@@francinebacone1455 How do you address the long-term suicide studies that line up with social media for both boys and girls? The fact is, the human brain isn't well evolved to deal with this type of mass interaction. Not just children but adults. And it's certainly evident algorithms designed to maximize ad revenue with sensationalism are not maximizing social cohesion; they're doing the opposite.
Social media has stunted the maturity level in politics to such an extent it will be the end of the west. It’s not a kid problem. It’s an adult problem.
Gave my 5th grader a flip phone. Lasted about a year before she was burning with shame for having it. Her and mom put the full-court press on me. Got her an iPhone. Six months later, she's now in therapy for anxiety and depression. The social pressure to have them is too great. Parents who managed to keep kids free of devices even just 5 years ago have no idea how incredibly more desirable and addictive they have become. No user stands a chance against algorithms.
This is ancient History but, many years back we moved to an area (Used to be beautiful) where there was no cable TV. We had Hundreds of movies. The kids spent all summer in the backyard in the creek. We had ONE, yes one phone. When cable came we still didn't get it for some time. We Actually had neighbors and adults from their school who accused us of "Child Abuse" because we would not get Cable. Yes - it is TRUE ...
I can't imagine having a phone that young. I don't think I had a smart phone until I went to college, and that was later than a lot of my peers. I applaud you for resisting giving her one. Sometimes peer pressure has to win and I'm sorry it caused anxiety/depression :( The internet is so unsafe for kids, I think. Honestly, I became suicidal because of bullying on the internet when I was 14. I was also too afraid to tell my parents back then. Also porn addiction which is destroying peoples brains. . . anyway, wishing you and your family the best
Since the desire to have a smart phone is driven by peer pressure, there should be some way to counteract it. Maybe if enough parents of kids in some area got together and made a joint decision that all the kids in that area would only have flip phones, that might work. I'm just tossing out a suggestion. Other people might come up with something better.
Parenting is a challenge. If a parent's role is to protect and prepare a child for this world, peer pressure cannot be more powerful than that parent. Insert other harms like sports concussions, bad diet, gambling, teen sex, drugs, etc ... Can you be strong on children's protection. Study prefrontal cortex development to understand when humans are ready for making good decisions on their own, hey 25.
There's an answer. It involves leaving the school system and joining a homeschool group of parents who prioritize their kids growing up like human beings did throughout human history, that is, without smartphones. It's insane that parents are just expected to roll over and accept the megacorporations' predation on children for profit.
Not necessarily the whole world, but definitely America. This country can ill afford to "lower the curve" of the educational system as it exists today.
Trouble is.....critic these days is synonymous with attack (as seen on social media).....I like his comment re when the moderates go silent...the extremes on both sides go crazy...which is how it is now...big time ! Scary
But stupidity also has limits, though not always recognised, by those with potential for genius. Truth is that which defends us against confusion. Confusion leads to defeat. So departure from truth, is the point at which confusion parasitises the efforts, energy, and potential of those who might show genius And thereby, that departure from truth, limits stupidity
I'm 63 and during the 2016 presidential election, I kept asking myself what the hell happened to our country? The outrage was ridiculous. I started searching the internet for answers and the only one who was able to explain it, without saying it's the other side's fault, was John Haidt. He's brilliant.
What happened? Have you not been paying attention? Offshoring of living wage work, onshoring of workers to depress wages of what's left. People are barely getting by. Started with "centrist" Clinton pairing off w/Reagan/Bush, passing NAFTA. 30 years of $2.13 an hour for tipped wage, regardless of who's held the congress. Shamelessness in our politicians, visible by 2006, which is a hallmark of untouchable/unaccountable. Both sides of the aisle, peddling half truth. Verifiable facts, but a long way from whole truth. Children. "But Mom..."
I have been a public school teacher for the last 28 years. It’s hard to explain to people how poorly todays students are doing in many aspects of their lives compared to students about 8 years ago. As more and more teachers that taught b4 social media leave the profession, this perspective will be lost. Honestly it might be…. Hey parents how about getting your kids a flip phone in case an “emergency” instead of the ironically named smartphone. I promise you it’s not making your kid smart 😐
Our district went from having events where police could describe to parents the dangers of kids being online at all, mostly stuff like physical predators. You could not bring a phone to school. To the next year everyone basically had to have a smart phone in class, just to keep up.
American schools: centers of abusive sexual indoctrination. Just say no. Home school. It's not that difficult. And it allows you to bring the worst forms of mimetic rivalry to heel.
That’s the most thoughtful explanation of the effects of social media that I’ve ever heard, I think. We are in deep doodoo here in the US, politically and socially, but social media has made it infinitely worse.
@@neilifill4819 hopefully you’re not deluding yourself by thinking that RUclips isn’t social media. It’s thee most utilized SM site. Even over FB. And the second most used search engine. No thanks to your contribution to the discussion.
@@judica8873 thanks. I’m not worried about negative responses to my words on any platform, to be honest. Part of the problem in which we find ourselves is the need for some people to attack each other on what are largely anonymous fields. Some people get their feelings hurt, but sadly, younger people aren’t able to shake these things off as well as they should. That said, I’m open to listening to everyone, regardless of how vitriolic people get. They often take someone’s words and appoint themselves as defenders of their truths. It’s much better to discuss ideas and agree to disagree, but who am I to judge?
When in doubt, I generally trust the guy who says “it’s complicated” and provides practical solutions instead of complaints over anyone who says “this is right period” or “that is wrong period” without explanation. I trust people who can calmly address objections (though as a scientist, I still check his sources). Thank you Dr. Haidt for the article and the uplifting coda.
Yes 1000%!!! Honestly I feel kinda ashamed but it wasn't until a college philosophy class when I was like 21 or 22 that I learned critical thinking. I was never taught it in school. But in philosophy class we were forced to write not only our own argument/opinion, but what counter-arguments might be. I was forced to consider other people's viewpoints, which seems obvious, but I just..wasnt really doing it before. Probably as a result, I got sucked into conspiracies for a while. . . One thing I've learned is that - if I am 100% believing and agreeing with everything someone says, that is a red flag. That means that I will think anything they think, and then I'm not thinking for myself. When I have allowed myself to doubt others, it was sometimes painful to disagree but it was also freeing. People I admired, unfortunately are wrong sometimes. And people I despise, can have profoundly correct things to say. But it's hard to put nuance into a 240 character tweet
@@TeaParty1776 lol - I’m pretty sure a scientist has a better conception of Bayes Theorem than a novelist who had doubts that evolution was really “a thing”
@@maryahhaidery7986 Rand was a philosopher, like the philosopher, Aristotle, who discovered scientific method and was the first scientist. Philosophy is the study of existence as a whole, ie., the context of all other knowledge. Science, knowingly or not, uses philosophy as a context and method for its specialized study. A true philosophy validates the science which appplies, knowingly or not. A false philosophy does not. Any claim about science as a whole is philosophical. Philosophy is the study of common human experience, the context of specialized knowledge. Philosophy is the study of man facing the universe. Rands doubt was intellectual honesty in the context of her knowledge at that time. She made no judgment about Bayes theorem. Philosophers using her philosophy have validated evolution, contra creationists, as properly inductive.
Excellent analysis, thank you. American democracy is operating outside safety limits. The extremes go viral and the moderates are silenced. Stupidity reigns. Thanks for working on it.
The so called centrist moderates have been in charge for years now and aren't doing anything to improve the lives of ordinary people, rich people yes but not ordinary people, or enact policies in response to huge issues like climate change ... "Moderates" are problematic...
The extremists have gone viral and in a way have "backed moderates into a corner" with no where to go. Also people used to have an escape from bullying or other forms of being put down. Now it is everywhere all the time.
It wasn’t lost on me that, after grilling the most recent SCOTUS nominee, one politician reportedly grabbed his phone and checked Twitter to see if he was trending. More like, if his behavior was trending. As you said, “American democracy is outside safety limits.” Soon, will we really able to call this a democracy and stay true to the theory?
It's not "Social Media" it's how the nation has become a right-wing, capitalist dystopia, worse and worse every year, it's reflected everywhere, look into the actual "stressors", look at how this centrist concern troll is fudging this up, he's more right-wing than David Brooks.
@@oasisneko1 I have friends on Facebook who I went to kindergarten with all the way through high school. I DON'T HAVE A SHITTY EXPERIENCE ON FACEBOOK. And hell, no one holds a gun to your head to PARTICIPATE!!! So, really - WTF???
Recently I realized how rare it is to hear genuine, balanced commentary on anything online any more, and the pockets where you can find it are gems. All the unique and insightful blogs I used to read are now gone. Google search results are diminishing. Reasonable people are being scared away from or simply just exhausted by the internet. It's such a dramatic pendulum swing away from where things were in 2006 or so. Hopefully the ship will right before we all topple over the side.
@@lexyswope I couldn't even get paper copies of Nuvia permanent dental implants possible risks of surgery information I signed mailed to me. They insisted I needed to wait to get the paper copies when I went back in for my appointment in two weeks. The two weeks I waited I was in pain, bruised and swollen from my eyes to the bottom of my throat. They said they didn't have the ABILITY to mail anything. They also insisted that they could email me my copies. I'm 65 and am not well versed in technology. So, for two weeks while I was in bed in pain, bruised and swollen I had no information on the possible risks of Nuvia's surgery. And the woman I talked to on the phone to try to get my copies mailed to me hung up on me.
This was a real eye opener. The polarization is not really one side shooting at the other but each side's extremists shooting at their own moderates, causing them to go silent. And when it comes to social media, it's not just the content but the architecture that amplifies things. Thank you, Professor Haidt. It's too bad that only us "high brows" will hear this conversation or read your book.
There is nothing high brow about any of this--and nothing new in this analysis. Social media has not changed the fundamental power relations in America. And I perceive no indications that it has changed how those in power think. The oligarchy abides; it seeks domestic submission and domestication of foreign nations; its tactics evolve, its strategy does not.
I left FB behind 5 yrs ago. Not only had it become divisive and toxic but it just sucked away my time. I'd pop on for half an hour and next thing I know several hours had gone by. I still comment a bit here on YT but no FB, no Twitter or Instagram. In all honesty, it's been a good thing. ✌
Yay! I never got into social media - it always felt like a complete waste of my time (because I don't feel any desperate need for validation from complete strangers of my thoughts or, like, photos of my breakfast). And, as someone who was never really involved in social media, I've had a (very upsetting) front row row view of how corrosive social media's influence generally is. I've watched once-normal people become these insecure, anxious, twitchy obsessives who can't stop themselves from grabbing their phones every few seconds. It's really disheartening to watch formerly smart, competent, well-adjusted people lose their attention span capacities and critical reasoning skills. Over the past decade, the number of "Overcoming Insomnia" and "Increase Productivity" articles has exploded, and the #1 tip in almost all of them? "Don't look at your phone before going to sleep" and "Don't look at your phone first thing when you wake up." In fact, a lot of these articles recommend leaving your phone across the room (or in another room) overnight, so you're not tempted to look at it while in bed. There's inevitably something in that section along the lines of, "We know - it's hard. It might feel impossible. But just grit your teeth and soldier through the deprivation." Like, seriously? Is this what we've become? Addicts so attached to their phones that it's physically impossible to not look at them for a few hours? How are people okay with this? FWIW, I think RUclips is a bit different - the format isn't quite as short-form as the others, and seems less likely to cause the kind of weird, obsessive addiction that the others do.
so true, I look at FB maybe 10 times a year and try to limit my time there, although it is so easy to get sucked in for hours to see what everyone is doing, worse, comparing your life to others, which can result is putting yourself down in a “How did that idiot beecome so successful” or “Why doesn’t anything good happen to me” way, which can stunt your growth, push you into a depression and just make you fail more. It can suck the life from your brain and your goals.
I need to try this. I've been thinking about deleting my FB and IG for over a year now. It's such a waste of time and energy. It's an overload of the senses and exhausting. I can see why kids get depressed from social media, it's a toxic place.
This is the most important youtube video I have ever watched. I'm an amateur historian and this (social media or asocial media) has been bothering me for quite a while. It's nice to have put words on it. Thank you Jonathan Haidt.
You may want to read one or two of his books. The one I am currently re-reading is "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion." I think he's one of the more enlightened thinkers of our time.
@Adam Jacobs There are so many. But if I should point out a few: - The Civil War - An Illustrated by Geoffrey C.Ward (the companion book the series).(1992-3) It tells the whole story about the US civil war in one book. But once you're finished with that you should read... - The Civil War 1-3 by Shelby Foote. (1958) Reprinted 1994. - The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler. (1963) 12th ed. 1993 - Verdenskrigen (The World War) 1-6 by H.Jenssen-Tusch, H.Ewald, E.Gyldenkrone, J.Lindbæk & H.Styrmer. (1922 in Danish) An compassing history of the first world war. Each book is app. 600 pages. - The Second World War 1-6 by Winston S.Churchill. (1948) - Mussolini by Göran Hägg (2008) And last but not least: - Ägypten. Die Welt der Pharaonen. (2004) An rather complete book of the Pharaohs and the world around them.
@@buzoff4642 There was a guy who asked about military history and supplied with a reading list and a book Egypt which is a comprehensive guide to the whole of ancient Egypt. I don't know where his question is.
I remember, at high school, that the debate team I was put on was contrary to the side I wanted. The teacher explained: to argue for the 'other side' is to consider all of their possible arguments against the motion. This is one step in learning empathy, which is essential to all human interaction, and that has stayed with me all my life. It becomes a thing that you do naturally when discussing different points of view: not just pushing your own conclusions, but considering theirs too. It's about avoiding (violent)conflict, which does nobody any good. Censorship of others' views is not reasoned debate but outright refusal to brook anything that might contradict your 'privileged' view.
*_He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form._* ~ John Stuart Mill
Judging by your poor grammar, your education stopped after high school. I know you think the series of cliches you wrote is full of wisdom, but the “wisdom” of your comment is on the level of the average kindergartener.
That's true but there are troll farms, or bots, there's also that dangerous misinformation: for example a cooking tip video that last 50 seconds showing you a trick with caramel, not mentioning it's 350F hot and if it touches you you're screwed.
@Grant Love your valuable perspective. Being on the opposite side of the debate is indeed a type of, objective intelligence, and should be a consideration for a professional position on every politician's team.
PRESIDENT Joe Biden - Quietly doing his job NO crazy tweets, NO lying, NO whining, NO insults, NO racist rhetoric, NO blaming NO bragging, NO complaining, NO hate speech, NO racism, NO crimes< NO love of Putin.
Absolutely agree. However there is a certain addiction in the media for politics to be like a reality show. So drama and craziness are focused on e.g the latest crazy thing Marjorie Taylor Greene has said. Meanwhile the politicians who work hard do not get the focus.
But we're not talking about stupid individual people here. The discussion is about how our recent social norms are forcing society as a whole to become stupid.
I've been a journalist on the national level and a creative director and writer in advertising and i have a unique perspective on why the perception of "stupid" is not the key reason for the belief systems occurring in a majority of the population in the US. It has far more to do with laziness and the reliance on the erroneous thought that if you see something broadcast--anywhere, from TV to RUclips--it has been vetted and couldn't be a lie or else it wouldn't "be allowed". And these are the same people who willfully ignore the idea that RUclips innovated the entire idea of using stolen media without the legal ramifications any other business would be shut down for hosting (and they almost were until Google bought them).
Great point! I don't know if I've stolen this concept from somewhere, but I've been calling this the "illusion of transparency". The media give you the illusion of showing you straight facts but the enormous amount of filters that this "information" has already gone through is invisible to the naked eye. You HAVE to take the time to do your own research into how the sausage gets made! Of course, that has always been true - hence the universal and immortal relevance of Plato's cave - yet it's vastly more important today, when 99% of our reality consists of mediated content. Not even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages could have dreamed of so much power to define the population's minds.
Yes, we ARE headed towards Latin America with failed institutions. But one of the reasons is also that wealth is so unequal now. It's creating widespread hopelessness among younger people.
Actually, Latin America is headed for us, by the millions per year. But, the good people, like Haidt, assure me that demographics have no influence on national character.
@@kreek22 Ya know he's actually NOT a left-wing if that's what you are implying. And why do you think they're coming here? Inequalty and Anarchy as well, which we are ALSO starting to have more of, with our 100 million guns and daily mass shootings...
@@bryanmachin2152 From chapter 8 of the Righteous Mind: In 2007, that conference was held in Memphis, Tennessee. Ravi, Sena, Pete, Jesse, and I met late one evening at the hotel bar, to share our findings and get to know one another. All five of us were politically liberal, yet we shared the same concern about the way our liberal field approached political psychology.
Amazing video. I’m from LATAM and I do see how the US is becoming more and more like a Latin democracy and at the same time, Latin democracies are also being affected by the extreme polarization created by social media. I love the guests and the interviews in this Chanel. Keep it up guys.
Ciertamente México padece de estas cuestiones. El clasismo y la ignorancia van de la mano. Apelar a supuestos valores unificadores ya no funciona: religión, clase social, color de piel, filosofía politica y económica. Sabio es el aquel que es tolerante y ejerce la democracia desde su persona. Culpar a AMLO--por ejemplo--por los males sociales, que en realidad son males de cada quien, no resuelve los males. Procurar más respeto, menos machismo y menos malinchismo. Ahi se empieza...
