Speaker 1: Welcome back today. We're going to be discussing the digital revolution,
Speaker 1: social media, and sociology of screen addiction. With me is
Speaker 1: the biggest screen addict. I know, Ryan, how are you
Speaker 1: doing doing well?
Speaker 2: But I will correct for the audience that caith is
Speaker 2: west in May.
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably, Yeah, we are.
Speaker 1: We will be talking about screen addiction and all of
Speaker 1: the negative effects this is happening on people. And I
Speaker 1: think we can both be honest and say that we
Speaker 1: are we are affected by this as well, but we're
Speaker 1: we're trying to we're trying to fight back against it.
Speaker 1: I can at least say though that it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of part of my job, it's part of my vocation.
Speaker 1: Whereas you're just like a regular you're a screen addict
Speaker 1: for five likes on Twitter, it's not quite the same.
Speaker 2: No, I could use that excuse of you know, being
Speaker 2: politically active and needing to reach people. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: think I am guilty of slight addiction like most other people.
Speaker 3: At what social.
Speaker 1: Media, reaching people on social media?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm too radical for the mainstream.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so where do we want to start it
Speaker 1: with this?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the starting point is kind of around
Speaker 2: twenty ten. I really remember a sharp distinction between kind
Speaker 2: of when I was leaving school two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: Facebook was the first.
Speaker 3: Real social media.
Speaker 2: I mean, there were things before that, like MySpace, but
Speaker 2: that didn't really have any significance.
Speaker 3: It was very basic.
Speaker 2: But Facebook around two thousand and eight when it started
Speaker 2: being launched worldwide other than just America universities, that's really
Speaker 2: when social media started. And around that time I thought
Speaker 2: it functioned in a much more social way than it
Speaker 2: does now. For example, you would, you know, typically be
Speaker 2: invited to someone's eighteenth birthday party or whatever event and
Speaker 2: someone would upload photos from a digital camera, lots of
Speaker 2: group photos photos of the event, and there was also
Speaker 2: functionality for events where you could invite your friends. There
Speaker 2: were lots of promoters at university and other social groups.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: There was a lot more connection to an actual social
Speaker 2: circle around that time.
Speaker 1: It's funny, it's almost like wholesome in hindsight, even though
Speaker 1: it was seen at the time as.
Speaker 3: Well, people saw it as this really deleterious.
Speaker 1: Thing, but in hindsight, like because it was being used
Speaker 1: to basically augment existing social networks, like the examples you gave, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. There was a lot of organizing events like
Speaker 1: you know, you've be in groups with your I guess
Speaker 1: for me it would like classmates or yeah, people's work
Speaker 1: colleagues and you know, organized parties around that. There was events,
Speaker 1: but it was it was very like real life based, right,
Speaker 1: like even the you know, people buying and selling stuff
Speaker 1: on there and yeah, organizing parties, organizing charity events.
Speaker 3: But there wasn't.
Speaker 1: The There wasn't really the East Lab phenomenon. It was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you got your three four hundred, five hundred
Speaker 1: friends and you know, it was it was a way
Speaker 1: where you organize your social circle.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean in those days you even had your top friends,
Speaker 2: so you could see who your you know, closest circle is.
Speaker 2: You could see the relationship statuses. You know, they were
Speaker 2: you know, origin of gossip. And but I think after
Speaker 2: that when the people started using the status to be
Speaker 2: more political and then there were comments being made, and
Speaker 2: this was at a time when society was politically starting
Speaker 2: to polarize. I think that scared a lot of people off.
Speaker 2: And a few years later, once smartphones really picked up,
Speaker 2: the camera quality increased, possibly led by celebrity culture and women.
Speaker 2: I would guess women's desire to avoid conflict that I
Speaker 2: think there was a mass exodus to platforms are Instagram,
Speaker 2: which are really just image based.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Snapchat as well around that period of time. Like
Speaker 1: I'm not sure of the years here, but I think
Speaker 1: like as you go into the twenty tens, Instagram and
Speaker 1: Snapchat become a lot more popular, and then Instagram just
Speaker 1: starts to completely dominate around the time where meta takes
Speaker 1: it over.
Speaker 2: Yes, Snapchat did have a usp for a while, but Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: as you always does, he just steals the steals a
Speaker 2: concept and then Instagram short stories really started to dominate,
Speaker 2: and then they did quite well with the reels concept,
Speaker 2: which is kind of stealing the TikTok idea. So Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: did very well with acquiring well, he even acquired Instagram originally,
Speaker 2: he just acquired the whole social media apparatus and made
Speaker 2: it work under the meta banner. And even Facebook now,
Speaker 2: which was considered a dead platform, has had kind of
Speaker 2: a renaissance as like a local networking group. You've got
Speaker 2: the marketplace. Boomers are still on there and even they're
Speaker 2: launching their dating now. So that's kind of the way.
Speaker 2: It's a volt.
Speaker 1: But what happens during that period when Instagram becomes more dominant,
Speaker 1: Like you said, it moves to more image based and
Speaker 1: you've the obviously massive improvement in camera quality. But then
Speaker 1: also so it moves to the focus being the follower count.
Speaker 1: I think that became a bigger deal where you know,
Speaker 1: normal people can enter that influencer space. So there's kind
Speaker 1: of a midspace where you're not officially an influencer, but
Speaker 1: you can, you know, you can get enough enough popularity
Speaker 1: on social media that it feels like it. And then
Speaker 1: that's I think that's when the heavy kind of algorithmic
Speaker 1: manipulation of people's reward circuitry comes in. It's it's the
Speaker 1: follower counts, and increasingly images and videos are put into
Speaker 1: a global feed rather than just to who's following the user.
