Bill Maher

I'm 50.

So we hear like Gen X, Gen Z, millennials, and this sort of thing.

But it does seem that there was an entire generation that was raised so deeply in these short video social media landscapes that they're almost like an experimental group, right?

I mean, inadvertently, they're the experimental group and nobody knows how this is going to work out.

I did hear that there are data that, you know, people won't hire kids of certain generations because their inability to have, you know, generate eye contact, have a conversation, because they're just so used to staring in a little box all the time.

It's wild.

What is that about?

Because I mean, that image can be, you know,

They could get that image after the show.

Exactly.

I don't know what that is.

I guess it's to project oneself into the onstage experience somehow.

What do you mean?

Well, there are some interesting studies.

I think the one that's probably most relevant to everyone is this study that looked at people's ability to focus when their phone is off and turned over in front of them.

versus in their bag turned off underneath or behind their chair versus in another room, separate room.

And the interesting thing is that the ability to focus was the same essentially across those groups, but it took a lot of extra cognitive resource

to work and to focus when the phone is on the table or even in a bag underneath or behind your chair.

They can measure how much, essentially how much energy people devote to focusing versus to generating new sort of creative thoughts into flexible use of the information.

And so it takes a lot more work to focus when your phone is in the room.