The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 303. iGen： Narcissism and Neuroticism

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:20.100 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.420 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.780 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.460 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. I'm pleased today to be talking with a fellow research psychologist.

00:01:14.140 Dr. Jean M. Twenge is the author of the recent iGen,

00:01:18.500 Why Today's Super Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy,

00:01:24.060 and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.

00:01:27.140 She is professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of more than 180 scientific publications and books.

00:01:35.060 Her other published books include

00:01:37.020 Generation Me, Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled, and More Miserable Than Ever Before.

00:01:46.340 The Narcissism Epidemic, Living in the Age of Entitlement, co-authored with W. Keith Campbell.

00:01:52.640 The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant, Personality Psychology, Understanding Yourself and Others, co-authored with W. Keith Campbell.

00:02:03.320 And Social Psychology, co-authored with David G. Myers.

00:02:08.460 Dr. Twenge frequently gives talks and seminars on teaching and working with today's young generation based on a data set of 11 million young people.

00:02:18.340 Her audiences have included college faculty and staff, high school teachers, military personnel, camp directors, and corporate executives.

00:02:26.720 Her research has been covered by Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and The Washington Post.

00:02:35.320 And she has been featured on today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Fox & Friends, NBC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, and National Public Radio.

00:02:46.860 Dr. Twenge holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

00:02:53.300 She lives in San Diego with her husband and three daughters.

00:02:56.580 I'm very much looking forward to talking to Dr. Twenge today, particularly about narcissism and online behavior among young people.

00:03:05.820 You introduced the book, Who is I, Jen, and How Do We Know?

00:03:08.860 And then talk about chapter one, In No Hurry, Growing Up Slowly.

00:03:12.380 That's the prolongation of childhood.

00:03:14.340 And so tell us about that and also about what you make of it.

00:03:19.040 Yeah, so childhood really does last longer now.

00:03:23.640 Kids are not as independent, and when they get to be teenagers, they're just less likely to do all of these things that adults do and children don't do.

00:03:35.580 And it's part of a bigger cultural story.

00:03:38.500 It's part of what evolutionary psychologists call a slow-life strategy.

00:03:42.540 So that means at times and places when people live longer, when health care is better, and when education takes longer to finish,

00:03:51.680 parents tend to make the choice to have fewer children and nurture them more carefully.

00:03:56.460 So that's a pretty good description of the way that we raise kids now.

00:04:00.000 So you get that kids don't walk to school by themselves as much.

00:04:04.280 And then when they're teens, they are more reluctant to get their driver's license or to go out or to date or have a paid job.

00:04:13.600 And then by young adulthood, it takes longer for people to settle into a career and get married and have children.

00:04:20.880 And then even older adults affects them, too, that 50 is the new 40, and people are healthy for longer.

00:04:28.440 So the entire trajectory of life has really slowed down.

00:04:33.500 And for iGen or Generation Z, where that really comes out is that their teen years are very different from their Gen X parents who remember, you know, going out, driving around in cars, getting in trouble, drinking alcohol, all of those things.

00:04:49.160 And their kids don't do that as much.

00:04:51.420 Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.

00:04:58.840 Most of the time, you'll probably be fine.

00:05:00.820 But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?

00:05:06.520 In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.

00:05:10.300 It's a fundamental right.

00:05:11.480 Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.

00:05:20.840 And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.

00:05:23.840 With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.

00:05:31.600 Now, you might think, what's the big deal?

00:05:33.660 Who'd want my data anyway?

00:05:35.200 Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.

00:05:39.620 That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.

00:05:43.860 Enter ExpressVPN.

00:05:45.620 It's like a digital fortress, creating an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet.

00:05:49.900 Their encryption is so robust that it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to crack it.

00:05:55.980 But don't let its power fool you.

00:05:57.780 ExpressVPN is incredibly user-friendly.

00:06:00.140 With just one click, you're protected across all your devices.

00:06:03.160 Phones, laptops, tablets, you name it.

00:06:05.340 That's why I use ExpressVPN whenever I'm traveling or working from a coffee shop.

00:06:09.480 It gives me peace of mind knowing that my research, communications, and personal data are shielded from prying eyes.

00:06:15.200 Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash jordan.

00:06:20.200 That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash jordan, and you can get an extra three months free.

00:06:26.580 Expressvpn.com slash jordan.

00:06:28.460 So do you see this as a prolongation of childhood in a positive way because people have longer to live?

00:06:39.840 Or because the cynic in me, I suppose the Freudian too, thinks of this as a consequence of overprotective parenting

00:06:47.400 and the inappropriate extension of childhood into adolescence.

00:06:51.340 And I'm wondering too, to what degree, you talked about improvements in healthcare and transformations in technology, longer lifespan.

00:07:02.340 To what degree is this also a consequence of the fact that people are older when they have children,

00:07:08.820 that they have fewer children, and that they're wealthier,

00:07:11.560 which all of that would make them in some sense more conservative,

00:07:14.420 but also in some strange sense more careful with their children and maybe even more inappropriately careful.

00:07:20.120 And especially the age of parents that's increased over the years,

00:07:25.520 and the fact that there are fewer siblings,

00:07:27.560 which also seems to me to tie into your work on narcissism,

00:07:30.280 because I think siblings tend to knock the narcissism out of each other.

00:07:34.920 And so when you don't have any, well, you definitely are a specialist,

00:07:39.800 especially if your parents have been waiting for you for a long time.

00:07:43.580 Yeah, so it's definitely a function of people waiting longer to have kids.

00:07:48.540 And as you said, they have more resources, and they have fewer children.

00:07:53.780 Because when you think about this strategy, that's when it happens.

00:07:57.360 It happens when there's more security and when everything tends to slow down.

00:08:02.320 And when there's fewer kids, just from an evolutionary perspective,

00:08:05.560 then parents are going to protect them more.

00:08:06.940 Also, you just can't keep track of them all when there's a lot of them.

00:08:10.180 So my mother comes from a family like that.

00:08:13.580 There were eight children in her family on a dairy farm in Minnesota.

00:08:17.020 And they couldn't possibly have run their dairy farm

00:08:20.360 and kept track of every single one of the kids,

00:08:22.180 so they learned how to be independent very early on.

00:08:24.600 But that was in the 1940s and 50s, and that was the standard at the time.

00:08:28.460 Even families with fewer kids, it was normal for the children to go and play,

00:08:34.680 and it was be home at dinner or come home when the streetlights come on

00:08:37.880 if you grew up in a more urban setting.

00:08:39.940 But that was the idea of, you know, you kind of let kids do what they wanted to.

00:08:46.300 And that's different now.

00:08:47.940 And it's not just from the parents.

00:08:50.240 So I think sometimes if you just look at, oh, the parents are overprotective,

00:08:53.260 you miss some of the bigger cultural story that, I mean,

00:08:55.960 this has been codified into law in a lot of places.

00:08:58.300 In the state of Illinois, you're not allowed to leave a child alone

00:09:01.420 until they're 14 years old, which to a Gen Xer is ridiculous.

00:09:06.080 Right.

00:09:06.560 So do you see this, how do you evaluate this as a psychologist?

00:09:10.640 Do you just see this as a part of the normal variation in parenting behavior

00:09:15.480 as a consequence of technological transformation?

00:09:18.220 Or do you see something that's permanently affecting people's capability of maturing?

00:09:26.120 Mm-hmm.

00:09:26.620 You know, I think it's some of both.

00:09:28.080 It is part of technology, certainly, that all of these causes are rooted in technology,

00:09:38.280 better health care, education taking longer for a more complex society,

00:09:43.240 and more knowledge that pushes toward that slow-life strategy.

00:09:48.180 So it's an adaptation.

00:09:49.740 It's an adaptation to a particular place and time.

00:09:52.780 So there's trade-offs.

00:09:53.820 Neither a slow-life strategy or a fast-life strategy is all good or all bad.

00:09:58.900 There are some clear advantages.

00:10:00.620 The kids are not growing up as fast.

00:10:02.160 Most parents are thrilled that not as many teens are having sex or drinking alcohol.

00:10:07.040 But there is the downside.

00:10:09.220 The downside is that we have a generation growing to adulthood

00:10:12.600 who doesn't have as much experience with independence.

00:10:15.880 And it's difficult, often, for them to make decisions on their own.

00:10:20.360 So when I travel around to universities, this is what I hear very consistently.

00:10:24.700 I have more and more students who can't make even simple decisions without texting their parents.

00:10:29.920 And to take the perspective of this young generation, too, which I think is important, it makes sense.

00:10:35.500 It's, you know, this is not necessarily how they asked to be raised.

00:10:38.840 This is the culture that they grew up in.

00:10:40.880 And they arrive at university without those experiences of making those decisions.

00:10:45.700 And it's really, really hard for them to do that and to make that adjustment.

00:10:50.380 So that's the big downside.

00:10:51.840 So that's where I think, you know, as you said, you can be more of a cynic or a critic and say, you know,

00:10:57.900 this is definitely not all good.

