45:00.640 | It's one of the first self-help books, "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day."

00:45:04.880 | And we've got a question here from Heather.

00:45:07.280 | "How do you do your research for books and articles?

00:45:09.880 | I find it challenging to sort through all of the information online.

00:45:13.880 | How do you write your books in terms of tools and organizing your thoughts?"

00:45:16.600 | I thought this was an interesting question.

00:45:21.980 | The main point I wanted to respond to here is the reality that the world of available

00:45:27.240 | information is vast.

00:45:29.880 | So like you want to write an article, you want to write a book.

00:45:33.120 | Between other books and other articles and the world of online information, it's endless.

00:45:39.160 | The idea that I'm going to master everything relevant to this topic and somehow organize

00:45:45.740 | it and present it back in my books or my articles is hopeless.

00:45:50.160 | It's quixotic.

00:45:51.560 | So the way a lot of idea writers like myself or critical commentators like myself—so

00:45:55.840 | I write critical commentary and I write idea books—the way we often operate is trying

00:46:01.160 | to create a coherent path through this world.

00:46:06.720 | It's like pattern matching.

00:46:09.120 | These four or five things I've encountered seem to connect together, and if we connect

00:46:14.440 | together right, it makes a coherent path here, or a coherent structure, if you want to use

00:46:19.020 | that metaphor, for one way of seeing some part of our life that allows us to take useful

00:46:23.600 | action or make useful critique.

00:46:26.560 | And the landscape in which this path or structure is built is massive.

00:46:30.800 | The landscape of all relevant ideas and information is massive, and we don't have to get our

00:46:33.960 | arms around all that.

00:46:35.480 | Just here is a coherent path that'll take you from one place to somewhere else useful.

00:46:40.960 | So we often think about that.

00:46:43.040 | You're building a coherent path instead of trying to be comprehensive—coherency over

00:46:50.160 | being comprehensive.

00:46:53.680 | One of the ways we see this violated is you get people that become encyclopedic when they

00:46:57.640 | tackle issues.

00:46:59.440 | Well, there's 15 relevant main issues to this issue that we're trying to face here, and

00:47:04.360 | if we go into sub-issue number three, sub-point four, sub-sub-point A, we see this particular

00:47:10.280 | argument, and then we can contrast that with point seven, sub-point six.

00:47:14.160 | You can get this complicated hierarchy of information that in most instances is just

00:47:19.080 | overwhelming and doesn't help.

00:47:22.340 | The other issue we see when we ignore the reality of coherence versus comprehensiveness

00:47:27.920 | is that people get petrified.

00:47:29.320 | If I build a path over here, what about the landscape over here and over here and over

00:47:34.600 | here and over here, and what if someone is over in that landscape and they will be upset

00:47:38.120 | that my path over here doesn't speak to their particular landscape?

00:47:41.560 | The problem is that's also a quixotic approach as well, because the landscape is vast.

00:47:47.840 | The number of ways to think about it is vast.

00:47:50.980 | The number of different things that people care about most when it comes to a particular

00:47:55.000 | issue is vast, and to try to address or handle everyone, to build a map that covers the entire

00:48:02.400 | space, you're probably not equipped to build that map because most of these other spaces

00:48:07.400 | you've never been to before, so it's not a useful map, and it's much more boring.

00:48:11.120 | I want to go—I'm stretching this metaphor—but I want to go on a nice nature walk now.

00:48:15.520 | I don't need a topographic map of the whole state, right?

00:48:17.920 | So that's the other thing that happens.

00:48:21.160 | This can lead to a sort of incomprehensibility because it's just you're trying to do too

00:48:26.200 | much.

00:48:27.200 | So it's my approach, and a lot of commentators are doing the same.

00:48:30.640 | In this vast space of issues and information and ideas, here is a coherent path that for

00:48:35.200 | a lot of people hopefully is useful.

00:48:37.640 | Add it to your list of particular outings, and that's a huge elaboration of a metaphor

00:48:42.840 | beyond its actual usefulness, but I just want to make that point, Heather, that sometimes

00:48:48.320 | it's okay to just find something useful to say, and then let people integrate that into

00:48:54.620 | the much broader maps they're creating.