Finally a discussion I’ve noticed for years. I finally stopped using FB a few years ago. Too much criticism and I identified increase in depression in many young people but also adults. Anger issues became quite obvious to me. Thank you for this wonderful interview.
In a polarized society, FB pages became all about 'creating outrage'. You have your page, sometimes with millions of followers, mostly people in living in thought bubbles, and you generate outrage, flodding your page with exaggerated or just downright false articles about: Look at what "the others" did this time! This one is pretty much Hitler! False news is all around, even regular media do it. Just yesterday I was reading an article which said about a polling: This is how people feel about subject X. But when I went to check the polling to see what the actual question what, it was worded quite different that although the question looked similar, it was actually an entirely different question than what the article claimed it was. All to generate a 'see, people don't actually agree with what X did' article. Even though 'what X did' wasn't actually the question in the polling.
I graduated HS in '02 so I just missed the whole social media addiction thank god, school was bad enough as it was I can't imagine the mental anguish kids go through today.
Social media is the ultimate bully. That is why the kids are depressed, people pile on to an issue and bully to shut it down. Kids don't have the psychological foundation to stay centered with that kind of onslaught.
It's not only bullying, but also the fake "Perfect" life syndrome, where people only post doctored pics of themselves, having supposed "fun," and doing "amazing" things. It's all staged, and it makes others feel like they have to compete.
I saw middle school kids addicted to Myspace back in 2004 while I was in middle school. Facebook was still family-friendly, at least until 2013. Twitter and the massive expansion of social media after 2013 is a man-made disaster. Children, kids, teenagers, and young adults were so much happier in the 1990's and early 2000's before social media fundamentally changed society. The use of social media to destabilize societies by foreign governments after 2012 should have been a red flag. Terrorists like ISIS were recruiting Western teenagers into ISIS in 2014. Hate groups and human trafficking is thriving in 2022 and the FBI came out and said they can't stop it because social media is using paywalls to hide criminal activity.
Evil or Good, its a spiritual choice...if kids are not taught love god, love your neighbor as yourself Evil will victor,,its promised x the creator.. free will, choose redemption with it.
Negativity breeds negativity, as positivity breeds posivity. This is an excellent view on the destruction of our society via social media. Thank you both!
Trite. Social media allowed the nation, to watch muscle head squeeze the life out of George Floyd, while others watched and did nothing, for 9 minutes. There's a whole lot of BS on social media, but there's also a whole lot of exposing the inexcusable, of a nation.
This interview should be mandatory for every educational institution, from kindergarten through university. And it should be replayed every week until things are put right and we're not driven crazy anymore.
Humans dont change and are basically stupid. Not too long ago we were burning witches, and shitting in buckets and throwing it into the streets. Now we’re just doing the same things in different ways.
@@kreek22 Yes, and the nature of media (news AND social) that by design serves to sequester us into our own information silos squelches the critic in US too. Or at least tries to, as many of us attack opposing views that we feel (or are made to feel) that the opposing views are coming from 'the enemy'. How do we fix this? How do we truly listen to one another without being triggered?
@@harlanjackson6112 I'm perhaps more cynical than Haidt, or more realistic. I agree that social interactions have become less friendly, more noisy, maybe even more stupid. But, I think this is a deliberate control strategy by the ruling class, a method of distraction and atomization of the lower orders. They prefer these petty, aimless squabbles to the possible alternative of people noticing *them* and the character of their rule: the permanence of the oligarchy, the irrelevance of elections, the growing wealth of the wealthy, the incompetence of the elite, its mendacity, its censorship and manipulation practices, how the core media organizations are the official state press, etc.
@@kreek22 Yes. And it doesn't help when our education system fails to teach the critical thinking skills we need to be able to see through this. It does teach us to be good consumers though, and good worker bees. But as the wealth disparity widens we see more mental health issues, homeless, drug use, lashing out in the form of mass shootings, etc. And it sucks.
@@kreek22 Do you seriously think that the "ruling class" dreamed up social media in order to "keep us down"? They actually dreamed up Fox News, and that's doing a pretty good job of keeping us stupid and squabbling.
So scary. I wish we could go back in time.. stop the madness. We need treat Social spaces like public spaces, when people are cursing, doing nasty stuff get asked to leave or sometimes arrested. The norms and values of social media is lowest level of human behavior sometimes, I getting so turned off.
As near as I can tell, it's due to the loss of "Justice of the peace" positions. A friend/neighbor asked, "Does EVERYTHING have to be a law? I can't even cross the street to talk to a neighbor with a beer in my hand!" I explained this comes about from the yahoos that believe if it isn't a law, then they have a right to do whatever they want. Some beer in a gift basket, I asked neighbor's girl to ask if her father wanted it. She ran home, came back, "Yes.", so I gave it to her, and she ran it home. OMG! Beer! In the hands of a 10 year old! OMG! Yes, I get his point, that non-incidental day could've gone very differently.
It was a shock when the less educated side of the family started talking about what they believed with respect to race and governance. I was definitely happier not knowing. It's hard to have any kind of reasonable debate when conspiracy theories are presented as evidence. Now I know why they used to tell us to avoid religion and politics as topics at social gatherings.
@@avibhagan If they are really idiots, then they are NOT educated. Unless that's some term invented by Rush Limbaugh to abuse everyone who isn't conservative.
When I was in college and moved to the dorm in my freshman year I knew everyone on my floor within the first week. For my two youngest sons the experience was very different. They only knew a few others on the floor. Much less social interaction in the dorms because of social media.
This all started one day in 2012 when Facebook suddenly caused us to start seeing public comments from strangers. Before that you only saw comments form friends. True. It became a nasty chatroom after that for 2 billion people. Immediate frustration, fear, anger and anxiety- worldwide.
13:00 YES! We need OPEN primaries with Ranked Choice voting - let all voters decide who advances, like top-4, and above 10% threshold to advance. Currently partisan primaries can eliminate all the moderates who don't inspire the radicals who show up to partisan primaries. But an open primary is a fair playing field for all.
Right! And we have to remember that primaries as they exist today are a fairly recent (mid- 20th century) phenomenon. They, and political parties are not Constitutionally mandated.
@@rogersmith7396 Closed primaries are not about laziness. They are about inspiring party purists to come and eliminate all moderate choices from the general election.
I think his point about congress is telling. Since '29 the US which was founded on the idea of representation passed a law limiting and ultimately diluting representation in the US. We the people have restricted the amount of representatives we are allowed to have. Repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act of '29. The house of commons in the UK has 600 people representing 67M. The US has 435 representing 330M.
We're uniquely an idiocracy. When the Kardashian's became role models and billionaires, we quickly devolved electing Trump and the rest of his clown show Making America unlivable again.
It's just so tragic. The driving force of this phenomenon is greed, greed of corporations and social media platforms. We are killing ourselves with "infotainment". WE NEED TO STOP PUTTING MONEY ABOVE OUR HEALTH AND WELL BEING!!!!!
Neither of my parents, now 77 and 80, have ever had a social media account. Unfortunately, so many of their friends and cohort have Facebook and spend so many hours a day using it that they might as well have it. My mother routinely mentions Qanon talking points as if they were legitimate assertions.
The official press said a lab leak was impossible for over a year---"as if they were legitimate assertions." They did the same on many other issues, like calling the Hunter Biden laptop story "Russian disinformation." Lie after lie. QAnon is of course nonsense, but it's more entertaining than the official nonsense and it pisses off the official liars. Support QAnon and everything else the official criminals and liars hate.
When I immigrated to the US 35 years ago it seemed to me this country was too stupid to exist and I have openly shared this observation since. Needless to say, nothing has occurred in the interim to ameliorate this
There were signs in the 90's, US children were already exhibiting attention deficit and had a huge sense of entitlement with parents neurotic and fearful. When you cannot walk places, children become prisoners ferried around between structured supervised events
Social media turned the light on above each one of us. We were supposed to be intelligent enough to see FB and other platforms for what they are. The death of critical thinking is most evidenced in the broad acceptance of social media. One of my daughters lives on social media and has developed her own safety systems to protect herself. The other has all but given up on it altogether. My son thinks it’s mostly a waste of time. Meanwhile, my generation can’t find enough opportunities to spew vitriol and shore up their shortcomings with false emotional economies.
The thumbs up / Like button has revealed what's most important to many individuals and it can drive followers off the cliff if not recognized and halted..
Social media puts me in mind of a book I read way back in college called 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neil Postman except that he was writing about TV rather than social media. It is worth a read in today's world.
Had my HS teaching staff read the Postman piece for a PD session. It was excellent and insightful, especially for those of us raised on Sesame Street. The complaints about its length were unsettling...
Same uproar over kids using calculators for math homework. Dismissed as hype. But underlying, the same issue, taking what comes out of software without question. Kids didn't recognize when calculator was giving them wrong answers, even grossly defective answers, that anyone familiar with basic math would've recognized immediately.
@@dawnmwalton1774 MIT professors said the inability to focus is showing up in the students' papers. Can't write two contiguous paragraphs with obvious concept flow. MIT, deep research requiring deep focus, now in the hands of ... can't focus.
It was there prior to widespread Facebook. I started seeing it emerge at work in early aughts. Oddly, it first showed up as avoidance, the inability to handle disagreement.
12 Points to Reform US Democracy and the Electoral System. 1) Get rid of First Past the Post (FPP) (sometimes called plurality) voting, and introduce some form of Proportional Representation (PR) Rank Choice Voting (RCV) preferably - Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP(R) with Multi-Member Districts. MMP has voters select both a candidate in their local district and a party they'd like to win a majority. Everyone who wins a district gets a seat, and then additional seats are given out to ensure that parties are represented in proportion to their share of the party vote. This has a number of advantages. Unlike party list representation, people still have representatives with at least some ties to their local area. Voters get 2 votes: one for their local representative, and one for their favorite party. Mixed Member Proportional has familiar local representatives, and simple ballot. 2) Eliminate/abolish the Electoral College (Article 2, Section 1, of The Constitution). This would normally be difficult, because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. Over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College - without any becoming law. It requires two thirds of the House, two thirds of the Senate, and three quarters of the States to vote in favor. There is another easier way to effectively end the Electoral College without technically abolishing it. Agreement of the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote. An organization called the ‘National Popular Vote Interstate Compact’ (NPVIC) is pushing to eliminate the Electoral College without tampering with the Constitution. Once the NPVIC has reached 270 electoral votes, the passed bills from all the states will kick in and guarantee that the candidate with the highest vote total nationwide would become the president. So far, 15 states (CA, IL, NY, CO, CT, MD, MA, NJ, NM, OR, WA, DE, HI, RI, VT) and the District of Columbia (Total = 196 electoral votes) have committed to the cause. The bill has also passed at least one chamber in 9 additional states with 88 more electoral votes (AR, AZ, ME, MI, MN, NC, NV, OK, VA). So, we need 74 more electoral votes to eliminate the unfair influence of the Electoral College. A total of 3,408 state legislators from all 50 states have endorsed it. www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation *American citizens need to become politically active to make this happen before the 2024 election. 3) Go back to reliable ‘hand marked pen and paper’ ballots publicly counted and scrutinized. Design simple to understand paper ballots, Standardize the voting system nationally across all states, and do NOT use ‘Black Box’ electronic voting machines (EVMs) or ballot marking devices (BMDs), because any electronic devices are too easily hacked or manipulated to rig voting figures even if using ‘block-chain’ technology. Cyber-attacks can also be undetectable. www.coindesk.com/mit-paper-rejects-blockchain-based-voting-systems-elections Paper ballots are more reliable and can be recounted if necessary. Democracy is too important to allow the possibility for cheating. 4) Install an independent Election Management Body (EMB) to be responsible for the polling, conducting and tabulating of votes in elections and referenda, and the registration of political parties, oversight of campaign finance, design of the ballot papers, drawing of electoral boundaries, resolution of electoral disputes, civic and voter education and media monitoring for the safeguarding the legitimacy of democratic institutions and the peaceful transitions of power. They need to ensure all aspects of any electoral contest meets global norms and follows the fundamental guiding principles of elections, including independence, impartiality, integrity, transparency, efficiency, professionalism and service-mindedness, that perform in the best interest of the voters. 5) Shorten the Election Campaigns to 4-8 weeks maximum (like most other advanced democracies. This also helps to get money out of politics). Ridiculously long campaigns (18mths) are a waste of money, resources and time; time that should be spent governing the country and providing social programs for citizens needs, not campaigning for re-election. 6) Voting Days to be held on the weekend (not Tuesday), and possibly in conjunction with Veteran’s Day Holiday. (Make it easier for all citizens to be able to vote). 7) Ban voter suppression, upgrade the Voting Rights Act, and introduce a 28th Amendment for the right of every citizen 18 years old and over the right to vote, or introduce compulsory voting (every eligible citizen votes - $50 fine if you don't vote) Australia has compulsory voting and because of this 95% voter turnout. By contrast in the US millions of voters are purged from voter rolls, and at least 40% of provisional ballots are thrown in the trash can and not counted. It’s just another method of rigging the electoral system. 8) Ban gerrymandering of districts to favor one political party. Independent commission should draw district lines, not partisan political parties. Voters should pick their politicians, NOT politicians their voters. 9) *Consider a Unicameral Congress (only House of Representatives needed to pass Bills. There's no need for the Senate to pass Bills, so situations like McConnell and the filibuster holding up important legislation cannot happen). *(NZ is an advanced democracy and has a Unicameral Parliament which works very efficiently). *(a Unicameral System is also one step closer to a direct democracy of all the common people). Unicameral System: www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unicameral-system.asp Bicameral System: www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bicameral-system.asp (*The majority of international governments use the unicameral system-with a roughly 60/40 split between unicameral and bicameral.) The only other option other than a unicameral system, is to make it mandatory for Bills passed in the House MUST be voted on immediately in the Senate. Mitch McConnell has sat on hundreds of Bills effectively blocking them from passing. 10) Campaign finance reform (donations only via private citizens with strict donation limits, ban corporate funding and influence). 11) Eliminate the need for political party registration (there’s no need to be affiliated to any political party, and it only encourages gerrymandering). No one should be loyal to just one political party. Force political parties to concentrate on policy to attract your vote. 12) Term limits on all politicians (Congressman and Senators) and judges (in particular Supreme Court justices - no lifetime appointments).
I disagree, especially with mandatory voting. Most non-voters are stupid and apathetic. They should not vote. It is good that most do not. Instead, voting ought to be a privilege for which people have to qualify, for example by being employed or possessing significant property. Anyone who came to America illegally, even if now a citizen, should be forbidden to vote.
@@kreek22 Pretty obvious you're a supporter of right-wing politics. having less people vote is the anti-democratic Republican strategy of minority power. And your comment about most voters are stupid and apathetic; what you really mean is voters that don't vote like you. You say voting should quote; "be a privilege for which people have to qualify, for example by being employed or possessing significant property". How undemocratic is that? Just another way for the minority elite to hold all the power and those less well off and suffering, for their issues to be ignored. Democracy is to address the issues of the majority, and if the majority are poor and suffering their issues gain weight and so should be addressed. Finally, I'm willing to bet you're just an immigrant only an few generations removed. You're not an indigenous American so why should you have any more rights than anyone else who's an immigrant.
It's not the institutions. It's the people within the institutions. We must choose people who understand problem solving, who understand negotiating, can accept compromise and who have integrity.
"We're not so much shooting those on the other side, we're shooting the moderates on our side." Man, Haidt is excellent. I'm sure there are those who don't like him, but throughout his career he's made a powerful case for liberalism (in the Smith-Mill sense) without sounding angry or dismissive of the left's social justice aspirations.
And it isn't because being moderate makes you right, it is that you get the dialectic and the opportunity to find the right answer when the left engages with it's full spectrum, and the right also. And then they engage each other.
Yes. That’s why I’m still so irritated with people like bill Maher and bari Weiss. For years they egged on the far left because they were all on the same side. Then one day the radicals came for them.
50yrs ago my European relatives visited America. The commercials and programming on television made them laugh and they said that eventually TV would make us crazy. The constant exaggerated drama and sensationalism primed a significant portion of the population for the present condition
It's universally acknowledged that every $1 invested in education yields back $14 in benefits/returns. Yet Amurka has trillions for death machines and almost nothing for schools. Hmm, I wonder why. Well, if you think education is expensive, wait till you see the cost of decades more investment in Stoopa.
Thank you for the interesting discussion. We're living in a very scary period of "civilization" in which expressing one's opinion can have devastating effects on one's personal safety and well being (as Prof. Haidt mentions).
Well Haidt himself is uniquely stupid since he himself wants more "moderates" to have a voice on the political spectrum. Not understanding moderates are the reason why America has turned into a capitalist dystopia
I am not on any social media platform and have not owned a television in over 15 years. I am very selective about what I watch via my computer but Christiane Amanpour and her guests are worth the time to listen. The quality of discussion is time well spent. But generally, not so much.... I have better things to do than waste my time on "structural stupidity."