Speaker 1: So you have a period of that with Instagram and Twitter.
Speaker 1: Twitter becomes a bit more, you know, it becomes a
Speaker 1: lot more parasocial in terms of celebrities start using it
Speaker 1: just to sound off. It becomes more personalized to them.
Speaker 1: But then I think around the time tiktokis off, that's
Speaker 1: when you get the extreme algorithmic manipulation of you know,
Speaker 1: you use these apps and it's it's heavily focused on,
Speaker 1: you know, the bursts of dopamine and you know, looking
Speaker 1: for the next poster pops off and very quickly apps
Speaker 1: like Instagram and others mimic some of the most addictive
Speaker 1: features of TikTok.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the the algorithms have definitely become far more aggressive,
Speaker 2: which was TikTok's original innovation. But going back to something
Speaker 2: you just said in terms of the follow account, I
Speaker 2: definitely think women's whole lens of the social world has
Speaker 2: moved not only online but universal, and they are or
Speaker 2: many of them, especially gen Z I've noticed this myself,
Speaker 2: is they live their whole existence.
Speaker 3: Through the lens of Instagram.
Speaker 2: They are many of them posting the most mundane of
Speaker 2: life updates. They they plan their lives around what will
Speaker 2: look good on Instagram. They are literally photographing and video
Speaker 2: in everything and given a daily update. I mean, some
Speaker 2: of these Slavic girls are insane, like you know, the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian refugees. They walk around like they're like they're a
Speaker 2: journalist and they will they will narrate their life to
Speaker 2: the audience like they're like they're the main character in
Speaker 2: some kind of news channel or something. It's it's really bizarre.
Speaker 2: I mean, it may it may have already peaked. I'm
Speaker 2: possibly guilty of being a bit optimistic now, but I've
Speaker 2: been on that kind of social network less lately, I've
Speaker 2: noticed less of it. But yeah, that's definitely being a
Speaker 2: feature of the last few years, just planning your whole
Speaker 2: life around what you can put on.
Speaker 1: I do think I don't know what the statistics are
Speaker 1: on male versus female usage of these platforms, but I
Speaker 1: would I would imagine take to Instagram, excuse much more female.
Speaker 1: But just as you're saying that, thinking like, really it
Speaker 1: really does fit female psychology that basically Instagram becomes like
Speaker 1: a collage of your life highlights, Like it seems like
Speaker 1: that's something that's much more appealing to the female mind,
Speaker 1: is to create a kind of narrative of these highlights
Speaker 1: of your life, these learning moments, these big experiences you've had.
Speaker 1: Their social media feeds are much more curated that way
Speaker 1: than men's, for example. You know, there's there's like a
Speaker 1: narrative there that they want to build. I wonder how
Speaker 1: much that's affected social life in other ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll discuss this again, but you know, one
Speaker 1: thing that comes to mind is how how long people
Speaker 1: are to land family formation. You have to wonder how
Speaker 1: much of that as a factor when there's a sense
Speaker 1: of like you have to collect x number of experiences
Speaker 1: in your twenties and kind of build us up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: I mean my theory of female psychology is that they
Speaker 2: kind of see their life far more as a story book.
Speaker 2: And as you say, like, you know, their youthful prime
Speaker 2: is this opportunity to gather the most attention, create these
Speaker 2: unique experiences. And you know, every time that they post,
Speaker 2: they're being socially validated, which is really what women run on.
Speaker 2: You know, every post is feedback that gives them oxytocin serotonin.
Speaker 2: It makes them feel close to people. It's not just
Speaker 2: men simpin and you know try and get them on
Speaker 2: a date or whatever. It's the sisterhood validation. So you know,
Speaker 2: there's so much, you know, so many neurochemicals feeding into
Speaker 2: this technological integration that we're now going through as a species.
Speaker 2: And I just think, you know, we're fifteen or so
Speaker 2: years into this and the boomers are kind of blissfully
Speaker 2: unaware with how much this is affecting the younger generations,
Speaker 2: and it's intrinsically linked with the birth rate collapse. And
Speaker 2: as you say, this whole storybook mentality and collecting experiences
Speaker 2: in the youth is definitely exacerbating this extended childhood before
Speaker 2: family formation can even occur. And it also inhibits family
Speaker 2: formation because the whole lens of attraction and sexual selection
Speaker 2: is also being shifted. But I don't think we're going
Speaker 2: to go too much into that today, but yeah, it's
Speaker 2: certainly causing a lot of problems socially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will cover the fertility crisis more in depth
Speaker 1: in a sense, we'll probably touch on these topics a
Speaker 1: lot again. But yeah, it's really it's two core aspects.