00:48:57.840 | All right.

00:49:00.480 | We got a case study here, but I'm going to put an asterisk in front of this.

00:49:04.160 | It's a case study, but it's also a plea for advice.

00:49:07.480 | So it's a useful case study.

00:49:10.080 | It's kind of at first a sad case study, but we're going to at the end give some advice

00:49:16.440 | to help this person.

00:49:18.200 | So we're going to both see an issue be illuminated in detail, and then we can talk about some

00:49:22.880 | advice.

00:49:23.880 | All right.

00:49:24.880 | Our modified case study today comes from Shane.

00:49:29.960 | Shane says, "I'm turning 25 soon, and the reality is starting to hit me.

00:49:34.160 | I have wasted the past eight years of my life scrolling through TikTok and Instagram and

00:49:38.880 | binge-watching Netflix.

00:49:41.000 | My daily social media usage is 15 plus hours, and I'm sleep-deprived due to this.

00:49:46.880 | The longest I can go without scrolling through social media is two days.

00:49:50.560 | I had no goals when I was young.

00:49:52.440 | I just went along with what my friends at the time chose to study in university.

00:49:56.300 | Now they all have successful careers and are getting married.

00:49:58.000 | I fell behind in life.

00:49:59.840 | I dropped out of university two times, but due to my parents forcing me to study, I somehow

00:50:03.240 | managed to complete my degree.

00:50:04.680 | But even when I was in university, I barely attended classes, and teachers called me a

00:50:08.440 | daydreamer because I never focused in class, and I always zoned out.

00:50:12.120 | As for getting a job, I prefer roles that don't necessitate daily attendance in an office

00:50:17.440 | or any consistent regular work schedule.

00:50:20.960 | My introverted personality has led me to isolation as I do not like talking to people, and I'm

00:50:25.600 | also ashamed to meet anyone as I haven't achieved anything.

00:50:30.160 | So I've tried learning various skills in the past three years, such as coding, copywriting,

00:50:33.680 | graphic design, web design, and animation, so I can do freelancing but never succeed

00:50:37.520 | at anything.

00:50:39.200 | When something gets difficult, I just drop it and continue scrolling through social media.

00:50:43.440 | The most I can focus is 10 minutes, or sometimes I go into a flow state for hours, but most

00:50:48.240 | of the time, my mind just goes blank when I try to learn something.

00:50:51.240 | I've watched over hundreds of self-help videos and tried everything I saw on the videos.

00:50:56.600 | From daily planning and specific goals to every piece of advice out there, nothing works.

00:51:01.480 | I know what to learn and the exact steps I need to learn these skills and how I will

00:51:04.560 | use them, but after creating a schedule, I barely follow through, and as I said, my mind

00:51:09.320 | just goes blank when I try to study.

00:51:11.760 | Now I have no idea how to get myself to do something and achieve something.

00:51:15.520 | All right, well, let's start here with a little bit of empathy.

00:51:20.920 | This is sort of the worst-case scenario or a crystallization of people's fears when it

00:51:27.380 | comes to smartphones and social media and young people.

00:51:31.760 | It is not for some people benign.

00:51:34.080 | It is not for some people a way to check on sports rumors and a community that's really

00:51:40.640 | supportive to them as part of an otherwise rich lives.

00:51:44.440 | These devices with these types of services can be incredibly addicting and have damage

00:51:51.320 | to people's lives that counters or is comparable to the damage of any of the more sort of well-known

00:51:58.240 | addictions, and we see that here in this case study.

00:52:02.520 | Now why do they do this?

00:52:04.440 | Well, we have the distraction component, right?

00:52:08.720 | So, like, how does this damage happen?

00:52:10.040 | There's the distraction component.

00:52:11.720 | You're using your phone instead of doing other things that are more valuable, but there's

00:52:14.080 | a deeper issue going on, and I alluded to this earlier in the show, but I'm going to

00:52:17.840 | detail it here more.

