Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, sparked a movement to warn kids and their parents about the harms of social media.

But what do young people think?

That's on the TED Radio Hour.

Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You are actively rewiring your brain for the worst by engaging with social media, high volume, quick videos.

And then from the medical perspective, it's rewiring your body, increasing your risk of heart disease and PTSD.

But there's all these small tweaks that you can do to override that primal urge to scroll.

For example, 91% of people had an improvement in attention, well-being, and mental health.

Just two weeks of continuing to use their device, but not having internet access.

Next, keep your phone out of your arm's reach because the sheer potential for distraction has actually been shown to change your prefrontal cortex, which is called brain drain.

And then to add to that, I have the three second brain reset.

So first.

Hey, you're back.

This terrifies me.

My background is that I'm a physician at Harvard, and my expertise is in stress burnout and mental health.

And so that is the lens that I view all of this through.

We know that the most deleterious relationship that you have is with your device.

In every healthy relationship, we have boundaries.

We have boundaries with our kids.

our parents, our colleagues, with our friends, and yet we have no boundaries and often porous boundaries when it comes to the relationship you have with your device.