Agreed. I used to bother - lightly - with Twitter (for the almost instant business and finance news) and Instagram (for the pretty pictures and political chat). Never bothered with FB. Have no idea what much else there is. I came to a point that I realised that even the little time I dedicated to Twitter or Instagram was a consummate waste, as I would come away angry, bored, or dismayed. It's much better to just communicate with my friends directly; occasionally tell off a dummy on YT; and, generally LIVE my life rather than just waste it online. 🤷🏻♀️
You are on RUclips and you have a "smart"phone. You'll be fiiiiine. P.S. I have a friend who is in the same position. Two years ago he sent good money to a nigerian beauty so that she can buy the airplain ticket to come to Europe to finnaly meet him,her greatest love,but at the last moment she aborted the flight due to the sudden death of her grandpa by crocodile bite. And he's now worried about the chemtrails killing us all. He's an engineer.
I am impressed with this interviewer. He asks a question and then he shuts up and encourages the interviewee to speak at length in response. So many of the news interviewers talk and talk and talk, and then the interviewee has almost no time to try to formulate an answer. Good questions, intelligent interview structure. Nice job.
The first is eternal. The second is because multiculturalism and community are antonyms. Multiculturalism equals globalism, which is shorthand for American global dominance--but, the American elite requires global dominance to fully secure its wealth and power. They don't want to end up like the Russian elite, watching its wealth snapped up across the world. When the American elite commits war crimes, it gets to keep its wealth because of its global power.
Im an author on psychology and the collapse of civilisations and its built into the capitalist model. Money = power and capitalism is a money funnel, it moves money inexorably to the top and therefore it moves power to the top and eventually the rich get MORE powerful than the government and at that point, the country is no longer governed for the benefit of the people but for the rich to get richer... And society starts to collapse.
@@paulwheeler6609 Fortunately, We have at our disposal a vast collection of maps that we can use to discover escape routes back to healthy community. These maps are called history. Since history demonstrates healthy communities have developed many times and places, we know it can be done. Synthesize the lessons, adapt them to the present time, generate political will--and the thing will be accomplished.
A beloved friend has gone down the antivaxxer rabbit hole and sounds like a cult member. Someone even closer to me has gone down a different route, conspiracy theories which to me map strangely onto antisemitic tropes... Not quite that bad yet, but heading there. This is taking a toll on our relationships because the fact I disagree somehow means I am colluding, or at best, an idiot. It hurts so much.
I had a similar experience, losing a close friend whose perspective evaporated. This person also became angry and after a period of unease like you describe directed that anger at me for not agreeing to validate her conspiratorial frame of reference. I stopped communicating with her. She now lives in a closed cognitive loop beyond the reach of family and friends. It happened quickly. It's a little bit like a zombie apocalypse in real time. The person I knew is just - gone. Shocking. The loss is painful and so unfortunate. These are all tragedies.
@@marthareis5873 thank you for articulating what happens, I found it helpful. People get caught in a closed loop, and it is not enough to agree to disagree. If you disagree you are part of the problem.
Yes, this is something I'm experiencing with a couple of friends. It's very difficult to avoid getting into arguments and I have to walk away at times. Some acquaintances are no longer tolerable company. It makes me sad but the constant conspiracy/ conflict is exhausting after a while.
I met Jonathan on my campus in 2018, on his book tour (The Coddling of the American Mind). Great guy. Systemic stupefying is a thing. In the twentieth century, children grew up and came of age in two world wars, a great depression, a cold war, and a number of significant social upheavals. There were no "hockey-stick" graphs that revealed a significant social and psychological meltdown during any of these times. Of course people were tougher. Of course children were socially processed through times of accountability and stability. When I was a kid, I dreamed of freedom. In order to dream of freedom, I had to be aware of what it actually was, what its purpose was in a kid's life, what it aimed for in an adult life, and what were its costs, liabilities and outcomes. I spoke briefly to Mr. Haidt about all that. I think there is a key hiding somewhere in the middle of all of that. He did not disagree. Because so many young people trade their freedom away now, for the illusion of safety. For smoke and mirrors. As if it is a value-less thing. And I say, turnaround, Liberty. And take a good long look at what's been going on behind your back. A nation turns its' lonely eyes to you, and doesn't even possess the language anymore, to address your exalted self. Mistakenly thinking that you're just a simple silent statue. You are the beginning of the greatest conversation America has ever had with itself.
Great message that won't reach the extremists. A few weeks ago I posted a message on a RUclips video that closed with this: "A lot of our problems come down to a lack of communication between the two political parties and their splinter groups. Marjorie Taylor Greene is the result of a lack of communication. Because there is no meeting in the middle, you get zealots. It just so happens that the Right is better at zealotry than the Left." I find that if you write something people don't agree with (or don't want to agree with even when it is reasonable), you will either be ignored or get blasted. In this case I was ignored. But I think that what I wrote is inline with what Haidt had to say.
@Listening to Intelligent People All thinking on the right is childlisly simplistic. It all reduces to yelling points. The left understands nuance and complexity which does not reduce to yelling points.
@@RickMartinRUclips RUclips is hardly the sort of toxic technology as Facebook or Twitter. "The algorithm" feeds you videos, yes. But the comment section is extremely limited. You can't "follow" a commenter. If you stay out of the comment section, it's not really social, or barely so.
im a teacher and my students have non-existent attention spans and self-control. I myself got a smart phone for the first time in 2011, then left the country and didnt have a smartphone until i returned to the US in 2015. those years without a phone/social media were the happiest years for me.
I don't have a smartphone. My computer screen broke a few months ago and it took me a week to arrange a new screen. During that week without any screen entertainment I read a book and listened to my records. The enjoyment of those felt greater than ever. As if I had had much more time and no hurry.
I am impressed with this news channel providing some unbiased commentary compared to the main stream news channels. Jonathan Haidt is a really interesting academic he is great on podcasts. Cheers from Australia
While I agree that social media is a driving force, I think it is important to remember that Citizens United has also had a profound effect on skewing politics and discourse in the US.
It should be called Not-Necessarily-Citizens United, as the money is anonymous, so who knows where it's coming from. Surprisingly, even ACLU objected to legislation proposing donor disclosure requirement.
"There's is no ability to have a common understanding of what we are doing. ... There is no possibility for ... widely shared stories in the age of social media." "There's a huge decline in trust. Trust in each other and trust in the institutions" "Social Media generally leads to a decline in trust."
Well, as I explained to a Canadian some years back, implosion of visibility, in what's occurring now, and what's occurred in the past, including long past, all at once. A grand reckoning, so to speak.
I like Haidt, but I have always seen his argument as too narrow. I prefer the argument put forward by Hannah Arendt. Materialism is at the heart of the fall of society. She argued that both Smith and Marx missed the point, in that they were arguing over who should get what in society, not how society should function in relation to the community. She used the term “alienation” to describe people losing their connection to community and becoming isolated in their pursuit of personal gain, ie. materialism. I think social media has exacerbated that trend, which is where Haidt is somewhat correct. It bombards people with information comparing their material well-being to that of the people they know, while hiding all of the negative aspects that nobody sees. I see my classmates or coworkers on vacation somewhere beautiful. I think “my life is so shitty” because I can’t afford to go on vacation. I don’t see the sacrifices they put in to pay for that vacation, or the debt that they’ve accrued, or the fights that happen over that debt. This ultimately impacts any solution you’re going to find to the problem. If you’re just trying to solve the social media problem, you’re going to fail. It may help to draw the process out, but it will still end in failure. I believe we need to find ways to see value in community rather than personal achievements. I’d love to see a UBI with a requirement to do community service. I think getting people involved in their communities would go a long way to restoring that sense of oneness.
Good comment. It makes me think about "The Secret" where people all "visualize" that the cosmos will make them rich but nobody asks to become a more mature, better person. I keep repeating it but I think in the Seventies, people were less materialistic.
It's actually not "materialism" that is the heart of any society. It is SURVIVAL, and with that, access to the resources we need to facilitate that survival. I believe Marx, Arendt and others were noting that when humans see restricted or no access to what we need to survive, it leads us to our worst behavior because this is processed by our brains as a THREAT. When humans are under threat, the amygdala gets triggered and the limbic system drives the show. Access to the prefrontal cortex is diminished or shut out so the threat can be handled in as quickly a manner as possible. This "amygdala hijack" phenomenon is the key because when it is overused, it leads us to very limited thinking. Overuse of the amygdala is what leads to "stupidity". It's not designed for executive function like context or critical thinking. That is the hallmark of the prefrontal cortex. More fear leads to more amygdala hijack, which leads to increasing emotion-based, short-term thinking because this is the type of thinking needed to handle a threat. We lose out on important context and critical thinking. Everywhere you look in the US, including social media, is the constant drip-drip-drip of fear-mongering propaganda, leading us to over-rely on the limbic system and under-utilize the prefrontal cortex. Fear leads to stupidity. Fear that is based on the lack of resources we need to survive and a false belief that some deserve that access, even at the expense of everyone else's access. At the heart of any society, healthy or not, is their SURVIVAL STRATEGY. One that increasingly excludes and allows for hoarding, is a society that will hate change, diversity and cling to traditional ways to maintain the survival advantage of just a few, often with increasing cruelty. This type of society continually engages our amygdala. These are DOMINANCE based societies. A society that increasingly includes others and discourages hoarding will be more open to change, diversity and continually evaluate traditions and institutions, but all that "positive behavior" can't be facilitated using any threat or force. It must come from making a continually logical and objective case for why this strategy is in everyone's best interest. This appeals to the prefrontal cortex. These are societies based on the concept of NURTURING.
This is what you get when you give everyone a voice with the option of anonymity! First, everyone should be required to use their real name and photos. Second, everyone isn’t intelligent enough to speak in public. Some will find this harsh, but unfortunately it’s factual.
I think that we need anonymity to remove the ego factor. You should have to register your real identity so that the authorities can track you down if you do something illegal, like threaten to kill someone. However, each conversation should use a randomly generated anonymous name for that conversation. This forces people to focus on the points made in the discussion, rather than who said it. Toxic behavior like cancel culture, celebrity worship and bullying could be eliminated. No one can dismiss your ideas based on who you are or what you've said in other conversations e.g. "This guys a Trump supporter, don't listen to anything he says!" When it's not tied to your real identity, I think people will be more willing to accept that they might be wrong about something. If you want to learn, you have to be wrong sometimes! Down votes will take care of unintelligent or off-topic comments.
@@waitaminute2015 2022 and racism in Florida. Very sad, but not surprising to hear. I wonder, assuming you've lived in Florida for a while (5+ years), have you seen the racism and other bigotry worsen, stay the same, or get better over that time?
Completely agree. I worked in the media for 20 years. Canadian media that is. Rules do exist. One just can't say whatever they feel like. Social media has given everyone the opportunity to say whatever they want with zero accountability. Amazing how the term "fake news" has become so popular at the same time.
Hahaha. I completely agree. I don’t like the cyclical putting down of the next generation… oh when I was your age I was so wise & hardworking & sacrificing.. I want to stop myself before I get that annoying. Stupidity is omnipresent and cross generational. It just shows up in different ways
"The biggest thing is we could all just take it easier on each other. Once we understand that we're all being driven crazy by this stuff, it's like we're all being fed poison gas, so when people do extreme things, stupid things, don't get mad at them, don't tweet how terrible they are, just ignore it, just ignore it. Um, we have to go easier on each other if we're going to make it as a country." Wow, what a closing statement! Makes me think this man has no understanding of the social media platforms and how they work and the corporations that own them. To put it the most simply: Clicks = $. The more clicks something gets, the more worth it has to an advertiser. The advertisers pay money to the social media corporations to advertise, and choose where to advertise based on traffic (clicks). The more extreme, stupid, and hateful something is, the more clicks it gets. It goes viral on Facebook, it starts trending on twitter. Anyone on social media would understand this if they are paying attention. The purpose of a corporation is to maximize profit for their shareholders. That means they are obligated to attract as many advertisers as possible. That's why their algorithms boost things that attract attention. Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news and gets boosted. This is why we are seeing constant coverage of Ukraine in the news and zero attention paid to important issues affecting our own country, you know, like GOP politicians trying to destroy democracy in this country. Weapons manufacturers and the military industrial complex are delighted. Mainstream media outlets are all owned by like 6 giant conglomerates. The corporations fund the campaigns of politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) that will do their bidding to de-regulate all private industries from health insurance and big pharma, to fossil fuels, mining, logging, agriculture, weapons manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, the chemical industry (including pesticides that have already destroyed bird and insect populations around the world, including the PFAs or "forever chemicals" that are now ubiquitous in our waterways and found in the blood of humans and animals everywhere www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained), the plastics industry that has caused microplastics to be found in our air, water, food, rain, everywhere they look. There is a revolving door between our government and corporations. After terms in office, many become lobbyists. Lobbyists are appointed governmental posts and heads of agencies controlling major areas of interest to corporations, like fossil fuels and other resource extraction industries. All mainstream media is biased because they are corporations that depend on advertising for their profits. They will not go against the basic corporate line. Campaign contributions go into mainstream media through advertisements. It is all connected. The ONLY ANSWER IS TO REFORM CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS. We are doomed if we don't get money out of politics. Abortion is being outlawed RIGHT NOW in numerous states--that too brings profits to corporations--every baby can generate a dozen new consumers in its lifetime, if not twice that. Each requires all the products produced by corporations. The more competition for jobs, the more people are forced to work for low wages with zero safety regulations. He understands the implications of social media but apparently does not understand why these profit-making enterprises will continue to push lies and hate and deflect from discussing things like having single-payer health care for all Americans, like every other developed nation. The horse is out of the barn. He forgot to do the number one thing when trying to understand how this country works now: FOLLOW THE MONEY. Being nice does not generate clicks. The very act of going on Twitter puts me into a rage of hate and despair reading the hateful things posted by not only bigots, but BOTS under the control of foreign countries like Russia (just check RUclips comments on mainstream channels, they are FULL of hateful posts by bots with no content on their account, sometimes created only days prior. The emotions of hate, and anger are counterproductive to human life and peace. Sorry for the long post. I wanted to be hopeful, but he missed the point at the end.
100% correct. Follow the money. Corporations funding politicians. Even Ukraine is US etc. perfect NIMBY war making oddles of money for the US, French, etc bomb makers. It is because CRAPitalism has people fooled... the more homes, cars, clothes you have the better human you are...Egos run amock.
Let's completely gloss over the fact that the US had played a very important role in the instability of Latin America. But no, let's use Latin America as the example of what we don't want the United States to become. 🙄😒
While it feels like decades, Facebook started in 2004. We have the data, we should fix the problem. Our kids deserve better; model the behavior you want to see, set limits on screen time, read.
Technically, FB is just two years away for being in existence for two decades. So feeling like "it's been decades" isn't really that far off of the mark, literally speaking.
The right wing corporations bought up over 95% of the media in the early 2000's and that is when the dumbing down of America hit high gear. Social media has helped stop many from believing the bullshit from corporate media on TV.
Thanks so much, Hari Sreenivasan, and Prof. Haidt. From a polyglot linguist’s perspective, I would add something. I noticed that the greediest, crookedest, richest Repugnithugs were taking over “Conservatism” from the shadowy backdrops of the stage, for their personal gain, in the ‘90s, in Germany. And it was spreading, as I realized upon my return to the US, around 2005. I have been battling vehemently online, ever since. The key element of civilization, of what I consider cultured behavior, is civil, reality-based dialogue between individuals. That takes reliable knowledge of facts. Here in my belovëd America, the R-Party swallowed the poison pill of weaponizing intentional divisiveness for their privatized power (and damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!), over a decade ago. That will be very difficult to cure. The really important thing we must remind all our voting fellow-citizens of is this: “Do you really want to rob your offspring (children, grandchildren, etc.) of their future, because of your petty fears?”
Yes, wasting my or there lives on petty fears..how true.. why isn't that shouted from the roof tops.. Drives me f...ing bonkers. Dosent seem to be enough balance between terrible things happening in the world (Ukraine) and so many more and how lucky so of us in the west are..
Always love to hear from Jonathan. I still need to get a copy of "The Coddling Of The American Mind." I've heard him speak about it many times, but have never actually read it! While everyone seems to be aware of the corrosive effects social media has on public discourse and childhood emotional well-being, I also fear its deleterious effects on our language. Read through the comments on any RUclips video, and you'll see comments with no punctuation, no capitalization and ATROCIOUS abbreviations for words (i.e. "u" for "you"). It's what I heard one clever RUclipsr call "textspeak," and it infuriates me! (Yes, I understand that languages are constantly undergoing transformation, but this is more of a deterioration -- literally stripping away the very STRUCTURE of the language!). On a broader note, I also wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Haidt that, far too often, it's the moderate middle that suffers the most from the increasing polarization brought on by the extremes of both Left and Right. And in political terms, that makes me terrified for the future of our country. As the Republican Party goes off the cliff, wholeheartedly embracing the worst fringes of their base, and as the Democratic Party caters more and more to IT's fringes, for fear of losing their base, those of us in the reasonable middle are left more and more to choose between the lesser of two evils, or perhaps refuse to choose at all. I've been around for six decades now, and while I still have hope, I've never been more pessimistic about America's future than I am right now.