00:52:20.600 | These phones simulate deep human needs that were designed to actually drive humans to

00:52:28.260 | do the hard work of becoming a successful, sustainable, proud human being.

00:52:33.720 | It is hard work to become a respectable adult who feels satisfied in life and has a sustainable,

00:52:40.120 | meaningful life.

00:52:41.640 | That is hard work.

00:52:43.960 | Evolution set us up to help us do that hard work by giving us a collection of fundamental

00:52:48.840 | human needs, and they're so compelling that in the pursuit of satisfying these needs,

00:52:56.200 | we will do the hard stuff necessary to become a successful adult.

00:53:00.160 | So these needs include connection, a sense of competency, community standing, and curiosity

00:53:08.680 | slash fear of boredom, among others.

00:53:15.560 | Those needs are very strong.

00:53:16.560 | Trying to satisfy those needs, we end up learning how to socialize, doing the hard work of getting

00:53:21.680 | good at things, trying to become a leader in our community, seeking out interesting

00:53:26.640 | information or productive activity because we really hate being bored, etc.

00:53:33.080 | Modern phones and the apps and services that are on them can simulate fulfilling these

00:53:39.120 | human needs just enough to short-circuit us from actually going after them.

00:53:44.080 | They make us feel just enough connected, just enough competent, just enough part of a community,

00:53:49.360 | and just enough not bored that we don't actually get up off of the couch and do the stuff needed

00:53:54.280 | to become a successful adult.

00:53:57.380 | So by short-circuiting those fundamental human drives, we lose the carrot and the stick that

00:54:07.360 | evolution granted us to prevent what is happening here with Shane from happening in our lives.

00:54:16.040 | That really is the fundamental danger of just unrestricted phone access to a kid, that if

00:54:21.880 | it's satisfying these drives as they gain autonomy as they go through their young adulthood,

00:54:26.820 | they never do the work necessary.

00:54:29.920 | That's really the insidious part, more so than the distraction or the addictiveness.

00:54:33.680 | Because part of the reason why they're so addicting is it becomes our only outlet.

00:54:38.000 | This is Shane's only outlet for satisfying these drives.

00:54:41.680 | We're miserable if our human drives aren't satisfied.

00:54:44.960 | This is his only outlet now because he never developed the hard adult skills necessary

00:54:49.120 | to do this in the way that we're really meant to do it.

00:54:51.360 | So now all he's left with is the devices.

00:54:55.280 | The good news is, Shane, it's recoverable.

00:54:58.280 | Those drives are there.

00:55:00.040 | You just have to learn how to satisfy them in the real-world way that evolution intended.

00:55:05.960 | Your phone will then become less compelling because it's not necessary anymore.

00:55:10.880 | So this is very recoverable.

00:55:13.640 | Now how do we actually do this?

00:55:16.280 | The big argument in part one of the book I'm writing now on the deep life, part one is

00:55:20.000 | called "Prepare."

00:55:21.000 | The big argument is, we jump too quickly into making the big changes in our life.

00:55:26.980 | I want to be like, "Let's get out there, I'm going to be super social and get really good

00:55:29.700 | at things."

00:55:31.320 | But we skip the first part, which is just preparing ourselves to be an eminently qualified

00:55:34.960 | human being.

00:55:35.960 | Just the hard work of learning how to be someone who can do hard things.

00:55:38.960 | Until you've practiced and created yourself into someone who can tackle hard things in

00:55:43.600 | a consistent way, any attempt to just go do something hard is going to fail.

00:55:49.000 | So I'm going to recommend a three-part solution here.

00:55:53.960 | Let's start with discipline.

00:55:56.560 | The ability to do hard things that are valuable that you don't want to in the moment is the

00:56:00.740 | fundamental ability if you're going to transform your life.

00:56:02.960 | You were very bad at this now, that's fine, because it's practiced.

00:56:06.440 | To say you were bad at discipline now is like saying also you're bad at the banjo.