Speaker 1: I mean, one is the way you described it with
Speaker 1: the storybook approach to life. But then the other thing
Speaker 1: is the neurochemical aspect of it, where you know, women
Speaker 1: are primed for these neurochemical rewards, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: oxytocin from forming close bonds or dopamine, the reward from
Speaker 1: kind of the chase or the feeling of being desired,
Speaker 1: And traditionally, obviously this was provided by one person through courtship,
Speaker 1: through relationships came from a pool of a small community,
Speaker 1: and so you know, to get those rewards, you had
Speaker 1: to engage in pair bonding, right, you had to have
Speaker 1: close relationships. But now yes, it's abstracted. You just kind
Speaker 1: of collected from this global marketplace, and that has profound
Speaker 1: effects on family formation, which we'll discuss again, but also
Speaker 1: even just on the effect of individual communities the way
Speaker 1: the way it adomizes people Like I think everyone can
Speaker 1: observe the way traditional social life. Maybe it's funny to
Speaker 1: use traditional for it, but even you know, the the
Speaker 1: customs of going out to pubs and clubs that's kind
Speaker 1: of dying among gen Z and gen Elfhan. There's all
Speaker 1: sorts of statistics on this. Now gen Z are the
Speaker 1: you know, the lowest alcohol drinking generation ever, and it's
Speaker 1: absolutely tanking in the trends. You know, you can observe
Speaker 1: in Ireland, for example, I know different small towns and
Speaker 1: cities where former clubs and bars are closed and there
Speaker 1: just isn't really a ute scene for that anymore. And
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a huge part of it is
Speaker 1: is women are much more drawn to find than those
Speaker 1: rewards on social media.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, absolutely the men follow female desire. So if
Speaker 2: women are checking out because you know they're getting those
Speaker 2: neurochemical hits elsewhere. Why would the men go out drinking
Speaker 2: at great expense if you know there are no women there.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was a photo posted on X a
Speaker 2: few months ago. It's what used to be an incredibly
Speaker 2: busy a couple of pubs in Leicester Square, middle of London,
Speaker 2: and I remember, you know, being like twenty years old
Speaker 2: and seeing the queues like right out the door, just
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred eighteen year old girls queuing up
Speaker 2: to get in, and the photo just it's completely dead,
Speaker 2: no one's out.
Speaker 1: I could think of the same thing in the space
Speaker 1: of ten years. Places that, yeah, every Friday and Saturday
Speaker 1: were well, I know they're.
Speaker 2: And it's not just those kind of youth pubs or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's also the nightclub scene. It's completely dying. I used
Speaker 2: to be involved in that, and I've seen DJs posting
Speaker 2: that there's no work anymore. So I'm surprised that even
Speaker 2: that scene is dying. And yeah, you mentioned alcohol. The
Speaker 2: you know, the markets realize this and a lot of
Speaker 2: these alcohol conglomerates are trading expecting terminal decline. But when
Speaker 2: you get a situation like this, where there's a lack
Speaker 2: of youth socializing, you get social circle collapse, and you know,
Speaker 2: to be socially active, you kind of need like a
Speaker 2: couple of groups to hang out with. You know, you
Speaker 2: pick up new people here and there that you like
Speaker 2: because you've met them at different events. But if you
Speaker 2: don't engage, you just get huge spirals of the client.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, rural areas declining and they lose
Speaker 2: their services and the community collapse because no one the
Speaker 2: group isn't big enough to sustain a perpetual cycle of sociability.
Speaker 2: So there the youthhor in trouble, I would say, And
Speaker 2: it's you know what, what can they really do if
Speaker 2: this situation is occurring. It's like what one on one
Speaker 2: dating with anonymous people and apps? And again that's not
Speaker 2: really stimulating to women because there's no real social proof.
Speaker 2: I don't think their theory of mind is as good
Speaker 2: as they claim. They're not very good at reading. Really
Speaker 2: what the intent of you know, whatever these men are
Speaker 2: claiming they are on on the apps.
Speaker 1: So I know you're dying to fire off to stake
Speaker 1: you have at some point about female empathy and emotional intelligence.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I will say that I don't want to
Speaker 2: done women too much, but yeah, it's it's a dark time,
Speaker 2: I would say, and it's it's hard to even find
Speaker 2: solutions for this kind of crisis.
Speaker 1: When you mentioned that as well, in terms of like
Speaker 1: rural communities that are kind of being left behind and
Speaker 1: losing a certain vitality or social life they once had,
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think of a certain kind of person,
Speaker 1: you know, especially when I think of like rural Ireland,
Speaker 1: I think of a certain type of person that would
Speaker 1: have had an act of social life in those areas
Speaker 1: that it is disappearing now. And when I think of
Speaker 1: the kind of person that's left behind by that, it's
Speaker 1: really the same kind of person that's being left behind
Speaker 1: with these new Daton dynamics. If you think of, you know,
Speaker 1: with social media, we're really moving back to a case
Speaker 1: of female sexual selection, and certain traits are selected for
Speaker 1: and certain traits are not that once made it true.
Speaker 1: But you know, certainly men that are more brash, arrogant,
Speaker 1: you know, van that can put themselves out there more,
Speaker 1: that can get a follow and that can get attention rewarded,
Speaker 1: that have something remarkable about them. But if you think
Speaker 1: about the kind of person that is left behind that
Speaker 1: not very long ago would have successfully started a family
Speaker 1: and you know, been respected in his community. There is
Speaker 1: a certain type of maybe industrious and functional and reliable,
Speaker 1: but not especially remarkable kind of man. And that's really
Speaker 1: the same kind of person that's been left behind by
Speaker 1: this collapse in social dynamics where things are moving towards
Speaker 1: reward and the you know, social movers and shakers, people
Speaker 1: that are a bit more entrepreneurial in this environment. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of honest assault of the earth
Speaker 1: decent people that are being left behind in this I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly, the you know, the the blue collar guy
Speaker 2: that goes down to the local pub and picks one
Speaker 2: of the girls there and you know, start as a family.
