On Children, Meaning, Media and Psychedelics
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- I feel that there’s something important missing in our debate over screen time and kids - and even screen time and adults. In the realm of kids and teenagers, there’s so much focus on what studies show or don’t show: How does screen time affect school grades and behavior? Does it carry an increased risk of anxiety or depression?
And while the debate over those questions rages on, a feeling has kept nagging me. What if the problem with screen time isn’t something we can measure?
In June, Jia Tolentino published a great piece in The New Yorker (www.newyorker....) about the blockbuster children’s RUclips channel CoComelon, which seemed as if it was wrestling with the same question. So I invited her on the show, and our conversation ended up going places I never expected. Among other things, we talk about how the decision to have kids relates to doing psychedelics, what kinds of pleasure to seek if you want a good life and how much the debate over screen time and kids might just be adults projecting our own discomfort with our own screen time.
We recorded this episode a few days before the Trump-Biden debate - and before Donald Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate. We then got so swept up in politics coverage we never got a chance to air it. But I am so excited to finally get this one out into the world.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“How CoComelon Captures Our Children’s Attention (www.newyorker....) ” by Jia Tolentino
“Can Motherhood Be a Mode of Rebellion? (www.newyorker....) ” by Jia Tolentino
How to Do Nothing (www.penguinran...) by Jenny Odell
Book Recommendations:
Lonesome Dove (www.panmacmill...) by Larry McMurtry
In Ascension (groveatlantic....) by Martin MacInnes
When We Cease to Understand the World (www.penguinran...) by Benjamin Labatut
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (www.nytimes.co...) . Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.co... (www.nytimes.co...) .
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Jeff Geld, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
That part about future generations not knowing what they lost in a world where everything didn't feel so hollow hit me hard. That's what bothers me most: it seems like people aren't adequately sensitive to the great infantilization of culture taking place right now. I'd feel a lot better if everyone was as miserable as I am
You can see in that "I paid my daughter to read a book" article in the NYT yesterday. It's not that the author's daughter was interested in books but didn't have the attention for them: it's that she didn't think the book as a medium has anything offer over TikTok. The whole notion of art as artifice has given way to pure frictionless content delivery as the only thing people ever knew. "You can't separate content from form" has gone from cliché to inconceivable
Long-time listener here. I was somewhat disturbed with the level of nonchalance with which the guest portrayed the act of giving an iPad to her young child; I very much believe that there is great value in giving kids the opportunity to be bored so they can learn how to entertain themselves without a dreaded screen. Why must we indoctrinate helpless babies into our insane culture of constant stimulation? I think it is absolutely inexcusable for a parent to do this.
Agnes Callard used the example of becoming a vampire (instead of psychedelics) in her book Aspiration. Worth a read.
Thank you for an interesting change of pace.
From my perspective, this distinction between education and joy is so very emblematic of modern humans.
I look out my window at any species living in the wild, and their young are engaging in activities that prepare them for adulthood. Naturally. This is what they want to do.
I am quite confident that this was the case with humans, too, until a blizzard of technologies and societal adaptations to technologies changed human life to the point that something artificial is needed, a conscious effort to prepare children to be adults.
And since we can no longer count on a child's natural drives to fit the world we actually have. And since we as adults never had a natural instinct for figuring out exactly what children need to face today's world, let alone to predict what will be needed to handle the next six to eight decades... It really is no wonder that parents suffer great angst over preparing children for adulthood.
Gotta learn to love the friction.
Screen time is bad because it’s passive stimulation, as opposed to reading or imagining which is active participation in a dopamine payoff. Attentional endurance for boring things is also vital for cognitive and emotional development. Cheap dopamine is never good. Community stimulation being replaced by screens has proven to be unhealthy.
This is the exact opposite position I was thinking of when I came to the comments section. Using a phone is active. Smart phones have moving screens and touch feedback. They move for us while we sit and scroll. Reading is something we can do on our phones or in a book, but more often than not, these days people are reading on their phones to worse effect because they are drawn to "move" to other sources of media.
The attention endurance part of what you said I do agree with. Which is why reading a book is more difficult, and meditating is even harder.
All these negative comments clearly didn’t listen until the end. 😂
This was a strange hair-splitting episode.
Such an excellent episode!
I think it's telling that you're having a conversation, as parents, on your concerns about giving drugs every bit as powerful as cocaine to a 1 year old. I might not be greatest parent (ok sometimes I'm pretty bad) but thus makes me uncomfortable on a deep level. I've got family that I've distanced myself from because they're so screen addicted my kids turn into something else when they're around and i just don't like it. I'm not going to not see my family over it, but I'll definitely see them like maybe half or a quarter as much as i would've otherwise. And that's kind of sad to me, but it's what I've chosen.
I feel like I’d be this way when I’m a parent as well. With screen time and junk food lol a lot of these foundational habits get set in really early on.
Good for you B.B. This interview troubled me as a fan of Ezra and as a Child Psychologist. Whatever her Educational level and professional expertise is. It Clearly does NOT translate into being in anyway a good arbiter of what one should do about technology with children, much less a one year old. And to brought on to a reputable pod cast to rift on Parenting is beyond irresponsible. His guest are as a norm in a league of their own. It was like watching a train wreck. Why is it so hard to take one's child out into the world and introduce them to the most amazing wonder in the universe!? Earth in all its wonder. Get down in the dirt with your kids.
❤
So many better things you could play for kid than coco melon. Literally brain rot for babies.
I don’t think you’ve yet realized how far you’ve got your head up your own tush. I implore you to please go talk to some regular people and see what they’re dealing with so you can put those smarts to better use, as opposed to exploring these rich people problems. I think you’d like to be helpful AND intellectual. Try to work on the first of those two a little more, please.
Analyzing family screen time is a very “regular person” problem.
@@dudehighmrksup I didn’t hear much analysis, just description, and in the end, justification.
OK . . . I get that psychedelics can provide powerful and meaningful experiences, but her constant comparison of using them to parenting . . . yeah, there might be something there, but it's not a juxtaposition that's easy to get. It just seemed weird, at least the parts I heard. I couldn't listen to the whole thing, and it's not because I am anti psychedelics, I am not, she just wasn't at all compelling as a guest--at least not to me. I am sure others will feel differently and that's cool.
Dude sounds like a lier
ParticipSpongepants
Plankton verses The FUN song
Unsexy tails