00:56:10.560 | The latter thing wouldn't upset you, because you're like, "Yeah, I've never played the

00:56:12.640 | banjo, but I'm sure I could get better if I practiced."

00:56:15.680 | Well, the same is for discipline.

00:56:17.560 | I would use the discipline ladder technique I talked about in a recent episode where you

00:56:20.640 | start with a really small thing that you do daily, but it's easy, and then you ladder

00:56:26.920 | up to something slightly harder, and then once you get used to that, you ladder up to

00:56:29.680 | something harder.

00:56:30.680 | So you work your way up to increasingly demanding versions of whatever you're working on.

00:56:36.680 | I would run two discipline ladders, one involving health and physical fitness, and one involving

00:56:43.840 | the intellect.

00:56:44.840 | This is probably around working your way up to being able to read interesting, hard books.

00:56:50.720 | So have a ladder you build up towards, which will lead to you getting in good shape, and

00:56:55.120 | a ladder that will lead up to you being able to use your mind and apply it in a consistent,

00:57:00.720 | sustained way, and be exposed to interesting ideas.

00:57:06.480 | Run those ladders concurrently.

00:57:08.200 | This could take three to six months, but it's going to give you a base of discipline we

00:57:12.960 | can now use going forward.

00:57:13.960 | All right, next you've got to organize your life.

00:57:17.280 | Start with capture systems.

00:57:18.280 | Just have a place where you write down all the different stuff you have to do, broken

00:57:21.760 | up by role and status.

00:57:24.440 | Then put away to lightweight morning shutdown routines, so just every morning, a very lightweight

00:57:27.820 | thing you do.

00:57:28.820 | I'm going to glance at these lists and sketch out a plan, put a couple notes down, and a

00:57:34.520 | shutdown routine you do, this should be really centered on, I just want to make sure anything

00:57:38.020 | that came up gets put in those lists, so I'm not remembering anything in my head.

00:57:43.400 | Once you get used to that, ladder that up to something like multi-scale planning.

00:57:46.440 | Then you'll be ready at this point to do something like multi-scale planning.

00:57:49.760 | All right, step three.

00:57:52.080 | Now we're pretty far into 2025 right now, and now we're going to reclaim your brain

00:57:57.240 | from the phone.

00:57:58.240 | I don't want you doing this yet.

00:57:59.840 | Before you have discipline, before you have some organization over your time and obligations,

00:58:04.760 | I don't want you going cold turkey on your phone yet, because it's going to be like going

00:58:08.080 | cold turkey on an alcohol dependency.

00:58:10.120 | You're going to get the DTs, it's going to be dangerous.

00:58:13.760 | But as a third step, you're ready to reclaim your brain, and this is where you're going

00:58:17.920 | to take a 30-day break from optional digital technologies.

00:58:20.720 | I kind of walked through this in my book, Digital Minimalism.

00:58:23.840 | You're going to aggressively explore in-person community opportunities, you're going to aggressively

00:58:27.500 | explore a hobby or skill that teaches you the joys of real competency, you're going

00:58:32.580 | to aggressively look into the world of ideas outside of your phone, it's going to be like

00:58:37.360 | reading or documentaries, and in whatever work you're doing, you're going to aggressively

00:58:42.640 | look at how do I get better at this job, not what do I want this job to offer me, what

00:58:47.080 | can I offer this job, I want to become indispensable so that later I can take control of my career.

00:58:52.000 | You have to get good first before your job gets good.

00:58:56.320 | Journal throughout this whole thing, reflect what's working, what's not.

00:59:01.240 | You'll be ready then to sort of get used to going after these fundamental human needs

00:59:06.240 | without your device.

00:59:08.360 | After 30 days, make very specific rules about what comes back into your digital world and

00:59:12.680 | why and what rules you have for using it.

00:59:14.640 | You'll probably have to repeat this a couple times a year for a while.

00:59:19.640 | So you can come back from all this.

00:59:22.720 | This is not destiny, but it's going to take hard work.

00:59:28.220 | Work your way up slowly.

00:59:29.220 | You're going to have some setbacks, but I absolutely believe in you, Shane, and that's

00:59:32.840 | the advice I would give.

00:59:33.840 | I just pointed to multiple books and multiple past episodes.

00:59:36.080 | You're going to have to dive into all of those as well to really understand what I'm saying.

00:59:40.120 | But I will say clearly, this is recoverable.

00:59:43.020 | You can figure out how to actually be an eminently qualified human being.

00:59:45.640 | This is going to take some work.

00:59:47.800 | Now is a good time to do it.

00:59:50.520 | All right.

00:59:53.360 | And now we're at the Slow Productivity Corner question.

01:00:07.200 | The Slow Productivity Corner question.

01:00:08.520 | We do one question a week that relates to my new book, "Slow Productivity, the Lost

01:00:12.520 | Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout."

01:00:14.400 | All right.

01:00:15.400 | Today's Slow Productivity Corner question of the week comes from...

01:00:19.920 | Oh, I don't have a name.

01:00:20.920 | That's a cool question.

01:00:21.920 | All right.

01:00:22.920 | It says, "How does Faustina Lente compare to the Tanias Longer Shorter Way?

01:00:30.560 | Sounds quite similar, and I like finding a source for the essence of this wisdom in Torah."

01:00:35.080 | All right.

01:00:36.980 | So we got to do a little bit of scholarship here.

01:00:41.520 | Faustina Lente is this Roman phrase, "Make haste slowly," which I talk about in my book,

01:00:48.880 | "Slow Productivity," because it ties to the second principle of slow productivity, which

01:00:54.080 | is to work at a natural pace.

01:00:57.120 | So make haste slowly.

01:01:00.000 | What it's capturing is you're sort of relentlessly and systematically moving towards a goal,

01:01:05.320 | but doing it carefully and slowly.

01:01:07.560 | All right.

01:01:09.240 | The Longer Short Way, which is a Jewish concept, I didn't know about until this question, so

01:01:15.040 | I did a little bit of research, and as anyone who knows anything about serious Talmudic

01:01:20.560 | study knows, 20 minutes of Internet research is all it takes to master these concepts.

01:01:25.080 | I'm being sarcastic.

01:01:26.600 | I'm apologizing in advance to all of the rabbis who are about to say, "Oh, you're getting

01:01:31.600 | this completely wrong."

01:01:32.600 | But let me give you my understanding of the Longer Short Way concept.

01:01:39.140 | It comes from a story from Talmud.

01:01:45.040 | For those who don't know, Talmud is the combination of the Mishnah, the oral law of Judaism, combined

01:01:48.760 | with commentary known as the Gemara in just sort of one book, etc., etc.

01:01:53.540 | It's old, and it's something that is studied in Judaism.

01:01:57.760 | So I found, using Internet searches, the story from Talmud from which this concept comes

01:02:02.960 | from, and then we're going to say, "Does this give us more insight on slow productivity?"

01:02:09.400 | Here's the story.

01:02:10.920 | Said Rabbi Yeshua ben Shania, "Once a child got the better of me.

01:02:17.720 | I was traveling, and I met with a child at a crossroads.

01:02:21.040 | I asked him, 'Which way to the city?'

01:02:23.160 | And he answered, 'This way is short and long, and this way is long and short.'

01:02:28.280 | I took the short and long way.

01:02:29.920 | I soon reached the city, but found my approach obstructed by gardens and orchards.

01:02:34.720 | So I retraced my steps and said to the child, 'My son, did you not tell me that this is

01:02:38.480 | the short way?'

01:02:39.480 | Answered the child, 'Did I not tell you that it is also long?'"

01:02:43.040 | All right, so this story has a lot of interpretations, in particular, I believe, maybe in Hasidic

01:02:53.680 | tradition.

01:02:54.680 | There's a book about it.

01:02:55.680 | There's a rabbi that's done a lot of glosses on it.

01:02:57.960 | But the simple version, as best as I could tell from my 20 minutes of internet searching,

01:03:02.960 | what's being said here is the long-short way, so the path pointed out by the child that

01:03:07.520 | is long but short, is sometimes the most direct way to get to an important goal.