Speaker 2: That way is kind of over. And now because the
Speaker 2: you know, the whole dynamic has changed. Men have to
Speaker 2: play the female game. They need to have the online clout,
Speaker 2: need to have a created profile, they need to you know,
Speaker 2: get professional photos or whatever. And it's just you know,
Speaker 2: a game theory of you know, female preferences, and you know,
Speaker 2: masculinity itself is being lost in that process, and there
Speaker 2: aren't any way many ways around it. You know, there's
Speaker 2: been kind of a movement in the last few years like, oh,
Speaker 2: just go and approach girls in real life. Bro, Well,
Speaker 2: it's not that simple, because a you have to fit
Speaker 2: the profile that they're seeing online as desirable. A lot
Speaker 2: be they're anti social themselves because they're not even socially trained,
Speaker 2: so many of them are zogged out on TikTok or whatever.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: One story a girl I was speaking to a couple
Speaker 2: of years ago. She said she was invited on a
Speaker 2: trip with her friends for New Year and they chose
Speaker 2: to go to some not very nice place in the UK,
Speaker 2: which I thought was funny in itself, but I was
Speaker 2: like when she came back, I was, Oh, how's your trip,
Speaker 2: and she was like, Oh, it was terrible. They just
Speaker 2: were on TikTok the whole time, and I went out
Speaker 2: and tried the local food on my own and they
Speaker 2: didn't want to come. I was just like, wow, Like,
Speaker 2: this is gen z women eccentral. And you know, when
Speaker 2: do any of these boomer politicians make any legislation or
Speaker 2: create any safety net against this When they look at
Speaker 2: the fertility rate and apply policy, they just throw money
Speaker 2: at the problem. No, this is this is a deep
Speaker 2: cultural problem and the whole lens of women's social life
Speaker 2: being shifted radically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure everyone listening will probably have similarly relevant anecdotes,
Speaker 1: but I mean we're talking about really gen Z here,
Speaker 1: and that's one thing, but we're looking at what comes
Speaker 1: after him. Note with Generation Alpha, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: going to be another level again where it's a generation
Speaker 1: that's totally raised with this as such as central Paraderal
Speaker 1: lives in a way it wasn't even for gen Z,
Speaker 1: and the effects of that, even cognitively are going to
Speaker 1: be profound.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The UK media regulator Offcom released shocking figures last summer
Speaker 2: about the tablet use by children in the UK. I mean,
Speaker 2: the data is disgusting. Frankly, eight of zero to two
Speaker 2: year olds have a personal tablet. Nineteen percent of three
Speaker 2: to five three to five year olds have a mobile phone.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that is smartphones only or they
Speaker 2: have like a slip a flip phone to call them
Speaker 2: at score or something, but that was the headline figure.
Speaker 2: In the three to five year old bracket. The average
Speaker 2: screen time per day is over six hours. Bear in
Speaker 2: mind that UK children start score four, so that is
Speaker 2: you know, how much time do they even have at home?
Speaker 2: Maybe the entire home time is being taken up by
Speaker 2: screen time. And that's the average. That's the average. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this isn't even the worst of it. Thirty In one
Speaker 2: another study of one thousand parents, thirty four percent admitted
Speaker 2: that they couldn't get their child to eat without showing
Speaker 2: it a screen at the same time, and I think
Speaker 2: it was around forty five percent admit using the screen
Speaker 2: to calm the child down. And I witnessed us myself.
Speaker 2: I've got a friend he invited me around for dinner
Speaker 2: and his two year old boy absolutely crashed out because
Speaker 2: his mum said enough pepper pig for today, and he
Speaker 2: literally had a tantrum for two or two or three hours.
Speaker 2: And my friend at that point realized that there was
Speaker 2: a serious problem and the screen got completely taken away,
Speaker 2: never used again. Apparently he's doing better than ever. So
Speaker 2: that is the kind of thing that's going on with
Speaker 2: young children in the UK, and the behavioral disorders and
Speaker 2: verbalization disorders are off.
Speaker 3: The charts now.
Speaker 2: I think that's something like in the thirties or around
Speaker 2: forty percent having behavioral disord orders as a result of this.
Speaker 2: The ones in the highest bracket of use. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's obvious obvious problems that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is those statistics are insaying, because if the
Speaker 1: average is like five or six errors, I mean there
Speaker 1: is going to be a cohort of those kids where
Speaker 1: the parents have some principle and and don't let them
Speaker 1: use the phones at all, which means that if you
Speaker 1: exclude those, presumably the amount of time is wall longer
Speaker 1: that you just have maybe a majority of kids that
Speaker 1: are basically just on screens the entire time they're outside school.
Speaker 3: I think it's looking that way.
Speaker 2: And even if you go out outside, you'll see prams
Speaker 2: now have a pad holder and the like. A young
Speaker 2: baby will be shown a pad of whatever entertainment just
Speaker 2: to stop them crying. So it's become it's become a
Speaker 2: replacement for maternal care and touch and whatever else a
Speaker 2: baby needs, and it's just oh, just train your brain
Speaker 2: on the images.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly what they'll watch him, but I
Speaker 2: do know that neurological development in babies and young children
Speaker 2: is incredibly important. There's one neurologist, Tomasello. He's got a
Speaker 2: theory or science of the nine month neurological revolution. It's
Speaker 2: been in our species even pre Homo sapien I think
Speaker 2: it was the Homo heidelbergensis, one of the proto of
Speaker 2: human types. But that's the sciences that we learned shared
Speaker 2: intentionality around nine months old, where the you know, the
Speaker 2: adult will show an object and follow the object with
Speaker 2: the eye, and the child starts to follow the eye
Speaker 2: of the parent. And the eyes are incredibly important in
Speaker 2: terms of neurological development. The eyes are wired into the
Speaker 2: brain and you know, linked linked to the brain and
Speaker 2: neural pathways in very profound ways. And if this neurological
Speaker 2: development is replaced with passive consumption rather than intentional learning,
Speaker 2: there is actually a huge deficit in white matter development.
Speaker 2: So the brain is literally not developing properly. And we
Speaker 2: don't even know what those children are going to be
Speaker 2: like when they should become functional adults.
Speaker 3: They could be basically retarded.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I of don't think as well. I have
Speaker 1: heard psychologists talk about this, the importance of border for
Speaker 1: childhood development, especially in terms of developing creativity. And you know,
Speaker 1: when kids are bored, I mean typically they invent games,
Speaker 1: and you know, they learn things like cooperation and social skills.
Speaker 1: You know, they do this with other kids and they
Speaker 1: learn to set rules and create structures and so on.
Speaker 1: But there's just so many ways in which, you know,
Speaker 1: the creative acts that kids come up with when they're
Speaker 1: bored it is important for their development because it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of learning on the fly, like it's it's learning
Speaker 1: actively having to adapt to situations, not just pre approved
Speaker 1: set games they're established for you by a teacher or
Speaker 1: parent or whatever. But that that's so vital for childhood
Speaker 1: development in a sense, it's probably there's probably even more
Speaker 1: going on there than we realize, just because of how
Speaker 1: much of childhood development traditionally has come through that. But
Speaker 1: we've basically eliminated boredom, right, like you know, you get
Speaker 1: you give the example the kid on the iPad.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people will have observed that.
Speaker 1: That, you know, young kids where you take an iPad
Speaker 1: of them and it's like, you know, it's like taking
Speaker 1: Heroin off a Heroin addict. But whether it's the screens
Speaker 1: or other forms of technological entertainment, boredom is is kind
Speaker 1: of absent for children now and if it, if it
Speaker 1: comes up, they're going to kick up a big fuss,
Speaker 1: and the parents are probably going to deal with very
Speaker 1: quickly because you know, they're busy themselves and they want
Speaker 1: to get on with whatever they're doing. They want to
Speaker 1: get back to their social media enjoyment. But I think
Speaker 1: that's I think that's going to be profound in the
Speaker 1: effect it has in this generation.
Speaker 2: I mean, what, what what did you do as a child.
Speaker 2: I mean, I did watch a lot of TV, or
Speaker 2: so my mom says, Thomas the Tank Engine. But I
Speaker 2: also remember playing with very mechanical toys, and I grew
Speaker 2: up with my cousins and my little brother, and you
Speaker 2: know Jonathan Hyatt about the need for children to have
Speaker 2: rough play and learn cooperation, and you know, I went
Speaker 2: to nursery at a young age, and I had my
Speaker 2: granddad in the house that I did crosswords and puzzles
Speaker 2: with and stuff. And I don't know how many children
Speaker 2: are even getting access to that, because you know, the
Speaker 2: families are smaller. It's like smaller nuclear families, maybe even
Speaker 2: one child, you know, no extended family around. I think
Speaker 2: children are probably still going to the play schools, but
Speaker 2: do they even have the skill to socialize in the
Speaker 2: play school if they've been watching the screen for the
Speaker 2: two years prior. So you know, I'm not an expert
Speaker 2: in this field. I'm just you know, ringing the alarm
Speaker 2: bells really, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there, I mean there's a lot of factors
Speaker 1: that are kind of compounding on each other when it
Speaker 1: comes to this as well, because you know, things are
Speaker 1: more urbanized, people living in suburbs more, there isn't as
Speaker 1: much open space for kids to explore. And then there's
Speaker 1: a decline and a lack of social trusts as well.
Speaker 3: I think kids.
Speaker 1: Aren't running off playing with their neighbors so much anymore.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't even know their neighbors or
Speaker 1: ever ever interact with them. And then, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: Western societies are more multicultural. And Robert Putnam's famous study
Speaker 1: Bawling Alone, where he studied the sociological effects of increased diversity,
Speaker 1: I mean, the number one thing was decline and social trust,
Speaker 1: but the effect that he called it on the individual
Speaker 1: level was the huddling effect, where people people spend more
Speaker 1: time indoors, they do more solitary activities, you know, hence
Speaker 1: the name bawling Alone. But I think you know that
Speaker 1: feeds into this retreat into technology as well. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine it. It's got to be quite difficult
Speaker 1: raised in a child because it's also there's also the
Speaker 1: compounding effect of when people have fewer children across society,
Speaker 1: smaller families becoming the norm itself discourages family formation because
Speaker 1: the society is directed less towards the needs of families,
Speaker 1: it's less friendly of an environment for children. And then again, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're looking to socialize your kids, I mean, one
Speaker 1: thing is there's just less children around, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: There does seem to be this feedback loop of more
Speaker 2: atomized society leads to more less children, leads to more
Speaker 2: online time, and in general, there is this perception that
Speaker 2: there is just far less risk by you know, socializing
Speaker 2: alone digitally.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make me think not the derail, But when
Speaker 1: did it become such a thing, Because if you think back,
Speaker 1: like it's like one generation prior to us, the kids
Speaker 1: just spent all their time outdoors apparently, and you know,
Speaker 1: would leave in the morning and.