Nice to see someone can view Dems and Reeps on an even keel. Both parties have never been worse. Biden is having a rough go of it and I cannot help to feel it is mainly due to fact that he is trying to cater to the Leftists of which he is not. Meanwhile Trump is still king on the other side .... ffffffFFFFFFFkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
Spent 20 years in Asia. Before social media, every single commuter on the train or bus read a newspaper or a book. Then, in the space of a year or two, all tapping on the phone. Massive loss on future mental dexterity for sure.
The interviewer is very good! He asks, then listens, and responds accordingly. Thorough discussion that encouraged clarity and provided further knowledge and information.
As a non-American the stupidification has only been an acceleration of what already was existing in America for decades. I'm hard pressed to think when America wasn't self-stupefied. It's easier to see the similar "hockey stick" jump in poor health, fitness and obesity. Common factor, corporations find a means to efficiently trash humans for immense profit.
Very interesting - I see this kind of thing in my own little sphere. Zooming out, I think we have a dearth of leadership all over the world at the moment.. I'll have to read the essay! Thanks guys.
Agree re leadership. In fact part of the overwhelming admiration of Zelensky is exactly due to his credulous leadership qualities which have been wonderfully amplified by the PROPER use of social media.
The thing he said about identity verification was really good. That would be a tremendous help in getting rid of spammers, scammers, bots and fake accounts that try to make an unpopular opinion seem more popular than it actually is.
Well…even with identity verification, and having a hard “no pseudonyms allowed” (CBC’s comments section has this) you will still get the contrarian troll (they seem to to come from Alberta, and rural Saskatchewan Canada, for the Americans Alberta and Saskatchewan are known as Texas (Alberta) north, and a slightly smarter version of Mississippi (Saskatchewan) )
Mostly good, but I'd tweak it a little by saying most people in US politics have been captured by corporate donations. Those who accept no corporate donations are pretty much the sole exception. Well covered in the book Winner Take All Politics. The mechanics of how the platforms damage us is well covered in the book Stolen Focus.
It's funny, but serious. And this is from a very mature person. Around 2005 I started looking at MySpace. I started seeing all these people at night clubs and other type parties, and I started to feel 'out of touch' with life in general. But after a while, it came to me, that as a professional musician, I was out playing in clubs and parties most weekends. The only difference between them and me, is that I wasn't posting pictures of my life. So if I could feel that way, it is easy to understand how a young person could look at others and feel 'out of the flow'.
It seems some people live their lives through the screens , other live their lives doing stuff. When playing music you were living, doing something, you were not looking at other people at a party. I think it is a big difference.
Besides, how sad was it that they were so desperate for attention that they kept posting photos of themselves all the time? "Is this activity that I'm doing finally cool enough? No? What about this one? Or this one? Or any of the next 1,000? Do you like me yet, random stranger? Do you? Huh? Do you?!?" I never understood the appeal of that - what a terrible way to live!
@@happybunny892 I wouldn't say 'desperate'. It more like showing off, for attention. And then add, monetized social media into the mix. Now some young people make a living just by showing an attention grabbing lifestyle.
I’m grateful my Sons grew up before social media. They are smart. They played sports. They sang and participated in musicals and plays. Went to Church and socialized with other Students doing positive things. They turned out great!! And so did their Friends.
I've enjoyed many diversity-awareness trainings. It helped me open my mind to the variety in my professional/academic groups. Maybe others have not reaped as many benefits as I have.
When Edison invented the gramophone, people stopped playing live music as much. When people started going to the movies every weekend, they stopped singing around the piano. When kids stay inside and read a book, the don't learn to play outside, or play well with others. All media is the opposite of "social" because it's non-participatory, it is merely observed. If only you could observe from my POV - with no TV or smartphone to sway me into rationalizations - you'd quickly see the social distortion and loss of empathy of the screen zombies.
There has always been some type of social media except in the most technologically primitive of societies. Books, magazines even a play is a way of substituting media for social interaction. What about listening to someone tell a story? So, an interesting point but there is spectrum of gray and clearly things are more complicated. It is more that social media on the internet is designed to stimulate and leverage our desire for social interaction for commercial purposes and this has lead to it being used as a poor substitute. Social masturbation is probably an accurate, if crude description. Like pornography, Social Media stimulates and but ultimately fails to satify one of our basic desires.
@@logaandm A less crude alternative term for this facet of social media use is commodified validation seeking. Works better with a mixed audience and hints at the financial incentives of the corporate social media platforms towards addictive and exploitative usage.
@@markromine5103 It's a perfect model for the oligarchy. Big business profits, big government surveils. This is the apotheosis of the fascist New Deal system: increased wealth, increased control.
The article "Do Learners Really Know Best? Urban Legends in Education" takes a critical look at three pervasive urban legends in education about the nature of learners, learning, and teaching and looks at what educational and psychological research has to say about them. The three legends can be seen as variations on one central theme, namely, that it is the learner who knows best and that she or he should be the controlling force in her or his learning. The first legend is one of the learners as digital natives who form a generation of students knowing by nature how to learn from new media, and for whom “old” media and methods used in teaching/learning no longer work. The second legend is the widespread belief that learners have specific learning styles and that education should be individualized to the extent that the pedagogy of teaching/learning is matched to the preferred style of the learner. The final legend is that learners ought to be seen as self-educators who should be given maximum control over what they are learning and their learning trajectory. It concludes with a possible reason why these legends have taken hold, are so pervasive, and are so difficult to eradicate.
Very nice. Thanks. I was there when it began to change. In the late 60s there was a famous book, The Student as N-word. The idea was that students needed more autonomy. In the early 70s there was more choice, lots of it good. Interdisciplinary studies. Focus on certain groups. For example I took a class on the Psychology of Women, taught by two female grad students. It was basically literature review of where men and women differed or were they same. The small seminar, mostly women, were committed to understanding the data. Or requiring an Asian art survey course for an Art History major. Even calling it Asian instead of Eastern or Oriental. But here's the point. We had a good education by the time we were given this freedom. The freedom was gradual. And most of us weren't completely crazy, so the adults didn't have to do much to control us. They could treat us as future colleagues. Somehow this went off the rails, as you describe. My sense is the unwillingness of adults of Biden's generation to say No. (I'm not talking politics, I'm pointing to non-Baby Boomers that had the power.) Add to this the radicalism of the woke and boom, disaster. The sad part is that they are harming the kids least capable of educating themselves. Tragic.
In an updated intro to Brave New World Aldous Huxley wrote that there were too many distractions for many people to think deeply about issues. These constant distractions were preventing people from taking the time to just ponder issues from a variety of perspectives and consider how they affected them and society. This was written in 1958, so I guess if he were alive now he would just consider the human race is done.
I enjoyed the Atlantic article - finally someone articulated what I’ve been thinking for years. I’ve been off FB since 2014. Tangent: I once had an interesting conversation with Professor Haidt when he was at UVA. It was about psychedelics.. I believe he misunderstood a perspective I was trying to convey.. ..Fast forward many years, and I hear him having a similar conversation with Sam Harris, and he seemed to appreciate what I had tried to convey all those years earlier. I believe there was a “professor vs student” bias, whereas with Harris, he was more open, or maybe he had learned more in the intervening years.. Nevertheless, he asked great questions that got me thinking critically Anyway, I really appreciate Professor Haidt. We are lucky to have him
Great interview. His point about closed party primaries is super important. Specifically, it's the "first-past-the-post" nature of these primary elections -- i.e., whichever candidate gets the MOST votes, no matter how small a percent of the total they may have earned. It's why the candidates who end up on the ballot are usually more extreme than many voters feel comfortable voting for (or sometimes, more centrist than they would prefer.) It's arguably the reason Trump won the Republican nomination back in 2016: when your goal is simply to get your single choice past everyone else, the nature of the debates quickly becomes acrimonious and uncooperative, focused at least as much on tearing down the "rivals," but in contrast, ranked-choice voting has the opposite effect. Ranked-choice voting requires you to rank your first, second, third, etc. choice. I've seen mock elections happen this way, and the effects are completely different that of conventional elections. First of all, there's a change in mindset for individuals: instead of creating an exclusionary outlook it makes your mindset more one of "yes and" mentality (well, I like candidate A best, but candidates B and C are pretty okay too, and I could live with candidate D, just not candidate E.) It also keeps the crazies from dominating the attention and getting most votes. With Trump, far more Republicans strongly disliked him in 2016 than supported him, but they were spread between a dozen other candidates, and as a result Trump's base won because they together outnumbered any of the other camps. If it had been ranked choice, they'd have ranked him last and their votes would have gone to someone they considered more appealing than him, even if they didn't get their first choice. I saw a similar thing at a Democratic Debates watch party in 2019: everyone was surprised by the candidates who ended up coming in first and second, because they weren't most people's first choice, but in the discussion that was held afterward, everyone agreed that if they couldn't have their first choice, they'd have been pretty satisfied, and were surprised to learn they had so much in common with people who were supporting another candidate. (Oh, and it led to a thoughtful, open-minded conversation afterward, instead of leaving people gleeful or mad, like most elections do.) The biggest reason most people dismiss ranked-choice is that it's "too complicated" or "not transparent," but the truth is that elections are already complicated, and can deal surprises for good or for bad. The important thing is that the data is made available immediately afterward, and that all the proceedings are done in the open. I truly believe that implementing ranked-choice is the single biggest thing we can do in the short term to save our democracy. It's gaining momentum in many states already. Here's a good description to see how it works. ruclips.net/video/oHRPMJmzBBw/видео.html
Agreed - don't engage with crap on social media - just report if really bad, block trolls and fools, and mute those who don't debate based on assuming good will, name-callers, etc. Then algorithms won't amplify their messages as much.
OK ... but what about the thousands of crappy channels? If you ignore them, they turn into echo chambers, if you engage with them, you risk increasing the polarization. I try to comment on channels that sprew misinformation politely, with little or no reaction. The few times I loose my temper I get a lot of reaction, but contribute to the problem. Seems a Catch-22.
@@KlausJLinke 100% true. For a long time I tried "neutral fact checking" alone, and surprised I'd often get Trump supporters supporting me because to them, any fact checking on the left proves they must be right that media is biased against them.
@@aresmars2003 Many are so heavily primed that what they got from their social media sources (or Fox News, RT, ...) must be right, and any contradictory fact is "mainstream propaganda", that it seems hopeless. OTOH, sometimes they seem actually grateful that somebody took their rant seriously, and turn more polite and mellow in further responses. It seems more about putting a small dent in their "Feindbild" (their concept of their perceived enemies, whether progressive, green, refugee, gay, trans, whatever), than getting through with facts.
The main problem is the state media, the official press, not the social media anarchy. The official press lies and lies and lies. They are dead to me. But, their lies have discernable patterns. One can generally answer the crux question: Cui bono?
Social media is hardly confined to the US. Indeed by children and grandchildren from Brisbane to Bungoma to Barnes to BC use it. It is admittedly a great tool for the spread of corrosive miss-information across the globe, yet this almost apocalyptic impact on what passes for the thought processes of the least informed in society is so much more marked in the US than elsewhere, except where free access to the internet is constrained by authoritarian regimes. Why is this so obviously the case?
Social media, our economy is what it is because our political system has deep systemic problems. If a system is not functioning properly, many new problems will appear that are difficult if not impossible to fix. Eventually, the system will break down completely and chaos will reign. Our constitution of a presidential democracy was created in response to a failing political system, the II Articles of Confederation., a parliamentary democracy, at the Constitutional Convention of 1788-89 in direct response to Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts. America doesn't do systemic problems since then. But how do you fix the myriad problems systemic failure causes if you don't fix or change the system? Germany has changed its political system four times in the first half of the last century. Other European countries have changed their political systems as well. Italy, Greece, France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries...
It really is a shame that this man's message will only be heard by a small percentage of the population.
You read my mind. How do we reach the people who need to hear this message/read the article?
Share
@@Maliceless100 Tweet
Nah. He's a hack.
@@francinebacone1455 How do you address the long-term suicide studies that line up with social media for both boys and girls? The fact is, the human brain isn't well evolved to deal with this type of mass interaction. Not just children but adults. And it's certainly evident algorithms designed to maximize ad revenue with sensationalism are not maximizing social cohesion; they're doing the opposite.
Social media has stunted the maturity level in politics to such an extent it will be the end of the west. It’s not a kid problem. It’s an adult problem.
Yep
Maturity = submission to constituted authority. And submit even more enthusiastically when said authority lies. How to distinguish from Stalinism?
@@kreek22 You are just another example of the toxic immaturity.
@@kreek22 Your contention that maturity is characterized by enthusiastic submission to liars is preposterous.
@@incognitotorpedo42 You failed to register that it was a sarcastic reply to a stupid comment.
Gave my 5th grader a flip phone. Lasted about a year before she was burning with shame for having it. Her and mom put the full-court press on me. Got her an iPhone. Six months later, she's now in therapy for anxiety and depression. The social pressure to have them is too great. Parents who managed to keep kids free of devices even just 5 years ago have no idea how incredibly more desirable and addictive they have become. No user stands a chance against algorithms.
This is ancient History but, many years back we moved to an area (Used to be beautiful) where there was no cable TV. We had Hundreds of movies. The kids spent all summer in the backyard in the creek. We had ONE, yes one phone. When cable came we still didn't get it for some time. We Actually had neighbors and adults from their school who accused us of "Child Abuse" because we would not get Cable. Yes - it is TRUE ...
I can't imagine having a phone that young. I don't think I had a smart phone until I went to college, and that was later than a lot of my peers. I applaud you for resisting giving her one. Sometimes peer pressure has to win and I'm sorry it caused anxiety/depression :(
The internet is so unsafe for kids, I think. Honestly, I became suicidal because of bullying on the internet when I was 14. I was also too afraid to tell my parents back then. Also porn addiction which is destroying peoples brains. . .
anyway, wishing you and your family the best
Since the desire to have a smart phone is driven by peer pressure, there should be some way to counteract it. Maybe if enough parents of kids in some area got together and made a joint decision that all the kids in that area would only have flip phones, that might work. I'm just tossing out a suggestion. Other people might come up with something better.
Parenting is a challenge. If a parent's role is to protect and prepare a child for this world, peer pressure cannot be more powerful than that parent. Insert other harms like sports concussions, bad diet, gambling, teen sex, drugs, etc ... Can you be strong on children's protection. Study prefrontal cortex development to understand when humans are ready for making good decisions on their own, hey 25.
There's an answer. It involves leaving the school system and joining a homeschool group of parents who prioritize their kids growing up like human beings did throughout human history, that is, without smartphones. It's insane that parents are just expected to roll over and accept the megacorporations' predation on children for profit.
"when critics go silent, groups get stupid"
This is the 101 of our world today in one sentence.
sadly it's also a viable business model.
death of expertise
When people are dependent and helpless, then vicious critics cause fear and silence.
Never forget HUAC and McCarthy.
Not necessarily the whole world, but definitely America. This country can ill afford to "lower the curve" of the educational system as it exists today.
Trouble is.....critic these days is synonymous with attack (as seen on social media).....I like his comment re when the moderates go silent...the extremes on both sides go crazy...which is how it is now...big time ! Scary
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits ~said wise man
LOL. Similarly, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, Einstein replied that he was not even sure there is one on earth.
But stupidity also has limits, though not always recognised, by those with potential for genius.
Truth is that which defends us against confusion.
Confusion leads to defeat.
So departure from truth, is the point at which confusion parasitises the efforts, energy, and potential of those who might show genius
And thereby, that departure from truth, limits stupidity
@@johnsomebody1753 Doublespeak has limits.
Hah! Agree.
Einstein knew what up!
I'm 63 and during the 2016 presidential election, I kept asking myself what the hell happened to our country? The outrage was ridiculous. I started searching the internet for answers and the only one who was able to explain it, without saying it's the other side's fault, was John Haidt. He's brilliant.
What happened? Have you not been paying attention?
Offshoring of living wage work, onshoring of workers to depress wages of what's left. People are barely getting by. Started with "centrist" Clinton pairing off w/Reagan/Bush, passing NAFTA. 30 years of $2.13 an hour for tipped wage, regardless of who's held the congress.
Shamelessness in our politicians, visible by 2006, which is a hallmark of untouchable/unaccountable.
Both sides of the aisle, peddling half truth. Verifiable facts, but a long way from whole truth. Children. "But Mom..."
I have been a public school teacher for the last 28 years. It’s hard to explain to people how poorly todays students are doing in many aspects of their lives compared to students about 8 years ago. As more and more teachers that taught b4 social media leave the profession, this perspective will be lost. Honestly it might be…. Hey parents how about getting your kids a flip phone in case an “emergency” instead of the ironically named smartphone. I promise you it’s not making your kid smart 😐
My idea exactly. Why do children need a so called smartphone?
Our district went from having events where police could describe to parents the dangers of kids being online at all, mostly stuff like physical predators. You could not bring a phone to school. To the next year everyone basically had to have a smart phone in class, just to keep up.
@@skonther0ck to cheat and sext friends. Parents should get out of denial and go through kids phones daily
American schools: centers of abusive sexual indoctrination.
Just say no. Home school. It's not that difficult. And it allows you to bring the worst forms of mimetic rivalry to heel.
I agree entirely!
That’s the most thoughtful explanation of the effects of social media that I’ve ever heard, I think. We are in deep doodoo here in the US, politically and socially, but social media has made it infinitely worse.
@neil menace thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
@@neilifill4819 hopefully you’re not deluding yourself by thinking that RUclips isn’t social media. It’s thee most utilized SM site. Even over FB. And the second most used search engine. No thanks to your contribution to the discussion.
Don't take toxic replies personally, I say. It's your words being attacked, not one's existence.🤷
@@hoosierbaddy3052 I say, “Lift every voice.” However, I didn’t say much about RUclips or Facebook. Thanks for the stats.
@@judica8873 thanks. I’m not worried about negative responses to my words on any platform, to be honest. Part of the problem in which we find ourselves is the need for some people to attack each other on what are largely anonymous fields. Some people get their feelings hurt, but sadly, younger people aren’t able to shake these things off as well as they should. That said, I’m open to listening to everyone, regardless of how vitriolic people get. They often take someone’s words and appoint themselves as defenders of their truths. It’s much better to discuss ideas and agree to disagree, but who am I to judge?
When in doubt, I generally trust the guy who says “it’s complicated” and provides practical solutions instead of complaints over anyone who says “this is right period” or “that is wrong period” without explanation. I trust people who can calmly address objections (though as a scientist, I still check his sources). Thank you Dr. Haidt for the article and the uplifting coda.
Complexity-worship disintegrates the minds function in guiding successful survival action.
@@danielz8925 ...not troubling himself with such questions as how one calculates percentages of the unknowable
-Ayn Rand
Yes 1000%!!!
Honestly I feel kinda ashamed but it wasn't until a college philosophy class when I was like 21 or 22 that I learned critical thinking. I was never taught it in school. But in philosophy class we were forced to write not only our own argument/opinion, but what counter-arguments might be. I was forced to consider other people's viewpoints, which seems obvious, but I just..wasnt really doing it before. Probably as a result, I got sucked into conspiracies for a while. . .
One thing I've learned is that - if I am 100% believing and agreeing with everything someone says, that is a red flag. That means that I will think anything they think, and then I'm not thinking for myself. When I have allowed myself to doubt others, it was sometimes painful to disagree but it was also freeing. People I admired, unfortunately are wrong sometimes. And people I despise, can have profoundly correct things to say. But it's hard to put nuance into a 240 character tweet
@@TeaParty1776 lol - I’m pretty sure a scientist has a better conception of Bayes Theorem than a novelist who had doubts that evolution was really “a thing”
@@maryahhaidery7986 Rand was a philosopher, like the philosopher, Aristotle, who discovered scientific method and was the first scientist. Philosophy is the study of existence as a whole, ie., the context of all other knowledge. Science, knowingly or not, uses philosophy as a context and method for its specialized study. A true philosophy validates the science which appplies, knowingly or not. A false philosophy does not. Any claim about science as a whole is philosophical. Philosophy is the study of common human experience, the context of specialized knowledge. Philosophy is the study of man facing the universe.
Rands doubt was intellectual honesty in the context of her knowledge at that time.
She made no judgment about Bayes theorem. Philosophers using her philosophy have validated evolution, contra creationists, as properly inductive.
Excellent analysis, thank you. American democracy is operating outside safety limits. The extremes go viral and the moderates are silenced. Stupidity reigns. Thanks for working on it.
Not long ago, stupidity was reigned in by embarrassment. No longer.
Fantastic comment James.
The so called centrist moderates have been in charge for years now and aren't doing anything to improve the lives of ordinary people, rich people yes but not ordinary people, or enact policies in response to huge issues like climate change ...
"Moderates" are problematic...
The extremists have gone viral and in a way have "backed moderates into a corner" with no where to go. Also people used to have an escape from bullying or other forms of being put down. Now it is everywhere all the time.
It wasn’t lost on me that, after grilling the most recent SCOTUS nominee, one politician reportedly grabbed his phone and checked Twitter to see if he was trending. More like, if his behavior was trending. As you said, “American democracy is outside safety limits.” Soon, will we really able to call this a democracy and stay true to the theory?
Jonathan Haidt is officially non-stupid and non-crazy. We need more like him.
And yet FB will not let me share him on my FB page!
It's not "Social Media" it's how the nation has become a right-wing, capitalist dystopia, worse and worse every year, it's reflected everywhere, look into the actual "stressors", look at how this centrist concern troll is fudging this up, he's more right-wing than David Brooks.
@@oasisneko1 Y-tube is censoring many of the comments under this very video. Welcome to Stalinism--now with digital enhancements.
@@oasisneko1 I have friends on Facebook who I went to kindergarten with all the way through high school. I DON'T HAVE A SHITTY EXPERIENCE ON FACEBOOK. And hell, no one holds a gun to your head to PARTICIPATE!!! So, really - WTF???
And your comment is something to aim for in general.
Recently I realized how rare it is to hear genuine, balanced commentary on anything online any more, and the pockets where you can find it are gems. All the unique and insightful blogs I used to read are now gone. Google search results are diminishing. Reasonable people are being scared away from or simply just exhausted by the internet. It's such a dramatic pendulum swing away from where things were in 2006 or so. Hopefully the ship will right before we all topple over the side.
Increasingly more businesses want everything to be done on-line. Thus, people become increasingly more isolated.
@@lexyswope I couldn't even get paper copies of Nuvia permanent dental implants possible risks of surgery information I signed mailed to me. They insisted I needed to wait to get the paper copies when I went back in for my appointment in two weeks. The two weeks I waited I was in pain, bruised and swollen from my eyes to the bottom of my throat. They said they didn't have the ABILITY to mail anything. They also insisted that they could email me my copies. I'm 65 and am not well versed in technology. So, for two weeks while I was in bed in pain, bruised and swollen I had no information on the possible risks of Nuvia's surgery. And the woman I talked to on the phone to try to get my copies mailed to me hung up on me.
This was a real eye opener. The polarization is not really one side shooting at the other but each side's extremists shooting at their own moderates, causing them to go silent. And when it comes to social media, it's not just the content but the architecture that amplifies things. Thank you, Professor Haidt. It's too bad that only us "high brows" will hear this conversation or read your book.
Also ……there is a severe backlash against “highbrows” in general. There is a rush to be as stupid as possible.
There is nothing high brow about any of this--and nothing new in this analysis.
Social media has not changed the fundamental power relations in America.
And I perceive no indications that it has changed how those in power think.
The oligarchy abides; it seeks domestic submission and domestication of foreign nations; its tactics evolve, its strategy does not.
@@kreek22 Wow then. This video was completely wasted on you. Did you even watch it?
@@incognitotorpedo42 That's not a counterargument and it won't save Haidt from my torpedoes.
@@incognitotorpedo42 He's an example of a troll.Don't engage
I left FB behind 5 yrs ago. Not only had it become divisive and toxic but it just sucked away my time. I'd pop on for half an hour and next thing I know several hours had gone by. I still comment a bit here on YT but no FB, no Twitter or Instagram. In all honesty, it's been a good thing. ✌
I quit because people just showed how really annoying they really are
Yay! I never got into social media - it always felt like a complete waste of my time (because I don't feel any desperate need for validation from complete strangers of my thoughts or, like, photos of my breakfast). And, as someone who was never really involved in social media, I've had a (very upsetting) front row row view of how corrosive social media's influence generally is. I've watched once-normal people become these insecure, anxious, twitchy obsessives who can't stop themselves from grabbing their phones every few seconds. It's really disheartening to watch formerly smart, competent, well-adjusted people lose their attention span capacities and critical reasoning skills.
Over the past decade, the number of "Overcoming Insomnia" and "Increase Productivity" articles has exploded, and the #1 tip in almost all of them? "Don't look at your phone before going to sleep" and "Don't look at your phone first thing when you wake up." In fact, a lot of these articles recommend leaving your phone across the room (or in another room) overnight, so you're not tempted to look at it while in bed. There's inevitably something in that section along the lines of, "We know - it's hard. It might feel impossible. But just grit your teeth and soldier through the deprivation."
Like, seriously? Is this what we've become? Addicts so attached to their phones that it's physically impossible to not look at them for a few hours? How are people okay with this?
FWIW, I think RUclips is a bit different - the format isn't quite as short-form as the others, and seems less likely to cause the kind of weird, obsessive addiction that the others do.
so true, I look at FB maybe 10 times a year and try to limit my time there, although it is so easy to get sucked in for hours to see what everyone is doing, worse, comparing your life to others, which can result is putting yourself down in a “How did that idiot beecome so successful” or “Why doesn’t anything good happen to me” way, which can stunt your growth, push you into a depression and just make you fail more. It can suck the life from your brain and your goals.
I need to try this. I've been thinking about deleting my FB and IG for over a year now. It's such a waste of time and energy. It's an overload of the senses and exhausting. I can see why kids get depressed from social media, it's a toxic place.
Same, but I find YT comments section to be a total cesspool of trolls, bots, and god knows what... yet here I am. 😑
This is the most important youtube video I have ever watched.
I'm an amateur historian and this (social media or asocial media) has been bothering me for quite a while. It's nice to have put words on it. Thank you Jonathan Haidt.
You may want to read one or two of his books. The one I am currently re-reading is "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion." I think he's one of the more enlightened thinkers of our time.
@@ELACAnatomyHelp I will - in a while. I have so many books I want to read that he has inserted himself into my book cue. ;)
@Adam Jacobs There are so many. But if I should point out a few:
- The Civil War - An Illustrated by Geoffrey C.Ward (the companion book the series).(1992-3)
It tells the whole story about the US civil war in one book. But once you're finished with that you should read...
- The Civil War 1-3 by Shelby Foote. (1958) Reprinted 1994.
- The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler. (1963) 12th ed. 1993
- Verdenskrigen (The World War) 1-6 by H.Jenssen-Tusch, H.Ewald, E.Gyldenkrone, J.Lindbæk & H.Styrmer. (1922 in Danish)
An compassing history of the first world war. Each book is app. 600 pages.
- The Second World War 1-6 by Winston S.Churchill. (1948)
- Mussolini by Göran Hägg (2008)
And last but not least:
- Ägypten. Die Welt der Pharaonen. (2004)
An rather complete book of the Pharaohs and the world around them.
@@nanorider426 Interesting selection, all military and power history.
@@buzoff4642 There was a guy who asked about military history and supplied with a reading list and a book Egypt which is a comprehensive guide to the whole of ancient Egypt. I don't know where his question is.
I remember, at high school, that the debate team I was put on was contrary to the side I wanted. The teacher explained: to argue for the 'other side' is to consider all of their possible arguments against the motion. This is one step in learning empathy, which is essential to all human interaction, and that has stayed with me all my life. It becomes a thing that you do naturally when discussing different points of view: not just pushing your own conclusions, but considering theirs too. It's about avoiding (violent)conflict, which does nobody any good.
Censorship of others' views is not reasoned debate but outright refusal to brook anything that might contradict your 'privileged' view.
*_He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form._* ~ John Stuart Mill
Judging by your poor grammar, your education stopped after high school. I know you think the series of cliches you wrote is full of wisdom, but the “wisdom” of your comment is on the level of the average kindergartener.
That's true but there are troll farms, or bots, there's also that dangerous misinformation: for example a cooking tip video that last 50 seconds showing you a trick with caramel, not mentioning it's 350F hot and if it touches you you're screwed.
Agreed, the views/opinions we must question the most are our own.
@Grant Love your valuable perspective. Being on the opposite side of the debate is indeed a type of, objective intelligence, and should be a consideration for a professional position on every politician's team.
PRESIDENT Joe Biden - Quietly doing his job
NO crazy tweets, NO lying, NO whining,
NO insults, NO racist rhetoric, NO blaming
NO bragging, NO complaining, NO hate speech, NO racism, NO crimes< NO love of Putin.
Beautifully said. Bravo!
☝️
Absolutely agree. However there is a certain addiction in the media for politics to be like a reality show. So drama and craziness are focused on e.g the latest crazy thing Marjorie Taylor Greene has said. Meanwhile the politicians who work hard do not get the focus.
And sadly, no popularity. The nutters may soon be in charge again.
@@avasolaris1 It deeply frightens me! Not for myself.
My family is split, and I am the sole dissenter. As I am 85, this is a terrible thing to me. The disrespect is the worst of it.
"if you think how stupid the average person is you then realize that 50% are more stupid than that" George Carlin
50% are more, or less, than the median, not the average.
@@olivierbeltrami On the IQ scale, the median and the average are identical. Do you know why?
@@kreek22
Even rather than skewed distribution
But we're not talking about stupid individual people here. The discussion is about how our recent social norms are forcing society as a whole to become stupid.
@@lim4275 Yes, it is designed this way as a matter of mathematical convenience.
I highly recommend all of his lectures on, “The Coddling of America”. I can listen to them all, over and over again. Brilliant.
Sounds like something cucker would write
Its finance driven.
Thanks, will do.
I've been a journalist on the national level and a creative director and writer in advertising and i have a unique perspective on why the perception of "stupid" is not the key reason for the belief systems occurring in a majority of the population in the US. It has far more to do with laziness and the reliance on the erroneous thought that if you see something broadcast--anywhere, from TV to RUclips--it has been vetted and couldn't be a lie or else it wouldn't "be allowed". And these are the same people who willfully ignore the idea that RUclips innovated the entire idea of using stolen media without the legal ramifications any other business would be shut down for hosting (and they almost were until Google bought them).
Great point! I don't know if I've stolen this concept from somewhere, but I've been calling this the "illusion of transparency". The media give you the illusion of showing you straight facts but the enormous amount of filters that this "information" has already gone through is invisible to the naked eye. You HAVE to take the time to do your own research into how the sausage gets made! Of course, that has always been true - hence the universal and immortal relevance of Plato's cave - yet it's vastly more important today, when 99% of our reality consists of mediated content. Not even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages could have dreamed of so much power to define the population's minds.
Yes, we ARE headed towards Latin America with failed institutions. But one of the reasons is also that wealth is so unequal now. It's creating widespread hopelessness among younger people.
The inequality creates an unequal power distribution where only those institutions that serve the wealthiest are maintained.
Actually, Latin America is headed for us, by the millions per year. But, the good people, like Haidt, assure me that demographics have no influence on national character.
@@kreek22 Can you point to where Haidt has made that claim?
@@kreek22 Ya know he's actually NOT a left-wing if that's what you are implying. And why do you think they're coming here? Inequalty and Anarchy as well, which we are ALSO starting to have more of, with our 100 million guns and daily mass shootings...
@@bryanmachin2152
From chapter 8 of the Righteous Mind:
In 2007, that conference was held in Memphis, Tennessee. Ravi, Sena, Pete, Jesse, and I met late one evening at the hotel bar, to share our findings and get to know one another.
All five of us were politically liberal, yet we shared the same concern about the way our liberal field approached political psychology.
Amazing video. I’m from LATAM and I do see how the US is becoming more and more like a Latin democracy and at the same time, Latin democracies are also being affected by the extreme polarization created by social media. I love the guests and the interviews in this Chanel. Keep it up guys.
thanks for watching.
Ciertamente México padece de estas cuestiones. El clasismo y la ignorancia van de la mano. Apelar a supuestos valores unificadores ya no funciona: religión, clase social, color de piel, filosofía politica y económica. Sabio es el aquel que es tolerante y ejerce la democracia desde su persona. Culpar a AMLO--por ejemplo--por los males sociales, que en realidad son males de cada quien, no resuelve los males. Procurar más respeto, menos machismo y menos malinchismo. Ahi se empieza...
De qué pais?
It's becoming more like Russia and Kazakhstan
Same.
Finally a discussion I’ve noticed for years. I finally stopped using FB a few years ago. Too much criticism and I identified increase in depression in many young people but also adults. Anger issues became quite obvious to me. Thank you for this wonderful interview.
In a polarized society, FB pages became all about 'creating outrage'. You have your page, sometimes with millions of followers, mostly people in living in thought bubbles, and you generate outrage, flodding your page with exaggerated or just downright false articles about: Look at what "the others" did this time! This one is pretty much Hitler! False news is all around, even regular media do it. Just yesterday I was reading an article which said about a polling: This is how people feel about subject X. But when I went to check the polling to see what the actual question what, it was worded quite different that although the question looked similar, it was actually an entirely different question than what the article claimed it was. All to generate a 'see, people don't actually agree with what X did' article. Even though 'what X did' wasn't actually the question in the polling.
I graduated HS in '02 so I just missed the whole social media addiction thank god, school was bad enough as it was I can't imagine the mental anguish kids go through today.
Social media is the ultimate bully. That is why the kids are depressed, people pile on to an issue and bully to shut it down. Kids don't have the psychological foundation to stay centered with that kind of onslaught.
It's not only bullying, but also the fake "Perfect" life syndrome, where people only post doctored pics of themselves, having supposed "fun," and doing "amazing" things. It's all staged, and it makes others feel like they have to compete.
I saw middle school kids addicted to Myspace back in 2004 while I was in middle school. Facebook was still family-friendly, at least until 2013. Twitter and the massive expansion of social media after 2013 is a man-made disaster. Children, kids, teenagers, and young adults were so much happier in the 1990's and early 2000's before social media fundamentally changed society. The use of social media to destabilize societies by foreign governments after 2012 should have been a red flag. Terrorists like ISIS were recruiting Western teenagers into ISIS in 2014. Hate groups and human trafficking is thriving in 2022 and the FBI came out and said they can't stop it because social media is using paywalls to hide criminal activity.
And you wonder why republicans like DeSantis are opposed to SEL. Social Emotional Learning.
Theres always the off button.
Evil or Good, its a spiritual choice...if kids are not taught love god, love your neighbor as yourself Evil will victor,,its promised x the creator.. free will, choose redemption with it.
Jonathan Haidt is so good at bridging the divide. He deserves an even wider audience than he already has.
4:44 “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” John Stewart Mill
5:43 “When critics go silent, the group gets stupid.”
It's John Stuart Mill. He wasn't Jewish.
Nietzsche said victory in war makes nations stupid.
Negativity breeds negativity, as positivity breeds posivity. This is an excellent view on the destruction of our society via social media. Thank you both!
Trite.
Social media allowed the nation, to watch muscle head squeeze the life out of George Floyd, while others watched and did nothing, for 9 minutes.
There's a whole lot of BS on social media, but there's also a whole lot of exposing the inexcusable, of a nation.
This interview should be mandatory for every educational institution, from kindergarten through university. And it should be replayed every week until things are put right and we're not driven crazy anymore.
Living amongst these stupid people has been a nightmare that seems to keep going
Exhibit A: the covid rates.
Humans dont change and are basically stupid. Not too long ago we were burning witches, and shitting in buckets and throwing it into the streets. Now we’re just doing the same things in different ways.
Says the guy with the high school education and horrific grammar.
@@LemonsAndSalt69 precisely the point
@@LemonsAndSalt69 that sentence is grammatically correct mate...but you're an American. Everything right us wrong and wrong is right to y'all
"When critics go silent, the group gets stupid". Good takeaway. Thanks Jonathan Haidt!
That line reminds me that sometimes saying something obvious is nonetheless informative to people who do not introspect.
@@kreek22 Yes, and the nature of media (news AND social) that by design serves to sequester us into our own information silos squelches the critic in US too. Or at least tries to, as many of us attack opposing views that we feel (or are made to feel) that the opposing views are coming from 'the enemy'. How do we fix this? How do we truly listen to one another without being triggered?
@@harlanjackson6112 I'm perhaps more cynical than Haidt, or more realistic. I agree that social interactions have become less friendly, more noisy, maybe even more stupid. But, I think this is a deliberate control strategy by the ruling class, a method of distraction and atomization of the lower orders. They prefer these petty, aimless squabbles to the possible alternative of people noticing *them* and the character of their rule: the permanence of the oligarchy, the irrelevance of elections, the growing wealth of the wealthy, the incompetence of the elite, its mendacity, its censorship and manipulation practices, how the core media organizations are the official state press, etc.
@@kreek22 Yes. And it doesn't help when our education system fails to teach the critical thinking skills we need to be able to see through this. It does teach us to be good consumers though, and good worker bees. But as the wealth disparity widens we see more mental health issues, homeless, drug use, lashing out in the form of mass shootings, etc. And it sucks.
@@kreek22 Do you seriously think that the "ruling class" dreamed up social media in order to "keep us down"? They actually dreamed up Fox News, and that's doing a pretty good job of keeping us stupid and squabbling.
So scary. I wish we could go back in time.. stop the madness. We need treat Social spaces like public spaces, when people are cursing, doing nasty stuff get asked to leave or sometimes arrested. The norms and values of social media is lowest level of human behavior sometimes, I getting so turned off.
As near as I can tell, it's due to the loss of "Justice of the peace" positions.
A friend/neighbor asked, "Does EVERYTHING have to be a law? I can't even cross the street to talk to a neighbor with a beer in my hand!" I explained this comes about from the yahoos that believe if it isn't a law, then they have a right to do whatever they want.
Some beer in a gift basket, I asked neighbor's girl to ask if her father wanted it. She ran home, came back, "Yes.", so I gave it to her, and she ran it home. OMG! Beer! In the hands of a 10 year old! OMG! Yes, I get his point, that non-incidental day could've gone very differently.
It was a shock when the less educated side of the family started talking about what they believed with respect to race and governance. I was definitely happier not knowing. It's hard to have any kind of reasonable debate when conspiracy theories are presented as evidence. Now I know why they used to tell us to avoid religion and politics as topics at social gatherings.
you forgot to mention that the Truth (that you can verify) is presented as fake news or Russian disinformation and conspiracy theory
it's also shocking when you talk to the educated ones, and realize that the term "educated idiot" was designed to describe .
@@avibhagan what's your point? Don't get educated? Yeah, that's a great idea...smh!
@@joymattson8549
Don't be ignorant.
Education has nothing to do with it.
@@avibhagan If they are really idiots, then they are NOT educated. Unless that's some term invented by Rush Limbaugh to abuse everyone who isn't conservative.
“Structural stupidity”. I have a hard time not laughing at this phrase. Or, maybe I should be crying.
Or some cross of the two.
By design IMO.
This is 'Mass Brainwashing' by surreptitious technologies.
The latter.
For profit. Look at how much they rake in.
When I was in college and moved to the dorm in my freshman year I knew everyone on my floor within the first week. For my two youngest sons the experience was very different. They only knew a few others on the floor. Much less social interaction in the dorms because of social media.
It's stunning to see at work, people barely able to look away from their phones. I had to let someone go.
This all started one day in 2012 when Facebook suddenly caused us to start seeing public comments from strangers. Before that you only saw comments form friends. True. It became a nasty chatroom after that for 2 billion people. Immediate frustration, fear, anger and anxiety- worldwide.
13:00 YES! We need OPEN primaries with Ranked Choice voting - let all voters decide who advances, like top-4, and above 10% threshold to advance. Currently partisan primaries can eliminate all the moderates who don't inspire the radicals who show up to partisan primaries. But an open primary is a fair playing field for all.
Agreed. We should have ranked choice voting for every public election in the country, from President down to municipal dogcatcher.
The power is in the permanent institutions, the ones not up for elections. Haidt is misdirecting people.
Right! And we have to remember that primaries as they exist today are a fairly recent (mid- 20th century) phenomenon. They, and political parties are not Constitutionally mandated.
Or people could stop being so damn lazy.
@@rogersmith7396 Closed primaries are not about laziness. They are about inspiring party purists to come and eliminate all moderate choices from the general election.
I think his point about congress is telling. Since '29 the US which was founded on the idea of representation passed a law limiting and ultimately diluting representation in the US. We the people have restricted the amount of representatives we are allowed to have. Repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act of '29. The house of commons in the UK has 600 people representing 67M. The US has 435 representing 330M.
We're uniquely an idiocracy. When the Kardashian's became role models and billionaires, we quickly devolved electing Trump and the rest of his clown show Making America unlivable again.
Maybe you should lead by example - like learning how to compose a coherent comment, that isn’t a string of cliches.
@@LemonsAndSalt69 If you're a Kardashian or Trump fanboi, maybe you shouldn't read the comment section on a video called "uniquely stupid"
That pretty much sums it up.
So accurate and well said. For people to look up to these types is truly disturbing.
@@LemonsAndSalt69 Okay, Ivanka.😂😝🥵
My hero. I wish my administration (at the school where I teach) would listen to him. I wish the parents (esp Silicon Valley) would listen to him.
What do you want them to hear?
You should stop watching Fox News and other right wing propaganda.
I wish the Harvard Graduate School of Education would listen to him.
@@bipslone8880 Basically she's just latching on to his unproven contention that diversity training doesn't work.
@@ronniebaker4549 America has a propaganda problem just like Russia and just like Russia some people are desperate to believe.
It's just so tragic. The driving force of this phenomenon is greed, greed of corporations and social media platforms. We are killing ourselves with "infotainment". WE NEED TO STOP PUTTING MONEY ABOVE OUR HEALTH AND WELL BEING!!!!!
Amanpour & Co to rescue once again with _actual insightful intelligent content_ & guests. So much appreciated, ugh 🙏
Neither of my parents, now 77 and 80, have ever had a social media account. Unfortunately, so many of their friends and cohort have Facebook and spend so many hours a day using it that they might as well have it. My mother routinely mentions Qanon talking points as if they were legitimate assertions.
QAnon = CNN
The official press said a lab leak was impossible for over a year---"as if they were legitimate assertions."
They did the same on many other issues, like calling the Hunter Biden laptop story "Russian disinformation."
Lie after lie.
QAnon is of course nonsense, but it's more entertaining than the official nonsense and it pisses off the official liars. Support QAnon and everything else the official criminals and liars hate.
When I immigrated to the US 35 years ago it seemed to me this country was too stupid to exist and I have openly shared this observation since. Needless to say, nothing has occurred in the interim to ameliorate this
There were signs in the 90's, US children were already exhibiting attention deficit and had a huge sense of entitlement with parents neurotic and fearful.
When you cannot walk places, children become prisoners ferried around between structured supervised events
Social media turned the light on above each one of us. We were supposed to be intelligent enough to see FB and other platforms for what they are. The death of critical thinking is most evidenced in the broad acceptance of social media. One of my daughters lives on social media and has developed her own safety systems to protect herself. The other has all but given up on it altogether. My son thinks it’s mostly a waste of time. Meanwhile, my generation can’t find enough opportunities to spew vitriol and shore up their shortcomings with false emotional economies.
The thumbs up / Like button has revealed what's most important to many individuals and it can drive followers off the cliff if not recognized and halted..
Social media puts me in mind of a book I read way back in college called 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neil Postman except that he was writing about TV rather than social media. It is worth a read in today's world.
Had my HS teaching staff read the Postman piece for a PD session. It was excellent and insightful, especially for those of us raised on Sesame Street. The complaints about its length were unsettling...
Same uproar over kids using calculators for math homework. Dismissed as hype. But underlying, the same issue, taking what comes out of software without question. Kids didn't recognize when calculator was giving them wrong answers, even grossly defective answers, that anyone familiar with basic math would've recognized immediately.
@@dawnmwalton1774 MIT professors said the inability to focus is showing up in the students' papers. Can't write two contiguous paragraphs with obvious concept flow.
MIT, deep research requiring deep focus, now in the hands of ... can't focus.
Facebook has taken us back to a High School Level of social interaction..
I'm afraid it's more like the stalls of a bus station restroom in the 1950's.
Middle school!
@@marvinmartion1178 Beat me to it.
It was there prior to widespread Facebook. I started seeing it emerge at work in early aughts. Oddly, it first showed up as avoidance, the inability to handle disagreement.
It’s basically Heathers.
12 Points to Reform US Democracy and the Electoral System.
1) Get rid of First Past the Post (FPP) (sometimes called plurality) voting, and introduce some form of Proportional Representation (PR) Rank Choice Voting (RCV) preferably - Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP(R) with Multi-Member Districts. MMP has voters select both a candidate in their local district and a party they'd like to win a majority. Everyone who wins a district gets a seat, and then additional seats are given out to ensure that parties are represented in proportion to their share of the party vote. This has a number of advantages. Unlike party list representation, people still have representatives with at least some ties to their local area. Voters get 2 votes: one for their local representative, and one for their favorite party. Mixed Member Proportional has familiar local representatives, and simple ballot.
2) Eliminate/abolish the Electoral College (Article 2, Section 1, of The Constitution). This would normally be difficult, because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. Over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College - without any becoming law. It requires two thirds of the House, two thirds of the Senate, and three quarters of the States to vote in favor. There is another easier way to effectively end the Electoral College without technically abolishing it. Agreement of the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote. An organization called the ‘National Popular Vote Interstate Compact’ (NPVIC) is pushing to eliminate the Electoral College without tampering with the Constitution. Once the NPVIC has reached 270 electoral votes, the passed bills from all the states will kick in and guarantee that the candidate with the highest vote total nationwide would become the president. So far, 15 states (CA, IL, NY, CO, CT, MD, MA, NJ, NM, OR, WA, DE, HI, RI, VT) and the District of Columbia (Total = 196 electoral votes) have committed to the cause. The bill has also passed at least one chamber in 9 additional states with 88 more electoral votes (AR, AZ, ME, MI, MN, NC, NV, OK, VA). So, we need 74 more electoral votes to eliminate the unfair influence of the Electoral College. A total of 3,408 state legislators from all 50 states have endorsed it. www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation *American citizens need to become politically active to make this happen before the 2024 election.
3) Go back to reliable ‘hand marked pen and paper’ ballots publicly counted and scrutinized. Design simple to understand paper ballots, Standardize the voting system nationally across all states, and do NOT use ‘Black Box’ electronic voting machines (EVMs) or ballot marking devices (BMDs), because any electronic devices are too easily hacked or manipulated to rig voting figures even if using ‘block-chain’ technology. Cyber-attacks can also be undetectable. www.coindesk.com/mit-paper-rejects-blockchain-based-voting-systems-elections Paper ballots are more reliable and can be recounted if necessary. Democracy is too important to allow the possibility for cheating.
4) Install an independent Election Management Body (EMB) to be responsible for the polling, conducting and tabulating of votes in elections and referenda, and the registration of political parties, oversight of campaign finance, design of the ballot papers, drawing of electoral boundaries, resolution of electoral disputes, civic and voter education and media monitoring for the safeguarding the legitimacy of democratic institutions and the peaceful transitions of power. They need to ensure all aspects of any electoral contest meets global norms and follows the fundamental guiding principles of elections, including independence, impartiality, integrity, transparency, efficiency, professionalism and service-mindedness, that perform in the best interest of the voters.
5) Shorten the Election Campaigns to 4-8 weeks maximum (like most other advanced democracies. This also helps to get money out of politics). Ridiculously long campaigns (18mths) are a waste of money, resources and time; time that should be spent governing the country and providing social programs for citizens needs, not campaigning for re-election.
6) Voting Days to be held on the weekend (not Tuesday), and possibly in conjunction with Veteran’s Day Holiday. (Make it easier for all citizens to be able to vote).
7) Ban voter suppression, upgrade the Voting Rights Act, and introduce a 28th Amendment for the right of every citizen 18 years old and over the right to vote, or introduce compulsory voting (every eligible citizen votes - $50 fine if you don't vote) Australia has compulsory voting and because of this 95% voter turnout. By contrast in the US millions of voters are purged from voter rolls, and at least 40% of provisional ballots are thrown in the trash can and not counted. It’s just another method of rigging the electoral system.
8) Ban gerrymandering of districts to favor one political party. Independent commission should draw district lines, not partisan political parties. Voters should pick their politicians, NOT politicians their voters.
9) *Consider a Unicameral Congress (only House of Representatives needed to pass Bills. There's no need for the Senate to pass Bills, so situations like McConnell and the filibuster holding up important legislation cannot happen). *(NZ is an advanced democracy and has a Unicameral Parliament which works very efficiently). *(a Unicameral System is also one step closer to a direct democracy of all the common people). Unicameral System: www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unicameral-system.asp Bicameral System: www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bicameral-system.asp (*The majority of international governments use the unicameral system-with a roughly 60/40 split between unicameral and bicameral.) The only other option other than a unicameral system, is to make it mandatory for Bills passed in the House MUST be voted on immediately in the Senate. Mitch McConnell has sat on hundreds of Bills effectively blocking them from passing.
10) Campaign finance reform (donations only via private citizens with strict donation limits, ban corporate funding and influence).
11) Eliminate the need for political party registration (there’s no need to be affiliated to any political party, and it only encourages gerrymandering). No one should be loyal to just one political party. Force political parties to concentrate on policy to attract your vote.
12) Term limits on all politicians (Congressman and Senators) and judges (in particular Supreme Court justices - no lifetime appointments).
I disagree, especially with mandatory voting. Most non-voters are stupid and apathetic. They should not vote. It is good that most do not. Instead, voting ought to be a privilege for which people have to qualify, for example by being employed or possessing significant property. Anyone who came to America illegally, even if now a citizen, should be forbidden to vote.
@@kreek22 Pretty obvious you're a supporter of right-wing politics. having less people vote is the anti-democratic Republican strategy of minority power. And your comment about most voters are stupid and apathetic; what you really mean is voters that don't vote like you. You say voting should quote; "be a privilege for which people have to qualify, for example by being employed or possessing significant property". How undemocratic is that? Just another way for the minority elite to hold all the power and those less well off and suffering, for their issues to be ignored. Democracy is to address the issues of the majority, and if the majority are poor and suffering their issues gain weight and so should be addressed. Finally, I'm willing to bet you're just an immigrant only an few generations removed. You're not an indigenous American so why should you have any more rights than anyone else who's an immigrant.
It's not the institutions. It's the people within the institutions. We must choose people who understand problem solving, who understand negotiating, can accept compromise and who have integrity.
"We're not so much shooting those on the other side, we're shooting the moderates on our side." Man, Haidt is excellent. I'm sure there are those who don't like him, but throughout his career he's made a powerful case for liberalism (in the Smith-Mill sense) without sounding angry or dismissive of the left's social justice aspirations.
When people say out loud what make sense, it's not unusual for them to face criticism from those who can't deal with rationality.
And it isn't because being moderate makes you right, it is that you get the dialectic and the opportunity to find the right answer when the left engages with it's full spectrum, and the right also. And then they engage each other.
social justice aspirations? that should be everyone's goal.
Yes. That’s why I’m still so irritated with people like bill Maher and bari Weiss. For years they egged on the far left because they were all on the same side. Then one day the radicals came for them.
@@intuitionz1198 It's not though..
Hari and Amanpour and Co, thank you for having social psychologist Johnathan Haidt on your program. 🗽
you're welcome. thanks for watching.
50yrs ago my European relatives visited America. The commercials and programming on television made them laugh and they said that eventually TV would make us crazy. The constant exaggerated drama and sensationalism primed a significant portion of the population for the present condition
It's universally acknowledged that every $1 invested in education yields back $14 in benefits/returns. Yet Amurka has trillions for death machines and almost nothing for schools. Hmm, I wonder why. Well, if you think education is expensive, wait till you see the cost of decades more investment in Stoopa.
When the critics are silenced, people get stupid. (Paraphrased) Beautifully said! And absolutely agree.
Haidt’s culture has made him very aware of Disgust.
Thank you for the interesting discussion. We're living in a very scary period of "civilization" in which expressing one's opinion can have devastating effects on one's personal safety and well being (as Prof. Haidt mentions).
you're welcome. thanks for watching.
Its always been that way.
@@rogersmith7396 So much for evolution.
Well Haidt himself is uniquely stupid since he himself wants more "moderates" to have a voice on the political spectrum. Not understanding moderates are the reason why America has turned into a capitalist dystopia
@@moonchild7456 Human history is atomistic and always one against the other. The wealthy understand this and believe in it. It works for them.
I am not on any social media platform and have not owned a television in over 15 years. I am very selective about what I watch via my computer but Christiane Amanpour and her guests are worth the time to listen. The quality of discussion is time well spent. But generally, not so much.... I have better things to do than waste my time on "structural stupidity."
this is a social media platform.
@@bobf5360 She literally acknowledges using this one!
Agreed. I used to bother - lightly - with Twitter (for the almost instant business and finance news) and Instagram (for the pretty pictures and political chat). Never bothered with FB. Have no idea what much else there is. I came to a point that I realised that even the little time I dedicated to Twitter or Instagram was a consummate waste, as I would come away angry, bored, or dismayed. It's much better to just communicate with my friends directly; occasionally tell off a dummy on YT; and, generally LIVE my life rather than just waste it online. 🤷🏻♀️
You are on RUclips and you have a "smart"phone. You'll be fiiiiine.
P.S. I have a friend who is in the same position. Two years ago he sent good money to a nigerian beauty so that she can buy the airplain ticket to come to Europe to finnaly meet him,her greatest love,but at the last moment she aborted the flight due to the sudden death of her grandpa by crocodile bite. And he's now worried about the chemtrails killing us all. He's an engineer.
I am impressed with this interviewer. He asks a question and then he shuts up and encourages the interviewee to speak at length in response. So many of the news interviewers talk and talk and talk, and then the interviewee has almost no time to try to formulate an answer. Good questions, intelligent interview structure. Nice job.
Our current form of governance and culture provide two things: they provide power to the wealthy and consciously or unconsciously destroy community.
The first is eternal.
The second is because multiculturalism and community are antonyms.
Multiculturalism equals globalism, which is shorthand for American global dominance--but, the American elite requires global dominance to fully secure its wealth and power. They don't want to end up like the Russian elite, watching its wealth snapped up across the world. When the American elite commits war crimes, it gets to keep its wealth because of its global power.
Im an author on psychology and the collapse of civilisations and its built into the capitalist model. Money = power and capitalism is a money funnel, it moves money inexorably to the top and therefore it moves power to the top and eventually the rich get MORE powerful than the government and at that point, the country is no longer governed for the benefit of the people but for the rich to get richer...
And society starts to collapse.
@@piccalillipit9211 Nonsense. The UK is my counterexample.
@@kreek22 You're not making me feel any better. LOL.
@@paulwheeler6609 Fortunately, We have at our disposal a vast collection of maps that we can use to discover escape routes back to healthy community. These maps are called history. Since history demonstrates healthy communities have developed many times and places, we know it can be done. Synthesize the lessons, adapt them to the present time, generate political will--and the thing will be accomplished.
A beloved friend has gone down the antivaxxer rabbit hole and sounds like a cult member. Someone even closer to me has gone down a different route, conspiracy theories which to me map strangely onto antisemitic tropes... Not quite that bad yet, but heading there. This is taking a toll on our relationships because the fact I disagree somehow means I am colluding, or at best, an idiot. It hurts so much.
I had a similar experience, losing a close friend whose perspective evaporated. This person also became angry and after a period of unease like you describe directed that anger at me for not agreeing to validate her conspiratorial frame of reference. I stopped communicating with her. She now lives in a closed cognitive loop beyond the reach of family and friends. It happened quickly. It's a little bit like a zombie apocalypse in real time. The person I knew is just - gone. Shocking. The loss is painful and so unfortunate. These are all tragedies.
@@marthareis5873 thank you for articulating what happens, I found it helpful. People get caught in a closed loop, and it is not enough to agree to disagree. If you disagree you are part of the problem.
Yes, this is something I'm experiencing with a couple of friends. It's very difficult to avoid getting into arguments and I have to walk away at times.
Some acquaintances are no longer tolerable company. It makes me sad but the constant conspiracy/ conflict is exhausting after a while.
Get better friends.
Doesn't it? I hear you.
I met Jonathan on my campus in 2018, on his book tour (The Coddling of the American Mind). Great guy.
Systemic stupefying is a thing.
In the twentieth century, children grew up and came of age in two world wars, a great depression, a cold war, and a number of significant social upheavals.
There were no "hockey-stick" graphs that revealed a significant social and psychological meltdown during any of these times.
Of course people were tougher. Of course children were socially processed through times of accountability and stability.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of freedom.
In order to dream of freedom, I had to be aware of what it actually was, what its purpose was in a kid's life, what it aimed for in an adult life, and what were its costs, liabilities and outcomes.
I spoke briefly to Mr. Haidt about all that. I think there is a key hiding somewhere in the middle of all of that. He did not disagree.
Because so many young people trade their freedom away now, for the illusion of safety. For smoke and mirrors. As if it is a value-less thing.
And I say, turnaround, Liberty. And take a good long look at what's been going on behind your back. A nation turns its' lonely eyes to you, and doesn't even possess the language anymore, to address your exalted self. Mistakenly thinking that you're just a simple silent statue. You are the beginning of the greatest conversation America has ever had with itself.
So many "people"- regardless of age - trade their freedom(s) away for the illusion of "safety".
Great message that won't reach the extremists. A few weeks ago I posted a message on a RUclips video that closed with this: "A lot of our problems come down to a lack of communication between the two political parties and their splinter groups. Marjorie Taylor Greene is the result of a lack of communication. Because there is no meeting in the middle, you get zealots. It just so happens that the Right is better at zealotry than the Left." I find that if you write something people don't agree with (or don't want to agree with even when it is reasonable), you will either be ignored or get blasted. In this case I was ignored. But I think that what I wrote is inline with what Haidt had to say.
MTG is a user. Most of these pols don't believe a word they say but they use it to get power and money.
@Listening to Intelligent People All thinking on the right is childlisly simplistic. It all reduces to yelling points. The left understands nuance and complexity which does not reduce to yelling points.
Some brilliant commentary on social media: thank you Jonathan, and Hari.
@Rick Martin You see the fatal flaw. You sir shall survive the insanity!
you're welcome. thanks for watching.
@@RickMartinRUclips RUclips is hardly the sort of toxic technology as Facebook or Twitter. "The algorithm" feeds you videos, yes. But the comment section is extremely limited. You can't "follow" a commenter. If you stay out of the comment section, it's not really social, or barely so.
im a teacher and my students have non-existent attention spans and self-control. I myself got a smart phone for the first time in 2011, then left the country and didnt have a smartphone until i returned to the US in 2015. those years without a phone/social media were the happiest years for me.
I don't have a smartphone. My computer screen broke a few months ago and it took me a week to arrange a new screen. During that week without any screen entertainment I read a book and listened to my records. The enjoyment of those felt greater than ever. As if I had had much more time and no hurry.
I am impressed with this news channel providing some unbiased commentary compared to the main stream news channels. Jonathan Haidt is a really interesting academic he is great on podcasts. Cheers from Australia
thanks for watching us in Australia.
Amanpour is a terrific journalist.
While I agree that social media is a driving force, I think it is important to remember that Citizens United has also had a profound effect on skewing politics and discourse in the US.
The Supreme Court is corrupt.
Agree, corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE!
It should be called Not-Necessarily-Citizens United, as the money is anonymous, so who knows where it's coming from. Surprisingly, even ACLU objected to legislation proposing donor disclosure requirement.
"There's is no ability to have a common understanding of what we are doing. ... There is no possibility for ... widely shared stories in the age of social media."
"There's a huge decline in trust. Trust in each other and trust in the institutions"
"Social Media generally leads to a decline in trust."
Well, as I explained to a Canadian some years back, implosion of visibility, in what's occurring now, and what's occurred in the past, including long past, all at once. A grand reckoning, so to speak.
I like Haidt, but I have always seen his argument as too narrow.
I prefer the argument put forward by Hannah Arendt. Materialism is at the heart of the fall of society. She argued that both Smith and Marx missed the point, in that they were arguing over who should get what in society, not how society should function in relation to the community. She used the term “alienation” to describe people losing their connection to community and becoming isolated in their pursuit of personal gain, ie. materialism. I think social media has exacerbated that trend, which is where Haidt is somewhat correct. It bombards people with information comparing their material well-being to that of the people they know, while hiding all of the negative aspects that nobody sees. I see my classmates or coworkers on vacation somewhere beautiful. I think “my life is so shitty” because I can’t afford to go on vacation. I don’t see the sacrifices they put in to pay for that vacation, or the debt that they’ve accrued, or the fights that happen over that debt.
This ultimately impacts any solution you’re going to find to the problem. If you’re just trying to solve the social media problem, you’re going to fail. It may help to draw the process out, but it will still end in failure. I believe we need to find ways to see value in community rather than personal achievements. I’d love to see a UBI with a requirement to do community service. I think getting people involved in their communities would go a long way to restoring that sense of oneness.
Good comment. It makes me think about "The Secret" where people all "visualize" that the cosmos will make them rich but nobody asks to become a more mature, better person. I keep repeating it but I think in the Seventies, people were less materialistic.
It's actually not "materialism" that is the heart of any society. It is SURVIVAL, and with that, access to the resources we need to facilitate that survival. I believe Marx, Arendt and others were noting that when humans see restricted or no access to what we need to survive, it leads us to our worst behavior because this is processed by our brains as a THREAT. When humans are under threat, the amygdala gets triggered and the limbic system drives the show. Access to the prefrontal cortex is diminished or shut out so the threat can be handled in as quickly a manner as possible. This "amygdala hijack" phenomenon is the key because when it is overused, it leads us to very limited thinking.
Overuse of the amygdala is what leads to "stupidity". It's not designed for executive function like context or critical thinking. That is the hallmark of the prefrontal cortex. More fear leads to more amygdala hijack, which leads to increasing emotion-based, short-term thinking because this is the type of thinking needed to handle a threat. We lose out on important context and critical thinking. Everywhere you look in the US, including social media, is the constant drip-drip-drip of fear-mongering propaganda, leading us to over-rely on the limbic system and under-utilize the prefrontal cortex. Fear leads to stupidity. Fear that is based on the lack of resources we need to survive and a false belief that some deserve that access, even at the expense of everyone else's access.
At the heart of any society, healthy or not, is their SURVIVAL STRATEGY. One that increasingly excludes and allows for hoarding, is a society that will hate change, diversity and cling to traditional ways to maintain the survival advantage of just a few, often with increasing cruelty. This type of society continually engages our amygdala. These are DOMINANCE based societies. A society that increasingly includes others and discourages hoarding will be more open to change, diversity and continually evaluate traditions and institutions, but all that "positive behavior" can't be facilitated using any threat or force. It must come from making a continually logical and objective case for why this strategy is in everyone's best interest. This appeals to the prefrontal cortex. These are societies based on the concept of NURTURING.
This is what you get when you give everyone a voice with the option of anonymity! First, everyone should be required to use their real name and photos. Second, everyone isn’t intelligent enough to speak in public. Some will find this harsh, but unfortunately it’s factual.
Brilliant observation. Don't know who you are but you certainly are qualified to speak in public !
I think that we need anonymity to remove the ego factor. You should have to register your real identity so that the authorities can track you down if you do something illegal, like threaten to kill someone. However, each conversation should use a randomly generated anonymous name for that conversation. This forces people to focus on the points made in the discussion, rather than who said it. Toxic behavior like cancel culture, celebrity worship and bullying could be eliminated. No one can dismiss your ideas based on who you are or what you've said in other conversations e.g. "This guys a Trump supporter, don't listen to anything he says!" When it's not tied to your real identity, I think people will be more willing to accept that they might be wrong about something. If you want to learn, you have to be wrong sometimes! Down votes will take care of unintelligent or off-topic comments.
How about requiring you to be 18+ to own a smart phone and have any social media acct?
@@waitaminute2015 2022 and racism in Florida. Very sad, but not surprising to hear. I wonder, assuming you've lived in Florida for a while (5+ years), have you seen the racism and other bigotry worsen, stay the same, or get better over that time?
Completely agree. I worked in the media for 20 years. Canadian media that is. Rules do exist. One just can't say whatever they feel like. Social media has given everyone the opportunity to say whatever they want with zero accountability. Amazing how the term "fake news" has become so popular at the same time.
I think we’ve always been stupid, but we didn’t have social media to flaunt our stupidity before.
YES! I'm convinced that NOT EVERYBODY deserves to have a voice!
@@gcb345 I want to address that I don’t necessarily exclude myself from “stupidity”. I’m not talking about some “other” here.
Hahaha. I completely agree. I don’t like the cyclical putting down of the next generation… oh when I was your age I was so wise & hardworking & sacrificing..
I want to stop myself before I get that annoying.
Stupidity is omnipresent and cross generational. It just shows up in different ways
"The biggest thing is we could all just take it easier on each other. Once we understand that we're all being driven crazy by this stuff, it's like we're all being fed poison gas, so when people do extreme things, stupid things, don't get mad at them, don't tweet how terrible they are, just ignore it, just ignore it. Um, we have to go easier on each other if we're going to make it as a country."
Wow, what a closing statement! Makes me think this man has no understanding of the social media platforms and how they work and the corporations that own them. To put it the most simply: Clicks = $. The more clicks something gets, the more worth it has to an advertiser. The advertisers pay money to the social media corporations to advertise, and choose where to advertise based on traffic (clicks). The more extreme, stupid, and hateful something is, the more clicks it gets. It goes viral on Facebook, it starts trending on twitter. Anyone on social media would understand this if they are paying attention.
The purpose of a corporation is to maximize profit for their shareholders. That means they are obligated to attract as many advertisers as possible. That's why their algorithms boost things that attract attention. Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news and gets boosted. This is why we are seeing constant coverage of Ukraine in the news and zero attention paid to important issues affecting our own country, you know, like GOP politicians trying to destroy democracy in this country. Weapons manufacturers and the military industrial complex are delighted. Mainstream media outlets are all owned by like 6 giant conglomerates.
The corporations fund the campaigns of politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) that will do their bidding to de-regulate all private industries from health insurance and big pharma, to fossil fuels, mining, logging, agriculture, weapons manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, the chemical industry (including pesticides that have already destroyed bird and insect populations around the world, including the PFAs or "forever chemicals" that are now ubiquitous in our waterways and found in the blood of humans and animals everywhere www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained), the plastics industry that has caused microplastics to be found in our air, water, food, rain, everywhere they look.
There is a revolving door between our government and corporations. After terms in office, many become lobbyists. Lobbyists are appointed governmental posts and heads of agencies controlling major areas of interest to corporations, like fossil fuels and other resource extraction industries. All mainstream media is biased because they are corporations that depend on advertising for their profits. They will not go against the basic corporate line. Campaign contributions go into mainstream media through advertisements. It is all connected. The ONLY ANSWER IS TO REFORM CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS. We are doomed if we don't get money out of politics. Abortion is being outlawed RIGHT NOW in numerous states--that too brings profits to corporations--every baby can generate a dozen new consumers in its lifetime, if not twice that. Each requires all the products produced by corporations. The more competition for jobs, the more people are forced to work for low wages with zero safety regulations.
He understands the implications of social media but apparently does not understand why these profit-making enterprises will continue to push lies and hate and deflect from discussing things like having single-payer health care for all Americans, like every other developed nation. The horse is out of the barn. He forgot to do the number one thing when trying to understand how this country works now: FOLLOW THE MONEY. Being nice does not generate clicks. The very act of going on Twitter puts me into a rage of hate and despair reading the hateful things posted by not only bigots, but BOTS under the control of foreign countries like Russia (just check RUclips comments on mainstream channels, they are FULL of hateful posts by bots with no content on their account, sometimes created only days prior. The emotions of hate, and anger are counterproductive to human life and peace. Sorry for the long post. I wanted to be hopeful, but he missed the point at the end.
100% correct. Follow the money. Corporations funding politicians. Even Ukraine is US etc. perfect NIMBY war making oddles of money for the US, French, etc bomb makers. It is because CRAPitalism has people fooled... the more homes, cars, clothes you have the better human you are...Egos run amock.
Let's completely gloss over the fact that the US had played a very important role in the instability of Latin America. But no, let's use Latin America as the example of what we don't want the United States to become. 🙄😒
An excellent example of the quote about knowing the other side of the argument. The US is ludicrously ill-informed about the rest of the world.
Mark Zuckerberg turned the US into a banana plantation…
That may be true, but that is not the topic of this discussion.
@@daveg5857
Which video were you watching buddy?
Social media has created a whataboutist culture where any subject gets taken over by some irrelevant point to change the narrative
I’m really glad I grew up before social media . It really puts your life under a microscope.
While it feels like decades, Facebook started in 2004.
We have the data, we should fix the problem. Our kids deserve better; model the behavior you want to see, set limits on screen time, read.
Technically, FB is just two years away for being in existence for two decades. So feeling like "it's been decades" isn't really that far off of the mark, literally speaking.
The right wing corporations bought up over 95% of the media in the early 2000's and that is when the dumbing down of America hit high gear. Social media has helped stop many from believing the bullshit from corporate media on TV.
Profits from propaganda should be demonetized.
Make them pay their own damn bills.
Thanks so much, Hari Sreenivasan, and Prof. Haidt.
From a polyglot linguist’s perspective, I would add something. I noticed that the greediest, crookedest, richest Repugnithugs were taking over “Conservatism” from the shadowy backdrops of the stage, for their personal gain, in the ‘90s, in Germany. And it was spreading, as I realized upon my return to the US, around 2005.
I have been battling vehemently online, ever since. The key element of civilization, of what I consider cultured behavior, is civil, reality-based dialogue between individuals. That takes reliable knowledge of facts. Here in my belovëd America, the R-Party swallowed the poison pill of weaponizing intentional divisiveness for their privatized power (and damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!), over a decade ago. That will be very difficult to cure.
The really important thing we must remind all our voting fellow-citizens of is this:
“Do you really want to rob your offspring (children, grandchildren, etc.) of their future, because of your petty fears?”
Yes, wasting my or there lives on petty fears..how true.. why isn't that shouted from the roof tops..
Drives me f...ing bonkers. Dosent seem to be enough balance between terrible things happening in the world (Ukraine) and so many more and how lucky so of us in the west are..
Fish don't know it's wet
Ecclesiastes tells us, "He that increases knowledge, increases sorrow." On a macro scale, that's what's happening now with the internet.
Well put
Someone pointed out that we weren't meant to know what everyone everywhere was doing and thinking all the time.
Always love to hear from Jonathan. I still need to get a copy of "The Coddling Of The American Mind." I've heard him speak about it many times, but have never actually read it!
While everyone seems to be aware of the corrosive effects social media has on public discourse and childhood emotional well-being, I also fear its deleterious effects on our language. Read through the comments on any RUclips video, and you'll see comments with no punctuation, no capitalization and ATROCIOUS abbreviations for words (i.e. "u" for "you"). It's what I heard one clever RUclipsr call "textspeak," and it infuriates me! (Yes, I understand that languages are constantly undergoing transformation, but this is more of a deterioration -- literally stripping away the very STRUCTURE of the language!).
On a broader note, I also wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Haidt that, far too often, it's the moderate middle that suffers the most from the increasing polarization brought on by the extremes of both Left and Right. And in political terms, that makes me terrified for the future of our country.
As the Republican Party goes off the cliff, wholeheartedly embracing the worst fringes of their base, and as the Democratic Party caters more and more to IT's fringes, for fear of losing their base, those of us in the reasonable middle are left more and more to choose between the lesser of two evils, or perhaps refuse to choose at all.
I've been around for six decades now, and while I still have hope, I've never been more pessimistic about America's future than I am right now.
Precise language is necessary for precise thought - and sometimes, for survival
@@carladehaas7866 Ayup
The off the cliff crowd is not largely the under 30 folks🥴😵💫....crackpots galore in the xer (me) and boomers contigent...
Well Said 👍🏽 🤔 🎯🗽🇺🇲⚖🙏
Nice to see someone can view Dems and Reeps on an even keel. Both parties have never been worse. Biden is having a rough go of it and I cannot help to feel it is mainly due to fact that he is trying to cater to the Leftists of which he is not. Meanwhile Trump is still king on the other side .... ffffffFFFFFFFkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
Spent 20 years in Asia. Before social media, every single commuter on the train or bus read a newspaper or a book. Then, in the space of a year or two, all tapping on the phone. Massive loss on future mental dexterity for sure.
The interviewer is very good! He asks, then listens, and responds accordingly. Thorough discussion that encouraged clarity and provided further knowledge and information.
Hello beautiful lady you look sweet, where are you ❤️?
As a non-American the stupidification has only been an acceleration of what already was existing in America for decades. I'm hard pressed to think when America wasn't self-stupefied.
It's easier to see the similar "hockey stick" jump in poor health, fitness and obesity.
Common factor, corporations find a means to efficiently trash humans for immense profit.
you got that right. amurikkka has always been stupid, self righteous, and lucky.
Very interesting - I see this kind of thing in my own little sphere. Zooming out, I think we have a dearth of leadership all over the world at the moment.. I'll have to read the essay! Thanks guys.
Do you believe the bullshit from the corporate media?
Agree re leadership. In fact part of the overwhelming admiration of Zelensky is exactly due to his credulous leadership qualities which have been wonderfully amplified by the PROPER use of social media.
This should be broadcast again and again! Thank you Amanpour and Company and Mr. Haidt.
The thing he said about identity verification was really good. That would be a tremendous help in getting rid of spammers, scammers, bots and fake accounts that try to make an unpopular opinion seem more popular than it actually is.
Probably not. Cons gotta con. Some are state actors.
Well…even with identity verification, and having a hard “no pseudonyms allowed” (CBC’s comments section has this) you will still get the contrarian troll (they seem to to come from Alberta, and rural Saskatchewan Canada, for the Americans Alberta and Saskatchewan are known as Texas (Alberta) north, and a slightly smarter version of Mississippi (Saskatchewan) )
Mostly good, but I'd tweak it a little by saying most people in US politics have been captured by corporate donations. Those who accept no corporate donations are pretty much the sole exception. Well covered in the book Winner Take All Politics.
The mechanics of how the platforms damage us is well covered in the book Stolen Focus.
It's funny, but serious. And this is from a very mature person. Around 2005 I started looking at MySpace. I started seeing all these people at night clubs and other type parties, and I started to feel 'out of touch' with life in general. But after a while, it came to me, that as a professional musician, I was out playing in clubs and parties most weekends. The only difference between them and me, is that I wasn't posting pictures of my life. So if I could feel that way, it is easy to understand how a young person could look at others and feel 'out of the flow'.
It seems some people live their lives through the screens , other live their lives doing stuff. When playing music you were living, doing something, you were not looking at other people at a party. I think it is a big difference.
Besides, how sad was it that they were so desperate for attention that they kept posting photos of themselves all the time? "Is this activity that I'm doing finally cool enough? No? What about this one? Or this one? Or any of the next 1,000? Do you like me yet, random stranger? Do you? Huh? Do you?!?" I never understood the appeal of that - what a terrible way to live!
@@happybunny892 I wouldn't say 'desperate'. It more like showing off, for attention. And then add, monetized social media into the mix. Now some young people make a living just by showing an attention grabbing lifestyle.
I’m grateful my Sons grew up before social media. They are smart. They played sports. They sang and participated in musicals and plays. Went to Church and socialized with other Students doing positive things. They turned out great!! And so did their Friends.
Lots of and more moronic Xers (my group) and boomers.....im shock daily...the younger ones just seem soft with a small strain of antisocials
Finally a guy that is a voice of reason.
I've enjoyed many diversity-awareness trainings. It helped me open my mind to the variety in my professional/academic groups. Maybe others have not reaped as many benefits as I have.
When Edison invented the gramophone, people stopped playing live music as much. When people started going to the movies every weekend, they stopped singing around the piano. When kids stay inside and read a book, the don't learn to play outside, or play well with others. All media is the opposite of "social" because it's non-participatory, it is merely observed.
If only you could observe from my POV - with no TV or smartphone to sway me into rationalizations - you'd quickly see the social distortion and loss of empathy of the screen zombies.
The social distortion is rent.
There has always been some type of social media except in the most technologically primitive of societies. Books, magazines even a play is a way of substituting media for social interaction. What about listening to someone tell a story? So, an interesting point but there is spectrum of gray and clearly things are more complicated.
It is more that social media on the internet is designed to stimulate and leverage our desire for social interaction for commercial purposes and this has lead to it being used as a poor substitute. Social masturbation is probably an accurate, if crude description. Like pornography, Social Media stimulates and but ultimately fails to satify one of our basic desires.
@@logaandm A less crude alternative term for this facet of social media use is commodified validation seeking. Works better with a mixed audience and hints at the financial incentives of the corporate social media platforms towards addictive and exploitative usage.
When the alphabet was invented and later the printing of books, people warned and worried about the loss of memorization skills.
@@markromine5103 It's a perfect model for the oligarchy. Big business profits, big government surveils. This is the apotheosis of the fascist New Deal system: increased wealth, increased control.
The article "Do Learners Really Know Best? Urban
Legends in Education" takes a critical look at three pervasive urban legends in education about the nature of
learners, learning, and teaching and looks at what educational and psychological research has to
say about them. The three legends can be seen as variations on one central theme, namely, that
it is the learner who knows best and that she or he should be the controlling force in her or his
learning. The first legend is one of the learners as digital natives who form a generation of students
knowing by nature how to learn from new media, and for whom “old” media and methods used
in teaching/learning no longer work. The second legend is the widespread belief that learners
have specific learning styles and that education should be individualized to the extent that the
pedagogy of teaching/learning is matched to the preferred style of the learner. The final legend
is that learners ought to be seen as self-educators who should be given maximum control over
what they are learning and their learning trajectory. It concludes with a possible reason why
these legends have taken hold, are so pervasive, and are so difficult to eradicate.
Very nice. Thanks. I was there when it began to change. In the late 60s there was a famous book, The Student as N-word. The idea was that students needed more autonomy. In the early 70s there was more choice, lots of it good. Interdisciplinary studies. Focus on certain groups. For example I took a class on the Psychology of Women, taught by two female grad students. It was basically literature review of where men and women differed or were they same. The small seminar, mostly women, were committed to understanding the data. Or requiring an Asian art survey course for an Art History major. Even calling it Asian instead of Eastern or Oriental.
But here's the point. We had a good education by the time we were given this freedom. The freedom was gradual. And most of us weren't completely crazy, so the adults didn't have to do much to control us. They could treat us as future colleagues.
Somehow this went off the rails, as you describe. My sense is the unwillingness of adults of Biden's generation to say No. (I'm not talking politics, I'm pointing to non-Baby Boomers that had the power.) Add to this the radicalism of the woke and boom, disaster. The sad part is that they are harming the kids least capable of educating themselves. Tragic.
In an updated intro to Brave New World Aldous Huxley wrote that there were too many distractions for many people to think deeply about issues. These constant distractions were preventing people from taking the time to just ponder issues from a variety of perspectives and consider how they affected them and society. This was written in 1958, so I guess if he were alive now he would just consider the human race is done.
I enjoyed the Atlantic article - finally someone articulated what I’ve been thinking for years. I’ve been off FB since 2014.
Tangent: I once had an interesting conversation with Professor Haidt when he was at UVA. It was about psychedelics..
I believe he misunderstood a perspective I was trying to convey..
..Fast forward many years, and I hear him having a similar conversation with Sam Harris, and he seemed to appreciate what I had tried to convey all those years earlier.
I believe there was a “professor vs student” bias, whereas with Harris, he was more open, or maybe he had learned more in the intervening years.. Nevertheless, he asked great questions that got me thinking critically
Anyway, I really appreciate Professor Haidt. We are lucky to have him
One of the most brilliant insights.
Not brilliant insight, just common sense.
Great interview. His point about closed party primaries is super important. Specifically, it's the "first-past-the-post" nature of these primary elections -- i.e., whichever candidate gets the MOST votes, no matter how small a percent of the total they may have earned. It's why the candidates who end up on the ballot are usually more extreme than many voters feel comfortable voting for (or sometimes, more centrist than they would prefer.) It's arguably the reason Trump won the Republican nomination back in 2016: when your goal is simply to get your single choice past everyone else, the nature of the debates quickly becomes acrimonious and uncooperative, focused at least as much on tearing down the "rivals," but in contrast, ranked-choice voting has the opposite effect. Ranked-choice voting requires you to rank your first, second, third, etc. choice. I've seen mock elections happen this way, and the effects are completely different that of conventional elections. First of all, there's a change in mindset for individuals: instead of creating an exclusionary outlook it makes your mindset more one of "yes and" mentality (well, I like candidate A best, but candidates B and C are pretty okay too, and I could live with candidate D, just not candidate E.) It also keeps the crazies from dominating the attention and getting most votes. With Trump, far more Republicans strongly disliked him in 2016 than supported him, but they were spread between a dozen other candidates, and as a result Trump's base won because they together outnumbered any of the other camps. If it had been ranked choice, they'd have ranked him last and their votes would have gone to someone they considered more appealing than him, even if they didn't get their first choice. I saw a similar thing at a Democratic Debates watch party in 2019: everyone was surprised by the candidates who ended up coming in first and second, because they weren't most people's first choice, but in the discussion that was held afterward, everyone agreed that if they couldn't have their first choice, they'd have been pretty satisfied, and were surprised to learn they had so much in common with people who were supporting another candidate. (Oh, and it led to a thoughtful, open-minded conversation afterward, instead of leaving people gleeful or mad, like most elections do.)
The biggest reason most people dismiss ranked-choice is that it's "too complicated" or "not transparent," but the truth is that elections are already complicated, and can deal surprises for good or for bad. The important thing is that the data is made available immediately afterward, and that all the proceedings are done in the open. I truly believe that implementing ranked-choice is the single biggest thing we can do in the short term to save our democracy. It's gaining momentum in many states already.
Here's a good description to see how it works. ruclips.net/video/oHRPMJmzBBw/видео.html
Excellent interview and very timely. We need to act more rationally.
you're welcome. thanks for watching.
Agreed - don't engage with crap on social media - just report if really bad, block trolls and fools, and mute those who don't debate based on assuming good will, name-callers, etc. Then algorithms won't amplify their messages as much.
OK ... but what about the thousands of crappy channels? If you ignore them, they turn into echo chambers, if you engage with them, you risk increasing the polarization. I try to comment on channels that sprew misinformation politely, with little or no reaction. The few times I loose my temper I get a lot of reaction, but contribute to the problem. Seems a Catch-22.
@@KlausJLinke 100% true. For a long time I tried "neutral fact checking" alone, and surprised I'd often get Trump supporters supporting me because to them, any fact checking on the left proves they must be right that media is biased against them.
@@aresmars2003 Many are so heavily primed that what they got from their social media sources (or Fox News, RT, ...) must be right, and any contradictory fact is "mainstream propaganda", that it seems hopeless. OTOH, sometimes they seem actually grateful that somebody took their rant seriously, and turn more polite and mellow in further responses.
It seems more about putting a small dent in their "Feindbild" (their concept of their perceived enemies, whether progressive, green, refugee, gay, trans, whatever), than getting through with facts.
The main problem is the state media, the official press, not the social media anarchy. The official press lies and lies and lies. They are dead to me. But, their lies have discernable patterns. One can generally answer the crux question: Cui bono?
@@kreek22 "State media"?? Do you live in Russia or North Korea?
My all-time favourite RUclips title. No need to even watch the video itself, but still derive great satisfaction from it
Social media is hardly confined to the US. Indeed by children and grandchildren from Brisbane to Bungoma to Barnes to BC use it. It is admittedly a great tool for the spread of corrosive miss-information across the globe, yet this almost apocalyptic impact on what passes for the thought processes of the least informed in society is so much more marked in the US than elsewhere, except where free access to the internet is constrained by authoritarian regimes. Why is this so obviously the case?
Social media, our economy is what it is because our political system has deep systemic problems. If a system is not functioning properly, many new problems will appear that are difficult if not impossible to fix. Eventually, the system will break down completely and chaos will reign. Our constitution of a presidential democracy was created in response to a failing political system, the II Articles of Confederation., a parliamentary democracy, at the Constitutional Convention of 1788-89 in direct response to Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts. America doesn't do systemic problems since then. But how do you fix the myriad problems systemic failure causes if you don't fix or change the system? Germany has changed its political system four times in the first half of the last century. Other European countries have changed their political systems as well. Italy, Greece, France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries...