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How Screens Stole Childhood — and How to Get It Back | Jonathan Haidt | TED — Transcript

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0:04To begin,
0:06I invite you all to remember a time in your life,
0:08a period in your life, when you felt fully integrated into a group.
0:12Maybe you were on a sports team,
0:14maybe you played in a band,
0:16or maybe you just had a great group of friends
0:18that loved to hang out together.
0:20Or maybe it was at work.
0:21Maybe you were part of a team
0:22trying to do something big and difficult under time pressure.
0:25But you all pulled together.
0:27Whatever it was, my question to you is,
0:29does that memory glow?
0:32Do you look back on that
0:33as something special and magical, that time in your life?
0:37The great biologist E. O. Wilson
0:39says that humans aren't just social, like dogs and chimpanzees,
0:44we are ultrasocial, like bees and ants.
0:48We have a massive division of labor,
0:50and we love to do things that put us in a mindset of one-for-all, all-for-one.
0:57Yet our hives aren't made out of wax.
0:59They're made out of shared culture and shared experiences.
1:03My talk today isn’t really about bees and ants --
1:05it’s actually about technology and childhood.
1:09But let's see what we can see about technology and childhood
1:12if we start with this premise
1:14that human beings are ultrasocial creatures
1:18with deep needs for community and communion.
1:21As a social psychologist
1:23who studies the effects of digital tech on young people,
1:27what I see from this perspective is very concerning.
1:30I think it justifies a general sense of wariness
1:34or skepticism about the technologies that are pushing their way
1:38into childhood today.
1:40So let's start with social media.
1:43In the early 2010s,
1:44teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones,
1:47and the phone-based childhood began.
1:49Their social lives moved on to social media.
1:52At first, we thought this would be fine, maybe even better.
1:55But quantity pushes out quality,
1:58and they started spending a lot less time with each other in person.
2:02And that’s a problem for our ultrasocial species
2:04because a lot of our evolved bonding mechanisms involve our bodies.
2:09So we connect with people,
2:11we bond with people when we eat with them, when we share food with them,
2:15when we share laughter,
2:17when we move together in synchrony,
2:19even if it’s just walking next to each other,
2:22and we bond together when we touch.
2:25But when everything moved online,
2:28teens across the developed world lost most of those bonding experiences.
2:34Levels of loneliness and anxiety began to rise almost immediately
2:38in many countries simultaneously.
2:41And this wasn't just a historical correlation.
2:44There are now multiple lines of evidence showing
2:48that social media is causing harm at an industrial scale.
2:53One line is the dozens of experiments --
2:57... these are usually with young adults --
2:59when you randomly assign people
3:01to greatly reduce their social media use for at least a week,
3:05their levels of anxiety and depression go down.
3:08And one of those studies was done by Meta.
3:13But what I've learned in the last two years
3:15is that I grossly understated the damage
3:18in "The Anxious Generation"
3:20because I focused on the mental health outcomes.
3:24That’s where we have the best data.
3:25That’s where we’re doing the most work.
3:27But I now believe that an even larger damage
3:30is the diminishment of the human capacity
3:33to pay sustained attention.
3:36One-third of all American teens say that they’re on a social media platform
3:41almost constantly, just throughout the day.
3:45And the main thing they're doing on those social media platforms
3:48is watching very short videos.
3:50Young people call it brain rot --
3:52which is a funny term --
3:53but it might really be true
3:56because the adolescent brain is always ... being remodeled.
4:02The neural network of a child has to convert itself,
4:06has to rewire itself to become the neural network of an adult.
4:11And that rewiring process,
4:14the neurons finding each other,
4:15that's shaped by whatever you're doing every day.
4:20And it's shaped by whatever everyone else says is prestigious,
4:25which means that puberty is the worst possible time
4:29for a human being to be on social media.
4:33For our ultrasocial species,
4:35that rewiring should be guided by huge amounts of social interaction
4:40in the real world,
4:41not by TikTok's algorithm.
4:43(Applause)
4:49I imagine there are a lot of parents in the audience.
4:52So here’s the first principle of what we might call techno-skepticism.
4:57Protect brain development through puberty.
5:00That's why it's so important for countries to follow Australia's example.
5:03Let's just raise the age for opening social media accounts to 16,
5:07as Australia did.
5:08All right, now let's look at EdTech.
5:11Of course, there are good uses of technology in education.
5:14My kids have learned a lot from Khan Academy,
5:17but I'm very concerned about what happened
5:19when we started putting computers and tablets on kids’ desks.
5:23These are the so-called 1-to-1 device policies.
5:27Computers and tablets are multifunction entertainment systems.
5:31If kids can get to the internet,
5:34they will play video games and watch short videos, watch YouTube Shorts
5:40and even porn.
5:41As soon as we brought in 1-to-1 devices in the 2010s,
5:44national test scores began dropping in the USA.
5:48And they've dropped in many other countries,
5:51especially in the countries that most firmly embraced EdTech.
5:55Now I can’t prove that these declines were caused by the screens
5:59and the apps that we put on kids’ desks.
6:01But consider this.
6:03Sweden led the world in digitizing education in the 2010s.
6:06They got rid of textbooks.
6:08They put a device on every desk.
6:10They even mandated that nursery schools had to use tablets.
6:16But after years of experience and years of declining test scores,
6:20Sweden reversed course.
6:22In 2023, they announced that they’re going back to textbooks.
6:25They’re pulling out a lot of the devices.
6:27They’re going back to books and handwriting,
6:30especially in the earlier grades.
6:32Their top research institute -- the Karolinska Institute --
6:35issued a report backing the government's position,
6:38saying there is clear scientific evidence
6:41that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning.
6:46And consider this.
6:47Many of us professors are banishing computers [and]
6:49laptops from our classrooms.
6:51My students at NYU say they learn a lot better
6:53when people aren’t on devices, don’t have a computer
6:56and the multitasking staring them in the face.
6:58But if college students can't learn that well
7:01when there's a computer in front of them,
7:03how do we expect eight-year-olds to do it?
7:06School is an intrinsically social experience.
7:09Students are not learning machines.
7:11They’re ultrasocial human beings who need to connect with their teachers
7:16and their fellow students.
7:18They don't need to connect with more screens.
7:22So here’s the second principle of techno-skepticism.
7:25Prioritize people and books in education, not screens.
7:28We should never have let laptops and tablets
7:31spread through K-12 education
7:32without extensive testing
7:35and evidence of safety and efficacy.
7:38But we’re about to [make] the exact same mistake with AI.
7:44Do you see the pattern here?
7:46We let social media companies take over our kids’ social lives,
7:50and they’ve harmed our kids’ social lives and their mental health.
7:55We let EdTech companies take over our kids' schools,
7:58and they appear to be doing more harm than good.
8:01Now AI companies are coming for their relationships,
8:05to be their friends,
8:06their therapists
8:07and even their sexual partners.
8:10What could go wrong?
8:12(Laughter)
8:14We're already seeing massive cognitive offloading and learning loss.
8:18When students have access to AI,
8:20they pass the critical thinking over to the AI.
8:24We're already seeing young people becoming dependent on ChatGPT
8:28to make their personal decisions and to draft their texts and their emails.
8:33And we're seeing a booming AI toy market.
8:35Chatbots are being put into dolls and teddy bears.
8:40And these chatbots are super responsive to the child.
8:43They’re always there to offer comfort, to be there for the child --
8:48and of course, the parents are often busy.
8:50But if the chatbot is super responsive while the parents aren't as responsive,
8:55the child's attachment system,
8:57which is looking for
8:59who in my environment is the person who responds to me --
9:01may well imprint or focus on the chatbot,
9:05which is going to compromise their relationship with their own parents.
9:08Here’s the third principle of techno-skepticism.
9:12Just beware of artificial relationships for minors.
9:16Give them nothing that conveys
9:18that it understands the child or that it cares --
9:22because it doesn't.
9:25There could be a role for AI therapists someday,
9:28but how about we require years of testing
9:31before we let anyone push it out into childhood?
9:34(Applause)
9:40All right, now I’ve just told you that we need to greatly reduce
9:43the role of these technologies in our kids' lives.
9:46And some of you may be thinking, "Oh, hold on a second.
9:49I want my child to be successful in the digital future
9:53and the digital workplace.
9:55So why not give them a head start?"
9:59Two reasons.
10:00The first is that these technologies are extremely easy to use.
10:06Your kid doesn’t need a 10-year head start
10:09to master social media and AI.
10:11(Laughter)
10:13And second,
10:17... is that being a digital native does not confer an advantage.
10:22For many kids it's a curse
10:23because it messes with [their] attention systems
10:27and their motivational systems.
10:30It teaches them that there's always a little bit of reward,
10:33a little bit of dopamine available,
10:35just one swipe away.
10:36And that undermines the ability
10:39to do difficult or sustained cognitive work
10:42like reading a book.
10:45I teach a course at NYU called “Flourishing,”
10:48and two years ago, we were talking about attention fragmentation.
10:51And one of my students who was a very heavy TikTok user, said,
10:55"Yeah, I take out a book,
10:57I read a sentence,
10:59I get bored,
11:01I go to TikTok."
11:03So if we want our children to be successful in the digital future,
11:09we need to protect them from the damage being done in the digital present.
11:14(Applause)
11:19So let's return to the hive.
11:21What do we see when we look at technology and childhood through this lens?
11:27When we start from the premise that humans are ultrasocial,
11:31what we see is that these technologies are being built
11:35by people who don't understand that premise.
11:39They think of people as consumers with social needs
11:41that can be satisfied by machines.
11:44They think it's good to free people from dependence on other people.
11:48Let's suppose, just for the sake of argument,
11:51... that they really can give us excellent friends
11:55and excellent romantic partners.
11:57In fact, just yesterday at lunch,
11:59Esther Perel told me she recently did her first couples therapy
12:03with a mixed couple.
12:05A human male and an AI female.
12:10So is this liberation?
12:13Do we no longer have to depend on other people to meet our social needs?
12:17Would that make us happy if we don't have to depend on others?
12:21Absolutely not.
12:24Because [it] would mean that nobody depends on us.
12:28Nobody is relying on us.
12:30We are not important to anyone.
12:34So is this our fate?
12:36Is there any way to stop this lonely digital future?
12:41Yes, there is.
12:44When "The Anxious Generation" came out two years ago,
12:48one of the main objections I got was that I was too late.
12:51The technology is here to stay, people said.
12:54You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
12:57But in the last few years,
12:58humanity has mobilized,
13:01and we are putting the genie back in the bottle.
13:03(Applause)
13:09Mothers were the first to organize and take action,
13:12but they were quickly joined by fathers
13:14and by a lot of Gen Z activist organizations
13:18and also by many governors
13:20and many heads of state.
13:22Together, we're getting phones out of schools around the world.
13:26(Applause)
13:30Teachers are so thrilled to get their students back.
13:33And one of the things that they tell us --
13:35the most common thing we hear -- is:
13:37"We hear laughter in the hallways again."
13:41We're getting the age raised for social media to 16.
13:45More than a dozen countries have already committed
13:47to following Australia's bold example.
13:50And we're seeing parents letting go
13:52and trusting their children to ride bicycles with their friends
13:56and to do errands so that they can feel useful.
14:00I'll give you one example.
14:02A mom in Utah gave her seven-year-old son the Let Grow challenge.
14:05That's where you say to a kid,
14:07"What's something that you think you can do on your own?"
14:10And her son said,
14:11"I think I can go into a Chick-fil-A restaurant and get us lunch."
14:15So she says, OK.
14:17And in the video, you see the mother sitting in the car,
14:20[you] see the kid coming out of the store
14:22and he's got the bags
14:24and ...this huge smile, and he comes into the car
14:26and he says, "That was so fun."
14:29(Laughter)
14:31And then the mom says, "Were you nervous?"
14:34And he says, "Yeah, my legs are still shivering,
14:38but I want to do it again."
14:40(Laughter and applause)
14:43So these are the stories, these kinds of stories --
14:45this is what most moves me, what most thrills me.
14:48Because this movement is not primarily about technology.
14:51It's about reclaiming childhood in the real world with real people.
14:57So what on earth do we do about the robot teachers
14:59and all the other future waves of technology
15:01that are going to push their way into childhood
15:04without adequate safety testing?
15:06It sometimes seems completely overwhelming.
15:08So let me repeat the three principles of techno-skepticism.
15:12One, protect brain development through puberty.
15:16Two, prioritize people and books in education -- not screens.
15:21Three, beware of artificial relationships for minors.
15:25I think techno-skepticism is the right attitude for people today,
15:29especially for parents and legislators.
15:32Because when it comes to children,
15:34these companies have earned our distrust.
15:38Techno-skepticism means that from now on,
15:40we put the burden of proof on them.
15:43Let them prove that their products are safe.
15:45We treat them like any other maker
15:47of potentially dangerous consumer products.
15:50We make them prove that their products are safe
15:52before they push them out into the world.
15:55And we hold them responsible --
15:56(Applause)
16:02We hold them responsible for their safety lapses.
16:06So in conclusion, human beings are ultrasocial creatures
16:10who need to matter to one another
16:13in order to flourish.
16:14We are so brilliant that we’ve invented technologies that can replace us
16:19[and] take us out of each other’s lives.
16:22But human connection is not optional.
16:25It's who we are.
16:27So we're going to have to fight for a future
16:30in which our children can grow into flourishing, connected adults.
16:36Thank you.
16:37(Applause)
16:46Do you disagree with anything I said?
16:48(Laughter)
16:49Sal Khan: We agree in spirit 100 percent.
16:52And that's where my question is, actually.
16:54And we have talked about this in the past, even before TED.
16:58But how extreme would you go?
17:04What would you say to someone that would make the argument,
17:07even putting Khan Academy aside,
17:09if a student is writing their paper,
17:11if they're editing video,
17:12if they’re doing something creative,
17:14they're building some skills in the process,
17:17isn't there some middle ground that might be OK?
17:19Jonathan Haidt: Well it depends on the age.
17:22So if we're talking elementary school, I would say no.
17:24I would say it's so clear,
17:25kids need to learn basic skills,
17:27they need to develop a habit of books.
17:29There’s all this research on how print is better.
17:31For elementary school, let's just get rid of all the 1-to-1 devices.
17:34Go back to books and paper.
17:36The people who made this technology,
17:38a lot of them choose to send their kids to schools that don't have this.
17:41We’re talking about young kids -- I say just no, until it’s proven safe.
17:45But I think we learned something really interesting today.
17:48I forget her name, that amazing woman in Africa --
17:51SK: Imagine Worldwide.
17:52JH: So no, no internet.
17:55That's the key.
17:57And I said to you like years ago, I said,
17:59Sal, if someone [were to] make a device that just had Khan Academy,
18:03you could not go to YouTube.
18:05You could not do anything.
18:07That would be amazing.
18:08SK: We agree.
18:10JH: I'm raising money for this.
18:12Someone has to make this.
18:14Do you agree with that?
18:15SK: I was fishing for that all night, so yes, thank you.
18:19Well, thank you so much, Jonathan.
18:20A super important conversation.
18:22JH: Thank you, Sal.
18:23(Applause)

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