00:11:00.540 I do hesitate to use the word maturity, though, because is it more mature or less mature to drink alcohol when you're 17?

00:11:06.100 It's really neither one.

00:11:07.340 So I think it's better to focus on that.

00:11:10.960 It's slower development.

00:11:12.580 Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse, but slower.

00:11:16.400 Yeah, well, there were studies of alcohol use I remember conducted when I was studying alcohol several decades ago,

00:11:24.140 looking at, let's say, life outcomes among teenagers as a consequence of their proclivity to break rules.

00:11:31.000 And the findings basically were that, and this is probably what you'd expect,

00:11:36.560 is that the kids who broke no rules were much more likely to be dependent, depressed, and anxious.

00:11:41.580 And the kids that broke too many rules were much more likely to be antisocial, right, and criminal.

00:11:47.360 And so there's a sweet spot in the middle, like there is so often,

00:11:52.340 where a certain amount of experimentation is exactly what you'd hope for.

00:11:56.340 And the question would be if the proclivity of young people to drink less alcohol,

00:12:01.860 and I mean alcohol is pretty damn toxic, it's a bad drug, all things considered,

00:12:05.860 is a net good because they're delaying their experimentation.

00:12:10.100 That's probably neurologically healthy, at least with regards to the effects of alcohol.

00:12:14.460 But if it means that they're doing less experimentation in general,

00:12:18.800 then the question is what the long-term consequences are.

00:12:22.940 I mean, if it's only a delayed maturation, then in some sense it doesn't make that much difference.

00:12:28.440 But if it's a permanent abdication of maturation, then that's a completely different issue.

00:12:33.800 And you also mentioned cell phones and texting parents.

00:12:37.420 I mean, one of the ways that people learned to make decisions before there were cell phones

00:12:42.120 is that they didn't really have a choice.

00:12:44.320 Because if you were away from your parents in a car, you were actually away,

00:12:49.920 unless you could get to a pay phone, let's say.

00:12:51.840 But even then, that wasn't necessarily all that likely, and you'd have to go search one out.

00:12:56.700 And so you were on your own.

00:12:58.700 It wasn't just that you were acting like it.

00:13:00.660 And now, because you're connected all the time with this electronic tether,

00:13:04.620 especially, I would say, if your parents are somewhat anxious,

00:13:07.420 then, well, under what circumstances should you make your own decisions?

00:13:12.120 And that was never a choice before.

00:13:14.820 And those sorts of things become problematic when they become a choice.

00:13:18.720 Yeah, no, I agree.

00:13:19.780 I mean, that's the other piece that technology plays in it is, yeah, you know, even when you're

00:13:25.000 at university, you can constantly contact your parents in a way that didn't used to be possible.

00:13:32.240 And the other part of it, too, and this gets to some of the other trends in the book,

00:13:38.240 is that socializing for teens has moved online.

00:13:44.700 And so you think about a lot of those things on that list that adults do and children don't,

00:13:50.120 where a lot of them involve getting out of the house and hanging out with friends and getting in a car,

00:13:55.460 usually to go be with other people.

00:13:57.180 And that doesn't happen as much now because the party is on Snapchat or on Instagram.

00:14:04.740 So that's the other way that technology is playing a role is there's so much more interaction online and less face-to-face.

00:14:13.180 Starting a business can be tough, but thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront is easier than ever.

00:14:20.860 Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business,

00:14:25.120 from the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage.

00:14:30.060 Shopify is here to help you grow.

00:14:32.260 Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise,

00:14:35.400 and we love how easy it is to add more items, ship products and track conversions.

00:14:39.480 With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful tools,

00:14:45.520 alongside an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand printing, accounting and chatbots.

00:14:51.720 Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout,

00:14:56.040 up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms.

00:15:00.100 No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control

00:15:03.940 and take your business to the next level.

00:15:05.860 Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase.

00:15:12.380 Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in.

00:15:17.700 That's shopify.com slash jbp.

00:15:23.320 And so what do you think that, let me run some hypotheses about online behavior by you,

00:15:29.640 and let me, and you tell me what you think.

00:15:31.380 I've read tens of thousands of comments on YouTube and on Twitter and so forth,

00:15:37.600 and tried to, many of which I find almost unbearably infuriating,

00:15:43.480 which is a very interesting reaction.

00:15:45.540 I don't think it's unique to me.

00:15:47.480 And the reaction I have often is something like,

00:15:51.360 when an anonymous troll posts something particularly caustic,

00:15:55.220 caustic, I think, if you dared say anything like that to me, to my face, even once,

00:16:01.920 there would be so much trouble surrounding you immediately that you can hardly imagine it.

00:16:06.000 But online, you know, there is this social distancing phenomenon that's well known to

00:16:11.580 social psychologists and personality psychologists,

00:16:13.780 that if you're, even if you're in your car and thereby sheltered, let's say,

00:16:20.160 from immediate interpersonal feedback, you're much more likely to act in a self-centered

00:16:25.580 and self-aggrandizing manner because you miss that immediate feedback.

00:16:29.840 And there's absolutely no consequence whatsoever to behaving in a narcissistic

00:16:36.300 and self-centered manner online, as far as I can tell.

00:16:39.960 And then that tends to promote, especially for people who are rather disinhibited to begin with,

00:16:46.400 that promotes a kind of self-aggrandizing narcissism that would be absolutely unthinkable in real life.

00:16:53.840 And then you wonder, well, if that's happening all the time online,

00:16:57.300 how much of that becomes a habitual mode of thought?

00:17:00.380 And what do you think of that?

00:17:02.520 Well, you know, it's classic social psychology, right?

00:17:05.320 That when people are anonymous, they're much more likely to be aggressive, you know, physically, verbally.

00:17:13.300 And so, absolutely, that's one of the primary issues or challenges with online interaction is we're not face-to-face.

00:17:21.840 We can't see the look on the other person's face when we say something caustic or, you know, highly critical or insulting.

00:17:29.960 So, because we did, if you have any modicum of social skills, you wouldn't do that.

00:17:36.200 So, it's not a real-time back and forth, and you're not seeing those facial expressions.

00:17:41.760 And so, you know, all of that is lost.

00:17:43.220 And so, it becomes contentious much more quickly.

00:17:45.440 It becomes negative much more quickly.

00:17:47.740 Aggressive.

00:17:48.580 You know, all of that goes on.

00:17:50.720 It's just kind of the way that the interaction goes.

00:17:54.000 And is that narcissism per se?

00:17:57.520 I'm not sure I would label it that way exactly.

00:18:01.260 It's more that it's anonymous, and thus, it frees people to just go with their base impulses, especially around aggression.

00:18:09.820 Well, especially, you'd think it would free people who are prone to have those proclivities to do that as well.

00:18:17.040 And I also think that that's more true of people who harbor a fair bit of resentment and who are relatively cowardly.

00:18:24.320 Because if they're resentful, well, then they're going to be looking for the opportunity to use derision in particular.

00:18:31.360 Like, I've noticed on YouTube, the markers for pathological behavior seem to me to be quite clear.

00:18:36.880 The first marker is an anonymous account.

00:18:39.980 And I think those are appalling.

00:18:41.620 The social media companies should have know-your-customer laws like banks do, and they should put the damn anonymous trolls in their own pit of hell.

00:18:49.180 You know, and shouldn't be mixed in with the real people.

00:18:52.160 And then, often, the worst anonymous accounts have a demonic-sounding name.

00:18:58.160 And so, there's something about the name that is derisive or often literally demonic.

00:19:04.720 They pick some moniker that's appalling in the most fundamental metaphoric way.

00:19:11.060 And then, they tend to use derisive nicknames and acronyms like Laugh Out Loud or LMFAO or WTF.

00:19:21.240 There's this casual use of derision and contempt.

00:19:24.240 You know, there's a great study done, I don't remember who did it, unfortunately, looking at predictors of marital breakup as a consequence of interpersonal interaction between the pairs of a couple.

00:19:36.980 And the best predictor of imminent marital breakup was eye-rolling.

00:19:41.220 So, the manifestation of contempt.

00:19:43.680 What's that?

00:19:45.140 John Gottman.

00:19:46.120 Yeah, that's right.

00:19:46.840 Gottman, Gottman.

00:19:47.760 Yeah, yeah.

00:19:48.280 And so, it's that use of contempt in particular, you know.

00:19:52.200 And I also, I read Hitler's table talk.

00:19:55.980 And that's a collection of his spontaneous speeches at mealtimes aggregated by his secretarial staff over about four years.

00:20:04.800 And I was looking at descriptive term usage, trying to understand his thought processes.

00:20:10.580 And it's pretty damn obvious that Hitler wasn't afraid of the Jews or the other people that he conducted genocide against.

00:20:18.380 His fundamental emotional attitude towards such people was derisive contempt and disgust.

00:20:26.800 There's something particularly toxic about disgust and contempt.

