Technology is rewiring our brains and relationships. Dr. Alok Kanojia explains how modern conveniences make us less resilient and what we can do about it! What We Discuss with Dr. Alok Kanojia: Technology and apps have become like an invasive species — our brains haven't evolved to handle them properly, leading to increased anxiety, depression, and difficulty forming relationships. Cultural conditioning that only validates male anger while dismissing other emotions results in psychological difficulties and destructive behaviors. The proliferation of convenience apps and services is diminishing our natural resilience and problem-solving abilities. Many young people struggle with purpose because external pressures and technology have drowned out their internal signals and emotional awareness. The good news is these issues can be addressed through intentional work on social skills, emotional awareness, and reducing technology dependence. Studies show even small interventions like watching educational content can improve mental health outcomes by ~10%, and more structured programs can show significant improvement in just three or four months. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1080 If you love listening to this show as much as we love making it, would you please peruse and reply to our Membership Survey here? And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Chapter 2: How does technology affect our resilience?
So what's starting to happen is we are getting this diet virtual lifestyle that fulfills us in some ways but doesn't go the whole way. And then the problem is since we're getting this diet soda, it disincentivizes us to drink the real thing.
And since we're getting enough of our needs met, since I can get groceries delivered, since I have friends online, since I can entertain myself at home, since I can work from home, now I have no reason to leave. And then we're creating these problems like touch starvation. Like it's a crazy term, right? For the history of humanity. Huh. That's a thing, huh? Oh, absolutely. Touch starvation, right?
So this is an end stage lack of human connection that can be incredibly profound and damaging.
I feel like I've heard about this in the context of Romanian communist orphanages where the nurses just never had the time to even change the kids because there were so many. Yeah. And it was like run by three nuns had like 60,000 orphans, you know, to take care of. And there's all these like they don't have any money.
So it's just like the kids are like soiled for the whole day and that they're not picked up, cuddled, nothing. And they ended up with much higher levels of mental illness and damage than other kids.
Yeah, the Romanian orphanages, I mean, that's quite severe and not just mental illness. I mean, a lot of these kids were basically like non-functional. So the neglect was so severe that they were not able to do things like form friendships. Like we're talking really, really severe levels of neglect very early. Thankfully, with tech stuff, I don't think we're seeing quite that level.
I would hope not. Right. So I think most people still have parents of some kind. Most people still go to school in some way and form relationships. But we are seeing things escalate very rapidly.
What I what I find interesting about this is, well, it's super insightful, but also there's this current. trend of everything is just habit change right so you know guys like James Clear friend of mine love that guy really good content and topics and game changers for a lot of people however I think for a lot of this stuff habit change is kind of a red herring because
Me doing it, let's say I'm playing video games for 18 hours a day. I live in my parents' basement. I have gone, I dropped out of school. I went nowhere in my career. I'm not moving forward. It's not like, oh, I have bad habits that I need to break. Like this is beyond that. This is not just like I need to quit video games. There's other things going on here.
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Chapter 3: What is the role of social media in mental health?
And then the person who's unfaithful starts crying. And in that scenario, is it OK to be angry and OK to cry? So this is where there's like when we really when the rubber hits the road on a lot of these like emotional situations, men really struggle. Women struggle, too. I'm not saying that they struggle more than women or less than. I don't think those comparative statements are useful.
The challenges that women face are different because for a lot of women, the reason that they're afraid of angry men and they view angry men as aggressors is because their experience of men is angry aggression. That anger correlates with aggression. That anger correlates with abuse. I think something like one out of three women is like sexually assaulted. Jeez. So the numbers are staggering.
That is horrifying. Yeah. A lot of dudes just don't understand this because we're not sexually assaulted quite as frequently. But there's a whole other problem of when we are sexually assaulted, it's OK to sexually assault a dude. Right. Right. There's all kinds of challenges.
And so what happens with men is as we're not allowed to feel these emotions, this is what's really important to understand. Just because you don't feel an emotion doesn't mean that the emotion isn't existing. and isn't acting. You're just numb to it. There's a big difference between having the lights off and having your house flooded and the lights on and having your house flooded.
House is flooded either way. Yeah. It's just whether you see it or not. So then what happens is we have a lot of emotional suppression and then these emotions then do things like impact our motivation. This is why it's hard for me to stop eating Cheetos and leave the house, because I have so much subsurface emotion that is keeping me here.
And if you talk to these people and you ask them, why don't you leave the house? They will say, what's the point? I tried leaving the house. It didn't work. Talk to someone today who applied for 300 jobs and got like one interview. Oh, God, that's super demoralizing. People who will like be on Tinder for two years and get like four matches and they'll go through thousands of people a year.
If you kind of look at that, someone will say, OK, this is logical. This is why I don't leave the house. But if you really pay attention to that, there's emotion underneath that's driving that logic. They feel hopeless. And this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy because every once in a while, if I must drop the courage to leave the house, but I'm not optimistic.
If I'm not optimistic about my ability to enter into a healthy relationship and that I can be a loving partner, it's going to sabotage my dating for sure. And at the root of this is all this subsurface emotion that is sabotaging people's lives and they don't even realize it.
You must see some pretty heartbreaking things as a therapist. Applying to 300 jobs and getting one interview is bad, but I can imagine that's just like the tip of the iceberg. Do you talk with a lot of incel type guys or like the toxically masculine guys who front all the time? Yeah, absolutely.
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Chapter 4: How can we find purpose in a tech-driven world?
Does that always start with trauma? Always is a tricky term when it comes to science, but I'd say most of the time, yes. It's not just trauma. So yeah, but I think it's fair to say. So I would say that 80 to 90% of people who are on the red pill incel spectrum that I've worked with, and I love working with these people, by the way, it's like incredibly gratifying work. And I think
One of the biggest mistakes that we make in society is that we like, depending on what your demographic is, if you are a criminal in some way, sometimes society will judge you and will punish you for it. Sometimes we'll say like, oh, this person needs help. Right.
So when someone like steals a lot, we thankfully a large portion of society has realized that this person needs help more than punishment. The interesting thing is that the incels are so good at being assholes that no one wants to help them. Yeah. But what they need more than anything else is help. They are this way because they've been rejected time and time and time again.
They're absolutely responsible because there are lots of decisions that they've made, but the world hasn't been very kind to them. And it usually does start with trauma. So it starts with something like, you know, getting made fun of, being attracted to a girl, having a bad breakup, having someone make fun of you.
And then once that seed of trauma starts, then there's a real problem because there's this vicious cycle where they amplify all kinds of like benign or neutral things to feel really negative. But anyway, there's weird kinds of cognitive biases. But I'd say, yeah, like a lot of times it starts with trauma.
And then what happens is just like the physical body, when I get traumatized by something, I form a callus. I don't want to be hurt that way again. So then what happens is they start to do all this dehumanizing of other people. They start to restrict themselves from emotionally connecting with other people. And then it becomes a vicious cycle.
Man, porn addiction is really just insidious and pervasive. I recommend switching to consumerism. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. Those are the ones who make this show possible.
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I am more than happy to surface that code for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. All right, now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Alok Kanoja. The incel thing for a while was sort of an obsession of mine, right?
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