Jonathan Haidt

So we all as humans have a primal urge to scroll.

When you feel a sense of stress, as many of us do in this moment in life, it is your sense, you know, your amygdala.

And so it's your sense of self-preservation.

It's survival and self-preservation.

That is what your amygdala does.

So if you want me to show you here.

So here, deep here, it's a small almond-shaped structure, and that is your amygdala.

And your amygdala, its main purpose is survival and self-preservation.

It houses your stress response, your fight or flight response.

And it is truly what is activated when you are engaging in content, when you feel a sense of stress.

And so you have this primal urge to scroll.

And so evolutionarily, when we all were cave people living together, we would sleep at night and there would be a night watchman scanning for danger.

And now we have become our own night watchman.

And so we scan for danger all day, all night long.

How do we do that?

We scroll.

And then the amygdala is triggered.

And then you scroll some more, and you scroll some more, and you scroll some more.

And so over time, what you're doing is that you're making that amygdala in a state of chronic, it's continually being triggered.

What happens to the amygdala?