00:20:30.260 And there's something about online commentary in particular that really brings that forward.

00:20:35.160 And then, you have the other problem, I would say, too, which is that, in some sense, the online world, and this is the world that the IGN kids are immersed in, it's a faux-celebrity world, right?

00:20:50.100 Because everyone online, in some sense, is a celebrity of different proportions.

00:20:56.300 They have their followers.

00:20:57.500 They have their fans, let's say.

00:20:59.100 And then, the whole enterprise seems to facilitate image management.

00:21:05.500 I know on, I think it's TikTok, there are real-time facial feature adjustment filters so that you can make, girls use them more than boys for obvious reasons.

00:21:18.060 You can make your lips plumper and redder.

00:21:20.340 You can make your eyes bigger.

00:21:21.880 You can anim yourself.

00:21:24.100 You can cutify yourself, to coin a terrible term.

00:21:28.500 And you can do that in real time.

00:21:29.960 And all of the, or much of the reinforcement pressure seems to be directed towards attention-seeking.

00:21:38.060 And then, that combined with the fact that there are almost no consequences for misbehavior, seems to produce a pretty, first of all, a toxic social environment.

00:21:48.220 But also one that doesn't follow the same rules as actual face-to-face contact, which I think is the bigger danger.

00:21:54.860 Yeah, and, you know, I think the online world has followed an interesting trajectory when it comes to attention-seeking and narcissism and so on.

00:22:07.120 So, the one constant, you're right, the trolls.

00:22:10.800 The ones who are the worst offenders, yeah.

00:22:14.840 Sociopaths, narcissists, clearly.

00:22:16.840 They've shown that in research.

00:22:18.660 But for everybody else, I think early on, social media was something that pulled for that attention-seeking.

00:22:26.560 And you got that narcissism there of, you know, look at me, I'm on MySpace, and I have this many followers, and here's all of my pictures and so on.

00:22:35.360 But then, when social media became more mandatory, which is really what it became for iGen around the early 2000s, 2010s, I mean, when, you know, almost 80%, 85% or so of high school students are doing that every single day on social media.

00:22:54.080 Then, and everybody's participating, well, not everybody can get attention.

00:22:57.800 So, then it becomes this competition.

00:23:01.240 So, it, I think at that point, became less about narcissism for most people and more about not measuring up.

00:23:09.820 And that's, right?

00:23:11.360 And that's where, so that's when you start to get, I have to use these enhancement filters because I don't look as good as everybody else online.

00:23:18.780 And I must be, you know, unattractive because I don't have as many likes and followers as I want to have.

00:23:25.020 And then, all of the other things of I'm not interacting with someone face-to-face, I'm not getting the same emotional connection, and that people are automatically more negative and hostile.

00:23:36.460 I mean, there's just, there's so many things going on in that online interaction, once, especially once it became mandatory, that pulled, not even really for narcissism, but more for anxiety and depression.

00:23:48.720 Right, right. So, maybe that's part of the reason that you've been picking up these and indicating these increases in mental health symptoms among young people.

00:23:57.980 Well, the other thing I'm wondering about, too, I've thought about this to a great degree, is that I studied antisocial behavior in boys and girls.

00:24:07.300 And boys, they're pretty much straightforward juvenile delinquents when they're antisocial.

00:24:11.220 They kick and fight and steal and break rules, and it's a lot of externalizing behavior, right, a lot of acting out.

00:24:19.940 But girls who are antisocial, they use reputation destruction and innuendo and gossip and backbiting, and they can be unbelievably good at it.

00:24:27.920 And everyone knows that. I mean, Mean Girls, that famous movie was about precisely that.

00:24:32.640 And the thing about social media that's, one of the things about it that's quite interesting and disturbing is that female-type antisocial behavior scales brilliantly online.

00:24:44.200 Because it can be done behind the scenes, it can be done anonymously, it can be done with that derisive contempt, let's say.

00:24:51.320 And the consequences are vanishingly small.

00:24:54.320 And so I can imagine that teenage girls who are often subject to bullying by other girls are now subject to bullying in a way that's much more subtle and much more devious and much more continuous.

00:25:06.700 Because that's the other thing that happens to young people now is, can you imagine being a teenager where nothing you ever did would be forgotten?

00:25:15.140 Right. Right. And it's 24-7. It's always with you because that's the way they communicate with their friends.

00:25:21.320 That is the lifeline to the world. And so it used to be, maybe you got bullied at school, you could come home and get away from it.

00:25:29.340 And now there's no escape. And it is particularly toxic for girls.

00:25:34.160 I mean, think about Instagram. Instagram at base is a platform where primarily girls and young women post pictures of themselves and ask other people to comment.

00:25:42.800 Jesus. Brutal.

00:25:45.080 Right? It absolutely is brutal.

00:25:47.160 And popularity becomes a number, likes and followers, and cyberbullying, all the things that we're talking about.

00:25:54.140 Just, it is a toxic suit.

00:25:57.060 Well, I remember, you know, we did psychometric analysis and looked at the psychometric analysis of thought patterns that loaded on trait neuroticism.

00:26:06.920 And so, as you know well, but I'll explain to everyone else, trait neuroticism is something like your baseline level of the proclivity to experience negative emotion, like depression and anxiety.

00:26:18.520 And one of the things that's quite striking is that self-conscious thoughts load so heavily on neuroticism, they're almost indistinguishable from emotions.

00:26:29.060 And so, it looks like if you're self-conscious, if you're thinking about yourself, you are instantly miserable.

00:26:37.980 And then if you're a teenage, then it gets worse for teenage girls, I think, because we also know that teenage girls experience a spike in neuroticism that's a tenant on puberty.

00:26:48.820 And that their self-conscious concerns tend to be particularly body-focused.

00:26:56.460 And that's probably a consequence of the fact that females are evaluated more stringently as a consequence of their appearance, particularly when they're young.

00:27:05.720 I mean, men are evaluated on the basis of their performance, let's say, but women tend to be evaluated more on the basis of their appearance.

00:27:12.600 And so, you can see that's a perfect storm for young girls, because they hit a negative emotion peak at 13, now they're susceptible to bullying, they're extremely self-conscious about their bodies, and then the entire online world is a place to display for public, it's like the old nightmare that people have about public speaking is being naked on a stage.

00:27:35.080 That's really, in some real sense, what the social media world has done to teenage girls.

00:27:41.920 It's got to be damn near unbearable.

00:27:44.720 Yeah, and the consequences have been severe.

00:27:48.620 So, teen depression has doubled, and that was true even before the pandemic.

00:27:54.560 The rise started about 2011 or 2012, right as social media moved from optional to mandatory, and right when smartphones were owned by the majority of people.

00:28:05.940 Loneliness went up, loneliness went up, anxiety went up, and it's not just symptoms.

00:28:12.340 Self-harm behavior, so the CDC keeps track of this, emergency room visits for self-harm.

00:28:18.820 So, that's an objectively measured behavior, not something subject to any kind of self-report bias.

00:28:24.320 And self-harm among 10 to 14-year-old girls has quadrupled in the last 12 years.

00:28:32.520 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:34.040 Well, that's a logical extension of feelings of inadequacy and depression and anxiety, a non-specific marker.

00:28:41.020 Now, you mentioned earlier also, and I thought this was very interesting, a couple of things I wanted to touch on.

00:28:46.500 The first was that you indicated that there was some research on anonymous trolls and their personality characteristics.

00:28:53.600 And then you also said that the self-aggrandizing element of the web, of web presence, was spearheaded in some sense by the narcissists.

00:29:02.720 But then once it became mandatory, it was more of a catch-up game for people who were experiencing fairly high levels of neuroticism, something like that.

00:29:10.340 So, let's start with the research because I'm very interested in the trolls.

00:29:13.400 Because I think one of the things the trolls are doing online, by the use of derision and contempt, in the manner that they do spew it forward, especially on platforms like Twitter.

00:29:24.980 You see it also on YouTube and other platforms, is that they raise the ambient social temperature to a great degree.

00:29:33.120 It's like externalized pollution in the real world.

00:29:36.760 It's psychological pollution.

00:29:38.660 They say things that no one should possibly be allowed to get away with in the public forum.

00:29:43.560 They spew their venom forward, and it makes everything appear more polarized and caustic than it really is.

00:29:49.140 And so, who are these people, the anonymous trolls, as far as the research indicates?

00:29:53.760 Well, I mean, narcissism does have a good amount to do with it.

00:29:57.300 So, back when Facebook was the prominent platform for young adults, there were a number of studies on this showing that people who are high in narcissistic personality traits have more friends on Facebook.

00:30:11.340 And they comment there more, and they participate more.

00:30:14.360 So, what that means is your average interaction on social media is more likely to be with a narcissist, not in the majority, maybe, but it ups the odds compared to your average conversation face-to-face.

00:30:28.460 So, those are platforms where narcissists thrive.

00:30:32.780 And you're absolutely right that they're the ones who are willing to say those things.