Speaker 3: Come back in the evening.
Speaker 1: When when did the peedo scare become such a thing,
Speaker 1: Where like while they were started telling their kids like
Speaker 1: if you know, if you play alone like a pedophile
Speaker 1: that was going to take you. That seemed that seemed
Speaker 1: to in one generation become kind of the big concern.
Speaker 2: I remember it around the town of Millennium. I mean
Speaker 2: I was always outside playing football. I was so addicted
Speaker 2: to football. I would even look for games with random
Speaker 2: other kids. You know, you'd have like a vague idea
Speaker 2: of like who the other kids in the town were,
Speaker 2: and you could kind of say, like you knew someone
Speaker 2: and we could you know, start a game together or whatever.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think like Murdock's tabloid press and pedo
Speaker 2: scare that really took off around then because you know,
Speaker 2: it's this usual thing that or the media do to
Speaker 2: you know, cause outrage, cars, cause shock scare people, and
Speaker 2: then people don't want to miss out on the latest dangers.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that that that became a huge thing in
Speaker 2: the late nineties. I remember brass I even did a
Speaker 2: comedy episode on it that that's quite a dark British
Speaker 2: comedy that would certainly not be aired now. But they
Speaker 2: did a special called Ptero Geddon and yeah, that that
Speaker 2: was I think that ended up getting banned or something,
Speaker 2: but that was kind of a mockery of that whole
Speaker 2: New line of news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, does that tone which just like
Speaker 1: the female true chrime obsession where you know, any isolated
Speaker 1: stories of kids getting taken like that seems to get
Speaker 1: blown up so much and talked about so much, and
Speaker 1: you know, like the medal McCann story just like went
Speaker 1: on and on and on. Or you know, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it is just a function of like more multicultural outami
Speaker 1: societies where you know, I mean there is something to
Speaker 1: do it. Like I said, people don't know their neighbors
Speaker 1: so much anymore. So Yeah, I mean, I guess on
Speaker 1: the one hand, kids were going out morning and evening,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, you know, the parents knew
Speaker 1: everyone else that lives and whether it was the you know,
Speaker 1: the the block of flats or the suburb or whatever,
Speaker 1: they did actually know all their neighbors.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when I was growing up, people would leave their
Speaker 2: kids with the neighbors or you know, with their sibling.
Speaker 2: You know, my mum went back to work when I
Speaker 2: was two and she'd leave me with her sister, and
Speaker 2: I grew up with my cousin around the same age.
Speaker 2: But now the one of the political buzzwords is childcare.
Speaker 2: You know, every manifesto has to promise x amount of
Speaker 2: free childcare. It's just it's just a whole breakdown of
Speaker 2: a you know, normal family, social structure, and trust in society.
Speaker 2: And you know, technology is certainly playing into that. Going
Speaker 2: back to the screen time statistics in gen Z, eighty
Speaker 2: two percent believe they are addicted to these platforms and
Speaker 2: over ten percent have clinical addiction. I mean, in terms
Speaker 2: of the type of content that people are spending their
Speaker 2: time on, it's incredibly dopaminergic reward centered. So the dopamine
Speaker 2: system works in terms of anticipate anticipation. If you get
Speaker 2: content that you're not particularly interested in and you'll constantly
Speaker 2: feel like you're searching for it, and then you find
Speaker 2: something that interests you, your dopamine rewards you. It makes
Speaker 2: you feel good because you've gone through this exploration, this
Speaker 2: journey to get a reward. I mean, you know, that's
Speaker 2: in our evolution because our ancestors went and did difficult things,
Speaker 2: explored new lands and just covered new food sources and
Speaker 2: one battles or you know, whatever they did to survive.
Speaker 2: But now that whole neurological system is being redirected into
Speaker 2: looking at entertaining videos online and that's now I think
Speaker 2: it's you know, hundreds of millions of short videos are
Speaker 2: being watched every day. You know, TikTok is the most
Speaker 2: extreme version of that. You mentioned snapchat earlier. If you
Speaker 2: are at a bus or train station and you see
Speaker 2: a young girl and you look over her screen and
Speaker 2: see what she's doing, often you'll see them just flicking
Speaker 2: through like their entire contact list with their thumb, like
Speaker 2: super quickly, and they're not they're not even stopping on
Speaker 2: a second. I think it's because the female especially needs
Speaker 2: to see everything that's going on in her social world.
Speaker 2: She needs to see every photo, every bit of news,
Speaker 2: every up day, every gossip, and it just completely zogged out,
Speaker 2: like they're not aware of their surroundings. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: they're probably giving themselves neck ache from looking down all
Speaker 2: the time. I mean, yeah, but it's you know, this
Speaker 2: is really changing the nature of human existence itself. And
Speaker 2: you know, as we say, leading to complete social atomization,
Speaker 2: collapse of social circles, and you know, families are not
Speaker 2: being created, relationships are not being created as a result.
Speaker 2: So it's intrinsically linked to nationalism, and that's why we're
Speaker 2: covering it.
Speaker 1: I mean, people have been sounding the alarm on these
Speaker 1: trends for a while, and you know, we've talked about
Speaker 1: observable things here fallen attention span and lower socialization and
Speaker 1: so on, but you know, things have basically continued as normal, right.