01:03:13.680 | It is a long path of intentional steady effort is sometimes the shortest way, the best way

01:03:21.280 | overall to get to a goal.

01:03:23.720 | By contrast, a short-long way where you think you're taking a shortcut, but it ends up being

01:03:26.960 | very long.

01:03:29.260 | So in Jewish tradition, as far as I understand, this is often applied to Torah study, to get

01:03:35.200 | to the goal of connection to God.

01:03:38.760 | Actually the shortest path there is a long commitment to studying Torah.

01:03:45.400 | Long path of steady intentional effort is sometimes the shortest way to a goal.

01:03:49.360 | That's a cool concept.

01:03:51.880 | I think that is very similar to Festina Lente, and I think it's a nice way of capturing some

01:03:58.280 | of the core ideas of working at a natural pace.

01:04:02.200 | The shortest path somewhere is sometimes long.

01:04:05.400 | That's okay because once you recognize that, you can chill out and start doing the daily

01:04:10.720 | or weekly or whatever pace you're working at.

01:04:13.760 | Do the stuff that matters and let it pile up.

01:04:17.720 | The path is long.

01:04:18.720 | So to make it sustainable, do the right stuff at a reasonable pace, so the long, the longer

01:04:25.000 | short way.

01:04:26.080 | I like that phrase.

01:04:27.120 | I'm going to add that to my lexicon of slow productivity related ancient wisdom.

01:04:31.920 | So thank you for sending that in.

01:04:32.920 | All right, speaking of wisdom, I want to go over the books I read in November.

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01:08:45.300 | All right, let's move on now to books.

01:08:48.760 | All right, I try to read five books a month and then report back at the first or second

01:08:57.060 | podcast of each month what I read the month before.

01:08:59.040 | So we're in December now.

01:09:01.260 | What books did I read in November 2024?

01:09:05.960 | First I read Gaining Ground by Forrest Pritchard.

01:09:08.200 | It's a cool memoir.

01:09:10.000 | It's a memoir of Forrest, went back to his family farm and took it over.

01:09:14.680 | He's over in Shenandoah, not far from here.

01:09:16.560 | He sells at the Tacoma Park Farmer's Market, so I love crossing paths with him.

01:09:20.520 | And I enjoyed it.

01:09:21.520 | It's like a good memoir of someone learning and embracing the farming life.

01:09:26.320 | Another memoir I read—I guess I was in a memoir mood this month, I'm realizing this—I

01:09:30.200 | read Little Chapel on the River by Gwendolyn Bounds.

01:09:32.840 | I like Gwendolyn Bounds' writing.

01:09:35.560 | Earlier this year I read that great book she wrote about not too late, about people in

01:09:39.360 | middle age taking on difficult physical goals.

01:09:43.280 | Little Chapel on the River is about her moving from New York in the wake of 9/11 to a small

01:09:47.800 | town on the Hudson River Valley and how she got really involved in this old, small pub

01:09:53.360 | on the river in this town and getting involved in the life of the people at the pub.

01:09:57.480 | And she's a great writer and it's a great book.

01:10:00.940 | It wasn't what I thought it was.

01:10:02.400 | This is my fault, not Gwendolyn's.

01:10:04.900 | I came into this thinking, "I really want to hear about what it's like moving upstate

01:10:08.960 | from a city, the life in the countryside and the slowness," because that's very aspirational.

01:10:16.080 | It really was about this bar and the people in the bar, and it's very touching, the relationships

01:10:21.520 | she made with these people, but it was like the vignettes of this.

01:10:25.180 | It ended up being a very affecting book.

01:10:26.560 | It wasn't what I thought, but I ended up enjoying it.

01:10:29.160 | I also read Lost in Thought by Zena Hitz.

01:10:33.560 | This I thought was going to be a memoir.

01:10:37.320 | She studied at St. John's in Annapolis, the great books program there, and was a successful

01:10:42.880 | academic but left the track and went to what was essentially a monastery.