00:30:36.500 And we know now, too, that the algorithms on social media tend to amplify things that are divisive, things that are angry, because they get more what they call engagement.

00:30:48.880 That's what people engage with more, and that's how the companies make more money.

00:30:53.640 So, those tend to be pushed to the top of people's social media feeds.

00:30:58.620 So, you are getting a relatively small population who's dominating this conversation and kind of, I don't know how else to put it, but ruining for the rest of us.

00:31:08.740 Well, you know, I've thought for a long time that a lot of the conditions that we diagnose as psychopathology aren't malfunctions, let's say, of evolutionarily adapted structures.

00:31:21.340 That was one definition that cropped up a fair while ago.

00:31:24.440 But more like positive feedback loops that have gone out of control.

00:31:29.120 So, you see this with agoraphobia, right?

00:31:33.680 People start to withdraw instead of approaching when they're anxious, and that makes their anxiety worse, so they're more likely to withdraw.

00:31:41.160 You see it with depression, because depressed people are less likely to interact socially, and then they start to withdraw, and that makes them more depressed.

00:31:48.280 They're less likely to go to work, and so forth.

00:31:50.020 You see it with alcohol, because people who develop alcohol tolerance start to drink to cure their hangover.

00:31:57.280 And so, there's a lot of pathological processes that are feedback loops that have gone out of control.

00:32:04.920 And if the narcissists are garnering excess attention online, and the algorithms are amplifying that, then we have the makings of something like a virtual social epidemic.

00:32:15.340 And it does look like that to me.

00:32:17.100 I'm trying to understand what's driving the polarization and divisiveness.

00:32:21.960 And I do think that—I think a lot of it's virtual in some real sense, because the online world and the real world have become so dissociated and so distinct that they don't even look like the same place anymore.

00:32:34.780 You see that with media.

00:32:35.800 But you also see it with the things that are so troublesome to people online that don't seem to make themselves manifest in the real world at all.

00:32:43.780 So, we've got this weird divorce that's a consequence of this layer of abstraction that's the online world, and it's producing its own associated pathologies.

00:32:52.480 That rise in self-destructive behavior, that's absolutely—that's cataclysmically awful.

00:32:57.240 Let me add another bit of pathology to this.

00:32:59.360 Tell me what you think of this.

00:33:00.360 So, you know, of course, that there's been an absolute explosion in childhood gender dysphoria, and it made sense to me that that occurred because we added confusion to the definition of male and female, let's say.

00:33:14.340 And when you confuse people, you confuse the most confused the most, and that often tends to be young girls around 13, and they're the ones that are prone to psychogenic epidemics, and they're the ones that are experiencing much higher rates than normal of so-called gender dysphoria.

00:33:32.300 Now, I'm curious about your thoughts on that in relationship to attention-seeking, because if we took that group of the more neurotic catch-up players on social media, they need a marker of uniqueness or status in order to attract attention to themselves.

00:33:51.160 And it seems to me that this emphasis on multidimensional sexual identity provides an easy avenue to the kind of uniqueness that might scale well on social media.

00:34:03.580 Does any of that make any sense to you?

00:34:06.440 Is that a reasonable hypothesis?

00:34:08.240 Well, it's really hard because these trends are so new, and we don't yet have, you know, really solid statistics.

00:34:14.480 It's actually something that I worked on for my new book, so I'll be able to talk about that a little bit more next year.

00:34:20.980 Because, like, that has to be the first step is we have to say, is this actually increasing?

00:34:24.740 Because it certainly seems that way, but we need that data to figure that out.

00:34:29.040 And then the why question is an even harder one to answer.

00:34:32.720 Because some, of course, have made the argument that, well, there's more acceptance now, and so that's why, you know, there are more people who are coming out as transgender.

00:34:41.380 But there is the whole question, which I think is a good, we have to explore it, at least, about what is the role of the online communities in this.

00:34:53.020 Because there are some folks who have said it's a positive thing, that the thing about online communities is if you're in a relatively unique group, you can find other people like you.

00:35:03.960 And then that can be beneficial.

00:35:05.480 But there are some who argue that that may not be as beneficial.

00:35:12.620 And it's just so early, I think we just don't really know.

00:35:17.600 It's probably beneficial if the group that you're pursuing is pursuing beneficial aims that are part of your character.

00:35:24.580 Like if you have a particular creative proclivity or a particular interest in a set of ideas and you can find a group that will support you in that, that's not much different than what happens to kids who are smart when they go off to university if universities are working properly.

00:35:40.440 But if you're anorexic and you find a community that's devoted to ensuring that you do think that you're fat and helping you figure out ways to restrict your food and normalizing that, then obviously that's not helpful at all.

00:35:52.540 Quite the contrary.

00:35:53.400 And so, and it is a peculiar fact that statistically unlikely proclivities can be normalized very rapidly online as a consequence of the generation of community.

00:36:05.460 Because as you know, we tend to regard ourselves in relationship to the peer group, the immediate peer group that we formulate around us.

00:36:15.580 And so, if you're one in 10,000 in your peculiarity, but you have 20 people around you who are the same, it's going to feel pretty damn normal pretty quick.

00:36:23.860 And if you're truly exceptional, that's a good thing.

00:36:26.300 But a lot of what constitutes truly exceptional is manifested on the pathological side.

00:36:33.580 And, well, and we don't know the consequence of community building on that front yet.

00:36:39.220 I think that's correct.

00:36:40.880 That, in general, what the internet allows people to do is to create those communities based on some of these unique identities.

00:36:50.780 And that can be used for good.

00:36:54.020 So, a gay kid in a small town who doesn't know anybody else like them can find a community.

00:36:59.520 But then, on the other hand, someone who wants to be anorexic and encourage other young girls and young women to be anorexic, they can also find each other.

00:37:10.060 And that has some pretty negative consequences.

00:37:12.820 Right.

00:37:13.160 Well, and there's also the facilitation of online predation as a consequence of the irresponsibility that anonymity allows, too.

00:37:21.000 So, if you are an isolated young person and you're searching around for an identity group, you're just quite nicely likely to run into somebody who's psychopathically predatious online as well.

00:37:31.900 And that happens in no small percentage of cases.

00:37:35.920 I've known a number of adolescents who got tangled up with someone pretty damn nasty online, much to their parents' chagrin.

00:37:43.700 And so, that's especially true on the sexual exploitation front.

00:37:47.380 Yes.

00:37:48.480 And that's primarily because social media is so unregulated.

00:37:52.680 So, there's no age verification.

00:37:54.620 For example, you could be 36 and say that you're 13.

00:37:57.940 You can be 9 and say that you're 16 or 13 to be able to get an account.

00:38:03.060 You're supposed to be 13 to get a social media account.

00:38:05.740 But it's not enforced.

00:38:07.100 So, there's very young children who are on it.

00:38:09.160 And then adults and children can communicate with each other.

00:38:13.240 And that has led, unfortunately, yeah, to a lot of sexual predation and other really unfortunate situations.

00:38:21.600 Yeah.

00:38:21.840 Well, you know, we can think about this from an evolutionary biology perspective, I think, for a moment or two.

00:38:26.500 That might be interesting.

00:38:27.360 So, I know that the rates of psychopathy appear to vary between about 1% and 5% cross-culturally.

00:38:36.200 And so, I talked to David Buss about various theories about that percentage.

00:38:43.580 And so, the first observation is it's actually not very effective to be a power-mad psychopath, right?

00:38:49.080 So, 95% to 97% of people aren't.

00:38:52.640 And the reason for that is it's really not a very effective strategy.

00:38:55.960 You even have to run away from yourself eventually if you're a psychopath.

00:38:59.180 And they tend to have itinerant lifestyles because people caught on to their narcissistic Machiavellianism sooner or later and then can identify them.

00:39:08.440 Now, it might be more useful, biologically speaking, to be a predatory psychopath than to be someone who's so depressed and isolated that they never go out of the house.

00:39:19.160 So, you could think about it as a strategy of a reproductive strategy that doesn't always culminate in failure.

00:39:26.260 And that's especially true because young women are less likely to be able to distinguish psychopathic predators from confident and competent males.

00:39:36.560 So, okay, so you open up a window for psychopathy.

00:39:39.820 And then the window's opened up, too, because most people are cooperative and productive and generous, at least in the main.

00:39:46.420 But what that means is that a small percentage of people can capitalize on that by mimicking it.

00:39:52.680 And the psychopaths mimic that by being confident and assertive and appearing competent, even though they're predators and parasitic in their fundamental orientation.

00:40:04.460 Now, those people, that 1% to 5%, present an unbelievable constant danger to the integrity of societies, right?

00:40:13.900 It doesn't take that many people to destabilize a complex society.

00:40:19.040 And certainly, 3% is more than enough.

00:40:22.380 And normally, the psychopaths are kept under some regulatory control because they get identified and isolated and punished.

00:40:31.880 But I don't think that happens online.