Speaker 1: Intelligence hasn't especially declined between generations. People still graduate university
Speaker 1: and so on. But in terms of real world effects,
Speaker 1: this is starting to have now where we're seeing really
Speaker 1: profound downstream effects of these trends. There's one study I
Speaker 1: think that's really interesting in this regard. It came out
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. It's called they Don't Read
Speaker 1: very Well, and so some of the details of it
Speaker 1: went kind of semi viral on X and substack last year,
Speaker 1: and I found this absolutely staggering. But essentially it studied
Speaker 1: English graduates. So these were people majoring in English in
Speaker 1: an American university and they had actually above average grades.
Speaker 1: And it studied whether they could decipher seven paragraphs from
Speaker 1: a Dickens text. So all they had to do read
Speaker 1: these paragraphs and explain back to the person examining them
Speaker 1: what Dickens is saying. Now, they had access to their
Speaker 1: smartphones and the dictionary, so they could do any amount
Speaker 1: of research they want get the different definition of every
Speaker 1: individual word, and the result is quite sagrid. So the
Speaker 1: results were fifty eight percent understood very little of the
Speaker 1: passages and would not have been able to finish the book.
Speaker 1: These are English graduates. Thirty eight percent understood about half
Speaker 1: the sentences and five percent I think it was four
Speaker 1: people out of eighty five surveyed. Five percent could understand
Speaker 1: all seven paragraphs, and the first group the problematic readers
Speaker 1: to fifty eight percent. They literally they could not differentiate
Speaker 1: between literal and figurative speech. So I think one example
Speaker 1: in the Dickens text, he was describing a guy sitting
Speaker 1: down and he had great whiskers, and so this fifty
Speaker 1: eight percent couldn't understand that this the Dickens creating a
Speaker 1: description of his mustache. They thought that he was sitting
Speaker 1: down with a cat named whiskers. Right, So this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing. And again these are English graduates. Now,
Speaker 1: the statistics on graduates from college generally are also very concerning.
Speaker 1: They say something like eighty percent or functionally illiterate. Now
Speaker 1: you can get into what that means in terms of
Speaker 1: obviously they can read, but it's a question of how
Speaker 1: well they understand texts, how much they can decipher language
Speaker 1: patterns and so on. But this is a much more
Speaker 1: I think a profound study, because this is telling you
Speaker 1: exactly what they're looking at and what they're coming back with.
Speaker 1: And again, these are English graduates. Most of these people
Speaker 1: are going to have degrees in English, and only five
Speaker 1: percent of them can read Dickens and understand it consistently.
Speaker 3: Is this in the United States?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in a university in Kentucky, where again they actually
Speaker 1: have above average gray.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I mean Dickens doesn't even have a high reading age.
Speaker 2: It was recommended to children when I was growing up.
Speaker 2: I can't say I'm hugely surprised, though. I had a
Speaker 2: friend he was a senior PhD student marking papers about
Speaker 2: a decade ago, and he said the students were complete morons,
Speaker 2: and that was a top university in the UK, top twenty,
Speaker 2: and he said they couldn't write, they couldn't form ideas.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much of this is down to
Speaker 2: technology or what's well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I spoke to someone that used to be a
Speaker 1: university lecturer in philosophy and he was saying, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: believe how poor the average undergrad is even twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: But he said he speaks to people that he knew
Speaker 1: from his time teaching that are still doing it, and
Speaker 1: they said to him, you would not be able to
Speaker 1: comprehend the level of declient since you were teaching here
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. It's night and day like. Essentially, these
Speaker 1: students are hopeless, and I think it is technologically induced
Speaker 1: because average intelligence, like I said, has not really gone
Speaker 1: down that much in so far as it has if
Speaker 1: you look at Western populations. I think there's a demographic
Speaker 1: angle there, but there really isn't a noticeable decline, and
Speaker 1: yet people are functionally illiterate, and you know, part of
Speaker 1: it is just reading less. I think about half the
Speaker 1: number of adolescents now read books for enjoyment that would
Speaker 1: have in the nineteen nineties. I think is the statistic.
Speaker 1: But there's also there's all sorts of ways that the
Speaker 1: constant use of technology, especially for short form content, rewire
Speaker 1: our brains in ways that do push us towards illiteracy,
Speaker 1: especially if it's at a young development age. I mean
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's some and called cognitive patience, which
Speaker 1: is very important for reading that you can you know,
Speaker 1: sit and kind of stew on a on a sentence
Speaker 1: or a paragraph and taking the understanding that goes down
Speaker 1: with use of technology. They even monitor people in the
Speaker 1: use social media to read that there's fewer size you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's which is a sign of kind of refocusing
Speaker 1: and taking in text. And people carry over these habits
Speaker 1: to longer texts where they get in the habit of
Speaker 1: of scanning information very quickly. And when we you know,
Speaker 1: when we look for information or when we read something online,
Speaker 1: get in the habit of of just scanning it for
Speaker 1: essential information. And people carry that over to longer texts
Speaker 1: and books to the point that they really can't focus
Speaker 1: on taking in an entire paragraph. They take these, uh,
Speaker 1: these scanning tendencies over with them, And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you do really have to train your brain in a
Speaker 1: certain way, especially in youth too, to learn to read.
Speaker 1: So it's not surprising. Another statistic is that seventeen percent
Speaker 1: of students are given a full book to read as
Speaker 1: they go through schooling in the US now because increasingly
Speaker 1: teachers have moved to teaching English through you know, assigning blurbs, blogs,
Speaker 1: excerpts from books. But people rarely read full books anymore.
Speaker 1: And of course, I mean this is twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: this is before everyone began using chatch GPT for all
Speaker 1: of their assignments and for all of their learning. So
Speaker 1: any of those trends are going to be far worse
Speaker 1: now because these are people that would have went through say,
Speaker 1: high school, and they would have actually done homework and
Speaker 1: read texts that were assigned. Now, with the widespread use
Speaker 1: of llms, they wouldn't even be doing that in their
Speaker 1: development right, They'll just be passing their homework through chat
Speaker 1: GPT increasingly all homer because done true chat GPT teachers
Speaker 1: are correct and using chat GPT. So even the little
Speaker 1: bit of training they would have gone on the you know,
Speaker 1: the whatever shorter text they were given to read and
Speaker 1: study and write about. No, that's going out the window.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean these trends are only going to
Speaker 1: be exacerbated.
Speaker 2: The pre TV generation, the silent generation, pre boomer they
Speaker 2: were said to have an attention span of twenty five seconds.
Speaker 2: When we were growing up, it was said to be
Speaker 2: around twelve seconds. I mean, you know, TV and mass
Speaker 2: media was certainly around there that probably affected things. But
Speaker 2: now it's said to be eight seconds, So you know,
Speaker 2: seventy percent decline over a few decades due to exposure
Speaker 2: to media. And I remember the older generations having a
Speaker 2: much higher level of English. My grandfather, for example, we
Speaker 2: spoke very correctly and he was only you know, a
Speaker 2: working classman, military police officer, and he spoke very correctly.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the standards are declining. I don't know how
Speaker 2: much of that is the quality of education or you know,
Speaker 2: other technological factors affecting neurological development or whatever. But how
Speaker 2: many of these children even even read books anymore? I
Speaker 2: remember I was quite a slow starter to get reading,
Speaker 2: but once I got into it, around the age of
Speaker 2: six or seven, I was a dedicated reader. I went
Speaker 2: through all the you know, children's adventure books, and you know,
Speaker 2: I think that's a really important stage that children should
Speaker 2: go through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's observable as well. I mean, you can see
Speaker 1: it's not just like a selection bias where we're looking
Speaker 1: at the educated few and how well they rolled or
Speaker 1: spoil prior to us. But I mean you can look
Speaker 1: at things like letters from soldiers, people posts sometimes on
Speaker 1: x people's diaries, people's letters to one another, like working
Speaker 1: class people and Yeah, it's at a level that seems
Speaker 1: totally remarkable to us now if you were to imagine
Speaker 1: the average person writing like that. But this, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was just a level of schooling and understanding that that
Speaker 1: was taken for granted.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to see that a couple of states have
Speaker 2: actually taken action. Sweden and Denmark have removed these kind
Speaker 2: of you know, technological aids and reverted back to pen
Speaker 2: and paper. Also, we've seen Australia create an entire social
Speaker 2: media ban for under sixteenes and I think it's necessary.
Speaker 2: The UK are looking at it. I would like to see,
Speaker 2: you know, a state solution across the Western world, because
Speaker 2: clearly something is very wrong and that will be required.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really so profound. I mean we haven't even
Speaker 1: gotten into all of the health effects in terms of
Speaker 1: what we're finding about how this affect sleep, how to
Speaker 1: affect people's cortisol and their general levels of stress and
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression, and all of these things are being
Speaker 1: studied now and again just very direct, very profound links
Speaker 1: between all of those things. And I mean it's very
Speaker 1: difficult in terms of looking at this as a as
Speaker 1: a sociological problem to really talk about solutions. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can talk about obviously limited it to from children.
Speaker 1: I think that that's a no brainer, and I think
Speaker 1: is you know, it should really just be like a
Speaker 1: basic kind of standard of parenting in terms of just
Speaker 1: being unacceptable to hand these devices over to kids and
Speaker 1: get them hooked on them. But I mean, ultimately, for
Speaker 1: the individual, it's very hard to see this just being
Speaker 1: legislated out of and you know, the Silicon Valley has
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of engineers combined millions of hours designed
Speaker 1: to hook people and activate the reward system to have
Speaker 1: them hooked on this for as many hours and minutes
Speaker 1: as possible, and fighting that is very difficult. But in
Speaker 1: terms of sociologically, how we deal with this collectively, not
Speaker 1: only there not very many answers, but I don't think
Speaker 1: the profound downstream effects of this have even really been
Speaker 1: considered very much, even by our own side. And I
Speaker 1: think we've only scratched the surface of it ourselves, even
Speaker 1: in this discussion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not let our political opponents monopolize these kind
Speaker 2: of ideas. You know, as we said in episode one,
Speaker 2: we need to be tapped into you know, all areas
Speaker 2: unless present a case for everything, how we see the world,
Speaker 2: how you know the future can be if we win
Speaker 2: power and you know, wielding the state to limit the
Speaker 2: freedom and you know, stop limbic capitalism operating with a
Speaker 2: totally free hand at whatever social cost.
Speaker 3: You know that, let's make the case for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot to cover. And you know, again
Speaker 1: we haven't even we didn't even really get into the
Speaker 1: effects of AI and l ll ms and the profound
Speaker 1: effects were starting to see that, have you know, open
Speaker 1: the can of worms on AI relationships and how in's
Speaker 1: sane some of the suffer scene with that is now
Speaker 1: and how common it is, But that will be that
Speaker 1: will have to be evergreen content before another day. For now,
Speaker 1: we leave it there. And yeah, this was a This
Speaker 1: was a good discussion. Hopefully people will get something out
Speaker 1: of it.