Jonathan Haidt

So you can see until around 2012, kids 15 to 24 is the youngest age group. They were spending about two hours a day with their friends outside of school and work.

And then you see this incredibly sharp drop around 2012 in that period, down to the point where in 2019, just before COVID, it's gone from two hours a day down to like 45 minutes a day, which is just a little bit more than older people are spending. And then COVID comes in, we get COVID restrictions and it just goes down a little further.

And then you see this incredibly sharp drop around 2012 in that period, down to the point where in 2019, just before COVID, it's gone from two hours a day down to like 45 minutes a day, which is just a little bit more than older people are spending. And then COVID comes in, we get COVID restrictions and it just goes down a little further.

And then you see this incredibly sharp drop around 2012 in that period, down to the point where in 2019, just before COVID, it's gone from two hours a day down to like 45 minutes a day, which is just a little bit more than older people are spending. And then COVID comes in, we get COVID restrictions and it just goes down a little further.

Gen Z began practicing social distancing as soon as they got a smartphone. And they finished the job almost by 2019 and then certainly by 2020. Because with a phone, you're always interrupted. It's always more interesting than the person standing next to you. And my students complain, like you sit with somebody at lunch in the cafeteria and they're on their phone half the time.

Gen Z began practicing social distancing as soon as they got a smartphone. And they finished the job almost by 2019 and then certainly by 2020. Because with a phone, you're always interrupted. It's always more interesting than the person standing next to you. And my students complain, like you sit with somebody at lunch in the cafeteria and they're on their phone half the time.

Gen Z began practicing social distancing as soon as they got a smartphone. And they finished the job almost by 2019 and then certainly by 2020. Because with a phone, you're always interrupted. It's always more interesting than the person standing next to you. And my students complain, like you sit with somebody at lunch in the cafeteria and they're on their phone half the time.

And so it just fragments, it disrupts. There's a great line in the book from Sherry Turkle at MIT. She says, with our phones, we are forever elsewhere. And so this is devastating to socialism. development. Yeah.

And so it just fragments, it disrupts. There's a great line in the book from Sherry Turkle at MIT. She says, with our phones, we are forever elsewhere. And so this is devastating to socialism. development. Yeah.

And so it just fragments, it disrupts. There's a great line in the book from Sherry Turkle at MIT. She says, with our phones, we are forever elsewhere. And so this is devastating to socialism. development. Yeah.

We're damaging our relationships. We're not damaging our brains.

We're damaging our relationships. We're not damaging our brains.

We're damaging our relationships. We're not damaging our brains.

But that leads right into the second foundational harm, which is attention fragmentation. And this is the one that I'm beginning to think is possibly the most serious. The book focused on on mental illness because we have good data about that. We don't have good data on attention fragmentation.

But that leads right into the second foundational harm, which is attention fragmentation. And this is the one that I'm beginning to think is possibly the most serious. The book focused on on mental illness because we have good data about that. We don't have good data on attention fragmentation.

But that leads right into the second foundational harm, which is attention fragmentation. And this is the one that I'm beginning to think is possibly the most serious. The book focused on on mental illness because we have good data about that. We don't have good data on attention fragmentation.

But in talking with my students, and these are students who got into a top university at New York University, some of them say they can't watch a movie. And some of them say, or they have friends who can't watch a movie unless they're also on a second screen because they can't focus on anything for that long. They can't read a book.

But in talking with my students, and these are students who got into a top university at New York University, some of them say they can't watch a movie. And some of them say, or they have friends who can't watch a movie unless they're also on a second screen because they can't focus on anything for that long. They can't read a book.

But in talking with my students, and these are students who got into a top university at New York University, some of them say they can't watch a movie. And some of them say, or they have friends who can't watch a movie unless they're also on a second screen because they can't focus on anything for that long. They can't read a book.

One of my students said, I take out a book, I read a sentence, I get bored, I go to TikTok. What is the cost to humanity if half of our kids can't read a book?