00:40:34.040 And so, it's, I don't know to what degree the, look, psychopaths don't learn from punishment very well at all.

00:40:43.520 And they don't learn from threat very well at all.

00:40:45.840 But online, all of that's been removed.

00:40:48.820 There's nothing but a field of opportunity for predatory psychopaths.

00:40:52.340 And so, I wonder to what degree virtualizing communication and opening up this hypothetically democratic front has actually magnified the degree to which our societies are susceptible to disruption by Machiavellian psychopaths.

00:41:06.700 That is absolutely possible.

00:41:08.980 Because, yeah, I mean, there's the trolls and all of those folks who, you know, get into those situations.

00:41:15.500 And they, too often, absolutely, get away with that.

00:41:20.200 You know, I think some people might argue that, well, they might get lots of negative comments.

00:41:25.300 And, you know, sometimes they do get punished or canceled.

00:41:29.620 But it's not usually the way it goes.

00:41:32.540 Because, yeah, they have a lot of tricks.

00:41:34.720 They can be charming.

00:41:36.440 They can fake their way through it.

00:41:38.000 And they do often get away with a lot, just partially because things are so unregulated.

00:41:43.140 It's the wild, wild west.

00:41:44.160 Well, they can also generate multiple identities.

00:41:46.960 So, even if one of their identities gets punished, well, first of all, they're not likely to be very affected by negative feedback to begin with, especially not of the psychological sort.

00:41:56.580 Because the typical psychopath doesn't give a damn what you think.

00:42:00.420 Like, they might react with some degree of surprise if you actually hit them.

00:42:06.180 But if you just said something that might disturb a person with normal conscience, let's say, the psychopath is going to brush that off.

00:42:16.320 And so...

00:42:16.980 True.

00:42:17.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:42:18.380 So, okay.

00:42:19.080 So, let's go through a little bit more about IGN.

00:42:22.160 You talked about insecure, the new mental health crisis, and also irreligious, losing my religion and spirituality.

00:42:31.580 So, let's talk about insecurity to begin with.

00:42:34.640 And so, we discussed that a little bit.

00:42:37.040 Are there other elements that are making...

00:42:39.300 So, kids can't...

00:42:41.300 Everything they do is remembered.

00:42:42.660 Everything they do is monitored.

00:42:44.000 They're tethered to their parents 100% of the time.

00:42:46.260 They're glued to a screen.

00:42:47.460 They're not engaging in face-to-face social contact the way they were.

00:42:51.480 They don't have their independence.

00:42:53.340 Are there other factors, as far as you can tell, that are rendering them more insecure?

00:42:58.920 Well, for one thing, they're not sleeping enough.

00:43:01.040 And the percentage of teens who don't get enough sleep started to rise, again, right at the time that social media became common and smartphones became common, right around 2012.

00:43:14.840 And right before the pandemic, reached all-time highs in two different surveys.

00:43:20.260 So, when you don't sleep enough, that's a major risk factor for developing depression and self-harm.

00:43:28.480 And it's not just the timing.

00:43:31.500 Not just that the timing lines up with technology.

00:43:35.240 It's also that kids are spending so much time online that it crowds out time for sleeping.

00:43:44.140 And looking at a phone before bed or having it in your bedroom is uniquely awful for getting a good night's sleep and for getting enough sleep.

00:43:53.560 You know, tons of sleep lab studies that that's the case.

00:43:56.920 And is that a light issue?

00:43:59.440 As well as an overuse issue?

00:44:00.980 Yeah, that's part of it.

00:44:02.160 Yeah, so there's a couple things going on.

00:44:04.100 So, you know, one is if you have that phone in your bedroom overnight, that part of your brain knows it's there.

00:44:10.680 And pretty much, when I was writing the book, pretty much every young person I talked to said that they had their phone within arm's reach when they were sleeping.

00:44:17.380 And almost all of them said, well, I have to have it in my room because that's my alarm clock.

00:44:22.880 And I would reply, then buy an alarm clock.

00:44:25.840 You can buy it on Amazon on your phone and then put it away and get a good night's sleep.

00:44:29.840 But before bed, there's two elements.

00:44:32.960 First, psychological stimulation.

00:44:35.380 Pretty much everything that we do on phones and tablets is stimulating.

00:44:39.640 You know, whether it's reading news or shopping or email or texting.

00:44:43.760 And then imagine being 12 years old and you're waiting for your crush to text you back.

00:44:48.020 You know, not relaxing thoughts, right?

00:44:50.360 And then the light issue, that the blue light from the device is especially when held close to the face.

00:44:54.920 It tricks our brains into thinking that it's still daytime and then we don't produce enough melatonin, the sleep hormone, to fall asleep quickly and get a good night's sleep.

00:45:04.360 So there's so many different factors in the way that technology is disrupting sleep.

00:45:08.600 And that may be a major mechanism for why we have such a high rate of depression and truly a mental health crisis among adolescents.

00:45:17.600 And do you have any idea what the relative strength of these contributors are?

00:45:22.480 We talked about the necessity to put forward a false and perfect face.

00:45:28.180 We talked about the possibility of being bullied online, that things can't be forgotten.

00:45:31.960 And now we add really a biological element to this, which is sleep disruption as a consequence of the potential for new information.

00:45:40.780 Excitement before bed in the form of exposure to all these pathological social tendencies we already described and exposure to blue light.

00:45:49.000 Is there any research at all that's parsing out the relative contributions of these different factors to the rise in depression and anxiety?

00:45:56.960 It's a great question, and I don't think we really know.

00:45:59.440 I mean, what we have is more individual-level correlational data, which is going to have some different factors in those generational and group trends.

00:46:06.280 But sleep definitely has the largest correlation with depression and unhappiness among those factors.

00:46:16.700 But it also, of course, depends on the individual because for some kids, yeah, they may have that phone away from them at night.

00:46:24.040 But then if they're getting bullied and feel terrible about their body all day long, that can also have those severe consequences.

00:46:30.680 So it's hard to say.

00:46:33.020 Well, and those things tend to loop too, so many, many things can contribute to sleep disruption.

00:46:38.500 And then once sleep gets disrupted, well, then all those other things tend to get worse, and that's all a downhill spiral.

00:46:44.620 So, yeah, so that's rough too.

00:46:49.380 Unexpected consequences of technological innovation, especially on the light front.

00:46:53.600 Yeah, that's a rough one.

00:46:55.020 You talked about irreligious and losing my religion and spirituality.

00:46:59.660 And so that's an interesting measurement, let's say, or an interesting issue to focus on.

00:47:08.200 And so tell me about the significance of that.

00:47:11.860 Yeah, so, you know, we've known for a while that the number of people who affiliate with a religion or attend religious services has gone down, especially among teens and young adults.

00:47:20.200 But there were kind of these theories for a while, like, okay, well, young people are not as interested in institutions and joining a group, so that's why that's gone down.

00:47:28.440 But privately, they still pray and believe in God.

00:47:31.640 Well, as of about 15 years ago, that also started to go down.

00:47:35.680 So that theory had to be discarded because even private religious beliefs started to decline.

00:47:41.500 Then you got the theory of, oh, well, they're not religious, but they're more spiritual.

00:47:46.040 The data doesn't back that one up either from the surveys that a number of people say that they're a spiritual person has stayed fairly constant, even while the number of people saying they're religious has gone way down.

00:47:58.500 And then among university students, fewer say that they feel like they're above average in spirituality.

00:48:03.540 So not religious, not particularly spiritual either, and you get a decline in the number of young people who say that finding meaning and purpose in life is important, that developing a meaningful philosophy of life is important.

00:48:20.880 So all of these intrinsic things, these intrinsic values and goals, have become less important.

00:48:29.320 Those all seem to be medium to long-term goals, right?

00:48:34.340 So to develop a purpose in life, to develop a philosophy of life, to aim at an integrated spirituality.

00:48:40.540 And one of the things that the web does particularly well is capitalize on short-term attentional, well, let's just call it short-term attention, right?

00:48:51.880 It's the next hot thing.

00:48:53.220 It's like it's the 24-hour news cycle, in some sense, broken down into 30-second bits.

00:49:02.420 And you can distract yourself endlessly with those sorts of things.

00:49:07.200 I mean, I'm saying this, too, obviously, as a prolific creator of more long-form content,

00:49:13.180 but we use TikTok and Instagram and these shorter forms as well to communicate with.

00:49:18.580 But you can certainly feed yourself on a steady diet of 15 to 30-second clips, and they are engaging in the moment.

00:49:27.320 It's like a nonstop procession of personalized ads in some real sense, and it often is ads.

00:49:32.980 And so that seems to be happening at the expense of these medium to long-term commitments that might be indicative of maturity in adulthood and spirituality, religious orientation, civic duty, all of that.

00:49:45.980 Maybe that's contributing to that immaturity as well, eh?

00:49:48.740 The maintenance of that short-term attention.

00:49:51.340 Because that's the experience so many people have online, especially on platforms like TikTok.

