Links to Consider, 3/1
Jonathan Haidt on the intrinsic harm of phones; Dancing away depression; Larry Summers, Yascha Mounk, and higher ed; recent sessions with paid subscribers
Let me be clear: there is no way to make social media safe for children by just making the content less toxic. It’s the phone-based childhood that is harming them, regardless of what they watch. Kids need to be freed from the grip of smartphones and social media, especially through early puberty. This is why two of the four norms I propose for solving our collective action problems are about delaying children’s complete immersion in the virtual world. Here are those four norms:
1) No Smartphone Before High School (give only flip phones in middle school)
2) No Social Media Before 16
3) Phone Free Schools (all phones go into phone lockers or Yondr pouches)
4) More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world, at an earlier age
A new, large-scale analysis of different treatments for depression found that by far the best was simply dancing.
My wife and I dance in the evening Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. We also walk almost every day, which is another activity that outperforms every form of therapy. But the rest of the time I spend reading stuff online, which I am sure more than counterbalances the benefits of exercise.
Interviewed by Yascha Mounk, Larry Summers says,
I think one would find for any Ivy League school that the federal government was ten times as large a donor, at least, as any other donor. And I think it's fair to say that the universities have thumbed their nose at what is by far their largest donor.
I would say that with their lobbying and gifts to congresscritters, the universities have successfully bought off the largest donor.
Jerry Muller and I discuss Jews and Communism. As we review the history, Jews were mostly non-Communist or anti-Communist. But the Jews who were Communists achieved some prominence in the movement. I was rather “off” during the discussion (I took my temperature afterward, and it was close to 100), and I only remembered to record the second half.
And here is the discussion a few weeks ago with Moshe Koppel. We talk about the contrast between the silly young left in America and the more sober, focused young people in Israel.
Substacks referenced above:
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“Kids need to be freed from the grip of…” TV, Elvis Presley, Rock n’ Roll, the Beetles, etc. We all need to be freed from prodnoses who have solutions to all ills, who want to control our lives and tell us what we should be doing.
I look forward to reading Haidt’s latest. I increasingly think those who focus on the toxicity of social media are missing the forest for the trees. It’s the phone! There’s an endless stream of addictive, frustrating, stimulating, happy, sad, etc content for both *kids* and *adults*. And there’s no friction to obtaining that addicting content. It feels us leaving ungrounded - “what did I just do or learn with my time?”
My intuition is adding a tiny bit of friction could solve most of this problem. Encourage kids and adults to use a family computer for internet use. It introduces just the right amount of friction and oversight of one another in the home.