01:10:46.520 | I thought this book was going to be about her recommitting to a life of the mind.

01:10:50.600 | It's not really about her, though, after the beginning.

01:10:53.280 | It's just more of a polemic about the value of the life of the mind, the sort of standalone

01:10:59.280 | value of a life that's dedicated to embracing and engaging thoughts.

01:11:03.880 | So once I adjusted that that's what this was really about, there are some really good arguments

01:11:06.900 | in there.

01:11:09.280 | I read it because I'm thinking about one day writing this book in defense of thinking,

01:11:12.280 | and she's kind of doing something like that.

01:11:14.160 | So if you want a sort of muscular argument in favor of hard books and ideas as having

01:11:20.560 | intrinsic value, Lost in Thought will give that to you.

01:11:25.240 | I then was, I guess, the last person left to read Outlived by Peter Atiyah.

01:11:30.240 | I had done an event with Peter and he had given me a copy of his book, and I read it

01:11:33.760 | on the way home.

01:11:36.340 | It was much better than I thought.

01:11:38.200 | It's interesting because there's a lot of Peter in this book, and basically his trajectory

01:11:42.640 | was "I used to be super fiddly optimized, like exactly this diet and exactly this supplement,"

01:11:49.600 | and he sort of matured and was like, "No, no, no.

01:11:53.480 | Different people respond to things differently.

01:11:54.840 | Let's get to the big ideas that really matter."

01:11:57.040 | I mean, it was a more medically rigorous and less bro-science-y than you're going to expect.

01:12:04.960 | It's a really good argument for what matters for longevity and what it looks like to actually

01:12:10.800 | prioritize in your life.

01:12:12.240 | It's affected me in various ways.

01:12:13.920 | It's well written.

01:12:14.920 | No wonder it sold, and I'm checking the official list here, all the copies because it's a very

01:12:21.560 | good book.

01:12:22.560 | And again, it's more general and less in the weeds than you might imagine.

01:12:26.240 | So I'm glad I read that.

01:12:28.240 | Finally I read We Have Never Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi, who's an assistant professor

01:12:34.260 | sociologist at Stony Brook.

01:12:36.280 | That's probably my favorite book of the month.

01:12:38.960 | I love books like this where you have a young academic throwing bombs.

01:12:43.560 | He just comes into the building.

01:12:45.340 | He looks at the people around him and is like, "I've got something to say," and he's making

01:12:49.380 | a big argument, and it's a bold argument, and he does it confidently, and it is very

01:12:55.240 | timely and very convincing.

01:12:58.360 | It's not saying something like, "Oh, we all are thinking this."

01:13:00.400 | He's just taking his term saying it.

01:13:02.200 | It's surprising.

01:13:04.420 | It's the type of intellectual books I love.

01:13:05.980 | It's an intellectual experience, and I thought it was an exciting, fun book to read.

01:13:11.480 | Man, he's got some courage, too.

01:13:14.040 | He's basically looking around at all of his fellow academics and other what he calls the

01:13:17.840 | symbolic capitalists, but sort of the technocratic elite of U.S. culture, and just saying, "Hey,

01:13:23.260 | all this woke stuff, this is like you guys playing internal status games.

01:13:28.300 | It's about you trying to justify yourselves and your position, and it allows you to ignore

01:13:32.160 | or put down people who have it worse off than you and still feel good about it."

01:13:36.000 | He's pretty compelling about it, and it's a fantastic, exciting intellectual journey.

01:13:40.160 | You might not agree with all of it, but you'll learn a lot, and there's an energy to it which

01:13:44.640 | you don't always see in these books.

01:13:45.760 | All right, so that's all I've got for today.

01:13:47.680 | We'll be back next week, hopefully, if everything goes well with what I'm up to, with Jesse.

01:13:53.160 | I promise.

01:13:54.160 | Jesse's coming back.

01:13:55.160 | I can't wait for that.

01:13:56.160 | Until then, as always, stay deep.

Toxic World Of Social Media: Mental Health, Focus, Stress & Digital Minimalism | Cal Newport

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