00:49:55.860 You know, you're just watching all of these short videos, and then before you know it, an hour has gone by.

00:50:00.900 An hour of your life you're not going to get back.

00:50:02.980 And it is just that what's immediate, and you have to respond to your friend's post right away and make a comment or say that you like it.

00:50:11.320 And it's all of that immediacy that isn't really focused on the long-term in a way, which, you know, is funny because in other ways,

00:50:22.580 this generation, iGen or Generation Z, has been taught to focus on the long-term.

00:50:27.760 So they're not doing that on their phones, but then in terms of goals around careers and going to college and university and all of those things,

00:50:35.900 they do focus on that, and it's been ingrained in them that they have to be long-term planners and make sure that they're thinking about each step of their lives.

00:50:45.420 And so they have that disconnect between what adults are telling them to do for the plans for their life and then what the way that they're living online.

00:50:56.160 Right, right, right.

00:50:57.200 So, and then insulated but not intrinsic, more safety and less community.

00:51:03.080 What does that mean?

00:51:03.900 So the safety piece was interesting because when I first started the book, it wasn't something that was really on my radar screen.

00:51:13.200 But the more I talked to young people in this generation and the more I looked at what had really changed in society,

00:51:22.400 safety was a major, major theme that kept coming up over and over.

00:51:26.960 And, again, there's tradeoffs.

00:51:28.920 The upside is that there's been so much emphasis on the safety of children and teens that that's worked.

00:51:36.700 A lot fewer teens getting car accidents or any kind of injuries.

00:51:41.620 Same thing with children.

00:51:43.020 All of these safety things that we put in place have really done a good job.

00:51:48.460 But it's not just protecting kids from physical dangers that society's focused on.

00:51:56.560 In many ways, it has shifted to also protecting kids from having experiences, from being upset, from failure, from all of these learning experiences.

00:52:09.060 From adventure.

00:52:10.740 Yeah, absolutely, from taking risks.

00:52:13.780 And what's really interesting is Gen Z has not rebelled against that, which is what you might expect adolescents to do.

00:52:20.920 They have embraced it.

00:52:22.060 So they're less likely to say they want to take risks, say, when they're 16, 15 years old.

00:52:29.420 What happened to teenage rebelliousness?

00:52:32.100 Like, that was something that was such a pronounced characteristic of being a teenager.

00:52:37.420 You also touched on that when you mentioned that so many fewer kids are getting their driver's license.

00:52:42.100 And that was just incomprehensible to me when I first became aware of it.

00:52:45.580 Because I remember when I was 14, 15, every single person I knew was just absolutely...

00:52:52.340 They were lined up outside the driver's license office like an hour before their birthday to get their license.

00:52:58.140 That was top of the priority.

00:53:00.620 And part of that was to be able to get away and to be autonomous.

00:53:03.600 And so I can't...

00:53:05.600 Why do you think that that spirit of adolescent rebelliousness has vanished to such a great degree?

00:53:12.860 Yeah.

00:53:13.500 There's a lot of different factors.

00:53:15.240 But, you know, a lot of it is just that has been the way that society has shifted in so many ways,

00:53:20.780 is placing safety as the top priority.

00:53:24.460 Not just physically, but also...

00:53:27.040 And Gen Z in particular likes to talk about this, emotional safety.

00:53:29.880 So, and many of them told me that they thought emotional safety was just as important as physical safety.

00:53:37.540 That that was one of the reasons they were scared of social interactions,

00:53:40.540 because you never know what someone might say to you.

00:53:43.340 And to a Gen Xer like me, I was like, well, yeah, that's how it works.

00:53:47.180 But they're used to texting and being able to compose their response

00:53:52.240 and to not have to worry about the look on their face when they read what someone else, you know, has said.

00:53:57.000 So, that's one factor that comes in there.

00:54:00.300 And then it is also just with the slow life strategy and other changes in parenting and in culture in general,

00:54:06.660 in how we treat young people, that, yes, it's good that we have tried to protect them from a lot of these dangers.

00:54:15.920 But we have also coddled them in some ways that has done them a real disservice,

00:54:22.740 that we have not prepared them for adulthood,

00:54:26.020 that we have not let them take as many risks and learn from that and have adventure and all those things.

00:54:33.760 Well, that risk of direct communication is an interesting one.

00:54:36.860 And I heard a comedian in the UK at a free speech comedy event who said that she had gone to a university to do a comedy show.

00:54:46.480 And they gave her a list of topics that were off limits, which is a hell of a thing to do to a comedian.

00:54:53.040 And then not only that, they gave all the student attendees these badges.

00:54:58.560 And if the badge were green, if the badge was green that you were wearing,

00:55:02.420 then other people could talk to you without your permission, including the comedian.

00:55:07.260 But if you didn't have a green badge, yeah, no kidding.

00:55:10.580 But, and I didn't have any, I thought that was pathological beyond comprehension.

00:55:14.220 But it's so protective that it's positively eatable.

00:55:18.380 But, you know, you just put your finger on something interesting,

00:55:21.620 which is if you're accustomed to being able to formulate your response thoughtfully,

00:55:27.360 you're doing that by text, for example,

00:55:29.700 then the immediacy of interpersonal contact might be off-putting to you.

00:55:34.520 Like, I mean, I don't know how isolated the kids are who only use their phones, I'm sure.

00:55:39.940 Do we know, for example, if this is more true of introverted kids?

00:55:43.980 Like, are the introverted neurotics even more likely to use their phone and text

00:55:48.120 instead of engaging in any face-to-face interaction?

00:55:50.540 Well, maybe, but then, on the other hand, extroverts send more texts

00:55:54.440 because they have more social interactions and social relationships in general.

00:55:58.260 So there's some kind of cross-currents there that might be hard to tease out.

00:56:02.280 But the neuroticism piece, that would make sense more likely maybe to text

00:56:06.680 than, say, have a phone conversation where that might be more anxiety-provoking.

00:56:12.380 Chapter 8 is income insecurity, working to earn but not to shop.

00:56:16.740 And you talk a bit about shopping in the iGen book.

00:56:20.540 About the fact that that also feeds into this self-centeredness in some sense,

00:56:25.160 that money is for, it's consumerism gone mad.

00:56:29.140 And, of course, that's promoted by the social media networks

00:56:33.840 that are monetizing teenage attention.

00:56:36.660 And you said that teenagers are also much less likely to be engaged in gainful employment,

00:56:44.380 which was obviously a step towards maturation for many people in previous generations,

00:56:49.160 or maybe the actual catalyst for maturation, apart from relationships.

00:56:54.420 Yeah, and they're less likely to get an allowance as well.

00:56:58.760 So when you don't have a job and you don't have an allowance,

00:57:01.360 then you're not learning how to manage your own money.

00:57:04.060 So it's more that your parents will give you money.

00:57:06.860 And so that's another aspect where they're not learning as much about how to make decisions

00:57:11.760 is around money.

00:57:14.040 Yeah, well, it's very—this brings up the issue in some sense of optimal deprivation.

00:57:18.920 You have older parents, you have fewer siblings, your parents in some sense care more for you.

00:57:25.000 You might even in some way have a closer relationship with them,

00:57:28.580 but then the question is, is it too close?

00:57:31.100 But how do you deprive your children properly under such circumstances

00:57:35.920 so that they're motivated to go do things on their own?

00:57:38.300 And again, when that becomes a choice,

00:57:40.540 it's very difficult to say no all the time when you could be saying yes.

00:57:45.780 It's the dilemma of modern parenting.

00:57:47.700 And I think where that comes up often the most is around technology.

00:57:53.060 So it's not just in, Mom, you know, I want to buy this thing or the other thing.

00:57:57.000 I think a lot—I have three kids myself, two of whom are teenagers.

00:58:01.220 And what I know from my fellow parents as well as my own experience

00:58:04.860 is that there's always, I want the smartphone and I want this social media app

00:58:11.760 and why can't I do it because everybody else is doing it?

00:58:14.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:58:15.180 And that's the dilemma.

00:58:16.700 And modern parenting is supposed to be, well, I want to make my kids happy.

00:58:21.200 And usually you think it's going to be easier to make them happy by saying yes.

00:58:24.940 But then if you say yes to some of these things, what's going to happen?

00:58:28.580 It's all the potential consequences that we've been talking about.

00:58:31.600 But it's difficult because, of course, not everybody is going to have the very negative outcome.

00:58:35.700 Some people are going to be on social media and be fine.

00:58:37.840 But you don't know which your kid is—which bucket your kid's going to end up in until they use it.

00:58:44.100 So then if you're the cautious parent who says, I'm not going to get my kid a phone until she's 16 or 18,

00:58:51.000 you're going to be the only one in a high school of 1,500 people who doesn't have one.

00:58:54.940 And same thing with social media.

00:58:56.180 So it's a very difficult dilemma right now as the parent of teenagers.

