Jonathan Haidt
speaker
5,062 appearances
20 recordings
18 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard 26 Jun
Jonathan Haidt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Whatever it was, my question to you is, does that memory glow?
Do you look back on that as something special and magical, that time in your life?
The great biologist E.O.
Wilson says that humans aren't just social, like dogs and chimpanzees.
We are ultra-social, like bees and ants.
We have a massive division of labor, and we love to do things that put us in a mindset of one for all, all for one.
Yet our hives aren't made out of wax.
They're made out of shared culture and shared experiences.
My talk today isn't really about bees and ants.
It's actually about technology and childhood.
But let's see what we can see about technology and childhood if we start with this premise that human beings are ultra-social creatures with deep needs for community and communion.
As a social psychologist who studies the effects of digital tech on young people, what I see from this perspective is very concerning.
I think it justifies a general sense of wariness or skepticism about the technologies that are pushing their way into childhood today.
So let's start with social media.
In the early 2010s, teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones, and the phone-based childhood began.
Their social lives moved on to social media.
At first, we thought this would be fine, maybe even better.
But quantity pushes out quality, and they started spending a lot less time with each other in person.
And that's a problem for our ultra-social species, because a lot of our evolved bonding mechanisms involve our bodies.
So we connect with people, we bond with people when we eat with them, when we share food with them, when we share laughter, when we move together in synchrony, even if it's just walking next to each other.
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