00:59:02.420 Chapter 9 is Inclusive, LGBT, Gender, and Race Issues in the New Age.

00:59:07.420 When I first read sections of this chapter, I thought, well, this strikes me as predictable in some sense,

00:59:17.780 given the virtualization of everything.

00:59:20.020 You know, one of the things that being online allows you to do is to experiment with different identities

00:59:26.700 that are disposable and that are virtual.

00:59:30.160 And then I also thought that to the degree that childhood is being extended and maybe interfered with,

00:59:39.160 especially at the early stages when pretend play should be occurring and there's so much screen time,

00:59:45.260 that experimentation with identity, which is a form of play, might be being extended out into adolescence and further on.

00:59:51.880 So you get virtualization and the extension of fantasy play.

00:59:55.440 It's not surprising to me that iGen young people would be, what would you describe it as,

01:00:03.280 very open in relationship to their proclaimed identity,

01:00:07.600 especially also if they're earning attention points for announcing a non-standard identity

01:00:13.540 and also having no other identity to replace it with in some real sense.

01:00:17.840 Well, I think there's a lot of other factors at work here, too,

01:00:20.380 because, of course, these trends have been going on for longer.

01:00:24.520 So as opposed to, say, some of the mental health trends, which really didn't start to appear until 2012,

01:00:30.160 the rise in, say, support for same-sex marriage and the embrace of LGBT identities,

01:00:38.080 that's been building for a longer time.

01:00:40.080 So we see that also, you know, even for Gen Xers and millennials,

01:00:45.080 that that's been rolling out for quite a long time.

01:00:47.760 So I think it's also a function of individualism.

01:00:50.660 And that was a major theme in Generation Me, my book on the millennials.

01:00:55.460 And it still is a different flavor for iGen or Gen Z, but it's absolutely still present

01:01:00.920 that we have the growth in, you know, North American culture that's always been individualistic,

01:01:08.440 but has become much more so, especially since the late 1960s.

01:01:13.620 So more focus on the self, less focus on social rules.

01:01:17.160 And what you get with individualism is the acceptance of difference and that people will be who they are.

01:01:22.540 And so that, I think, is also a natural consequence of more individualism,

01:01:26.880 that you will get more acceptance of different sexual orientations.

01:01:31.460 Right.

01:01:31.760 Well, it's a strange individualism, though, because it's based, again,

01:01:36.360 on what you might describe as maximization of short-term identity.

01:01:42.000 It's sort of the claim is, I can be whoever I want,

01:01:45.220 and all social regulation of that is nothing but an imposition,

01:01:49.300 which is really not true at all,

01:01:51.300 because most of the time, following social principles

01:01:55.020 allows you to form relationships with other people

01:01:57.460 and opens up horizons of opportunity to you.

01:02:01.000 That's the benefit of sacrificing not exactly individuality,

01:02:06.700 but short-term individual whim.

01:02:10.240 And it's something that children learn as they mature, right?

01:02:12.480 They can't get everything they want right now,

01:02:14.760 but the payoff for that is that they can get along with other people

01:02:17.820 and that things work better over the long run.

01:02:20.400 And that all, that, I would say,

01:02:23.020 understanding that and then abiding by that principle of medium-to-long-term well-being

01:02:30.120 is something like maturation.

01:02:32.560 And this individualism that you're describing isn't really,

01:02:35.760 I don't think it's really,

01:02:37.440 it's not an enlightened individualism because it's too short-term.

01:02:41.760 It's more like, well, I am whatever I feel I am right at this moment.

01:02:46.300 And to me, that smacks of, well, nothing more than,

01:02:49.840 in some real sense, like a two-year-old immaturity.

01:02:52.140 And I mean that technically because two-year-olds are very whim-oriented,

01:02:56.680 very, very short-term, and very self-centered.

01:03:00.300 They can't play with other people.

01:03:02.480 And so you have the dissolution of identity, right?

01:03:06.300 There's no community, no real community,

01:03:09.160 not in terms of community organization,

01:03:11.560 but also not in terms of real face-to-face friendships and interactions.

01:03:15.920 There's no participation in religious enterprises.

01:03:20.120 There's no real reading about political or philosophical matters.

01:03:24.440 There's a decline in spirituality.

01:03:26.080 So there's a real collapse of sophisticated identity.

01:03:29.760 And all of this, well, the sexualization of identity seems to me to be,

01:03:34.160 in some sense, what would you say, a replacement for that or reaction to that?

01:03:40.060 Does that seem on point to you or am I missing something there?

01:03:44.340 Well, you know, I think you're correct in that some of those elements of individualism

01:03:49.440 are much more short-term and not as deeply seated, you know,

01:03:53.040 in terms of religion and meaning and, you know, more focus on some of the short-term.

01:03:58.740 But I think, you know, lesbian and gay and bisexual identity is not really an example of that

01:04:05.160 because that seems to be more deeply seated and constant for most people.

01:04:10.600 That does seem to be a much more long-term identity.

01:04:13.720 So that, I think, is not as much on the part of individualism having to do with that self-focus.

01:04:21.280 It's more around accepting difference and accepting people for who they are

01:04:25.900 and taking some of the more traditional social rules and saying, you know,

01:04:30.860 these don't really recognize people as individuals and for who they are.

01:04:37.680 And that might be different, it might not be in the majority, but that that's who they are as people.

01:04:42.700 Well, you talked in your book, in Generation Me, you talked about the self-esteem movement.

01:04:53.240 And self-esteem has always been a particular bugbear of mine, I would say,

01:04:57.360 especially since I discovered that psychometrically it was basically composed of low neuroticism

01:05:02.060 with a bit of extroversion thrown in.

01:05:04.060 And so self-esteem is a proxy for neuroticism in many, many ways.

01:05:08.700 It isn't obvious to me at all that you treat neuroticism by treating people to be more self-centered.

01:05:15.440 You know, one of the things I used to do with my clients who were socially anxious, say,

01:05:19.840 when they'd go into a social situation,

01:05:22.280 they'd start obsessing about how they were appearing to other people.

01:05:25.380 They'd fall into that trap.

01:05:26.820 And then they'd stop making eye contact.

01:05:28.660 And then they would get awkward.

01:05:30.160 And then they would engage in non-sequiturs.

01:05:33.300 And the whole conversation would grind to a halt.

01:05:36.240 And I asked them instead to concentrate as hard as they could on putting the other person at ease.

01:05:42.720 And that gave them something to think about other than themselves.

01:05:45.440 And so the self-esteem movement was predicated on the idea that people high in neuroticism had low self-esteem,

01:05:53.820 which I don't think was true at all,

01:05:55.580 and that the right remediation for that was to treat everyone as if they were uniquely special.

01:06:00.240 So it was like narcissism was the antidote to neuroticism.

01:06:04.000 And that's...

01:06:04.520 Right.

01:06:05.000 It's so appalling.

01:06:06.400 It doesn't work.

01:06:07.280 No, no, no.

01:06:08.220 In fact, it makes it much worse.

01:06:10.440 And so...

01:06:11.000 Exactly.

01:06:12.220 Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

01:06:13.580 So, well, I'm relieved to hear that your sentiments are in keeping with that formulation.

01:06:19.780 I mean, I've been trying to base it on the relevant data, trying to figure that out.

01:06:23.700 Chapter 10, independent politics.

01:06:29.100 So what about...

01:06:30.640 Well, you said that the iGen people, they're not watching the news.

01:06:34.360 The news is dead, right?

01:06:35.480 I mean, legacy media news is dead.

01:06:37.180 I don't think anybody watches it.

01:06:38.580 I think old people have the TV on, and that's where the ratings come from.

01:06:43.200 So that's just gone.

01:06:44.920 That centralizing ability that the nightly news had to broadcast a similar message, in

01:06:50.060 some sense, to everyone and bolster identity, that's disappeared, too.

01:06:53.340 Everybody's in their own news.

01:06:55.100 I wouldn't say bubble exactly, but it's fragmented so much that there's no unity of apprehension.

01:07:01.020 What's happening on the political front with the iGen types?

01:07:04.120 Yeah, so there's a couple of things going on.

01:07:06.440 So one is that a lot more young people now say they don't want to belong to a political party at all,

01:07:12.240 that they're politically independent.

01:07:14.660 And that's been going on for a while.

01:07:17.240 The other big piece is just huge political polarization, partially for the reasons that you

01:07:22.220 mentioned, that everything is so atomized that you can get your news from a particular source.

01:07:28.100 And perhaps because of the caustic nature of a lot of online interaction, it becomes contentious very,

01:07:35.940 very quickly.

01:07:37.000 So we have a political atmosphere that's just very, very aggressive and very, very polarized.

01:07:43.660 And, I mean, it's gotten to the point here in the U.S. where people don't even agree on their

01:07:49.380 own facts, that the two parties have different sets of facts.

01:07:54.940 And young people reflect that larger cultural change.

01:07:59.100 I think they may want to change it, but they also show more who say they're very liberal or

01:08:06.220 very conservative or very much on the left or very much on the right and fewer in the middle.

01:08:11.920 Yeah, well, that atomization of political identity, it's another interesting twist on the notion

01:08:19.960 of individualism, because you might say that not abiding, not joining a political party,

01:08:25.560 not joining a political group, not joining a religion, not cementing a local social network,

01:08:32.080 let's say, frees you up because you're not constrained by the necessity of abiding by the

01:08:37.000 principles of those groups.

01:08:38.140 But the problem with that is, is that the more, and this is something that people don't

01:08:43.360 really understand well about choice, is there's not a lot of difference between excess choice

01:08:49.020 and anxiety.

01:08:50.920 They're very much the same thing, right?

01:08:52.840 If you have too many pathways open in front of you, and I can't help but think that this

01:08:57.580 is contributing to the epidemic of depression and anxiety.

01:09:00.300 I mean, if you have a three-year-old who wants to dress himself and you open up a closet full

01:09:04.460 of clothes, he or she is just generally stumped into immobility.

01:09:09.680 If you lay out three outfits on the bed and say, pick one, then they're perfectly happy

01:09:14.440 because they've had the right amount of constrained choice.

01:09:17.420 And we've been teaching young people that all social norms are nothing but constraints on

01:09:24.200 this individualistic freedom.

01:09:26.160 And that completely underplays the role that identity plays in encapsulating anxiety.

01:09:32.800 Now, I was talking to Carl Friston the other day, a neuroscientist, and he's convinced, as

01:09:38.240 are many people, that our conceptions are entropy management techniques in some real sense.

01:09:45.840 So, you know, once you define yourself, for example, within the confines of a given identity,

01:09:51.360 now you're playing a bounded game that might open up an interesting amount of options, but

01:09:57.280 not so much that you drown.

01:09:59.420 And to lose all those intermediary social structures, except maybe the bond you have with your parents,

01:10:04.360 that strikes me as a, well, as a mental health catastrophe.

01:10:08.100 So we should conclude this maybe by talking about your last chapter.

01:10:13.920 What's to be done?

01:10:15.820 Yeah, well, you know, I think we absolutely have to get a better handle on technology,

01:10:20.760 particularly social media.

01:10:22.660 We need more regulation.

01:10:24.440 We need more balance.

01:10:26.720 Technology is not all bad by any means.

01:10:29.100 I mean, it's amazing how many things that we can do with what we have, but it has to be

01:10:36.120 a tool we use, not a tool that uses us.

01:10:38.460 And the latter is exactly where we are.

01:10:40.960 That it's amazing how many people talk about social media using the language of addiction.

01:10:45.760 And it is very clear what impact these technologies have had on young people in particular,

01:10:55.320 and the mental health crisis that we're confronting.

01:10:58.980 So we really have to get a handle on this.

01:11:01.660 And one thing that I am encouraged by is how many young people are recognizing this and

01:11:07.200 taking those steps themselves.

01:11:09.360 A college student named Emma Lemke, who founded a movement called Log Off.

01:11:13.920 And she says it was from her having such an incredibly terrible experience with Instagram

01:11:20.580 when she was a high school student.

01:11:22.720 And so she's encouraging other young people to cut back, if not eliminate their social

01:11:28.440 media use, and experience the rest of life and leave a lot of that toxicity behind.

01:11:34.520 And I'm encouraged to see more of that and more bipartisan support for regulating social

01:11:39.100 media.

01:11:39.740 And so maybe we'll get there.

01:11:41.120 Well, and so what do you have for suggestions that are practical on the regulation front?

01:11:47.300 We talked a little bit about, well, clamping down on the online trolls and the anonymous

01:11:52.440 accounts.

01:11:53.200 I mean, that just seems to me to be a no-brainer.

01:11:55.280 At least they could be put in their own category, right?

01:11:58.380 You're either a real person or you're a fictional anonymous or a bot, in which case, you know,

01:12:05.400 you're consigned to perdition.

01:12:07.240 People can read your comments if they want.

01:12:09.200 But concretely, what do you, first of all, what do you think the social media platforms could

01:12:15.160 do and should do?

01:12:16.100 And even if they did it, do you think that the social media landscape will just transform

01:12:21.540 itself so rapidly that it'll elude any sort of regulation?

01:12:25.040 Because, I mean, a lot of these social media platforms are only a couple of years old.

01:12:29.220 They spring into being.

01:12:30.460 They're massively powerful.

01:12:32.340 I don't imagine they have a tremendous amount of longevity.

01:12:35.140 And so we're playing regulatory catch-up all the time.

01:12:38.380 Yeah, absolutely.

01:12:39.620 Well, you know, I think a lot of it starts with age verification.

01:12:43.040 If we can verify people's age, we would cut down on a lot of the sexual predation.

01:12:48.260 We would get rid of children 12 and under being on the platforms.

01:12:52.360 The platforms could have more regulation and be safer for, say, 13 to 17-year-olds in terms

01:13:02.280 of hiding the likes and comments on other people's posts.

01:13:06.500 Facebook actually tried that at one point.

01:13:08.080 They called it Project DAISY, and they decided not to implement it because it cut down on

01:13:12.820 revenue, even though they showed it cut down on social comparison, particularly for teens.

01:13:18.360 So there's a long list of regulations that could be put in place that would have only

01:13:25.200 a small impact on the social media companies.

01:13:27.600 That decrease in revenue with Project DAISY was 1%.

01:13:30.480 Oh, well, it's good of them not to have implemented it then because, you know, 1% is pretty catastrophic.

01:13:38.200 So there's so many things that they could do to keep kids and teens safer.

01:13:42.340 But it depends on not being anonymous, not being able to open multiple accounts, and verifying age.

01:13:50.260 Right, right.

01:13:50.940 And who do you know that's, apart from you, who do you know that's working on such ideas?

01:13:56.240 I know that Jonathan Haidt has made many suggestions on the internet pathology front.

01:14:01.740 It doesn't appear to me that the big social media companies are really paying attention

01:14:05.460 to the psychological research in any real sense.

01:14:08.100 I mean, maybe that's unfair, but I don't think so.

01:14:10.660 So the comment sections could have been cleaned up long ago by anybody with any sense, as far

01:14:15.200 as I can tell.

01:14:16.320 I think they know it.

01:14:18.140 They know the research.

01:14:19.960 It's just they have their own reasons for not acting on it, some of which are financial.

01:14:25.480 Right, right.

01:14:26.640 And so who else, apart from you and Jonathan Haidt, are worth talking to about the internet

01:14:31.840 predicament that young people have found themselves in?

01:14:34.720 There's a lot of great research on this topic.

01:14:37.140 Um, there's, uh, uh, Australian researchers done a lot of stuff on Instagram and body image.

01:14:44.680 Um, I, I may get her, her, her first name, Ryan, Marika Tigaman.

01:14:49.820 Um, she's done a lot of great stuff on that.

01:14:52.820 Uh, Brian Primack, who's, uh, an MD by training and works in public health, has done a lot

01:14:58.880 of great stuff, too, on, um, looking at social media use and how it relates to depression

01:15:04.480 and loneliness.

01:15:05.640 And he's looked at young adults in particular.

01:15:07.940 Well, maybe I can get in contact with you to, to get some of these names, because I'd like

01:15:12.160 to put together a little group of people who are concentrating on social media regulation

01:15:17.520 and maybe introduce them to the political types that I have access to, because it's

01:15:21.880 a pressing issue and it's not being dealt with well, and it's driving polarization in

01:15:25.860 a terrible way.

01:15:27.460 And, uh, so, all right, well, we should wrap up this part of our conversation.

01:15:32.440 We spoke today almost primarily about your new book, iGen, um, an analysis of the first

01:15:39.160 generation, the behavior of the first generation who's been, who've been exposed, I would say,

01:15:43.160 over the entire course of their life to these radically new technologies that we so thoughtfully

01:15:47.400 refer to as phones, when they're much more, God only knows what they are, but they're

01:15:52.520 certainly not phones.

01:15:53.700 And I appreciate you very much sharing your insight with us today, and I'd like to thank

01:15:57.860 everybody who's watching and listening on YouTube and to remind you that I do an extra

01:16:01.660 half an hour with my guests on the Daily Wire Plus platform, where I walk through their

01:16:06.240 lives in a more biographical sense, trying to assess, well, the ups and downs of their

01:16:10.800 career, but also to try to focus in on what's made them particularly, let's say, successful

01:16:16.380 and impactful and, and, uh, what prices they paid for that and what benefits have accrued.

01:16:21.560 So for those of you who are interested, head over to the Daily Wire Plus platform and you

01:16:26.080 can hear Dr. Twenge for another half an hour talking with me.

01:16:30.580 Hello, everyone.

01:16:31.220 I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guests on dailywireplus.com.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - November 07, 2022

303. iGen： Narcissism and Neuroticism ｜ Dr. Jean Twenge

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript